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‘No regrets –’cept that I miss you and Reuben and her ladyship. We’re so out of the way, here, and I only see people on shopping day – apart from the district nurse. She calls once a week but we shan’t be seeing so much of her, once Daisy gets to be six weeks old. I write to Reuben, though it isn’t often he writes back …’
‘I see him often. He’s fine, Alice, and tells me what you have written, though often you’ve already given me the same news. But I’m sure he’d like to see Daisy.’
‘I’d like him to. If he decided to visit us, either Tom or me would go to London and meet him. Wish I could persuade him to come.’
‘Or you and Daisy could come to Holdenby to see him?’
‘Oh, my goodness!’ Alice set down the tea tray with such force that the cups and saucers rattled. ‘You know I couldn’t! When I left Rowangarth the excuse was that I’d had a bad time getting over Drew’s birth and I was going to Aunt Sutton for a change and a rest. But that was ages ago! What are they going to say if I turn up with a baby in my arms?’
‘Well, you won’t shock Reuben nor mother, because they knew you were really going to Tom and they know about Daisy, so who else is there? Everyone else at Rowangarth is your friend. Oh, I tell them from time to time that you are fine and they know that you and I write to each other – but I’m sure they often thought about you and wondered when you’d be back. So why don’t you let me tell them that you have married again? You had every right to.’
‘But married to Tom?’
‘A deserter, you mean? But who knows about that? Mother, Reuben, and me – and we aren’t going to tell. And the Army thinks he was killed, so where’s the bother? You know the way we feel about it – we’re on Tom’s side.’
‘Yes, an’ I’m grateful. But what do I say – that I’m Alice Dwerryhouse, now, and that Tom was never killed? Are folks going to accept that?’
‘Of course – if you tell them he was a prisoner and the authorities were never told about it by the Germans. It happened often, in the war – men turning up like that. Everyone who knew you both would be glad.’
‘Aye,’ Alice frowned. ‘I think they’d believe it–especially as Jinny Dobb knows about Tom, already.’
‘Old Jin knows! How on earth …?’
‘She saw him the day he came back to Reuben’s cottage, when he came looking for me. Reuben had to tell him I’d wed Giles, and had a bairn …’
‘I know. I’m not likely to forget that day. But you’re sure Jin saw him?’
‘Certain. She told me she had and wanted to know why I wasn’t going with him.’
‘Yet she never said a word about it to anyone – not to my knowledge, at least.’
‘She promised she wouldn’t. But when I left Rowangarth, Jin must have suspected I wasn’t going away for the good of my health.’
‘Well – there you are, then,’ Julia smiled. ‘It would be a five-minute wonder. They’d all be so busy ooh-ing and aah-ing over Daisy that they’d pay no heed to what you and Tom had been doing.’
‘I don’t know …’ Alice frowned, biting her lip, cupping her blazing cheeks in her hands. ‘I’d have to talk to Tom about it. I mustn’t do anything to risk him being caught and happen he’d not be so keen to have me visit – well, you know what I mean?’
‘Elliot Sutton? Well, you’d just have to promise to keep out of Brattocks Wood. And anyway, you’d have no need to go there. Reuben lives in the village, now.’
‘But I think I’d want to go there – just once, for old time’s sake. It was where Tom and me did our courting, remember. I used to take Morgan out and hope like mad I’d bump into Tom.’
‘And you’d want to tell the rooks what had been happening, wouldn’t you,’ Julia teased. ‘Then I’d have to come with you, that’s all. Have you any rooks here, to talk to?’
‘Some over in the far wood – but I haven’t made their acquaintance, just yet. And happen I’ve grown up a bit, since I used to tell my secrets to the Rowangarth rooks.’
‘They’d be glad to see you, for all that,’ Julia urged.
‘Maybe. But what about her ladyship? Would she be glad? And if I did come – and I’m not saying I will, mind – where would I stay? There isn’t room for me and Daisy in Reuben’s little house.’
‘But mother would love to see you again – and as for sleeping, what’s wrong with Rowangarth? It was your home, wasn’t it? You would stay with us.’
‘What would they all say, though – Miss Clitherow and Cook and Mary and Tilda?’
‘Alice – you know staff don’t usually make comments about mother’s house guests, even though I know they would all say, “Welcome back, Alice!”’
‘There’s Tom …’ She was wavering, she knew it; knew, too, that she desperately wanted to see Reuben just once more – see Rowangarth, too.
‘Tom was a prisoner of war. I shall tell them that and mother will confirm it. And anyway, Tom wouldn’t be coming with you – not on your first visit. Are you afraid Will Stubbs would poke and pry and ask his business?’
