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‘Oh, darling – forgive me?’ Julia hurried to her mother’s side, falling to her knees, laying her head on her lap as she had done since childhood. ‘And try to understand my bitterness?’
‘I do.’ Helen dropped a kiss on her daughter’s head. ‘I know what it is like to lose the man you love, always remember that, will you, when you think the world is against you.
‘And go upstairs, why don’t you, and take a peep at Drew, then come with me for a walk around the garden, before the light goes. This is such a beautiful evening. Let’s walk quietly, and count our blessings?’
‘Let’s. I won’t be a minute.’ Blessing-counting. It always worked for her mother, Julia thought sadly as she opened the nursery door. Why, then, did it do nothing for her? Why could she never accept Andrew’s death nor cease to want him until her body throbbed and ached from it? And why, no matter what her common sense told her to the contrary, did she still fear the harm Elliot Sutton could do?
‘Alice – I do so long to see you,’ she whispered as she tucked in the cot blankets. ‘You can’t know how I have missed you; how much I would give to have you back here.’
But Alice would never return to Rowangarth.
Clementina Sutton began her scheming the moment she learned about the people next door, in Cheyne Walk. She had been anxious, during the war, about the house standing empty next to hers, worrying that the Army would commandeer it as a billet for soldiers or, worse, that it would be filled with refugees, foreign refugees, thus lowering the area in general and the value of her own property in particular.
She had bought the London house for mixed reasons, though mainly to use for entertaining during the social season when mothers, desperate for good marriages for their daughters, paraded them at dances and parties, at race meetings and concerts like hawkers setting out their stalls.
It was at one of these events she had hoped her eldest son Elliot would meet a suitable young lady and if she came with a title, it wouldn’t matter how poor she was; Clemmy Sutton had money enough to support her. Nor would it matter if she were plain as a pikestaff, so long as she came from a line of good breeders and had the stamina to produce two sons at least. And if that were not all, the favoured young lady would have the ability – and the sense, if she knew what was good for her – to turn a blind eye to her husband’s excursions into infidelity for it was certain that no one woman, no matter how beautiful and bed-worthy, would satisfy her Elliot. Clementina had come to expect it and even to forgive him for it, because it wasn’t his fault he was born so handsome and so attractive to the opposite sex.
Mind, it had to be acknowledged that Elliot always seemed to attract the worst kind of woman; sometimes married ones but most often women that she, his mother, would refuse to touch with the end of a long stick. Ladies of easy virtue. Whores! Why did they attract him so when he could have had all the pleasuring he wanted free, and in his own bed, if only he’d had the sense to marry!
Of course, with the coming of the war, young women had been quick to throw off their chaperons with alacrity and delight; had raised their hemlines, spoken to young men to whom they had not been introduced and smoked and drank cocktails in public. And they had taken to uniforms with high delight, driving ambulances, being lady typists in the Women’s Army Corps – even nursing as her niece Julia had done; gone to France an’ all to do it, risking life and limb for her stupidity.
Well, now that was over, and young women would be falling over themselves to get their hooks into a husband and husbands not so easy to catch, either. Stood to reason, didn’t it, with many millions of men killed and thank God her own three sons had come through it unscathed, though Nathan had ended up in the thick of it with the soldiers in the trenches and him not caring one jot for his mother’s feelings.
But now she could forget the war and its inconveniences, for she had embarked on the task of seeing her eldest son safely wed – and before another year ran, if she had anything to do with it!
‘I think,’ she said to her husband, ‘that I might have acted a little hastily, putting up that fence …’
‘Fence?’ Edward Sutton lowered the evening paper he was reading.
‘At Cheyne Walk.’
‘Aah. To keep out the gypsies next door?’
