Daisychain Summer Read online

  ‘But the baby saved her sanity. She had to look after him, you see – find milk for him, make sure he lived. By the time I was well enough to get out of bed he was six weeks old – and Julia’s. They’d bonded, each to the other. The child was the son she would never conceive and I was content to leave it that way.’

  ‘It didn’t bother you that some other woman had your bairn?’ He shook his head in bewilderment. ‘It was like giving him away.’

  ‘Yes, it was. But I didn’t want him – didn’t want to touch him, even. When I was well enough to think for myself, I was even glad there’d been no milk in my breasts for him.’

  ‘Alice!’ He slammed down his mug, spilling ale over the hearthstone. ‘How could you – your own son? There must have been some affection for Giles Sutton? You must have felt something for him, or how could you have got that child?’

  ‘I had great affection for Giles – always. I worked at Rowangarth for his mother, remember, and when he was brought to our hospital wounded and more dead than alive, I asked Sister if I could stay with him. He was in another world – on morphine. They used to give them morphine, Tom, to let them die peacefully – those who were lucky enough to be got to a hospital, that was.’

  Her eyes filled with tears and she was back again in France with the stench and the horror and the hopelessness of it all. Then she pulled her sleeve across her face, sniffing loudly, facing him defiantly.

  ‘Yes, I felt affection for Giles Sutton, I’ll not deny it, and pity, too. And I think I could have cared for the child, if it had been gently got. But that bairn wasn’t the result of love or affection, Tom. When Giles was brought to our hospital, I was already four weeks pregnant. And before you pass judgement,’ she hastened, ‘before you say what I can see in your eyes – let me tell you just one thing. The child – Drew Sutton – was got the night I’d been told you were dead. Your sister wrote to tell me. Julia was in Paris, on leave with Andrew. I had no one to turn to, so I ran out of the nurses’ quarters, half out of my mind.’

  ‘And someone …?’ His face was chalk white, his lips so tight with distaste he had difficulty speaking.

  ‘Yes. Someone. He smelled of drink; his eyes were wild. He didn’t know what he was doing – I’ll swear it.’

  ‘He must have!’

  ‘Don’t, Tom? Let me tell it the way it was?’ she whispered dry-mouthed. ‘We nurses were quartered in what had been the schoolhouse of a convent. There was a shed at the back where the nuns once kept their cows. He dragged me in there. I didn’t have a chance and anyway, I think I wanted him to kill me. You were dead, and I wanted to be dead, too.’

  She walked across the room to stare out of the window, taking in gulps of air, holding them, letting them go in little steadying puffs. Then, hugging herself, she turned to face him again.

  ‘I fainted. I must have done, because when I could think clearly again, he’d gone. But it had happened – there was no telling myself it hadn’t – and I got myself back to the schoolhouse. It was dark, by then, and when I got upstairs, Julia was back.

  ‘She was waiting there, with Nurse Love. I’d thrown your sister’s letter down, and they’d read it. They were kind to me. Julia held me – then it all came out. Not just about you being reported killed, but about him, and what he’d done to me. Julia took my uniform off – it was all dirty and torn – and got me into a bath. Nurse Love wanted to tell Sister, have the Military Police arrest him, but Julia said not to.

  ‘She was livid, though. You know what she could be like, when she had a temper on her? She said to wait a bit – that with luck no harm had been done. She was only thinking of me. She knew I’d been through it before, you see.’

  ‘But she was wrong. Harm was done, it seems, and you passed that child off as Giles Sutton’s. How could you, Alice?’

  ‘Because Giles didn’t die, did he, though it might have been better if he had – with hindsight, that is. He survived to become only half a man. He told Julia one night that he would never father a child, though I think I’d known it, all along. I’d helped dress his wounds, you see. There were no niceties in those wards, in France. And she told him that life was cruel, because I was carrying a child I didn’t want.’

  She looked into his eyes, hoping to find understanding there, or pity, even, but there was none.

  ‘Anyway, Nathan had been coming in every day, to see Giles,’ she rushed on. ‘He was stationed only a couple of miles away – an army chaplain, you’ll remember – and Giles told him about me and the terrible mess I was in; said it was on his mind to ask me to marry him – say the child was his. The baby would be the one her ladyship had always wanted, and if it was a son, so much the better.’