‘Will!’ Alice gasped, remembering the inquisitive coachman, bursting into laughter. ‘Is he still a terrible busybody?’
‘As bad as ever, though he’s careful to keep his own affairs a secret – or so he thinks,’ Julia grinned. ‘We all happen to know that he’s setting his cap at Mary.’
‘Mary Strong? Her ladyship’s parlourmaid?’
‘The very same Mary. And Alice – don’t revert to your old ways entirely? You were once married to my brother – you were Lady Alice Sutton. Mother thinks of you still as hers. If you should come home to Rowangarth, don’t call her milady or refer to her as her ladyship? You used to call her dearest, as Giles did – remember?’
Nodding, Alice closed her eyes. She remembered so much and almost all of it security and kindness and the sweet sense of belonging. All at once, Rowangarth called her.
‘I couldn’t leave Tom,’ she gasped.
‘Not if he’d want you to pay Reuben a visit? Tom was fond of him – and Reuben isn’t getting any younger.’
‘You think I don’t know it? He’ll be seventy-five, come September. I’d hoped you would take his birthday present back with you – give it to him on his birthday. I’ve got tobacco and mints and knitted him two pairs of good thick socks.’
‘I’ll take them, gladly, and see he gets them, too. But mightn’t it be nice to be able to tell him on his birthday that one day soon you’ll be bringing Daisy to see him? At least don’t dismiss it entirely?’
‘Don’t, Julia! I want so much to visit, and you know I can’t! There’d always be Elliot Sutton at the back of my mind – not just meeting him, though that would be bad enough. What if he saw me – and blurted it all out? What then?’
‘Elliot won’t say anything – not now. If he’d been going to make trouble, he’d have made it when he realized he’d been cheated out of hopes of the title. He can’t know – not for certain – that Drew is his. Hateful though he is, I’d give him credit for keeping his mouth shut.
‘And you wouldn’t be staying long – a week, at the most? Surely for so short a time we could make sure you and he didn’t meet?’
‘We? You and your mother, you mean? But she doesn’t know that Elliot Sutton is Drew’s father – had you forgotten?’
‘No. But I’m trying to. From the day he was born I always thought of Drew as Giles’s son – just as mother does. You must do the same, Alice. Elliot Sutton is a womanizer and a lecher but he isn’t so stupid that he’d stand on the top of Holdenby Pike and shout it out to the three Ridings, now is he?’
‘N-no …’
‘There you are, then! We stand together, you and I – just as we did when we were nursing. We each took care of the other, in the old days – we can do it again. We’d wither cousin Elliot at a glance. And remember, Alice – I hate him as much as you do.’
‘You can’t. You don’t know what it’s like to – to’
‘To be raped by him? No, I don’t. But he’s alive and my husband was killed in that war, so I hate him more than you do – and never forget it!’
‘I believe you do,’ Alice said, wonderingly. She hadn’t thought, not for a moment, that anyone could hate him as much as she. ‘You really do …’
‘Oh, yes. And you and Daisy would be safe with me. And bring Morgan with you, if you’d feel better. Morgan hates him, too …’
‘Oh, I couldn’t come. It wouldn’t be right to leave Tom on his own. I want to come, Julia – you know I do – but how could I?’
Yet even as she said it, she knew it was only a matter of time. One day, and soon, she would return to Rowangarth. Nothing was more certain.
3 (#ulink_60d0d02e-4c8c-55b2-90d3-f408e28cd4ae)
‘I tell you it was Alice,’ Mary Strong insisted. ‘That’s where Miss Julia has been! Miss Julia and her ladyship were talking on the telephone and it was Alice Hawthorn they were talking about! Her ladyship said, “Where are you ringing from, Julia?” and then she said, “Good. That’s handy to know if ever we need to get in touch with Alice.”’
‘Alice Sutton, don’t you mean, and have you forgotten, Mary, that parlourmaids don’t listen to private telephone conversations?’ Cook corrected, her mouth a round of disapproval. ‘And then what did she say?’
‘Then …’ Mary pushed her cup across the table to be refilled, taking another piece of cinnamon toast without so much as a by-your-leave,‘ … then her ladyship said, “And how are Daisy, and Morgan? We mustn’t forget dear old Morgan.”’
‘Alice took Morgan with her, didn’t she,’ Tilda frowned, ‘when she left for Aunt Sutton’s, I mean. And why has she stayed away so long without so much as a word? Surely she’s better, now. And who is Daisy?’
‘Don’t know anything about any Daisy,’ Mary shrugged. ‘But I happen to know that Alice keeps in touch with Miss Julia. I’ve said so all along, haven’t I? I know her writing on the envelopes.’
