A Burracombe Christmas

by Lilian Harry

Genres: General Fiction; Short Stories

Synopsis

17-year-old Alice Tozer comes as a maid to the Tozers' farm in Burracombe in the spring of 1918. She soon falls in love with the little village. But that's not all she's falling for. Ted Tozer is half promised to young Ivy Prowse, daughter of a neighbouring farmer, yet Alice and Ted feel a powerful bond forming. But romance must wait as Ted's brother Joe returns from the war only to fall ill with influenza. Alice sees a new side to the family as she nurses Joe and wonders if life as a farmer's wife could be her destiny. As the year turns towards the first peacetime Christmas in years, it seems like there will be more to celebrate in Burracombe than anyone had hoped.

Release date: November 6, 2014

Publisher: Soundings

Print pages: 64

Sample

A BURRACOMBE CHRISTMAS

Burracombe, Christmas 1918

‘I just got a few things to say before I propose a toast,’ Amos Tozer declared, ‘and that’s that it’s master good to have the war over and our Joe home again at last, and all your faces round the table looking so happy and healthy. And what’s more, my dear,’ he turned to his wife, Minnie, ‘I reckon that was the best Christmas dinner you ever cooked.’

‘Go on, Amos,’ she said, looking pleased nevertheless, ‘you always say that.’

‘Well, you must be getting better every year, then,’ he retorted, lifting his glass of port. ‘Anyway, here’s my toast. To all of us – good health and happiness. To peace and no more wars – and to our Joe, home again safe and sound.’

‘To all of us,’ the family chorused, ‘And to our Joe.’

Alice Whiddon raised her glass too. Although she had been working as a live-in maid at the farm since September and had always been treated as one of the family, she still felt rather shy at such occasions, and she scarcely knew Joe, who had only returned from France a week or so ago.

She glanced at Minnie, wondering if she should get up and start clearing the table, but nobody seemed inclined to move just yet so she stayed quietly listening to their talk. The Christmas dinner of roast goose – fattened up by Minnie herself – and vegetables from the kitchen garden, followed by the Christmas pudding Alice and the Tozers’ younger son, Ted, had helped stir a few weeks before, had filled them all so that all they wanted to do was relax round the table and enjoy being together as a whole family again.

In an hour or so the men would have to go out to start the milking and Minnie and Alice would set everything to rights indoors while they were gone. And later on, Ivy Prowse, who was walking out with Ted, and Dottie Friend, Joe’s sweetheart, would be coming for tea, though whether anyone would have room for the ham Minnie had boiled or the sandwiches and trifles Alice had made, not to mention the Christmas cake they had iced and decorated last week, was anybody’s guess.

‘And how about you, Alice?’ Joe broke into her thoughts. ‘Have you found a sweetheart in Burracombe?’

Alice blushed and Minnie said sharply, ‘Don’t tease the maid, Joe. Her’s hardly turned eighteen. Plenty of time for her to be thinking of all that.’

‘Well, my Dottie’s not much older,’ he retorted, grinning, but then his grin faded and he added soberly. ‘And I reckon the maids need to be looking sharp these days, for there’s not going to be so many men about for them to marry after this war, and now there’s the ‘flu as well.’

There was a sudden silence. Eleven young men from Burracombe had gone to war and never returned, and two more had been seriously wounded. There was talk of a memorial stone to be erected, engraved with all the names of those who had been lost, but some of the villagers thought it would be too painful t. . .