by Cathy Gohlke
David’s color rose. “That was a diabolical event, and I’m ashamed of my ancestors.”
“Aye, it was.” The doctor’s firm and low note sent a warning.
“But that was nearly three hundred years ago and had nothing to do with me or the plan I’m suggesting. We’d not be asking anything of the villagers, but sending an offer to become allies, partners to get us all through this war.”
The men stared each other down.
Claire held her breath as long as she could. “I see what you’re saying, but I don’t think inviting the locals to a singsong or a picnic will do—not this time. It has to be something everyone can participate in for the sake of winning the war—and our children need to be seen as the hosts, much more than the grown-ups.”
When David’s eyes lit in appreciation, Claire smiled, the blood pounding in her veins in a way it hadn’t for ages. “I have an idea—a splendid idea.”
Mrs. Newsome thought Claire’s idea a splendid one indeed and presented lists of orders to the children the next morning in military style without even consulting Lady Langford. If a thing was to be done, it must be done right and no shilly-shallying. She placed the oldest boy and girl among the French and oldest boy and girl among the Germans in charge of their task forces, then sent them out the kitchen door, ignoring groans and mock salutes.
Getting the grounds in shape for the fund-raising fete Miss Claire had schemed would take the rest of July and most of August. They’d best get started. If Mrs. Newsome didn’t miss her guess, this veritable army of competitive youngsters might do what three grown men had been challenged to keep up. A bit of fun, a strong work ethic, and killing two birds with one stone—now that appealed to the Scottish housekeeper.
At eleven o’clock Mrs. Newsome poured tea for Lady Langford in the library.
“I just worry that we’re expecting too much of them. They’re children, after all. I would never have expected Christopher to labor in the gardens like this.”
“Ah, but he did, and with you, my lady, despite Mr. Dunnagan’s protests.”
Lady Langford smiled, her eyes glassed in memory. Mrs. Newsome smiled in return at the image of her lady and the young master covered in garden dirt and drenched from sudden downpours as they’d rushed through the kitchen door, laughing—not once, but many times. “If memory does not fail me, those were some of your happiest days . . . and his.”
Lady Langford blinked back moisture that Mrs. Newsome politely ignored. “Yes. Yes, they were. We did it together . . . that’s what made it so special. It wasn’t work at all, for either of us.”
“And it needn’t be work now, my lady.” Mrs. Newsome waited a moment more.
“Are you suggesting I join them?”
“I’m not suggesting anything at all, my lady. But that does sound like a bonny idea. The sunshine and fresh air might do you a world of good. You’ve always loved gardening and growing things.”
Lady Langford gave a self-conscious laugh. “I’m not sure how much digging or clipping or weeding I’m up to these days.”
Mrs. Newsome’s brow wrinkled. She’d seen her lady’s loss of strength, and it worried her. “Mind, you must be careful not to overdo, but I think if we set a chair in the shade for you, you might find it pleasant, and enjoy watching their activity. I daresay those youngsters will labor their hearts out trying to impress you.”
“What are they working on today?”
“You should see them! The older boys climb those ladders like young monkeys, a true blessing for poor Mr. Dunnagan. Under his veteran instruction they’re learning to trim and shape the topiaries.”
“I can hardly imagine that.”
“Bringing those gigantic animals back to life will inspire everything to come. The younger children are picking up brush, raking leaves, and I believe Mr. Dunnagan will set some to trim grass. Even young Aimee’s out weeding the flower beds. Mr. Dunnagan has gone and fashioned her a child-size spade, and Peter’s shown the patience of Job in teaching her to dig and plant.”
“You’re certain we’re not expecting too much of them? Not only are they children, but they’re here as our guests.”
“They’re evacuees and refugees, my lady. It’s high time they were gainfully employed and helping. This is their home for the duration, after all. Children relish learning new skills. They take pride in becoming capable. ’Twas all that idle time that gave way to mischief and shenanigans in the first place . . . a common enough trouble among adults and children alike, if I do say so.” Mrs. Newsome knew her lecture sounded disapproving. Lady Langford’s notion of coddling youngsters was one thing when that meant coddling her own son, the young master, but quite another for ten active and imaginative foreign-born children bent on mischief.
