Three Sons (Timeless Classics Collection)

by Ursula Bloom

  Three Sons

  Ursula Bloom

  Copyright © The Estate of Ursula Bloom 2020

  This edition first published 2020 by Wyndham Books

  (Wyndham Media Ltd)

  27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX

  First published 1946

  www.wyndhambooks.com

  The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Cover image © Everett Collection (Shutterstock)

  Cover design © Wyndham Media Ltd

  TIMELESS CLASSICS COLLECTION

  by Ursula Bloom

  Wonder Cruise

  Three Sisters

  Dinah’s Husband

  The Painted Lady

  The Hunter’s Moon

  Fruit on the Bough

  Three Sons

  Facade

  Forty is Beginning

  The Passionate Heart

  Nine Lives

  Spring in September

  Lovely Shadow

  The Golden Flame

  Many more titles coming soon

  www.ursulabloom.com

  Ursula Bloom: A Life in Words podcast

  Listen to the free, five-part podcast series based on the autobiographical writing of Ursula Bloom. The podcast covers Ursula’s life as a young woman on the Home Front in the Great War, and her rise to success and fame in the publishing world of the 1920s to 1940s.

  www.ursulabloom.com/ursula-bloom-a-life-in-words-podcast

  Contents

  BEGINNING: IN SWITZERLAND

  BOOK ONE: JAMES

  I: IN NINETEEN HUNDRED AND EIGHT

  II: IN ENGLAND

  III: IN HERTFORDSHIRE

  IV: IN ITALY

  BOOK TWO: ADAM

  V: FIRST-BORN

  VI: MAN’S ESTATE

  BOOK THREE: MARTY

  VII: THE BOY

  VIII: THE HUSBAND

  IX: THE GREAT MAN

  BOOK FOUR: LUKE

  X: THE CHILD

  XI: GROWING UP

  XII: LUKE’S WALL

  XIII: AVALANCHE

  AFTERMATH

  Preview: Wonder Cruise by Ursula Bloom

  Preview: Youth at the Gate by Ursula Bloom

  Preview: Victoria Four-thirty by Cecil Roberts

  Preview: Wind on the Heath by Naomi Jacob

  Preview: The Print Petticoat by Lucilla Andrews

  Preview: A Shaft of Light by John Finch

  Timeless Classics Collection by Ursula Bloom

  BEGINNING

  IN SWITZERLAND

  In March there had been the white crocuses. The snows had disappeared, slipping away before the strong spring suns, of Switzerland, and, slipping, disclosed beneath them the white crocuses, with the single orange tongue of fire in their cups. They looked as if they had been there all the time.

  Now, much later, it was the gentians, virulently blue, surely no flower had ever been so poignantly blue before? Carolyn stood on the veranda of the chalet, and saw the valley beneath them, and the Alps high above, wearing their pointed clowns’ caps. She heard the cow bells, and the man yodelling in the distance as he went through the pass. She liked the strong brave sunshine, and there was the certainty of peace about the blue of the gentians, and the yellow greenness of the grass. She looked at the snow points against the sky, which was such a different blue from the gentians, so much less real. But then the whole world seemed to have become unreal.

  Last year Carolyn had come out here to be with Luke. The professor at the Sanatorium had said that now he was so much better, he could, if he wished, live outside. The chalet had belonged to an Hungarian artist, who was insistent that there was going to be war, and had rushed off in a panic. Carolyn had come here to be with Luke, and the Hungarian had been quite right, for there had been war.

  In this very room she had heard Mr. Chamberlain’s ominous words, and had been undecided whether she should stay here with Luke or go home to James and the other two boys. They’d be in it, of course. Martin would have to join up in any case, James would probably be a special constable.

  ‘But what do you want to do, Mother?’ Luke had asked her on that September morning. She wanted to stay; the others had never meant what Luke did to her. Besides, she did not fancy having to endure another of those awful European wars.

  ‘I want to stay,’ she said.

