Of Sylvester Ratton there was no sign at all.
The next morning there was something of an inquisition, which I was allowed to attend and, I must say, rather enjoyed. Awan’s story had come haltingly out as I had fed and bathed her and put her to bed. ‘Uncle Sylvester’ had promised her a prize if she could hide in her most secret place until tea time without him finding her. A high-stakes game of hide-and-seek had seemed very exciting to her until midway through the afternoon, when hunger and loneliness had overwhelmed her. Once darkness had fallen she had been unable to do anything other than wait, frozen by fear and a sense of having been outwitted whether found or not. She had picked the gatehouse, she told me, because she knew that he knew that it was my secret place, and therefore wouldn’t likely be hers. Also, from what I had told her, she understood Ratton had already trespassed there; even if he did find her, he would not be discovering anything he did not already know. Part of me marvelled at (and was rather proud of) this complex reasoning, the rest shuddered at the twisted mentality of the man. To play such a game was one thing - to set off in search of her, to do his part - but to send her off with no intention of even looking, and, worse, to feign ignorance and innocence while half the county had been raised, was quite another.
I am happy to say that, for once, Colin saw things through my eyes. He was fond of Awan in his cold, fishy way, and rather proud of her wit and confidence amongst the sombre-suited politicians and strategists he brought to Tall Chimneys. He and a small delegation of the gentlemen cornered Ratton in the dining room after breakfast the next morning. By arrangement, I was there clearing the breakfast dishes. At a discreet signal from Colin the majority of the men left the room and Colin closed the door. Ratton, who had been finishing his coffee and staring out of the window, turned at the sudden silence and realised what had occurred.
‘What’s this?’ he blustered, placing his cup and saucer on the table. Behind his eye-glasses, his eyes blinked repeatedly, a spurious indication of innocence.
‘My sister tells me that you were the cause of the child’s disappearance yesterday.’ Colin came right out with it.
An older man with a grey, nicotine-stained handlebar moustache muttered ‘Very poor show.’
‘Me?’ Ratton laughed nervously, ‘what could I have had to do with it? I know nothing about it.’
‘You suggested the idea to her,’ I said. ‘You offered her a prize if she could stay hidden until tea time.’
Ratton shrugged, but a line of perspiration oozed onto his upper lip. ‘She misunderstood me,’ he stammered.
‘Not at all,’ I replied, ‘she expected you to be looking for her. She thought it was a game.’
‘I haven’t got time for games,’ Ratton spluttered, indignantly. ‘The girl’s a liar. I haven’t spoken to her.’
‘You’re a liar,’ I countered. ‘I saw you speaking to her yesterday, by the fountain.’
‘So did I, as a matter of fact,’ said the moustache-man.
‘The child’s a damned nuisance, always in the way,’ Ratton spat out. ‘I may have told her to go away and stop bothering me.’ He threw me a steely glare, ‘You ought to keep her under better control, madam.’
‘I find her a very pleasant child, and extremely well-behaved,’ put in a balding man who remained seated at the table. ‘A pleasure to have about the place, in fact.’
I gave him a grateful smile.
‘Whatever your intention, whatever you actually said, it was very ill-judged,’ pronounced a man with smoothly slicked-back black hair. ‘I have two daughters at home. The idea of either of them being lost for hours…’
‘She wasn’t lost,’ Ratton interrupted. ‘In fact she boasted to me that she knew every inch of the woods and could hide for days if necessary. She still has some idea the Germans are due imminently.’
‘There but for the grace of God…’ the balding man said under his breath.
‘So you did have some conversation with her!’ Colin pounced.
‘I told you the man’s a liar,’ I put in, bitterly. ‘I’ve been telling you for years he isn’t to be trusted.’
‘Let’s not rake up old grievances,’ Colin said.
‘No, indeed,’ Ratton echoed. ‘If I’m to be arraigned for misdeeds past and present, accused by a loose woman and her illegitimate progeny…’
‘Sir!’ the smooth-haired man interrupted. ‘Remember your manners!’