  ‘So you were glad to wed him, Alice – let him claim the child as his?’

  ‘Not glad. Grateful, more like. And I didn’t say yes, right away. I had this feeling inside me that I was going to hear from you or about you. I couldn’t accept you were dead, you see. I thought that one day you’d come back.

  ‘Julia stood by me. She’d wanted me to go to Aunt Sutton to have the baby and maybe get it adopted into a good home. Then Giles came up with a better idea – to marry me.’

  ‘And the rest we know, Alice. I suppose it was Nathan who married you and him?’

  ‘In the convent chapel,’ she nodded, eyes on her hands. ‘Just Julia and Nurse Love as witnesses. I’d not have done it, but Geordie Marshall came to see me. He was passing through Celverte – where we were nursing – and he brought me your Testament, and letters I’d written to you. Said that you’d been sent on special duties and that he’d heard that twelve of you in an army transport had all been killed by a shell. No chance you were alive, he said, but at least it had been quick and clean. I was grateful for that. I’d not have wanted you to die like some I’d nursed …’

  ‘And you got away with it? Didn’t you feel one bit of shame, lying to her ladyship – deceiving her?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘It wasn’t me told the lies. I just went along with them. And they were white lies. Sir Robert had been killed – you knew that already – and with Giles not being able to have children, the title would have been lost to Rowangarth – passed to the Pendenys Suttons and you know how that would have grieved her ladyship.’

  ‘So what did you all cook up, between you?’ He looked at her as if she were a stranger; a lying, deceiving woman and not the girl he married a twelve-month ago; not the mother of his Daisy.

  ‘We cooked nothing up. So Nathan Sutton and Julia knew about it – that didn’t make them criminals. And the child would be born in wedlock, which made him the rightful Rowangarth heir – what harm did we do? Her ladyship was overjoyed, looking forward to it being born …’

  ‘And you? Did you feel grand, being a lady of title in the house where once you’d started off a housemaid?’

  ‘No, Tom. That part of it took a lot of getting used to. And I’ll admit I was always aware of the deceit. But it was Giles told his mother the child was his. He didn’t mention about it being a rape child. Said he’d come across me all distressed, because I’d just heard that you’d been killed – told her he’d held me and soothed me and well – it had happened between us, just the once. An act of comfort.’

  She drew a deep, shuddering breath, covering her face with her hands as if she were afraid to look at him; see the hurt and disbelief in his eyes.

  ‘Tom, love – don’t you think it was better for the poor, dear woman to think her grandchild had been conceived that way? And it explained away the fact that he was born eight months after we were married. When a boy was born, that night Giles died, it helped her, a little, to accept it.

  ‘I had the child named Andrew Robert Giles for all the Rowangarth men the war had taken. Julia was pleased about it because he’s Sir Andrew, now – he’s got her husband’s name. Little Drew – there, I’ve said it again. It’s as if telling you has driven all the hurt out of me and I can really think of him as Giles’s son. Do
you forgive me, Tom?’

  ‘For what?’ Still he sat there, making no move to take her in his arms, kiss her, tell her he understood. ‘It wasn’t your fault some drunken soldier got you pregnant, though that nurse was right – he should have been found, and arrested. But what worries me is that yon little Drew has already inherited a title and stands to gain a whole lot more, when he comes of age. Can that be right? If Giles Sutton had died childless – and in all honesty, he did – then the title should have passed to the Pendenys Suttons – to Mr Edward, Giles’s uncle. That’s how it should have been.’

  ‘You mean that some drunken soldier’s hedge child has landed on his feet, did he but know it?’

  ‘Don’t, Alice? Don’t use such talk. It isn’t like my lass.’

  ‘But am I your lass, now?’ she demanded, head defiantly high. ‘Oh, I wish you could see your face, Tom Dwerryhouse. You look all holier-than-thou, even though an army chaplain – a priest – connived at the deception, as you want to call it. Don’t you think we did it for a reason – or do you think we set out to cheat the other Suttons – those at Pendenys Place – out of what is rightly theirs?’