  ‘Is this going to be the big show, Mother, or bluff?’

  ‘I doubt if anyone knows the answer to that, save Adolf Hitler.’

  ‘We shall know in a year’s time.’

  ‘Yes, Luke, we shall know.’

  Now in May, standing here on the same balcony, she knew that it was the big show. The valley had not changed, nor had the Alps, nor the chalet. The news had just come over the wireless that France was falling, and it seemed unbelievable. Luke came out and stood beside her. Luke was very brown, he looked so strong that it seemed incredible that he had a collapsed lung. He was so much better for being here, he was given a new chance in life, but it looked as if new chances were not going to be much use to a man.

  There might still be the opportunity to go home through Italy whilst there was yet time, but Carolyn knew that she did not want to go. Last year, when she had come out here first, she had hated the place, possibly because she had felt subconsciously that it took Luke from her. Now with the knowledge that it had given him back to her, she loved it.

  He came to her side, standing there, his brown hands on the white balustrade. ‘Well, Mother, it is the big show.’

  ‘Yes, Luke.’

  ‘What are we going to do? We haven’t so much time to decide, I imagine?’

  ‘The professor says that you ought to stay on here for at least another year.’

  ‘He’s possibly over-anxious.’

  ‘I think he’s right.’

  ‘You want to go back, Mother?’

  She looked at him. She could easily have passed for ten years younger than the age she was. ‘No, Luke, it’s a dreadful confession to make, but I don’t want to go back. I don’t like war. I want to stay here, and if I am to die, I think I’d rather die here.’

  He said nothing, only his hand closed over hers reassuringly. In the long pause the yodelling grew more distant and the cowbell ceased. ‘What about Dad?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, they’ll be all right.’

  ‘Yes, of course they’ll be all right. Because France goes down, it doesn’t say that we shall. It’ll be a hell of a dog-fight though.’

  ‘Yes, Luke, it’ll be a hell of a dog-fight,’ and then came the silence again, neither of them very sure of themselves. He turned and saw her profile, which was so remarkably young.

  ‘There are three of them there, Mother, and there’s only one of me here.’

  ‘I know.’ Then quite suddenly, not in temper but resignedly, as though it was something that she had always meant to say and now the unhurried moment had arrived: ‘You see, Luke, all these years have been wasted. Your father does not need me. Marty and Adam will fight their own war in their own way. For the first time in my life I have the chance to be alone, perhaps for years, with the one person I love most. I’m not missing that chance, Luke, I’ve misse
d too many in my life, but this time I’m taking it and holding on to it.’

  He said nothing at all.

  Perhaps he had known all the time how she felt about the others, but never until this particular moment, how deeply she had always felt for him. He stood there holding her hand, with the gentians flowering down into the valley, and the white clowns’ caps behind them, and the girl in the chalet over the way singing a piquant little song of France.

  Beyond this valley, where no war was ever to come, the whole world gaped and galvanised itself for action, whilst the valiant little boats of England set sail for besieged Dunkirk, to bring back the torn remains of an unbeatable army.

  ‘It’ll be a hell of a dog-fight,’ was all Luke could say. All that he could think of …

  BOOK ONE

  JAMES

  I

  IN NINETEEN HUNDRED AND EIGHT

  Carolyn Spinx was the only child of a marriage which had come about late in life. Her mother was an austere female, well advanced into the thirties (and that in the Victorian era was the hall-mark of old-maidism), so she had long ago abandoned any thought of romance, for the sourer delight of good works. She had believed that this self-appointed task in the country parish would be her metier for the rest of her life, but there she was not right.

  It was this very duty that took her to the Lodge, to comfort the squire when his wife Amelia Evelyn died at fifty-one, of what was diagnosed as being a rapid decline, but which was probably pneumonia.

  ‘Somebody ought to give him spiritual comfort,’ said the lady keen on good works, and off she went.

