‘I noticed as soon as I arrived that she wasn’t sparkling in her usual way. I’ve always admired her, you know. She married your father because she wanted to share the excitements of his life, but ever since Frank was born she’s had to stay at home and look after you all.’
It was a new thought to Grace that she was partly responsible for condemning her mother to a life of dullness. ‘She never says –’
‘Of course not. She’s not a grumbler. And no doubt it happens to all of us. We have our time of adventure when we’re young, and then we have to live on the memory for the rest of our lives. What’s your adventure going to be, Grace?’
If there was any excitement in Grace’s life it was to be found in Andy’s kisses and her own daydreams. But she was not ready to confess to that. ‘Nothing ever happens here,’ she mumbled. ‘Mother makes me go to dancing classes, but I hate them. I’m taller than any of the boys. I look stupid.’
Midge, walking briskly, made no comment on this and for a little while was silent. When she spoke again, it was with her usual decisiveness.
‘When I was about your age, my father sent me to France for a year, to stay with the family of one of his suppliers. It would be easy for your mother to make the same kind of arrangement for you. Wouldn’t you like that – to go and live in a château of one of the great wine-making families?’
‘What for?’ asked Grace. ‘What would I do there?’
‘You wouldn’t need to do anything unless you chose to. It would simply be a very agreeable way of life. You could learn a good deal about wine if you wished. You could even ask to be given instruction in cookery. French cuisine is thought to be the best in the world.’
‘I don’t like cooking!’ Grace was horrified by the idea.
‘But that beautiful loaf –’
‘That was different. A special occasion. And no one will eat it. I watch Mrs Charles sometimes, icing cakes or decorating fish in aspic – taking such trouble to make things look nice, and then it’s all spoilt and eaten in a second. I couldn’t bear that. Last year, when Mother and Father had a silver wedding party, I made a swan out of meringue for the centre of the table.’
Grace was silent for a moment, remembering how difficult it had been to make the mixture keep its shape, and how beautiful it had looked as it came out of the oven, baked slowly for just long enough to form a crust – and then how, by the end of the evening, there had been nothing left but a mess of sticky crumbs. ‘I like to do things that will last. I’m giving Mother a cushion cover for Christmas – but you mustn’t tell her, of course. I don’t specially enjoy doing gros point, but now it’s finished it will be there to be looked at for years; so I suppose it was worth it.’
‘I wasn’t suggesting that you should become a cook,’ her aunt assured her. ‘I’m sure you’ll always have someone to do that for you. But it’s useful to know what you can expect of your servants, to the highest standards. Well, even if that doesn’t attract you, a stay in France would help you to perfect your French.’
Grace sighed. She had never wholly understood the point of education. Almost everything that Miss Sefton had ever taught her seemed to be useless. Her brothers, she was sure, felt much the same. Frank and Philip had spent years at school swotting up Latin and Greek. What Philip had really wanted to learn about was soil and air and water and plants, and the school had given him no lessons about that at all. Now that he was at university he could choose what he wanted to study and was content, but he called his schooldays a waste of time. As for Frank, he was never likely to open any of his texts again. What use would Caesar or Homer be in the running of The House of Hardie? ‘I can speak French quite well already,’ she said. ‘But I never need to.’
Her aunt’s voice betrayed a touch of irritation. ‘You’re – how old is it – sixteen? You ought to feel excited at the suggestion of a change. You don’t want to stay here all your life, surely.’
Grace quickened her pace so that Midge, falling behind, should not be able to see her flush. ‘I don’t want to leave my friends,’ she said. Even to herself that did not sound convincing. She had grumbled often enough to her aunt about the fact that she had so few chances to meet anyone of her own age.
‘Your friends will leave you. People move away as they grow up. All your brothers have left home – even Jay is boarding now.’
‘Not everyone goes. People from the village stay here all their lives. Most of them have never been even as far as London.’
‘You surely don’t wish to be like that.’ Grace felt her aunt’s hand gripping her own to hold her back. ‘Is it one special friend that you don’t want to leave?’ Midge hardly paused for an answer before interpreting the blush that Grace was unable to control. ‘Who is it?’
Grace looked down at her feet. ‘Andy,’ she mumbled.
‘Who is Andy?’
‘You know, Aunt Midge. Andy Frith.’
‘The gardener’s son! Grace, my dear – Does your mother know?’
‘There’s nothing to know.’
‘You shouldn’t have secrets from your mother, Grace dear.’
‘Andy and I have been friends for the whole of my life. Mother doesn’t need to be told that.’
‘Friends as children, yes. But he isn’t a child any longer. Nor are you.’
Then stop treating me like one, thought Grace; but she did not dare put her resentment into words. Instead, she looked her aunt straight in the eye. ‘You’re not going to sneak on me, are you, Aunt Midge?’ It was a good many years since Grace had put her tomboy phase behind her and distanced herself from the roughness of her brothers; but she had absorbed their schoolboy code of honour in the nursery, and the resolution in her voice now checked even a headmistress. There was a moment’s pause before Midge answered.
‘I shall say to your mother what I have just said to you – that I think a year in France would be of great benefit. If she agrees with the suggestion, she’ll ask what you think about it, and you’ll have the chance to put your own point of view.’