‘Yes, Sylvester,’ Colin warned, ‘remember of whom you are speaking…’
‘Well,’ Ratton threw his hands up, ‘I’ll not be party to any kangaroo court.’
‘No more will I,’ the bald man said, ‘nevertheless, I think it’s clear you gave the child the idea of hiding, and offered her an incentive to do so. At the very least you owe her some recompense.’
‘Agreed,’ the slick-haired man said.
Ratton’s usually pasty complexion turned puce. He groped in his pocket and threw some coins onto the table cloth, ‘A few shillings? Will that put an end to this ridiculous interrogation?’
‘A few guineas would be more like it, I think,’ the man with the moustache said, drawing his pipe from his pocket. ‘The child’s had a terrible fright, not to mention our lady hostess, here. As it turned out there’s been no actual harm done, but potentially…’
‘Oh, alright,’ Ratton said, with ill-grace. ‘I’ll see the child is recompensed. What a fuss over nothing, when we have so many other more important things to occupy us.’ He took out a weighty pocket watch and squinted at it. ‘Now you must excuse me. I have a meeting in York and I’m going to be late.’ He strode round the table and put his hand on the door knob. ‘Thank you for your kind hospitality, Colin,’ he said, through gritted teeth. ‘I fear my business will detain me for a day or two. Kindly have my valise sent on to The Grand in York. I shan’t have time to pack, now.’
He wrenched open the door and disappeared through it.
‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ I said, quietly, gathering dishes onto a tray.
‘A pleasure, madam,’ the man with the black hair said. ‘Such an engaging child, with that cloud of blonde curls and those blue eyes. Reminds me of someone. Can’t think who…’
‘Can’t you?’ Colin asked, sharply.
I felt the blood rush to my face. I kept my eyes down, riveted to the greasy dishes and eggy cutlery. Even the men who knew about my association with John could never have supposed Awan to be his child - as dark as she was golden, his features as bold and full as hers were delicate and fine - and, it was true, the older she got, the more like her biological father she became. He, surely, was well-known to these men, and it would not take an Einstein to make the connection. Colin’s question was virtually a challenge to them to do so. I could almost hear their mental processes considering men of their acquaintance.
‘As Ratton says, there are more pressing matters,’ the older man said, breaking the silence. ‘Talbot, I want to go over those papers with you again…’ The two left the room in deep conversation.
‘And I must telephone Westminster.’ The bald man said, getting up from the table and following them.
As I gathered in the breakfast things I heard Ratton’s motorcar pull onto the gravel at the front of the house. I longed to hear it drive away; the man’s malevolence always caused me to shudder. But the engine idled for a while and presently I heard raised voices. When I reached the open dining room window I saw Kenneth, dressed in his gardening gear and grasping a scythe, holding Ratton by the shirt-front against the bonnet of the car. Ratton was purple, struggling ineffectually against Kenneth’s vice-like grip. I couldn’t make out Kenneth’s words but there was a torrent of them, more than I had ever heard him speak since we had been childhood companions. He spat words like bullets from a machine gun into Ratton’s face. Kenneth himself was blanched white, even his freckles had paled. The contrast between the two men couldn’t have been starker; Kenneth, slim and hale, as tough as hemp, and Ratton, soft and fat and as ineffectual as eider feather
s. Kenneth leaned forward, Ratton cowered back. Kenneth was white-hot, powerful in his anger, while Ratton melted with fear, a pathetic excuse for a man.
After a while Ratton tore himself from Kenneth’s grip, scrambled into his car and roared off up the drive. Kenneth remained on the gravel, his fist opening and closing around the handle of the scythe. I wrestled with the window catch and threw the window wide. The sound alerted him to my presence. We looked at each other and for once his eyes did not slide away but held mine in a steadfast gaze. We both smiled.
John came home on leave at the beginning December 1941 and announced he could stay for Christmas. I greeted him rapturously but Awan outdid me in enthusiasm. That evening she refused to go to bed and in the end we took her in with us - a mistake, of course. Her presence in the bed put the kybosh on our usual blissful reunion after a separation, that night and subsequently, as, naturally, once she had been admitted to the big bed she refused to go back to her own.