‘Not gypsies, Edward.’ She squirmed at her own foolishness. ‘There was a man – a giant of a fellow …’ He had lived in the basement area, emerging from it from time to time to yell at dogs or glower at any passer-by who was foolish enough to linger outside. A thick black beard he’d had and terrified Molly more and more with every sighting. ‘I got it wrong; Molly got it wrong. The dark fellow was a Cossack it would seem, and Cossacks were loyal to a man to their Czar. I should have known better than to listen to her, but what can one expect from a woman of her class?’
‘Or for three shillings and sixpence a week,’ he added, raising his newspaper again.
‘She gets a pint of milk a day and old clothes! And all she does is caretake an empty house …’
‘So am I to take it that the fence will be removed – or at least lowered a couple of feet? Are the new tenants next door all at once acceptable?’
‘I don’t know. One hears such stories. That is why I shall go to London and see for myself; see if they are socially acceptable, that is.’ She might even leave her card, though card-leaving did not have the same social power it once had. Standards had been lowered since the war ended, she sighed. Things would never be the same. The working man had fought a war and thought he was as good as his master, now! ‘Shall you come with me?’
‘I think not.’ Edward Sutton disliked London. Even this house he lived in – Clemmy’s great, ornate, completely vulgar house – was to be preferred to noisy, smoky, overcrowded London. ‘I’m sure you can manage without me.’
‘Of course.’ She hadn’t for a moment imagined he would want to leave Pendenys. ‘But if you don’t come, I shall need someone with me. I shall take a couple of servants.’
‘Take whom you wish, Clemmy.’
She usually did. She considered it cheaper to buy train tickets for them than pay out good money to keep permanent servants there – apart from what they ate and stole in her absence.
‘Yes.’ She intended to. After all, it was she who paid their wages, not her husband.
‘When will you go?’
‘Tomorrow, Edward, I think. I shall take a cook, a housemaid and a footman.’ Sufficient to impress the people next door if they were what she supposed them to be. She would have taken her butler, pompous and arrogant though she thought him, had she imagined for a moment he would agree to go with her. But the Cheyne Walk house was far beneath the man’s dignity. For one thing, its cellars were completely empty of wine and for another, it did not provide him with his own sitting-room and a man in his position, he stressed, whenever London threatened, was entitled to his privacy. A snob, Clementina brooded, who looked down his nose at her; at Mrs Clementina Sutton whose hand fed him. She only put up with him because as butlers went he knew what he was about and she got his expertise cheaply on account of his liking for red wine. They understood each other, she and that butler!
‘I said I would take –’
‘Yes, my dear. Do as you wish. Take Elliot, too.’ Elliot had been on his best behaviour these few weeks past. Soon, his instincts would surface and better they surfaced in London – and under the eye of his mother!
‘You can’t bear to be alone in the house with him, can you?’ she countered tartly. ‘Can’t speak a civil word to your own son …’
‘Clemmy – let us not quarrel over Elliot?’ he sighed. ‘Leave him here at Pendenys, if that’s what you wish.’
She did not reply. Her mind was back at Cheyne Walk and the people next door. Refugees, of course, but what refugees! Not destitute, if what she had heard was to be believed, and real aristocrats, possessed of a title! A daughter, too, and unmarried; strictly chaperoned by the fierce Cossack whenever she ventured out.
She purred inside her, just to think of it. To have what she had been searching for landed next door to her was past belief. Such luck – even if they were Russians. She wouldn’t mind betting they’d got out of St Petersburg with a small fortune sewn into their corsets and the benefit of a London bank account set up long before the shooting of the Czar. Oh, my word, but it was worth looking into. Well worth looking into!
Tom Dwerryhouse checked his pocket watch with the station clock and found they agreed. He was in time. He had sent the pony along at a brisk pace, determined that Julia MacMalcolm should not arrive before him and take the station taxi.
He needed time alone with her to explain the way it had been; thank her for what she had done for him. But mostly he wanted to tell her that he knew about young Drew and that Rowangarth’s secret was safe with him. It was why he had taken time off work and harnessed up the pony and trap provided by his employer for the use of the estate workers – them being so cut off from civilization. The pony and cart could be used by any employee at any time, provided due notice was given to the groom who looked after Ralph Hillier’s hunters.