‘You don’t understand. You don’t know how it feels.’
‘Oh yes, I do.’ Midge’s smile and eyes were sympathetic. ‘Do you think I’ve never been in love, Grace? I know that first love is like an illness. Everyone suffers from it sooner or later. I did myself – and I wished afterwards that I’d confided in someone who could have helped me to avoid all the heartbreak. There’s no protection against the infection, and it hits you without warning. It can cripple you for life if it’s not properly managed – or it can serve a good purpose and give you a kind of immunity, like an inoculation, so that you’re never swept off your feet in the same way again.’
‘Why should I want to be immune?’ cried Grace. ‘I love Andy, and he loves me. It’s nothing like an illness. I don’t want to be cured. I just want to be left alone.’
‘You can’t be expected to make good judgements at sixteen,’ Midge said soothingly. ‘You need more experience – a wider circle of acquaintances, so that you can make a choice and be certain what it is that you’re choosing.’
‘Mother was only seventeen when she fell in love with Father. She’d never loved anyone before and she’s never loved anyone since in the same way. She told me so herself.’
Midge hesitated for a second. ‘That doesn’t mean that she might not have been wiser to wait,’ she said. ‘It’s chilly, standing here. I think I’ll get back to the house. Are you coming, dear?’
‘Not yet.’ Careless of whether she was being rude, Grace hurried away round the side of the hill. On a frosty day like this, when the ground was too hard to dig, Andy would be working in the plant room. Andy wouldn’t treat her like a child. He would comfort her and tell her again that he loved her. But even as she ran, with her arms held out sideways to steady her balance on the slope and her breath freezing into white clouds, she knew that Andy would not be able to offer any protection. Her mother and her aunt between them were bound to get their own way. She would have to go to France.
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Chapter Four
For the first few days of what she regarded as her banishment from Greystones Grace was resentful and homesick; but within a week her own robust spirits and the companionship of the daughter of the house restored her to good humour. She knew very little about the wines which provided her family with its income and expected to be bored when her host promised that he would take her to watch the culture of the vines at each season of the year. But as he showed her round the vineyards which surrounded the château and the caves in which bottles of his champagne were racked and turned, she found herself genuinely interested in learning more about the complicated processes of viniculture.
She missed Andy, naturally, but was sensible enough to acknowledge that she was still too young to marry. Had she remained in England, the two of them would not have been permitted any private meetings. To be close at hand and yet kept apart might have proved more frustrating than the separation forced on them instead. Andy would remain loyal to her, and she took almost as much pleasure in re-living his kisses through daydreams as she had in his company. Time passed happily enough and in her letters home she made no complaint.
So it came as a surprise when, at the beginning of August, 1914 – only half-way through the twelve-month stay which had been arranged – her eldest brother called without warning at the château. If Frank was continuing his father’s custom of calling on his most important suppliers each year, he had chosen an odd time for the visit. In France, as in England, August was a holiday month.
‘Did you come here meaning to do business?’ she asked, after he had formally presented himself to her hosts and been left in private conversation with his sister.
‘No. I’ve come to take you home.’
‘You mean that my sentence of exile is over – that I’ve received a pardon?’
Frank failed to return her smile. ‘Haven’t you heard about the war?’ he asked.
‘There’s been talk, yes. It’s expected. But I’ve been told that England won’t be involved.’
‘Then you’ve been told wrong. The order to mobilize the army was issued yesterday, as I was leaving. We may already be at war by now. In any case, it isn’t the situation in England which may affect you, but here. Germany has refused to respect Belgian neutrality. That’s why we shall have to fight, to defend it. It means that the invasion of France is certain to come from the north-east. Go and pack your things whilst I talk to your hosts. They’ll be glad not to have responsibility for you in a time of crisis.’
Grace had not wanted to come, but she was sad to leave and made a formal speech of thanks and real regret in her now fluent French. The regret, however, could not last long. Thanks to the German threat she would soon see Andy again.
Twenty-two hours later the Hardies’ carriage made its way slowly up Shotover Hill. The day was hot and the journey had been exhausting. The ultimatum to Germany had expired an hour before midnight on the previous day and every train and Channel steamer was crowded with travellers returning hastily to their own country. In spite of her tiredness, though, Grace asked Frank to stop the carriage soon after it turned into the long drive of Grey-stones, so that she could approach the house on foot.
The moment of rounding the last bend and seeing her home for the first time after an absence was always a satisfaction. ‘A palace for a princess,’ her father had said when he first removed the blindfold from her eyes, and at each new return Grace recaptured some of the pride she had felt then. When she tried to explain her feelings to Frank, who dismounted to walk beside her, he nodded understanding, but not agreement.
‘Greystones isn’t right really,’ he said. ‘Not right for us, I mean.’
‘What are you talking about? It’s perfect.’ They could see it now, although still at a distance above them, standing proudly on the higher slope of the hill with its tower – Grace’s tower – commanding attention. It was the tower which most of all she loved, but she would not accept criticism of anything about the house.