  The squire was sixty, a formidable old man who had lived hard, but he attended church services dutifully, to give an example to the parish, making all the proper responses at the right times, and occasionally reading the lessons. Amelia Evelyn had sat beside him, her hands clasped in prayer, but her pale eyes roving the church for some sign of disrespect in village lass or lad. She was one of those women who had to pick holes, and nobody liked her, preferring the old man, who, even if he was known to have gout from riotous living, and to be habitually fuddled by ten o’clock at night, was still a sporting good sort. Amelia had led him a life, and he had been disappointed in that they had had no children. He had desired an heir, but Amelia did not like intimacy. She had never thawed, and to the old man’s fury had lived a completely celibate life in a bed hung with cerise brocade.

  For the sake of appearances, he pretended to be prostrate with grief, but in truth he could not be sorry. When he saw Miss Arabella Jenkins coming in at the door, with comfort of a sentimentally religious nature, his nomad mind contemplated other things. Miss Jenkins was a round, full-bosomed little person with brightly-dark eyes, and hair like bird wings, dark and lustrous, combed back with a sheen on it. Her thirty odd years were half his age, and he was bubbling over with amatory champagne. Nothing suited him better than to have the solicitous Miss Jenkins comforting him, and in a remarkably short space of time (in fact even before they could get Amelia Evelyn’s name on to a handsome stone above the family vault) he married Miss Jenkins and this time had no nonsense about celibacy in a cerise bed.

  Having become Mrs. Spinx, and chatelaine of the Lodge, Arabella gave up her sanctimonious attitude towards life, and put on side. The Lodge was an overpowering mansion, white, built in the Regency period, and added to in a more unfortunate one, crowned with a couple of ridiculous little turrets that could serve no useful purpose and made its facade look like a Victorian cruet. The handsome gardens sprawled down to the river behind it, and round a drive to the front gate before. It made Arabella proud of herself. She did not expect to have children; Henry, for his part, did.

  The years rolling on, Arabella expected a family less and less, and Henry Spinx mentioned it more and more. In her fortieth year she found to her surprise that she was expecting a baby. This fulfilment of her marital obligations horrified her, and she was convinced that she would die. The village felt the same, and gloated over her age, never failing to mention it. Henry Spinx hoped for a son, and into the world one bright March morning came his daughter.

  The child was called Carolyn after his deceased mother, now hidden in the vault with Amelia Evelyn, his father, grandparents, and a couple of day-old babies, belonging to forebears never clearly defined.

  Henry was disappointed, but believed that now Arabella had started, the son might be acquired next year. What he never realised was that the modest soul of Arabella had been nauseated by the business. Shehad had a difficult confinement, and did not intend to tempt providence with any more like it. She put Henry off. She lied. She maintained that the doctor had said that it would be dangerous for her to have other children and she did not mean to risk her life.

  Henry blustered and swore, but Arabella held her head high and scorned him. He hated the presumptuous chastity of women! There were unpleasant scenes, but with the ingeniousness of her sex, Arabella always managed to put him so much in the wrong that he was almost ashamed of himself. He went back to his port, his lewd stories with neighbours, and after a few months abided by the change in his married life.

  Carolyn, fair-haired and blue-eyed, was surprisingly pretty. She had a docile and tender nature, but she was afraid of her mother, who warned her against her father. He died when she was ten. Arabella went into the deepest weeds, conducting herself as she imagined the dear Queen would in similar circumstances, but in her heart she was immensely relieved to part with Henry, never having known what he would do next. In her opinion he had always been an obstinate old fool with an unpleasant mind, and she could not be really sorry that the vault had been re-opened and he now lay beside Amelia Evelyn.