He had, Tom considered, done very well for himself, all things taken into account. A decent employer, a good house, now that Alice had licked it into shape; a suit of clothes every second year and boots and leggings, an’ all. And by far the most important, he had Alice and Daisy.
Why, then, should Miss Julia’s coming disturb him? Not entirely on account of her being gentry and him being working class nor because he was an army deserter, either, though he wasn’t proud of it nor ever quite free of the fear that one day the Army would arrive to cart him off.
He set his jaw tightly, shaking such thoughts from his head because they were not the cause of his misgivings. The truth of it, he was bound to admit, was that she was coming from Rowangarth; from the place where he and Alice met and where they had expected to end their days. Keeper’s Cottage on the Rowangarth estate had a woodman in it now because these days there was no need of a gamekeeper there; not until young Drew – Sir Andrew – was old enough to handle a shotgun, that was.
Yet that was still not all and if he were honest, he would admit it. Miss Julia would be bringing the north country with her and Tom Dwerryhouse was a son of the north and no matter how well suited he was with the way his life had turned out nor how contented Alice was with her new little bairn and her own hearth, one thing could never be denied. Northern roots did not easily transplant into southern soil. He was surprised Mr Hillier had seen fit to do it, him being a northerner, an’ all. But maybe it was all right for the likes of someone who owned another house in Westmorland and who could take off whenever the fancy took him. Windrush Hall, on the edges of the New Forest, was where it was convenient for Ralph Hillier to live, being close to a port and near enough to London where most of his business deals took place. But whenever his early years tugged on the thread of memory, he need only order his motor to be driven round to the front entrance and he could be away and back to his roots.
It was different for Tom Dwerryhouse who could never return to Rowangarth. For one thing, most folk thereabouts thought him dead, killed in the last year of the war; and to go back there would be to carry hate inside him for a man he might meet at any time. Elliot Sutton lived only a cock-stride from Rowangarth and for Alice’s sake – and for young Sir Andrew’s, too – it were best the two of them should never meet.
A signal fell with a clatter. A porter pushing a trolley and the stationmaster with top hat and green furled flag appeared on the platform. The train, no more than a noiseless speck down the track, would arrive on time. Julia was coming, and bringing their past with her.
She got down from a third-class compartment, lifting a gloved hand to bring the porter hurrying from the far end of the train and the first-class carriage that usually put a sixpenny tip his way.
She had not changed. Everything about her proclaimed her status; her understated air of command, her well-labelled leather suitcases, the way she held her head, even. She was still a Sutton. Not even what she had endured in the war could wipe out her breeding. She saw him, and smiled, and he walked towards her, removing his cap.
‘Tom!’ She held out her hand, her voice low with emotion. ‘It is so good to see you. How long is it?’
‘More’n five years, Miss Julia, and it’s right grand to see you, an’ all.’
They walked unspeaking beside the porter, waiting as he lifted her luggage into the cart.
‘Step up carefully, Miss Julia.’ Tom offered his hand, settling her comfortably, laying a rug over her knees. Then he jerked the reins, calling, ‘Hup!’ and clicking his tongue.
They were well out of the station environs before he said, ‘I want to say I’m sorry about what happened to the doctor, Miss Julia. And I’d like to thank you for being so decent about giving me a reference. It got me the job, though I’d have understood if you’d have wanted no truck with a deserter, after all you’d been through.’
‘Alice gave you the reference, Tom …’
‘Aye, but written in your hand, Miss, and it was you signed Alice’s name to it. I’m grateful.’
‘Then don’t be. Any man who had the guts to desert that war has my understanding. And Tom, there’s one thing I’d like to say to you. You must not call me Miss Julia. Not only am I Mrs MacMalcolm, now, but I am also a guest in your house. Alice calls me Julia – I would like you to do it, as well.’
‘But it wouldn’t be right! I used to work for her ladyship and you are still her daughter.’