  ‘To my way of thinking,’ he said deliberately and quietly, ‘that’s exactly what you all did.’

  ‘Passing off a bastard as a Sutton, you mean?’ she flung, face white with outrage.

  ‘Alice – what’s got into you?’ He took a step towards her as if he knew he had pushed her too far and was willing, now it was too late, to make amends. ‘I told you before we were wed I didn’t want to know about that little Drew at Rowangarth, nor why you could bring yourself to leave him there, and come to me. You know I was willing to put it all behind us and start afresh, here.

  ‘And we’ve been happy, Alice, till now. Why must you rake over what’s past? What’s done is done, and if Giles Sutton died happy, and the son of his marriage –’

  ‘My son, Tom!’

  ‘All right – your son! If the bairn is acceptable as a Sutton, then who am I to gainsay it, wrong though it might be in law.’

  ‘Dear, sweet heaven, you can be so stubborn!’ She stood, hands on hips, cheeks blazing red. ‘I wanted to tell you. I thought you’d understand, aye, and happen sympathize, an’ all. But everything is either black or white to you, isn’t it? You don’t allow for the shades of grey, in between.

  ‘And I wasn’t going to tell you all, because I thought there’d be no need to. There was one thing I didn’t want you to know; but since you see fit to set yourself up as judge and jury and find us all guilty, then best you should know that young Drew is a Sutton! He’s taking what would, in the course of time, have passed to his father – to Elliot Sutton!

  ‘There, Tom! You have it all, now – every last sordid bit of it. The drunk who tumbled me on the floor of a cowshed was the man you so hate, so think on before you pass judgement on me!’

  She stood, tears streaking her cheeks, shaking with anger and dismay at what she had said. And she looked into the face of the man she loved and saw hatred in his eyes.

  ‘Elliot Sutton!’ he spat through clamped jaws. ‘So he had his way with you, in the end?’

  ‘Aye. He tried it in Brattocks Wood, didn’t he, when I was a bit of a lass. But I had Morgan with me then, and Reuben within calling distance. And I had a young man who thrashed him for what he’d tried to do. But no one was there to help me that night in Celverte, Tom; neither the dog nor Reuben, nor you! You were dead, remember?’

  ‘Thrashed him? I should have killed him!’ He drove his fist hard into the palm of his hand. ‘That first time he tried, I should have beaten the life out of him. And I would, if I’d thought I could’ve got away with it.’

  His face slablike, he rose to his feet, walking across the room and out of the house and she knew better than to try to stop him. To leave in a rage with a flinging open and a banging shut of doors would have seemed more normal. Things done in temper, in the shock of the moment, she could understand, and forgive. But to walk calmly out with never a word, closing doors gently and quietly behind him, sent apprehension coursing through her.

  It was then she was grateful for the discipline of her nursing years and she closed her eyes, breathing deeply, resisting the urge to take his beer mug and hurl it against the wall.

  She straightened her shoulders and tilted her chin. She would not weep on her wedding anniversary; not for anything would she!

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered to the empty room. ‘So sorry, Tom …’

  He did not return until it was dark; long after she had lit the lamps and given Daisy her evening feed.

  She sat beside the hearth, rocking the chair back and forth, worrying, waiting, and he came as quietly and suddenly as he left, his face pale, still, yet with contrition in his eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry, lass,’ he said, his voice rough with remorse. ‘It was none of it your fault. You did what you had to do – what was best for all concerned. It was just that it was too much to take – him, having touched you.’

  ‘Where have you been?’ She rose slowly to her feet, wanting him to take her in his arms and not stand in the doorway, putting the length of the room between them.

  ‘Walking. Just walking. I must have covered the entire boundary of the estate. And I was thinking, Alice; thinking how much I hate that man. I was even hoping to meet him around the next corner, because I wanted to kill him; beat the life out of him …’

  ‘It was all my fault.’ Tears trembled on Alice’s whispered words. ‘I could think of nothing else but to tell you. I didn’t want you to think wrong of me for seeming to forget you so soon after I’d heard you’d been killed; didn’t want you to think I could love any man but you, much less get a child with him. And I didn’t want you to think I was so unfeeling that I could desert a child to come to you. I knew all the time I ought to have loved him, but I couldn’t, even though he was born Sutton fair, and not dark, like – like him. I couldn’t have borne it if Drew had fathered himself.’