‘Aye, and as for us not hearing a word,’ Tilda defended, ‘we did make it pretty plain when Alice came back from France Lady Sutton that things had changed, now didn’t we?’
‘Things had to change,’ Cook murmured. ‘Alice wasn’t below stairs any more – Miss Clitherow made sure we knew that, right from the start. And we still aren’t any the wiser, are we?’
‘Curiouser, though.’ A pity, Mary thought, she’d had to move on in mid-conversation, so to speak, but there was a limit to the time it took any one person to walk across the hall. ‘Wonder if Miss Julia will tell us about it? After all, Alice is supposed to be with Miss Sutton and that’s where Miss Julia was supposed to be going. The very last thing her ladyship said to her when she left was, “Give my dearest love to Anne Lavinia, don’t forget. Tell her we don’t see half enough of her.” I heard her!’
‘A lot of supposing, for all that,’ Cook murmured, half to herself.
‘Yes, but Miss Sutton spends most of her time in France,’ Tilda insisted. There could be no doubting it when her ladyship always gave her the stamps from the envelopes for her little brother who collected them. ‘So why do Alice’s letters have a Southampton postmark on them?’
‘Hmmm.’ Cook thought long and hard, then ventured, ‘Happen letters from France get brought over to Southampton on ships and the Post Office there –’
‘Happen my foot!’ Mary interrupted, forgetting herself completely. ‘I see all the letters that come into this house and Miss Sutton’s have a Marseilles or a Nice postmark on them so why, will you tell me, don’t Alice’s?’
‘That’s enough!’ Cook snapped, aware the conversation had gone too far. ‘What Upstairs does and where their letters come from is none of our business and we’d all do well to remember it if we want to keep our positions in these hard times. And not one word of what’s been said in my kitchen is to go beyond these four walls – do I make myself clear?’ She fixed Mary with one of her gimlet glances. ‘We’re all getting as bad as Will Stubbs,’ she added as a final reminder.
‘There’ll be none hear anything from me!’ Mary countered archly. ‘Never a word passes my lips when I’m in Will’s company. I hope I know my place here and have always given satisfaction, Mrs Shaw!’
‘That you have, Mary; that you have – so don’t spoil it!’
Whereupon her ladyship’s cook rose from her chair, indicating that morning break was over. ‘Now let’s all of us be about our business. If we’re intended to know, we’ll be told when Miss Julia gets home, Tuesday. If not, then we keeps our eyes down and our mouths shut tight!’
All the same, she pondered, there were things that didn’t add up, postmarks on letters apart. Just why had Alice stayed away so long? And who was Daisy?
Clementina Sutton was in a tizzy of delight. Not only had the first visiting card she left at the house in Cheyne Walk been accepted by a servant dressed in black from top to toe, but the next day – the very next day, mark you – a card had been delivered by the black-bearded Cossack which indicated, if Russian etiquette ran parallel with English, that Clementina was now free to call. Hadn’t the Countess added the time – 10.30 – in small, neat letters in the bottom, left-hand corner, and tomorrow’s date?
The Countess. Just to think of it made Clementina glow. Merely to look at the deckle-edged card bearing what could only be the family crest embossed in gold and the name Olga Maria, Countess Petrovska beneath it, gave her immense pleasure.
She knew little of the family next door, save that they had fled St Petersburg where the Russian revolution started, though now those Bolsheviks were calling the city Petrograd, if you please! Mind, the Bolsheviks appeared to have gained the upper hand, so were entitled to call it what they wished. The last of the British troops sent to help restore the Czar to his throne had long ago left and heaven help anyone who had the misfortune to fall foul of the men – and women – who waved their triumphant red banners. Shot, like as not, just as the Czar and his family had been.
But it couldn’t happen here, Clementina insisted nervously, even though men were joining trade unions as never before and threats of strikes were always present. But they wouldn’t strike. For every man who withdrew his labour there were ten only too grateful to take his place. She dismissed the British working man from her mind, thinking instead of tomorrow’s call. Investigating the pedigree of refugee Russians and whether the daughter of the house was in the market for a husband might prove interesting. It could turn out to be an extremely enlightening talk.
Talk? But what if the family next door spoke no English; used French as their international language as diplomats did? She would not only feel a fool, but be shown to be one! Then she comforted herself with the thought that any foreigner of any consequence spoke English and if the Russians did not, then they were not worth wasting her time on – which would be a pity, because the daughter of a countess was exactly what she had set her heart upon, for Elliot.
She sighed deeply, then began to search her wardrobe for something suitable to wear, regretting having brought so few clothes with her. And this town house, though small, she resolved, must be brought into full working order and before so very much longer, too. Elliot had dillied and dallied far too long. Now he would be given to understand that he had a twelve-month in which to get himself wed – or else!