‘Those days are long gone and besides, Alice is my friend. I still look on her as my sister and it would please me if you would treat me as she treats me.’
‘It’ll be a mite strange …’
‘Alice found it strange, too, but it didn’t take her long.’
‘I can but try,’ he smiled, touched and embarrassed both at the same time. ‘Though how you can show such kindness to someone who ran away –’
‘But I understood and my mother understood, too. Alice told us how it was. It was a terrible thing to have to shoot a man – a boy – in cold blood. That you threw down your rifle afterwards and risked the death sentence for what amounted to an act of mutiny, was a brave thing to do.’
‘No, it wasn’t.’ He shook his head vigorously. ‘I was beside myself with disgust; all twelve in that firing party were. One man stood there shaking as if he was going to throw a fit and another was sick. I just stormed up to that officer and told him I wouldn’t do a thing like that again, and they were all of them in such a state that I got away with it. But I wasn’t acting the hero. It’s this temper of mine …’
‘I can understand. I’ve got one, too. My mother calls it my Whitecliffe temper,’ she laughed. ‘Act first then think afterwards. You and me both, Tom.’
‘Aye. I was thinking on the way here about Rowangarth and that no matter how much I miss the old days, it’s as well I’m here. If Alice and me lived there, then I’d always be on the lookout for him.’ His eyes sought hers, asking understanding.
‘Elliot Sutton, you mean?’ Her gaze met and held his. ‘So you know?’
‘I know. Alice told me. It bothered her, you see. Told me it all.’
‘I see. And do you agree, now, that we did what we had to do? Giles needed a son and had just been told he would never father one – his injuries, you see – and Alice was demented with worry about your death and the pregnancy she didn’t want – a child she could never accept, or bring herself to love.’
‘And her ladyship …?’
‘She believes what Giles told her; that Drew is Giles’s son, conceived in a single act of compassion. She accepts it. She even thinks that Drew was meant to be.’
‘I’ve come to accept it, too.’ Tom slowed down the pony at the crossroads, turning to the right. ‘Almost there. And I’m grateful to Sir Giles. He was a decent man, and a brave one, too. Geordie and me would go out into No Man’s Land at night with the stretcher bearers, picking up the wounded. We’d hide ourselves and keep watch; try to give them some protection if they were seen by the German gunners. It took a brave man to be a stretcher bearer, like Sir Giles was. Brave fools, we called them – and the orderlies and doctors who went under the barbed wire with them.’ He slid his eyes to where she sat and saw her sudden sadness. ‘I’m sorry, Miss. We must try not to look back …’
‘Oh, but you are so wrong, Tom! We must always look back. We must remember, so it won’t happen again to Drew and Daisy. But we must always remind ourselves that the pain of remembering will grow less – or so I’m always being told.’ She lifted her head, and smiled. ‘I’m so looking forward to being with you both. I’ve missed Alice so. And as for seeing my god-daughter – oh, this will be such a wonderful holiday for me!’
Alice stood at the gate, waiting impatiently for the sound of the pony and cart. Beside her, in her shiny black perambulator, her baby girl slept.
The house was clean and shining; a joint of beef roasted in the fire oven. Vegetables stood ready for cooking; an apple pie cooled on the slate slab in the pantry.
Flowers from the garden were newly arranged in her best vases; Julia’s bedroom was as perfect as ever it could be. She hoped Julia would not find it inconvenient, there not being a bathroom at Keeper’s Cottage, but no one hereabouts had one. Water, except at Windrush, came out of wells or pumps or rain butts.
And why was Daisy asleep? Why couldn’t she be awake to fix Julia with brilliant blue eyes? She didn’t smile, yet, but she recognized voices and turned towards familiar sounds. She knew the minute Tom gave his warbling whistle. Tom loved her so much …
Impatiently, she walked to the turn in the lane, standing still, listening; walking back to the gate, again, sure the wheel must have fallen off the cart.