“Miss Claire and the children are conspiring on a play from one of the books she’s been reading them; she’ll write and they’ll perform. It turns out that young Franz is the son of a tailor back in Germany and reared in the family trade, for being only a mite. He’s prepared to turn some old drapes I found in the back of the linen cupboard into costumes with the help of Marlene and Ingrid.
“Mr. David’s promised to work on some props with the young ones, and he’s working up a bit of his hamboning. He and Miss Claire pulled out the gramophone. Mr. David has quite the collection of recordings. They’re going to teach the children American square dancing—that should be a sight—and a bit of those gyrations they call the jitterbug.” Mrs. Newsome shuddered at the thought. The jitterbug was a vulgar dance in her mind. But she daren’t say that to her ladyship—an American, after all. “They’ll finish up with a rousing singsong.”
“British tunes, I hope.”
Mrs. Newsome laughed. “British, through and through. Miss Claire says she’ll pick them out on the piano, though I think Jeanine is the one to play them. That girl’s got music in her fingers and toes. Mrs. Creedle and I can handle the food. She’s agreed to save back most of our sugar rations and fats and such until then. Things will prove a bit meager during the saving, but that’s as it is.”
“The events of the day must be finished long before the blackout.”
“They’ll all be on their way home before the gloaming. We’ll do an afternoon bonfire, if the day isn’t too warm. Miss Claire’s fete and the money it will raise will provide a real wartime lift. It’s a great lot of work, I agree, but I believe Miss Claire is right: it’s worth the doing. Preparations will keep the children busy and out of mischief, and the villagers will relish a day on the grounds. Raising funds for another ambulance is a cause we can all get behind. It just might forge a bridge between.”
“What we might call ‘mutually beneficial’?” Lady Langford laughed.
“Aye, ‘mutually beneficial’!” It was worth all the fuss and bother just to hear her lady laugh.
Claire waited while David fiddled with the wireless dial on Sunday night. She and the children had finished the washing up after tea, listened to an early news broadcast, and enjoyed a shortened reading of Great Expectations. The BBC broadcast of Norwegian news was just finishing. None of the children seemed eager to break the domestic circle. Aimee nestled close to Claire’s side, and Claire gladly drew the little girl in.
“Quarter to eight on Sunday nights, C. S. Lewis will broadcast,” David explained. “This is his first one. I’d like to listen, if you don’t mind. He’s the writer whose book I was reading a while back. Never finished it. Don’t know what I did with it. He’s writing another, I heard just the other day. Becoming quite well known.”
Claire squirmed. She’d never returned David’s copy of The Problem of Pain, never even told him she’d taken it. She’d read it through—twice—and wasn’t ready to let it go, as if holding on to it might make the things Lewis said about life and God come clearer or deepen the comfort his writing gave of recognizing her inner being. Nothing else has made that much sense in a long time.
Claire’s sense of guilt was ill-timed, she decided, or maybe it was fate. L
ewis spoke for fifteen minutes on the topic of common decency.
It was going along fairly well, until Lewis reached his main point:
“I hope you will not misunderstand what I am going to say. I am not preaching, and Heaven knows I do not pretend to be better than anyone else. I am only trying to call attention to a fact; the fact that this year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practice ourselves the kind of behavior we expect from other people. There may be all sorts of excuses for us. That time you were so unfair to the children was when you were very tired. That slightly shady business about the money—the one you have almost forgotten—came when you were very hard up. And what you promised to do for old So-and-so and have never done—well, you never would have promised if you had known how frightfully busy you were going to be.”
Claire groaned within, but Aimee squeezed her hand and smiled up into her eyes. Claire knew that Aimee, young as she was, understood what Mr. Lewis had said, and that the child forgave her.