  But Arabella had reckoned wrongly. She had no knowledge of ways and means, believing that all ‘gentlemen’ had business heads, and that estates went on for ever; she had not realised that Henry was getting more and more fuddled over his port and was too much in the hands of Mr. Henshaw, his solicitor, who had personal claims on the estates. Mr. Henshaw comforted the widow, patted the child’s yellow hair, and proceeded to make it clear that although Arabella was still comfortably off, she was no longer very rich. Her late husband had been in the habit of dipping into the estate when in an awkward corner, so that much had been mortgaged. Mr. Henshaw explained that he had not wished to worry her, but as Arabella now realised, her departed husband had been in a horrible muddle, and to replenish his exhausted cellars had allowed his solicitor to do what he would with the property. Arabella went into the subject of ways and means as far as she considered a lady of good birth could look into such matters. She cut down her staff, sold some of the estate to put the rest in order, and instead of giving Henry a magnificent tombstone eulogizing his many virtues, she commemorated him with a second-rate stone and the simple text, ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth!’ at which nobody would quibble. It satisfied public opinion and saved her a good deal in imperishable lead.

  Naturally she loathed the enforced retrenchment; considering that it was vulgar and middle-class, and had been foisted upon her by an unworthy husband who should have known better. Her only hope lay in the fact that little Carolyn would make a good match. So, whilst little Carolyn was only thirteen, her darling mother was raking the neighbourhood with an eye to boys in the middle teens, with affluent prospects and if possible a title to be inherited by them.

  In her diligent quest she contrived to locate a couple of starters, or what she sincerely hoped might prove to be starters in the matrimonial race for her little daughter. Harry Bourne was an unpleasant youth of seventeen, a considerable trouble to his housemaster at Eton, but with a certain seven thousand a year ahead of him, and if his uncle could be prevailed upon to die unmarried, a barony. Also there was Sir Rodney Stein, who was fourteen, a pasty child, said to have lung trouble and looking like it.

  At every children’s party, Carolyn was pushed into the arms of these boys and shrank from the obviousness of the proceeding. She was a clever little girl, encouraged in backwardness
and shyness, which her mother called modesty. She met few other children. Visitors were not encouraged to the Lodge, in case they brought some unfortunate complaint with them, or more regrettably, taught the little dear something that she should not know. Occasionally the vicar’s daughters came to tea; or the land agent’s languid son and daughter with the round, clock-like faces, came. Once Sir Rodney Stein was persuaded to attend, a brilliant August day, when the mulberries were ripening, but Rodney had no interest in girls, but sat up the mulberry tree the entire afternoon, stuffing himself with the fruit, and only descending when he wanted to be sick.

  At seventeen Carolyn let down her skirts and put up her hair; her last governess, Miss Bradshaw, who had been with her for over a year, insisted that skirts and hairpins alone could not make a woman grown; there was more to it than that.

  Carolyn had learnt to hate life. It was convent-like. Youth never penetrated into the Lodge. Full of abundant energy herself, she could never expend it, or the good spirits that went with it, for she must always walk sedately or play with decorum. The only time that she was alone was when she was in the garden with the dogs. They were the youngest inmates of the place.

  I’m lonely, oh so desperately lonely, she thought.

  Life was too long. It seemed dreadful at seventeen that it should be dragging itself out, and that she should be afraid of what the future could offer her. She felt that this would go on for ever; the summer days in the garden, the long winter walks with the cold air lying like water against her face, and the tears springing to her eyes from the smarting of frost. April, perhaps the most difficult of all to bear; the days violeting in country woods sweet with the scent of little flowers, the frittering song of linnets, and the sap rising in the trees; in her too.

  Then it changed.

  The dull life was entirely disrupted that July day when the vicar borrowed the garden for the purpose of a fête in aid of parish funds. Miss Bradshaw’s brother was taken seriously ill, so that Miss Bradshaw had to go off to Birmingham to be with him for a difficult operation. To add to this, Carolyn’s mother was stricken with acute lumbago during lunch, and could hardly move. Carolyn and the parlour-maid had to help her to her room, the large ornate one where Amelia Evelyn had refused to comply with the wishes of Henry for reasons of prudery, and where later on Arabella had done exactly the same thing because she loathed the thought of another confinement.