Then she heard a faraway sound and held her breath, making out the steady clopping of hooves, the round grinding of wheels. Her cheeks reddened; she felt a sudden tensing of her hands.
Then Tom was pulling on the reins, smiling, calling, ‘Well, here she is, now!’
Slowly, carefully, Julia got down, then stood, not moving nor speaking, as if she didn’t believe any of it. Then as one they ran, arms wide, clasping each other tightly, saying not a word, standing close, cheek upon cheek.
‘Oh, my word!’ Alice was the first to find her voice. ‘Let me look at you. My dear, dear Julia – I’ve missed you!’
‘And I you.’ Julia’s eyes pricked with tears and she blinked rapidly, smiling through them. ‘Sixteen months! It’s been so long. And do let me see her!’
‘Asleep, as usual,’ Alice sniffed, pulling back the pram cover. ‘Don’t know what I did to deserve such a placid babe.’
Daisy Dwerryhouse lay on her pretty pink pillow, face flushed from sleep, half-moons of incredibly long eyelashes resting on her cheeks.
‘But she is beautiful! She is incredible!’
‘If you don’t mind, I’ll leave the pair of you to it.’ Tom deposited suitcases on the doorstep. ‘Best take the pony back. Supper at half-past six, will it be?’ He didn’t even try to conceal his pride.
‘There or thereabouts,’ Alice nodded. ‘Let’s go inside, Julia? You must be fair gasping for a cup of tea. The kettle’s on the hob and the tray set and oh, my dear, it’s so good to be together again!’
‘It is,’ Julia whispered throatily. ‘So very good …’
When Tom had excused himself after supper and Daisy had been fed and settled in Julia’s arms in the fireside rocker, Alice set about restoring order in the kitchen.
‘You must be tired, love,’ she murmured.
‘Not if you aren’t.’ Julia cupped the little head protectively in her hand, smiling softly. ‘She smells of breast milk and baby soap. She has a mouth like a little rosebud. You should have called her Rose …’
‘No. Her mother is a buttercup girl and daisies go best with buttercups. Now – tell me about Aunt Sutton? How was she, when you called?’
‘She insists she came back to London to see her bank manager, but she let it slip that she also visited her doctor – then went to great pains to hide it. Said she might as well let him have a look at her, whilst she was over, but she was altogether too casual about it. It’s my belief she came especially to see him and when I said as much she told me it was all stuff and nonsense and that she had no intention of taking the pills he’d given her. A fussy old woman, she called him.
‘She’ll be back in the Camargue, now, and I’ve got a peculiar feeling about it all. I wonder if I should try phoning her doctor – get to the bottom of it.’
‘He wouldn’t tell you – you know he wouldn’t.’
‘No, and nor would Aunt Sutton. All she said was, “Fiddle-de-dee!” If only Andrew was here …’
Alice remained silent, then, drying her hands, she walked to where Julia sat, standing behind her chair, hands on her shoulders. For a moment she stood there, then said softly, ‘Is she asleep? Why don’t you take her upstairs to her cot? I don’t have to tell you how to do it, now do I?’
Julia was quite composed by the time she came downstairs and Alice was setting out cups and saucers.
‘Kettle’s just on the boil,’ she smiled, removing her apron. ‘Now we can have that chat. Tom won’t be back, yet.’
‘Does he always work this late?’
‘Bless you no – leastways, not these days. Windrush was very run down when Mr Hillier bought it. The Army were in it right through the war – the place had gone to rack and ruin. Game covers overgrown and hardly a pheasant in them. Tom’s had to start from scratch. There was no shooting last back end, though he’s hopeful there’ll be good sport come October. He’ll need another keeper, by then. Mr Hillier is keen to have his business friends from London for a few shoots, so Tom wants it all to be in good order.
‘Said he was going to make up the hour he took off, this afternoon, but really it’s only to let you and me have a good gossip.’
‘And you’re happy, Alice? No regrets – about leaving Rowangarth, I mean, and starting afresh here?’
