The Silver Locket (Choc Lit)

by Margaret James

  The music started, and somehow he managed to get himself across the ballroom floor.

  ‘Denham can be very irritating,’ muttered Michael, and Rose felt his hand become a fist, pressing hard between her shoulder blades. ‘I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. We all know what he is and where he came from, after all. But maybe someone ought to teach the fellow courtesy.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Rose became aware her feet were aching. The straps and laces of her undergarments were digging trenches in her flesh. The vile whalebone corset crushed her ribs.

  She wanted to sit down. But Michael danced on, talked on, told her more amusing stories, and she felt obliged to smile, although she wasn’t really listening to anything he said.

  Michael finally noticed her abstraction. ‘You must be getting tired,’ he said, and before she could deny it he was leading her towards some chairs. ‘You sit here, and I’ll fetch you a cordial.’

  As Michael walked away, Rose noticed several chaperones sitting together on a window seat, no doubt exchanging scandal. She didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but the women were all deaf, their shrill, aristocratic voices carried, and she could hear very well what they were saying.

  ‘Viola never had any shame,’ rasped one. ‘So we shouldn’t be surprised if her son decides to make a foolish exhibition.’

  ‘But he’s such a very attractive boy.’ A second woman sighed. ‘So tall, so handsome. He has his mother’s eyes, her charming smile, and there’s a certain sort of girl who doesn’t ask for more.’

  ‘Well, Henry won’t allow it, I shall see to that.’ The first crone shook her head. ‘One bastard at a time is quite enough for any family. If Alex thinks he can play fast and loose with Charlotte Stokeley – that child is just fifteen.’

  ‘Your cordial, Miss Courtenay.’ Michael handed Rose a glass, then sat down beside her and started telling her another story.

  But Rose didn’t hear Michael, didn’t see him. She didn’t know why she felt like this, she didn’t understand it – after all, she didn’t even like the man.

  All she could hear right now was Alex asking her to dance with him. She could still see his smile.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Come on, Phoebe sweetheart, that’s enough. You know old Maisie wouldn’t have wanted you to break your heart.’ Maria Gower drew back the green plush curtains with a flourish, sending the brass rings rattling down the rails and letting the dusty light of the East End flood into the dark parlour.

  She sat down by her sister and put a comforting arm round Phoebe’s shoulders. ‘I must admit I’m glad the funeral’s over. I reckon they really did us proud, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, it was the business.’ Phoebe Gower sniffed and gulped and rubbed her swollen eyes. ‘People was impressed by that glass carriage an’ all them black ’orses. But it must’ve cost a fair old bit?’

  ‘I had some money saved, and Maisie deserved the best of everything.’ Maria gazed round the little terraced house in which their foster mother had brought them up. ‘If she hadn’t taken us from the Spike, if she hadn’t treated us like her own, God only knows how we’d have ended up.’

  ‘You’d ’ave done all right, Maria,’ said Phoebe. ‘You got brains.’

  ‘But you have looks. A lovely figure, pretty face and beautiful black hair.’

  ‘The blokes all goes for blondes an’ redheads these days,’ muttered Phoebe, and Maria reflected that her own fair hair and clear grey eyes were such a striking contrast to Phoebe’s gipsy colouring no one would have guessed they might be sisters.

  ‘I got something to tell you,’ added Phoebe. ‘You ain’t goin’ to like it. But I’ve thought about it for a while an’ now I’ve decided, so you won’t change my mind. I’m goin’ on the stage.’

  ‘The stage?’ Maria stared. ‘But you’ve just started work at Mrs Rosenheim’s, round at the corner shop.’

  ‘I don’t work there no more. I give me notice Monday.’ Phoebe grimaced. ‘I’ve ’ad enough of flippin’ Nathan bumpin’ up against me. I’m sick of Mrs R, always givin’ me ’er dirty looks as if to say, don’t you think you’re goin’ to catch my Nathan, you schemin’ little shiksa. God, Maria – as if I’d want to go to bed with him!’

  ‘But you had a place to live, a job–’

  ‘I’ll soon get another place, don’t worry. As for a job, that Mr Harris down the Royalty says ’e’ll find me somethin’, maybe in the chorus line.’

  ‘But you can’t sing – or dance.’

  ‘Maria, I could bloody learn!’ Phoebe’s full, red lips were pressed together, in fierce determination. ‘It’s all right for you,’ she muttered, angrily. ‘Anythin’ you wanted – a scholarship to that fancy school, where you learned to talk like Lady Muck. Then you got the Board to let you train to be a nurse. You just ’ave to whistle, an’ it all comes along.

  ‘But it’s never been like that for me. In any case, now Maisie’s dead, you know we can’t stay ’ere in Bethnal Green. It’s not where we belong.’

  ‘Where else could we go? Phoebe, we must–’

  ‘Anybody ’ome?’ The front door opened, and their next door neighbour poked her head into the parlour.

  ‘Come in, Mrs Taylor,’ said Maria, wearily.

  ‘I ain’t stoppin’.’ Still resplendent in her funeral finery, Mrs Taylor dabbed her red-rimmed eyes. ‘I just popped round to tell you some of us is goin’ down the George, an’ we’d like you girls to come along. We wants to see old Maisie off in style.’

  Lady Courtenay’s party had evidently been a huge success. The great pile of bread and butter letters lying on her breakfast table seemed to prove it. As she opened them and read, she smiled with satisfaction.

  Even Alex Denham had sent her a short note, which she passed across the toast and coffee and invited Rose to read.

  ‘Good God, his handwriting’s atrocious,’ muttered Rose, who didn’t actually want to read the letter, or even touch the letter, come to that, because she wanted to forget him, or at any rate forget the strange, uncomfortable emotions he’d aroused.

