The three years she had spent in Dublin before her marriage cast long shadows. She had loved Robert’s daughter from the first, and could not forget the pain of parting. That Robert had also abandoned her shortly afterwards was hard to forgive: with his regiment safe in Ireland, there had been no need for him to volunteer for the Sudan. Even now, she could not view that war as anything more than an excuse for his leaving.
Although she had seen the girl rarely over the succeeding years, Louisa felt she knew Georgina better than her father did. She treasured this new, adult friendship, finding a sympathy and understanding which was sadly lacking in her relationship with Tisha. Her own daughter, Louisa reflected unhappily, was a chip off another block, reminding her of her sister Blanche, and her mother’s sister, Elizabeth. How odd it was, she thought, that Edward should love Tisha so blindly, seeing few of the shortcomings which in those other women had grieved him so much.
That bias never failed to be baffling. Georgina’s choice of vocation, however, was not. Unlike Letty and Robert, she understood why the girl had decided to become a nurse, and why she had chosen the most difficult aspect, the nursing of the mentally ill. That passionate concern for life’s unfortunates had been instilled by Letty, and from there it was no more than a step to Charlotte Duncannon, who had been strange when Robert married her, and beyond redemption after Georgina’s birth. The girl was no stranger to madness, nor its various treatments. It seemed logical to Louisa that being the person she was, Georgina Duncannon should feel the need to care for those who shared her mother’s afflictions.
Nor did it surprise her that the daughter of a woman so irredeemably insane, should have made a vow never to marry. That had come out during one long and very serious conversation, and she had asked Louisa not to repeat it. She was, she said, afraid of developing the same brand of insanity: too little was known about heredity, and she would not wish to pass a similar affliction onto her children. Although Louisa admired the sentiments involved, she did wonder whether that decision would hold if Georgina ever fell in love. From her own experience, Louisa knew how hard it was to stick to principle where passion was involved.
If the girl had gone to Dublin for the funeral, they would not see her again for a while. In the meantime she would drop a few questions and watch Liam’s reaction. The real test, however, would be to see them together. Armed with those warnings of Edward’s, then she would know the truth of the situation.
With the heightened perception of those who hold a secret passion, Liam was alerted by his mother’s enquiries, to the extent that he dare phrase no direct questions with regard to Georgina’s continued absence. It also seemed to him that the tension at home was connected to his father’s tetchiness at work, and from pure instinct attributed it to his unsuitable and unrequited love for Colonel Duncannon’s daughter.
Unhappy, missing Georgina to distraction, Liam did try to submerge his anxieties in the work at hand, but his heart and mind were elsewhere. His forgetfulness brought constant recriminations. At the end of ten days, convinced that something was wrong, he took to cycling past the Retreat each evening in the hopes of seeing her. By the third occasion, desperation had fuelled enough courage for him to write a note in which he said he must see her, would wait for an hour in case she might be free, and again the following evening.
It was one thing to write the note, quite another to persuade the porter to pass it on. It was more than his job was worth, the man said, to pass billy-doos to the nurses. Liam’s offer of a tip would persuade him only to leave the note on the board by the nurses’ quarters, where Miss Duncannon might find it in the morning; he would do no more.
Liam had to be content with that. Disconsolate, he went home, but when he returned just before seven the following evening, Georgina was already watching from a high point overlooking the road. He caught the movement of something white beneath the overhanging trees, looked up and realized Georgina was signalling to him. A moment later she came out of the drive on a bicycle, and with barely a glance in his direction, started pedalling away towards the village of Heslington. Bemused for a moment, he simply stood with his bike by the roadside, but as she disappeared beyond the crest of the hill, he re-mounted and went after her through golden light and lengthening shadows. Not too quickly, however. He had sense enough to keep some distance between them until they were clear of the village.
