Daisychain Summer Page 3

  ‘And then you swep’ out! Good for you, mother! How could he even think such a thing?’

  ‘How indeed, when not one household in Holdenby came through that war without loss. The last thing they want to see is a German gun. Julia – did we really win? It makes me wonder when I see heroes with no work to go to; men with a leg or an arm missing, begging on street corners. Half our youth never to come home again and oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to remind you.’

  ‘You didn’t, because I don’t need reminding. And I’m glad you put him in his place. If Luke retires, I hope that vicar doesn’t get ideas about getting the living for himself. When the time comes for a new parish priest, I think it should be Nathan. I’d like to have him here. He’ll be back from the African mission, soon – and who better?’

  ‘I agree, and since Rowangarth will have some say in the matter, perhaps we can help him. Nathan saw service as an army chaplain – he’d be a popular choice, hereabouts. But this is not the time to talk of such things. We must hope for a miracle for Luke. And meantime –’

  ‘No German field gun,’ Julia supplied.

  ‘Not on any piece of Rowangarth land!’ And since Rowangarth owned every square yard of Holdenby village and much, much more besides, it seemed that Helen Sutton would have her way.

  ‘I shall miss you when you go to Hampshire for the christening.’ Deftly, she changed the subject.

  ‘You’re sure you’ll be all right, mother? Drew can be rather a handful, now.’

  ‘Of course I can manage. I’ve been looking forward to having him all to myself. And isn’t it wonderful that Alice has a little girl of her own?’

  Dear Alice. She at least was happy. It was to her, Helen acknowledged, they owed the beautiful boy who would one day inherit Rowangarth. So sad that Giles never lived to see his son.

  ‘I reared the three of you with no trouble at all. One small boy won’t put me out in the slightest.’

  ‘But we three had a nanny – and a nursery maid!’

  ‘So you did, but nannies are going out of fashion and there’ll be Miss Clitherow to help me – if I need help.’

  ‘Yes, and Cook and Tilda and Mary’ – all of whom spoiled Drew dreadfully.

  ‘A growing child cannot have too much love and affection. Children are treated differently, now,’ Helen smiled, calm again, for just to think of her grandson gave her such feelings of love and gratitude that any anger was short-lived.

  ‘I’d thought to leave a day earlier – stay the night with Aunt Sutton, whilst she’s at Montpelier Mews.’

  ‘A good idea.’ Her sister-in-law, Helen frowned, spent so little time in England, now. ‘How long since anyone saw her?’

  ‘Oh, ages.’ Since not long after Andrew was killed, Julia recalled. ‘She couldn’t wait to get back to France, once the war was over. We can have a nice long chat – catch up with the news, then I’ll go on to Hampshire. It will mean being away for five days – you’re sure you can manage?’

  ‘Of course.’ She loved him dearly, the grandson who was walking sturdily, now, and had cut most of his teeth with scarcely a disturbed night. Drew, who made her young again. ‘Think of it, Julia. He’ll be two, at Christmas.’

  ‘Mm.’ The months had rushed past. Soon, there would be the second anniversary of Andrew’s death to be lived through and that of Giles who died the day his son – Alice’s son – was born.

  ‘Julia?’ Her mother’s voice came to her softly through her rememberings.

  ‘Sorry. Just thinking …’

  ‘Aah.’ Her daughter was often just thinking. Sometimes she was far away, eyes troubled; other times there would be a small smile on her lips and she would be a girl again, impatient to come of age, marry her young doctor. There hadn’t been a war, then, nor even thoughts of one. Her elder son, Helen pondered, had been in India and Giles with his nose in a book, always, and nothing more to worry her than the next dinner party she would give. Lovely, gentle times. Days of roaring fires and hot muffins for winter tea and sun-warmed summer days and the scent of flowers at dusk and the certainty that nothing need change.

  But then the war had come and nothing could be the same again. Only Rowangarth endured.

  ‘And talking about Alice – and we must talk about it, sooner or later – do you think you might mention it to her – and Tom, of course – whilst you are there?’

  ‘That people should be told she was married again, you mean?’

  ‘Well, it is all of eighteen months since she left Rowangarth; people will want to know what is happening.’

  ‘But it isn’t anything to do with people – not really, mother, though I agree with you. I’ll have a word with her. After all, she’s done nothing wrong. She had every right to remarry.’

  ‘I accept that – and Tom was her first love.’

  ‘Her only love.’ Her once and for ever love. ‘None of us ever pretended she cared in the same way for Giles – those of us who knew the real truth of it – about their marrying, so soon after Tom was killed, I mean …’

  The real truth of it? Not even her mother knew that, nor ever could. There were things never to be told – even to Drew.

  ‘I know, my dear. I have always accepted the circumstances of Drew’s conceiving and been grateful to Alice for leaving him with us. I’d longed so for a grandson, you know; for a boy, for Rowangarth.’

  ‘And you got him,’ Julia smiled. ‘And what’s more, you can’t wait to have him all to yourself, can you?’ Best drop the subject of Drew’s getting. For his sake alone, it must remain a closed book. ‘Do you suppose he’ll miss me?’

  ‘I’ll do my best to see that he doesn’t. And you deserve a break, Julia. Just think how much news there’ll be to catch up on; it seems such a long time since Alice left us. And I’m sure she’ll let you share her little girl, if your maternal instincts get the better of you.’