John seemed physically well, although more tired than he usually was after a time in London. I questioned him, but he was as close-lipped as ever. He was thin; good food was possible to find in London despite rationing, if one had money, but the hours he worked seemed to preclude regular mealtimes and John was not one to eat while his neighbour went hungry. The blitz had ceased earlier in the year as Hitler had turned his attention to the Soviet Union, so threat of air-raids was less, but the situation in the capital was still dire, streets reduced to rubble, gas and electricity still very unreliable and unexploded bombs being discovered daily.
John sat and listened carefully as Awan and I described the day she had hidden in the gatehouse and why she had done so. I was glad to see her ordeal had not quelled her spirit; she was as brave and as adventurous as ever around Tall Chimneys, but she was more reserved with the gentlemen who came to stay; she had learned a hard lesson, I suppose, that not all men are to be trusted.
The incident seemed to ignite a gnawing angst in John - he was furiously angry with Ratton, of course - but there was something else, another quality to his reaction which I couldn’t, at first, identify. Why had Ratton taken such an interest in the child, he wanted to know. Had he, on other occasions? Had I discouraged it? Or allowed it?
‘Awan makes herself at home in the house,’ I told him, ‘and why wouldn’t she? It’s her home! She is used to having gentlemen stay here and she thinks nothing of speaking to them. Ratton is just one amongst many. I neither encouraged nor discouraged it.’
‘But surely,’ he fumed, ‘Ratton, of all people, you would want to keep her away from. Unless…’
‘Unless?’
‘Well,’ he gave me a sideways look, ‘unless he has some right…’
‘A right?’
It dawned on me, then, what was at the root of John’s response. He was jealous of Awan. Although he knew he was not her father he was the nearest she had to one. He didn’t like the idea of anyone usurping that role, let alone Ratton. And it had come to him in a blinding flash of lunacy that the one man I might allow to form a relationship with the child was her natural father.
In spite of myself, I started to laugh. ‘You think Ratton might be Awan’s father?’
He had the decency to look ashamed of himself.
‘Over my dead body,’ I declared. ‘If you want to know, I’ll tell you.’
‘No,’ he shook his head. ‘I don’t want to know.’
It was a thing that stood between us, a shadow. Like John’s marriage to Monique, Awan’s provenance was a closed book, something we could not share with one another. It separated us, an obstacle we could never over-leap no matter how we tried. I wonder if he resented it, as I resented his marriage. Did it haunt his dreams as he and Monique inhabited mine? And what did he imagine? A charming seducer? A romp under a hay-stack? An on-going affair which suffered a hiatus every time he came home? All I can tell you is that his umbrage - if he felt any - never showed in his dealings with Awan; he was never anything other than loving and true to her - the perfect father. And if he doubted my loyalty, he never showed that, either.
The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour a day or so after John came home and we entered onto a new phase of the war; The United States joined the allies along with Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The theatre of war was wider than ever, being fought on islands and in seas which were so remote they were almost unheard of to many small-islanders. Certainly, for myself, as reclusive as I had been, they meant almost nothing; I could as easily imagine Jupiter or Neverland as those sweltering islands and dust-blown deserts, and yet I was as alive as anyone to the terrible hardships and devastating losses of men and ships. More and more villagers and townspeople had received news of killed, wounded or missing men-folk. One or two dreadfully maimed and disfigured men began to reappear on our streets, their trouser legs pinned up, their shirt sleeves empty, their eyes blank - blind, or haunted by some inner nightmare.
At first John thought this new development would mean him cutting his leave short, but we were reprieved - he could stay. He took Awan into town shopping before Christmas, a trip loaded with excitement and mystery in equal measure which had her almost incontinent with anticipation beforehand but which sobered her when she encountered the wounded men on the streets and in the shops. John told her not to stare at them, but also, not to ignore them. He instructed her to say ‘good morning,’ as she would to anyone, and to forgive them if they did not reply.