Though she tried to focus on the broadcast and the children before her—what common decency meant for her treatment of them—her mind kept returning to her own hurt, closer to the surface.
She’d received another letter from Josephine on Friday. It had taken five weeks to reach Claire from Sylvia’s mother in America. Josephine had mailed it from Paris six weeks before that. Two and a half months. Josephine wrote that she hoped Claire would understand that she and their mutual friend had been working side by side these many months and grown closer. It was natural, she supposed, but felt the need to let Claire know, to never betray their friendship.
Claire knew Josephine did not write those words to taunt her, but to forewarn her, to practice common decency in the way she could. Josephine had fallen in love with Arnaud, Claire was certain. Even now, Claire felt her heart pound, the heat rise up her face. Well, why wouldn’t she? All the girls fall for Arnaud. The question is, has he fallen for her in the same way?
In the past, when Claire had asked him about their mutual close friend, Arnaud had laughed, saying, “Josephine? She’s too old—she must be nearly my age! Non, ma chérie! She’s like a sister to me. You, on the other hand, are not like my sister.” And then he would smile and wink in a way that sent chills up Claire’s arms. Surely, she’d believed, they were made for one another.
In two and a half months, anything might have happened. Still, Claire could count on Arnaud to be loyal . . . couldn’t she?
Chapter Twenty-Three
BY LATE AUGUST Claire’s play rehearsals for The Secret Garden ran full length. Franz and the girls had finished the costumes in time for dress rehearsals, and Marlene had created a veritable flower garden in pots, ready for the outdoor makeshift stage. David had directed the building of an arbor, and even a swing. Mr. Dunnagan and David had orchestrated the moving of a downed tree to stand in the center of the “garden” and hung the swing from its lowest branch. The girls had fashioned paper blooms, dyed from vegetable peelings and the petals of the summer’s wildflowers.
It was the dancing that worried Claire. The children loved the music and seemed to catch on easily to the American square dancing. Jigs and reels and folk dances of all sorts ran native through their blood. Though jitterbugging tangled the feet of the youngest, and they were quick to give it up, especially when they found it meant holding on to one another through the entire dance, the older children were as eager to learn as David was to teach them.
But there came the rub. David wanted Claire for his partner to teach the children, and that meant they needed to practice, with the children and without.
“I can’t pretend the lady’s part while doing the gent’s,” David protested as he spun Claire out in a dramatic twirl. “Don’t you like dancing? Don’t you like dancing with me?” he teased, pulling her back, a little too close.
Claire loved jitterbugging, but doing it in David’s arms sent chills up her spine, set her mind to racing, and discombobulated her nervous system . . . all of which apparently pleased David to no end. Her pleasure felt disloyal to Arnaud. And yet, that confused Claire too. Was Arnaud loyal to her? And if he wasn’t, why did she fear betraying him?
I won’t be like my father! He was far away from Mother and me, but he should have remained true—not thrown us over for another woman, a second family! The revelation of her concern—the connection—shocked her, but there it was.
“That’s it, Peter!” David cheered. “Step, step, rock step . . . step, step, rock step. Once we’ve got that, we spin the lady out, like this—” he twirled Claire again, her mind still whirling—“then twirl her back and under your arm, two arms linked, and rock step, step, step, repeat the rock. You keep the same basic step all the way through, even while you spin her. Got it?”
Peter wiped the perspiration from his brow. “I think Bertram would be better at this. I’m two left feet, as you say. I need something slower.”
Jeanine’s face fell, and Claire’s heart, in recognition of rejection, hurt for her, but Bertram stepped up to the plate and took her hand from Peter’s. “Shall we?”
Claire’s mouth dropped open as Bertram spun Jeanine out, spun her back, and rock stepped in perfect rhythm. Without waiting for David to place the needle on the record, Bertram spun her out and back once more, then lifted her for a perfect flip.
Mr. Dunnagan stopped in the drawing room doorway, nearly dropping the potted geranium he carried. “Well, I’ll be a—I mean to say, suffer the French!” He grinned from ear to ear. “Well done, young Bertram! Well done!”