  ‘So the little lad is fair?’

  ‘He is, thanks be. To my way of thinking, he looked like his grandfather – his real grandfather, Mr Edward Sutton – but Julia could only see Andrew in him, because that was what she wanted to see, and Lady Helen swore he’d come in Sir John’s likeness. But no one could say, or even think, that he looked like Elliot Sutton. It was the one good thing in all the sad and sorry mess.’

  ‘Then I’m glad about that. No child deserves to be saddled with such a father.’

  ‘His father was Giles Sutton and never for a minute forget it, Tom. Am I forgiven?’

  He smiled, unspeaking, and opened wide his arms as he’d done when they were courting, and she ran to him as though she were seventeen again, clasping her arms around his waist, resting her head on his chest.

  ‘I love you, Tom – let’s never speak of it again?’

  ‘Not ever, bonny lass. But I’ll never forgive that man for what he did. I swore, out there, that if I could ever do him harm, I would – will – if ever I get the chance. I killed finer Germans than him …’

  ‘Then it’s a good thing you’re never likely to set eyes on him again. Y’know, Tom, I used, in my dreamings, to think of you and me living in Brattocks Wood in Keeper’s Cottage, and Julia and Andrew not far away and Reuben nicely settled in his almshouse. I’d think of it when things got bad, in France.

  ‘But Julia’s husband was killed and I thought I’d lost you, yet it was meant to be, my darling. Fate landed you and me here, miles and miles away, and I’m glad. Up there, I’d be scared half out of my mind that you and him would meet.’

  ‘Happen you are right.’ He unclasped her clinging arms, standing a little away from her, cupping her face in his hands.

  ‘I love you, my Alice. I never stopped loving you, even when I thought I’d lost you. The past is over and done with, I promise it is.’

  ‘Happy anniversary, Tom.’

  Yet even as they kissed passionately, kissed as if there was to be no tomorrow, she
knew he would never completely forget; that his hatred for Elliot Sutton would fester inside him and that if ever he could do him harm, he would.

  Without so much as the batting of an eyelid.

  2

  Helen, Lady Sutton closed the door behind her, then let go a gasp of annoyance.

  ‘The fool! The smug, unfeeling fool! I am so angry!’

  ‘Oh, dear.’ Julia MacMalcolm kissed her mother’s flushed cheek. ‘Why don’t you sit down and tell me what happened at the meeting to make you so very cross.’

  ‘That vicar! I don’t know how I kept hold of my temper!’

  ‘Don’t let him upset you. He’s only a locum. He’ll be gone when Luke Parkin is fit again.’

  ‘But Luke won’t get well and we all know it, Julia. Six months, at the most,’ she whispered bitterly.

  All the men she could once rely on, lean upon – all dead, her husband, her sons, her son-in-law; bluff, brusque Judge Mounteagle and soon, Luke Parkin. That ugly war – how dare they call it the Great War – had taken so many young men and now the older ones, weakened by four years of too much responsibility and too little consideration and overburdened with the worry of it, were themselves falling victims to its aftermath.

  ‘Sssh. Just tell me?’

  ‘We-e-ll, it was the usual parish meeting – or should have been. I knew they’d be talking about the war memorial; I was happy about that.’ She had promised any piece of land the parish saw fit to choose so the war dead of Holdenby should be remembered. ‘But to suggest a German field gun should stand beside it!’

  ‘A what!’ Julia flushed scarlet. ‘Whose damn-fool idea was that?’

  ‘Our temporary vicar’s! He said that any city or town – Holdenby, even – could claim a German gun as spoils of war and wouldn’t it be a splendid thought to have one here and site it beside the war memorial? So I said that upon further consideration, I wasn’t at all sure that I could offer that piece of land – leastways, not if an enemy gun was to stand on it. Indeed, I said, if anyone was thoughtless enough to bring one here, I would hope to see the wretched thing rolled down the hill and into the river! That’s what I said!’