She cycled with confidence, quickly gaining speed, so he had no difficulty in following at what was, for him, a natural pace. With the last house behind him, he pressed a little harder, intending to overtake; but as the gap between them shortened, Liam found himself fascinated by the shape of her back, her narrow waist and flaring, womanly hips. In a simple straw hat and white blouse, she sat forward in the saddle, navy skirt pulled tight under a neat, provocative bottom, while her thighs moved rhythmically with the pedals. He was unable to tear his eyes away.
A moment later, his thoughts were shaming him; with an effort he forced himself to overtake. It was none too soon. Rounding the next bend she slowed, stopping as he drew level. Flushed with exercise and agitation, he thought she looked more beautiful than ever; but her words were sharp and concise.
‘Liam, this won’t do! You must not pester the porter with notes – you’ll get me into serious trouble!’
Crushed by the tone of that reproof, stunned by its unexpectedness, for a moment Liam stared in disbelief. Sharply, he turned his bicycle. He would have ridden off but she grasped his arm.
‘I’m sorry – you didn’t know. It must be something vital, of course it must, but we’re not supposed to meet young men outside the hospital gates.’
Ashamed of his thoughtlessness, Liam hung his head. She tugged gently at his sleeve. ‘Come on – we’ll park the bikes out of sight and walk a little way. I’ve got an hour or so before I go on duty.’
There was a dry, rutted cart-track just a few yards up the road, leading between fields of ripening wheat. Dog-rose and honeysuckle threaded the hedge, while tall spikes of fox-glove pierced the shadows beneath. Along the border of the field a few early poppies reared silken scarlet heads. The air was full of mingling scents of earth and grass and flowers, and in the low evening sunlight all was somnolent and still. As they walked, Liam’s tension began to ease, but his first words to her came out badly.
‘Where have you been? It’s been so long since your last visit, I thought there must be something wrong.’
It was clear she was surprised by his vehemence. ‘Didn’t your mother tell you I was going to Dublin? She knew, I’m sure she did.’
‘Nobody tells me anything,’ he said bitterly. ‘But why Dublin? I think you might have said, since you knew you were going!’ Georgina stopped at that, her frown deepening, and Liam realized the mistake in showing his anguish. ‘I thought we were friends,’ he finished lamely.
‘We are friends,’ she said quietly. ‘And I’m sorry I didn’t say. I thought it would have been explained later, after we’d gone.’
For a while they walked on in silence. When she began to speak, in short, wrung-out sentences, he was at first incredulous, and then ashamed. He could only imagine her loss in terms of losing his own mother, and that she should have set aside her grief to the extent she had, was astounding. That he had taken her to the fair that day, with no idea of the news her father had come to impart, was also rather hurtful. He wished she could have confided in him, and said so.
On an indrawn breath, she said, ‘I would have, but to be truthful, Liam, I heard the music and just longed to do something silly. It was my suggestion, so don’t blame yourself. And afterwards – well, there wasn’t time.’
It was hard to understand, but he was touched by her confession. Six years his senior, Georgina had always seemed mature and somehow invulnerable. He had talked to her, trusted her with his difficulties and listened to her advice, but for the first time he was seeing her as a suffering human being with problems far greater than his own. Forced to place himself in the role of comfo
rter, it was new to him and awkward.
Imagining his own mother incarcerated for fifteen years in a mental hospital, Liam winced. That Georgina had never known Charlotte Duncannon as a mother in the true sense was harder to grasp, yet he felt the tragedy of never knowing warmth and comfort as a child. He declared, with some feeling, that it must have been worse than being an orphan.
‘Yes,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘I suppose it was. Of course, we visited, my aunt and I, over the years... but I doubt she knew me.’
‘But that’s terrible...’
‘It certainly wasn’t easy.’ Locked into her own thoughts, memories of a past which did not include him, Georgina stared unseeing over the still, golden fields; while he ached for her, wishing he could know her feelings, experience her emotions. The gap of inches which separated them as they walked, might well have been miles. Liam was painfully conscious of all that divided them: age and gender, circumstance and experience. He had long been convinced that to kiss her would be to transform everything, that joined in a passionate yet tender embrace, he would absorb all that she was, just as she would know him, feel as he felt, love as he loved.