‘Sometimes I think this is why Mother never seems to have many friends,’ he said. ‘You haven’t either, have you? It doesn’t matter so much for the rest of us. We’ve made friends at school, and now there are the people we work with. But – I mean, there are other families like ours in Oxford. If we lived in North Oxford, say, they’d pay calls on Mother and she’d call back. But when people of that kind look at Greystones, they think Mother must be too grand for them. Whilst the people who live in other big houses, the county families, aren’t going to mix socially with trade.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ protested Grace.
‘I know it’s ridiculous, but it’s the way things happen. People like to put other people into boxes. We do it ourselves in The House of Hardie. The amount of credit a customer can draw on isn’t written down anywhere, and there are no rules to help us work out a figure. But we all know how far a duke’s son can go, or a scholarship boy. And look what happened to Mother when she married outside her own class. Her family never spoke to her again. They made her choose between their circle and Father’s circle, because none of them was prepared to cross the line.’
Grace stopped walking and turned to face her brother. ‘Are you still talking about Greystones?’ she demanded.
‘No,’ admitted Frank. ‘Mother told me about Andy. I’m talking about you and him. Well, perhaps I am still talking about houses. I suppose that if Andy takes over from his father as head gardener one day, we’d let him stay on in the cottage. Can you imagine yourself living there, Grace – able to see Greystones, but knowing that it wasn’t your home any longer? Because that’s what would happen. Andy wouldn’t move up: you’d move down.’
‘He doesn’t have to stay a gardener all his life.’
‘He doesn’t have to – but I think he wants to.’
‘Are you trying to tell me that you’d behave like Mother’s family did to her? Cut me off?’
‘Of course not.’ Frank put an arm round his sister’s waist and hugged her affectionately. ‘I’m behind you whatever you choose to do – as long as you wait until you’re old enough to understand the consequences of your choice. Sounds pompous: sorry. But while Father’s away I have to speak on his behalf. He’d tell you that you’re far too young to think seriously about Andy. Everyone falls in love when they’re your age. You think it’s going to last for ever – but then you discover that it was the falling in love that was important, not the person you thought you loved.’
‘I do –’
But Frank, having embarked on his brotherly lecture, was not ready to be interrupted.
‘Andy understands all that perfectly well,’ he said. ‘That’s why he’s joined up as well. So that you both have time to grow older.’
‘Andy!’ Grace’s heart jumped in panic. ‘Andy doesn’t want to be a soldier. You can’t make him go into the army.’
‘No one’s making him do anything,’ Frank said soothingly. ‘Anyone of spirit knows that this is the time to defend his country. He’s a good chap, Andy. He can see what his duty is, and he’s going to do it.’
‘Where is he?’ Grace did not wait for an answer, but turned away from the house and ran as fast as she could towards the wood.
‘Mother thinks it would be best –’ Frank was calling after her, but Grace closed her ears to the words. She didn’t care what her mother thought.
Andy was waiting for her by the boulders. She had known that he would be there when she was expected. He stood up as she approached and she flung herself into his arms. Happiness at seeing him again and terror of losing him mingled with the excitement of realizing that he still loved her. The fierceness of his embrace overwhelmed her so that she could hardly breathe. He had kissed her before, but never as passionately as this. When at last he released her, she found herself trembling with weakness.
Side by side they sat down on the ground, leaning back against one of the huge boulders. In the world outside the sun was shining brightly, but here it only pierced through
the canopy of trees in narrow shafts, dappling her clothes with a pattern of leaves or illuminating circles of moss or water like spotlights. There was so much to talk about – all the thoughts and feelings saved up during their six-month separation – but Grace was able to voice only a single plea. ‘You mustn’t go. Don’t do it.’
‘It’s done.’ Andy’s arm tightened round her waist. ‘I went to the recruiting office yesterday. Got to report to Aldershot tomorrow. Reckon it’s best, anyway. They’re not going to let us meet. Might make it awkward for my father if I were to stay on here. He’s only got the cottage for as long as he’s employed at Greystones.’
‘Mother wouldn’t dismiss your father just because of us!’ Grace was aghast at the thought, but Andy shrugged his shoulders.
‘She won’t need to. It’s right for me to go. A job to be done. And time for me to make a life for myself. So’s when I come back it won’t be just as old Frith the gardener’s son.’ He checked himself, thinking over those last words. ‘Not ashamed of that,’ he said. ‘But Andy Frith, me, separate; I have to show people.’ He was not used to expressing his thoughts in words. ‘Best I should go,’ he repeated.
His hand rested on top of hers, gently stroking her fingers. Grace stared down at it, intent on memorizing the moment through the pattern of freckles on his skin and the colour of his fine, sandy hair.
‘Will you write to me, Andy?’
‘Not much of a hand at writing,’ he confessed. ‘But when they allow, yes. Reckon you’ll soon forget about me, though.’
‘No!’ Grace would have protested at greater length, but at that moment she caught the sound of Frank’s voice calling her name. She scrambled to her feet as he came nearer.
Andy, equally quick to stand, pulled her round to the far side of the boulder. It was quite large enough to conceal them both. For a second time he took her in his arms.
Grace Hardie Page 10