She closed the wardrobe door firmly. Nothing there; nothing half good enough in which to call upon a countess. Best take a stroll through the Burlington Arcade and along Bond Street – buy new …
Julia felt a warm glow of homecoming the moment the station taxi entered the carriage drive that swept up to the steps of the old house. For more than three hundred years Rowangarth had stood there, blessing Suttons on their way; welcoming them back.
‘I’ve missed you both!’ She kissed her mother’s cheek, then swept the small, pyjama-clad boy into her arms, closing her eyes, hugging him to her, amazed he should feel so solid, so robust against Daisy’s newborn fragility. ‘It’s good to be back, though it was such a joy being with Alice again. I wanted to bring her home with me.’
‘Come inside, do. It feels quite cold out here.’ Helen Sutton shivered. ‘I promised Drew he should stay up to welcome you, though he’s been fighting sleep this past half-hour.’
‘Then I shall take you upstairs at once, my darling, and tuck you in,’ Julia smiled, kissing him again. ‘Have you had your supper?’
‘Mm. Mummy not go away again?’
‘No, Drew. Next time, you shall come with me. We’ll go for a lovely long ride on a puffing train – now what do you say to that?’
He regarded her solemnly through large grey eyes – Andrew’s eyes – stuck a thumb in his mouth, then laid his head on her shoulder. Almost before she had tucked the bedclothes around him, he was asleep.
‘Now, give me all the news,’ Helen smiled as they sat at dinner. ‘How was Anne Lavinia?’
‘She seemed fine. I gave her your love, as you asked.’ Best not spoil tonight with vague suspicions about her health. ‘She’ll be back in France, by now. I think it was business brought her home. Figgis has retired now, remember. There’s no one in the house, so maybe she thought she’d better check up on things – pick up bills. And she popped in on her doctor. Nothing wrong. Just a quick check-up,’ Julia hastened, feeling better for having mentioned it, albeit briefly. ‘It was good to see Alice again. She and Tom are very happy – and as for little Daisy! Five weeks old and a beauty already. I could have stolen her to be Drew’s sister!’
‘She is Drew’s sister,’ Helen reminded, fork poised. ‘Had you forgotten?’
‘No.’ Nor was she likely to. ‘The christening was lovely. Quiet, but lovely. Alice sent you a piece of cake, by the way.’
‘And Morgan – I almost forgot the old softie. Is he all right?’
‘Morgan’s fine. I’m glad Alice took him with her. He’s never looked so fit – thinner, because he gets a lot more exercise.’
‘And no titbits from Cook,’ Helen supplied.
‘Absolutely not. His coat shines, now. He shares brick kennels with Tom’s two labradors, though he’s really Alice’s dog. When Tom is at work, she lets Morgan out and he sits beside Daisy’s pram, on guard.’
‘Good. Giles would have been pleased …’ Helen paused, reluctant to ask the question uppermost in her mind. ‘About Alice – did you feel – I mean …’
‘Did I ask her about well – what we talked about – and yes, I did. I put it to her, then left it at that; didn’t want her to feel I was pressurizing her to come home. Where Tom is – that’s really her home, now. But I don’t want to lose her. The war took so much from me and she is one of the people I have left who understands. She was with me the day I met Andrew …’ Her eyes took on a remembering look, then she tilted her chin, and smiled. ‘When I left, Tom drove me to the station. He told me they’d talked about it – about Alice visiting us, I mean; said there was no reason at all why she shouldn’t stay with us. And he agreed with me that people should know that he and Alice are married.’
‘Then what are we to tell them?’ Helen frowned. ‘That he wasn’t killed, but taken prisoner …?’
‘Exactly that. Alice and I will tell the same story, be sure of it. No one shall ever know what really happened. We wouldn’t be so foolish as to say anything that would get him arrested, now would we?’
‘Then everything would seem to have worked out very well.’ Helen smiled tremulously. ‘And if we ever need to get in touch with Alice – about Drew, I mean – I believe there is a number we can use?’
‘In the village – it’s called West Welby, by the way. You can ring up from the Post Office, there. They’ve got a tiny switchboard at the back of the office, and if you give them one-and-sixpence for every trunk call, they’ll put you through with no trouble at all. Just one snag. They use an extension phone, so it isn’t very private. People waiting at the counter for stamps and postal orders can have a good old listen.’
‘But they could get a message to Alice?’
‘Of course they could. Alice sews for the postmistress; I believe they are quite friendly. But you seem obsessed with getting in touch with Alice. What has put the idea into your head?’