The sheer impossibility of it made him sigh.
Georgina turned to him and smiled, and with a touch that was all too brief, pressed his hand. ‘Oh, Liam! I didn’t mean to make you sad, too. Let’s change this awful subject, and talk about you instead. What have you been doing while I’ve been away?’
With a short laugh, Liam shook his head. ‘Nothing much. In more trouble than ever with my father, I’m afraid.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. What’s wrong this time?’
‘Hard to say. It’s just how he is.’ Trying to be dismissive, he laughed again. ‘I can’t seem to do anything right, and yet when I try to tackle him about the accounts and keeping them up to date – which he’s terrible at, he leaves things outstanding for months – he tells me not to be clever, and to mind my own business!’
‘Oh, dear.’
‘I don’t know why, Georgina, but I can’t talk to him anymore. We used to get on so well, but now all he does is bite. To hear him talk, I’m no good at the job, I’m mean to Tisha, I don’t help in the garden, and I go out too much. But if I stay in,’ Liam added bitterly, ‘he accuses me of reading too much and going to bed too late. But Robin comes and goes as he pleases, and never a word to him. And as for Tisha – well, she might not get away with much when Mother’s there, but she winds Dad round her little finger. She can do no wrong, while I can do no right!’
‘And it’s not fair,’ Georgina chided with gentle humour.
He grimaced at that. ‘No, it isn’t, and it makes me mad. I don’t know what to do. Maybe I’m not as good at the job as I should be – but I find it tedious. I didn’t think I would, but I do. And I must admit I hate being inside all the time. That’s why I go out in the evenings – I need the fresh air.’
‘Have you tried talking to him — outside work, I mean?’
‘No, but I don’t think I could at the moment.’
She suggested enlisting Louisa’s help, but he explained that his mother had also been strange with him recently and the atmosphere at home was taut in the extreme. ‘I mean, she didn’t even see fit to tell me that your mother had died!’
After that, they were both silent for a while, each considering possible motives. A grassy bank by a gap in the hedge looked too inviting to ignore. Liam flopped down dejectedly, chewing on a piece of grass, while Georgina stood looking down at him, deep in contemplation. Youth was so terribly painful, she thought, remembering her own; and harder still when things were never explained, when you had to struggle alone in the dark.
A wave of love and compassion swept over her, and she wished he was still a little boy to be fussed and petted and coaxed back to smiles. Instead he was tall and broad-shouldered and self-consciously tragic, sprawled there on the grass: handsome enough to break a young girl’s heart. How easy he would be to fall in love with, she thought, envying the girls he might choose. With his straightness and honesty, he would never betray, never abandon the ones he loved.
Thinking of the honesty he deserved, she longed to tell him why things were as they were at home, but the secret was not hers to divulge, and the pain of keeping silent was bitter indeed.
‘So,’ she said firmly, sitting down beside him, ‘what would you do, given a totally free rein?’
He glanced up, startled by the abrupt change of subject. A smile began to play at the corner of his mouth. After a moment, discarding that chewed piece of grass, he said: ‘A totally free rein? No ties, no apprenticeship?’
‘No ties,’ she stressed, wondering why it was so important, and why she should wait with bated breath for his reply.
‘If I had money, I’d travel the world,’ he said softly, aware that with this confession he was trusting her with his most cherished dreams. ‘Travel until I got tired and found a place to settle. And then I’d write about it.’ He glanced at her again, half afraid she might be laughing; but she was gazing intently into his face, willing him to go on. Suddenly, smiling, he said: ‘But if I hadn’t any money – which I haven’t – I’d simply go abroad to work. Canada, Australia, America – somewhere new and untouched. Farming probably, but it wouldn’t really matter.’
‘And then you’d write?’
‘Eventually. When I’d lived a little, had something to write about.’