We enjoyed Christmas with Kenneth, Rose, Bobby and Brian, and had a small party for Awan on Boxing Day, her fifth birthday. The weather over Christmas was cold, with hard frosts and bright, glittering days. John went up to the gatehouse most days to paint. Sometimes he took Awan with him. Occasionally they would take their paints and easels outside, onto the moor. Awan’s daubings were immature, of course, and she soon grew tired of sitting still and would wander off to collect things she considered interesting. John’s paintings were bleak, wide expanses of featureless moor rendered in smears of grey and purple, dark boggy pools like gaping mouths, the sky as cold and hard as steel with a grey blade of cloud, knife-like, across the horizon. Only a smudge of cottage with a wisp of smoke rising from its indistinctly rendered chimney, or the hazy spire of the village church would offer any comfort in these forbidding landscapes, at all.
On these days Awan would sometimes fall asleep in the car on the ride back down the drive, exhausted by fresh air and exercise. John would carry her into the house and give me a knowing look over her nodding head. He would tuck her into bed fully clothed, creeping out of the room and closing the door with stealthy movements. Then we would throw ourselves into each other’s arms, kissing and tugging at clothing, stumbling against furniture, scarcely making it to our own room before the first wave of pleasure hit us.
Even while John was at Tall Chimneys, despite it being holiday time, I remained busy. The house remained an unwieldy burden to maintain. Thankfully Colin’s money continued to come and I could pay masons and roofers for repairs when required. The old generator continued to run thanks to Kenneth’s ministrations and the plumbing creaked and shuddered, but worked. Kenneth, Rose and I worked hard in the kitchen gardens to provide food. We had chickens for eggs and meat, a pig and, that year, I recall, a few ewes in lamb. Many afternoons found me in the village, in the church hall or out on the old cricket pitch and village green, where we grew produce as a community. Conscription for all women had begun and many of my contemporaries had joined the ATS, WRNS, WVS and the WAAF in spite of being married with children. My own involvement on the Home Front seemed to satisfy the authorities and, indeed, I really threw myself into the work that had to be done ‘keeping things going’. We were busy growing vegetables, bottling fruit and making chutney and jam. Nothing was allowed to go to waste. We knitted socks and scarves for the men serving abroad, and made up parcels to be sent away. We cared for the children, sharing out those whose parents were serving in the forces, volunteering or working in reserved occupations such as the munitions
factories. We comforted each other when news came that a loved one had been lost.
On 5th January 1942 John and I took Awan to the village school, where she skipped into the classroom with barely a backward glance at us. I clung on to John’s arm as we watched her go. He was dressed for travel, his packed bag in the car.
There was plenty of time before John’s train. As we left the village I considered driving down one of the farm tracks or isolated lanes I had discovered; I itched for him, my sexual appetite by no means satisfied by the two or three hurried couplings we had managed while Awan slept or played out with Bobby and Brian. The idea of having him in the car, or on a blanket in the corner of a meadow, or both, made my juices flow. As long as we had been together I still found him irresistible. His hair was still very dark although much shorter than it had been when we had first met. He had retained his honed physique; he was well-muscled though spare of flesh. Nearer forty than thirty, he had developed creases around his eyes but the eyes themselves were as dark and deep as they had always been, velvet with lashes, and full of passion.
I wondered if his thoughts ran along the same lines as mine. If he hadn’t spoken, I would have taken the initiative - there was a secluded track I knew of which led through a copse and would have afforded us privacy. But as the entrance came into view, he said, ‘Do you think you’ll always live here?’
His question startled me - I hadn’t expected it - but it matched so ill with my mischievous plans I hardly took it seriously. I did think I’d always live there. I had never had any other life and, with its slight enlargement into the village and even occasionally into the nearby town, I wanted no other. ‘At Tall Chimneys?’ I asked, waggling my eyebrows suggestively, ‘well, that depends.’
Tall Chimneys: A British Family Saga Spanning 100 Years Page 17