“Where did you learn to do that?” Claire gasped.
“Mademoiselle, you were not the only one who knew Americans in Paris,” Bertram teased, suddenly older than his years.
David laughed. “Mademoiselle Claire, I believe we have a show!”
Claire laughed too, relieved that Bertram and Jeanine could be the center-stage jitterbugging couple. At the same time, she was astonished to realize how much Bertram and Jeanine had grown in the year they’d all lived at Bluebell Wood, how much all the children had grown and changed. Had she changed too?
Dr. MacDonald insisted that a Scottish reel be included in the festivities, and Peter’s suggestion of something slower was echoed by Elise’s unexpected request for waltzing lessons and a fox-trot.
“It seems we’re now official dance teachers, mademoiselle,” David whispered in Claire’s ear as he took her in his arms to begin a fox-trot. Was it the music’s sultry saxophone or David’s breath on her hair’s damp tendril, tickling her ear, that sent the shiver down Claire’s spine once more?
“I haven’t danced in ages,” Aunt Miranda objected as Dr. MacDonald pulled her to her feet. “I’m not sure I can, or that I have the breath.”
“Of course you can, lass.” The doctor would not take no for an answer. “You’re the lady of the manor; you canna remain seated and expect the villagers to commence. You must open the dance and lead the day! We’ll take it one step at a time.”
Claire marveled at the way the doctor could convince her aunt of almost anything, though she sometimes wondered if it was more a case of him giving her the permission she craved to step beyond the grievous choices she’d framed for herself, or the lethargy into which she’d sunk.
Yet when the doctor spun his laughing partner out and back again and she stumbled, bumping him shoulder to chest, Claire saw a sudden spark fly between the older couple that she’d not seen before. Claire had known, ever since the doctor’s attendance to her aunt during her bout with influenza, that he loved her. But the brilliant light in her aunt’s eyes told Claire that the passion was not one-sided.
Aunt Miranda, don’t waste another minute holding him at bay. It’s not betraying Uncle Gilbert’s or even Christopher’s memory. They’re gone, and we’re all interlopers into your life. We won’t stay . . . none of us. Don’t be alone. You need him and he loves you!
Oh, to be loved like that!
Each of those thoughts raced through Claire�
��s mind in a moment. Each made her wonder if they applied to more than her aunt.
For all the snide remarks Claire had received in the village shops, the day of the fete seemed to turn the tide—at least for some—as she and Aunt Miranda welcomed cheerful villagers to Bluebell Wood.
“They’re more than curious; that’s all,” Claire whispered to her aunt between guests. “They’ve been longing to walk the grounds and see the inside of your estate for ages.”
“This is our opportunity to respond graciously and prove ourselves generous,” Aunt Miranda reminded her. “We’re here for a greater cause. And it was your idea.” Her aunt smiled widely as she turned and warmly greeted the now-walking vicar’s wife.
Claire knew Aunt Miranda was right, and as the day progressed her own heart opened to the laughter of children and the dry wit of some of the locals.
She clapped with everyone else, praising each act of the performance of The Secret Garden. Watching Gaston as Colin rise from the wheeled chair, unsteady and halting in his crippled steps, and stumble across the makeshift secret garden from Mary—Elise—to Dickon’s waiting arms—Peter—Claire could almost believe in magic and new beginnings, could almost believe in anything.
The conclusion of The Secret Garden brought rousing cheers and foot-stomping approval. Mr. Dunnagan’s bow as Ben Weatherstaff pulled the adults to their feet to clap. He was a longtime villager, after all, and Claire thanked all the stars that be that she’d cast the crusty gardener in his role. It was written just for him.
“Forging new relationships takes time.” Dr. MacDonald nodded his approval. “You’re doing right well, lass.”
“That affirmation was worth the day,” Claire whispered to David when he brought her a heaping luncheon plate and forced her to sit down and eat.