Stunned by the simplicity of it, by its very obviousness, Georgina wondered why no one had thought to ask him before. He was a young man who loved the outdoors, not the sort to welcome being cooped up in a small, airless space, making books for other people to read, ledgers for other people to enter columns of tiny figures. Writing books, yes, she could see that, eventually. Writing about adventures and foreign lands he might have had a hand in conquering.
With all the undercurrents at home, especially now her father was taking such belated interest, Liam would be better away from it. ‘Why don’t you?’ she asked with breathless intensity, but even as the words left her lips, she thought how much she would miss him.
‘How can I?’ Liam whispered, aware that he could never leave without knowing her fully, never say goodbye until she knew him too.
‘But you can!’
He looked away. ‘I have my apprenticeship to finish,’ he said abruptly, gathering himself together. ‘Perhaps after that...’
He stood up. Georgina saw at once that she had failed him somehow, but did not know what to say. With a sudden shiver, she realized it was time for her to go. Pursued by night clouds, the sun had dipped below the horizon: the golden light was gone, the land a uniform shade of grey.
Eight
Since he had to be Ireland for his wife’s funeral, Robert’s superior at the War Office had asked whether he would mind staying on to attend to some official business. Aware that it would save another journey immediately afterwards, Robert agreed, but not without some degree of concern for his daughter, forced to make the long journey back to York alone.
The War Office business kept him in Dublin for several days. Days in which he was forced to listen to his sister Letty’s catalogue of anxieties regarding her niece, also her admonitions on his role as her father. With his conscience suitably nagged into life, on his return he wrote to Georgina, but her reply was not reassuring. The letter seemed flat and depressed – understandable, perhaps, in the circumstances, but leaving much apparently unsaid. With a couple of days at his disposal, Robert decided to pay her another visit. The decision cheered him, especially when it came to him that if he timed it carefully, he might also spend an hour or so with Louisa.
A telephone call to the Retreat’s superintendent established his daughter’s free time and a suitable appointment. The following morning he took a cab to King’s Cross and caught the express for York. Depositing his bags at the Royal Station Hotel, Robert found himself thinking of the summer of ‘99, when Kruger’s antics in the Transvaal had kept everyone in suspense. Knowing
war was coming, seeing too clearly the impossibility of family life, Robert had finally relinquished his ties with Louisa. It was what she had wanted, but it had taken a war to make him see the sense of it.
As he approached the riverside with its unchanging vistas, the flourishing trees and soft, sandy path, he remembered all the old passions, and the jealousy which had made it so hard to accept her marriage. Even now he found it difficult to believe that Louisa had really preferred a quiet life with Edward to the heady passion she had shared with him. Their relationship had been passionate, perhaps too much so, heaven and hell at times; but recalling the sparks that had flashed between them so recently, Robert knew the magic was still alive, stirring the embers of that old affair.
There had never been anyone to match her. Desire remained, despite the other women, the years abroad, the stupid things he had said and done. She was a loving and lovable woman, and he still wanted her, that was the hell of it.
With the cottage in sight, a frisson of nervous anticipation made him pause. Screened by trees and the lie of the land, it stood no more than a few hundred yards from busy riverside wharves and the spread of new housing off Bishopthorpe Road. In the nearby meadows cows munched contentedly, giving an illusion of deepest countryside. On the river a couple of barges were idling their way downstream, and in Louisa’s front garden the subdued buzz of bees foraging amongst the flowers was almost the only sound.
Outside the gate, in dappled shade, Robert noticed a wooden board, listing fruits and vegetables – all fresh from the garden – and their respective prices. Envisaging possible interruptions, his euphoria evaporated. With a sigh he pushed open the newly-painted gate, hoping his walk would merit at least a cool drink and a shady seat. A light tap on the front door produced no answer. At the back of the house the kitchen door stood open, but she was not inside, and even the garden seemed deserted.
A moment later, with her sleeves pushed back and wearing a sunbonnet, Louisa emerged from behind the screen of glorious pink roses, bearing a gardening trug full of lettuce and soft fruits.
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