  Her maternal instincts, Julia brooded. Drew had been hers from the moment of his birth. She it had been who fought for him when Alice lay desperately ill and unable to feed him. That fatherless babe had given her something to live for after Andrew’s killing. She was Drew’s mother, now.

  ‘You must take a lock of his hair, for Alice,’ Helen smiled. One of his fair, baby curls, now cut off. Drew had remained in his long baby clothes until he walked, though Julia hadn’t entirely agreed with keeping little boys in nursery frocks, she acknowledged, and allowing their hair to grow untrimmed so that many were hard put to know if the child was a girl or a boy. But it had been the custom when her sons were toddlers and she had wished it for Drew, though now he was a real little boy, her hair cut short and wearing his first breeches. ‘Well – if you think it won’t upset her too much. That child is the image of his father when he was little, you know.’

  ‘Take one of his curls? No – she won’t be upset.’

  Not in the way you mean, mother. Alice won’t go all emotional and want to take him from us when she sees a lock of his hair. She never wanted him, couldn’t love him – but you didn’t know that, dearest. And never say Drew is the image of his father, because he isn’t – and please God he never will be.

  Only she and Nathan knew, and perhaps Tom, now. And Giles had known; had married Alice knowing she carried another man’s child, then claimed it to be born a Sutton – a Rowangarth Sutton, and Rowangarth’s heir. Little Drew. Two years old, at Christmas.

  ‘Alice says I’m to take tweeds and tough shoes.’ Julia, too, was adept at subject-changing. ‘They live right out in the country – it’s quite a walk, I believe, into the village to post a letter. And it’s Reuben’s birthday in September,’ just three days after Andrew’s, ‘so she wants me to bring his present back with me.’

  ‘Dear old Reuben. He misses Alice for all there’s a letter from her every week. That’s why people should know Alice and Tom are married, now. Reuben isn’t getting any younger. There might come a day when Alice is needed here.’

  ‘But she can return to Rowangarth any time she likes
. She’s done nothing wrong!’

  ‘Of course she hasn’t – but there’s Tom …’

  ‘A deserter, who could be put in prison for it, if people knew? Is that what you mean? But who is going to tell on him? Not you, mother; not me! I agree with what he did and so would Giles, if he were alive. Tom was a soldier who was pushed too far! He was reported killed in action – the authorities think him dead – so all we need say is that he wasn’t killed at all but taken prisoner and the Red Cross was never told about it. He wouldn’t be the first man to come back from the dead! I see no reason why the pair of them shouldn’t walk through Holdenby, heads high!’

  ‘Julia, child – hush your anger! You’ll never be rid of that Whitecliffe temper! Small wonder the old lady was so taken with you. And I agree with you about Tom Dwerry-house; there is nothing I would like more than to see them both back here, even though it can’t ever be.’

  ‘And why not, pray?’

  ‘We-e-ell, if they were to come back to Keeper’s Cottage – and we all thought that when Reuben retired, Tom would live there, with Alice – if they came back, just what would their position be? Alice is Drew’s mother; Drew – Sir Andrew – will one day inherit, so he would be Tom’s employer …’

  ‘Mother, how you do run on!’ Julia laughed. ‘I don’t think Tom and Alice will ever come back here. From what I read in her letters, she’s well suited in Hampshire. But I would like her to be able to visit us, from time to time. Tom would understand her need to see Reuben. And remember, she is still Drew’s legal guardian.’

  ‘Exactly – and that’s one reason I want it to be known she isn’t Alice Sutton any longer. I would like her to come home to Rowangarth whenever she has a mind to. She was my son’s wife, albeit for less than a year, and I cared – care – for her, deeply. And she’ll never take Drew away from us, I know it.’

  ‘She won’t. Not ever. I know it too, dearest. So what are we worrying about? I’ll have a talk with Alice and Tom – see what they think. We’ll be able to work something out and had you thought, there might soon be a pardon for deserters, so Tom wouldn’t have anything to be afraid of and never, ever, anything to be ashamed of. He fought in the trenches which is more than Elliot ever did!’

  ‘Julia! Why ever must you bring him into it? And why, since we are talking about your cousin –’

  ‘My nasty, over-indulged, awful cousin!’

  ‘Talking about Elliot,’ Helen went on, calmly, ‘why do you always get so prickly when his name is mentioned and make excuses not to meet him?’

  ‘Because I detest him, mother. No, I hate him. I dislike his womanizing and his arrogance and I won’t ever forgive his mother for arranging two safe postings for him when he joined the Army. She bought them, for him!’

  ‘You mustn’t say that of your Aunt Clemmy!’

  ‘Not even when it’s true?’ Julia jumped to her feet and stood, arms akimbo, at the window, staring out across the lawns and the wild garden to Brattocks Wood. ‘And I hate him because he’s alive – because he hardly got his boots dirty in that war, yet Robert and Giles and Andrew will only be names, soon, on a war memorial!’

  And she hated him, too, for what he had done to Alice, and the fact that they could never be sure that one day he might not say, ‘Giles’s son? Are you sure …?’ That was the reason she hated him so much, though she could never speak of it. Giles was Drew’s father as far as her mother was concerned, and if she ever learned the truth of their deception, her heart would break.

  ‘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 fo
olish 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.