  ‘You’re a fine one to talk, my dear,’ said Lady Courtenay, tartly. ‘All you young people scrawl. But he writes a very charming letter, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, if you say so,’ murmured Rose. ‘I’m taking Boris for a walk.’

  ‘Be home by twelve,’ called Lady Courtenay, after her departing back. ‘Mrs Sefton is coming here for luncheon. You have a fitting with your dressmaker at two.’

  Rose walked moodily along the headland, throwing sticks for Boris who was much too fat and lazy to chase them very far, and wondering if she might meet Michael Easton – he often rode this way.

  If she did get married, should she marry Michael Easton? She liked him, she supposed. But marriage meant having babies, running households, having dismal, boring parties like the one last night.

  Boris eventually caught a stick then sat down panting heavily. So Rose slumped down beside him. She could hear shouts and cries of laughter coming from the beach. So now she inched her way towards the cliff top, intending to look down and find out who was making all the noise.

  Alex and Charlotte Stokeley, the eldest daughter of Henry Denham’s bailiff, were running up and down the beach with Charlotte’s dog, a much more energetic beast than Boris.

  The dog was barking like a lunatic and going berserk with joy as Alex threw sticks into the surf for it to find and fetch, and Alex himself was laughing as the dog came charging up the beach, and shook itself all over him and Charlotte.

  Then they had a race. Alex shouted go, and Charlotte and the dog shot forward. A few moments later, Alex started running, soon caught up with them, but then he stumbled, grabbed Charlotte by the arm, and they both fell over on the sand, rolling over and over and over as Charlotte squealed with laughter, and the dog went wild with joy again, and jumped all over them.

  They were soon on their feet again, and started playing what looked like tag. Alex dodged and feinted, laughing as Charlotte
ran and tried and failed to catch him, and was easily caught when it was his turn to chase Charlotte.

  Rose could see quite well that all of this was merely horseplay, and nothing at all improper was going on. But she still felt her face grow hot, and wished she was down there on the beach, that Alex Denham had chased and caught Rose Courtenay, and – kissed her, maybe?

  God, what was she thinking?

  She shut her eyes and frowned, determined to put all thoughts of Alex Denham right away.

  She was so wrapped up in contemplation she didn’t hear Alex and Charlotte coming up the cliff path, and the first she knew of it was when Charlotte’s spaniel came bouncing up to Boris to greet the older dog.

  She felt very silly and at a disadvantage, sitting there all prim and solitary in her new spring coat and matching hat and gloves, while Alex and Charlotte laughed and gasped and panted as they climbed the last few steps that were cut into the cliff.

  As they came into view, Rose wondered if she ought to speak to them. She supposed she’d better – it would be polite.

  But what on earth was Alex wearing? It looked like one of Henry Denham’s horrible old suits. She shuddered, waiting for a moth or several to fly out of it, and she was still wondering what to say when Charlotte beat her to it.

  ‘It’s Miss Courtenay,’ she began, and ducked her head respectfully at Rose. ‘Good morning, miss.’

  ‘Good morning, Ch-ch-charlotte,’ Rose choked out.

  ‘Miss Courtenay.’ Alex nodded too, and when at last Rose managed to meet his gaze, she saw his dark brown eyes were shining and he looked full of – mischief, devilment?

  She’d been about to make some pointless comment about the weather, but now she changed her mind.

  Alex just stood there, and now he was staring out across the English Channel, humming something to himself.

  ‘My mother had a note from you this morning,’ said Rose eventually, still looking up at Alex and wishing the sun would go behind a cloud, because at the moment it was in her eyes. ‘She says you write a charming letter.’

  ‘She gave a charming party. I enjoyed it very much. It was very kind of her to make me feel so welcome.’ Rose didn’t quite like the sound of that. Alex didn’t sound at all sincere. But he was smiling, his actual smile seemed genuine enough, so she supposed perhaps he’d meant it.

  ‘How long will you be staying in Dorset?’ she asked him somewhat stiffly, aware she sounded like a dowager duchess speaking to a groom, but totally unable to do anything about it.

  ‘I’m here until Friday, when I go to Ireland.’

  ‘Mr Denham will miss you.’

  ‘I’ll miss him.’

  ‘My mother will be wondering where I am.’ Charlotte clicked her fingers at the dog. ‘Dancer, heel,’ she said. ‘Miss Courtenay, Mr Denham.’

  ‘I’m coming your way, too.’ Alex nodded again to Rose, then he and Charlotte Stokeley turned inland and walked away, and Rose could hear them chattering and laughing.

  As she sat there alone, she felt like crying.

  The spring of 1914 kept its promise. Although the first weeks of May were cold and damp, and no one walked along the shingle beach that lay beyond the manor house – for there the grey-green sea rolled up the pebbles, foaming white and lashing the black rocks with salty, wind-whipped spray – the summer was a golden dream.

  At Charton Minster, the sunny afternoons were filled with tennis tournaments, garden parties on the sloping lawns, and games of croquet. There were picnics on the headland, bathing parties on the beach, and drinks served on the terrace as the sun went down.

  Rose was not to go to Somerville. Lady Courtenay was adamant, and Sir Gerard liked a quiet life, so when Rose asked him to intervene on her behalf, he’d refused to argue with her mother.

  ‘I dare say you’ll be getting married soon,’ he’d added, smiling. ‘That young Easton fellow – Mummy and I think very well of him.’

  Rose hardly thought of him at all.

  A year ago, before she’d dared to hope that she might go to Oxford, before she’d realised there was another world outside her social circle, becoming Mrs – and in due course, Lady – Easton would have been the height of her ambition. If Michael had proposed, she would have accepted him.

  But nowadays she was restless. She was longing for adventure. In search of inspiration, she read all the newspapers the butler laid out every morning in the library. They predicted conflict, most probably in Ireland. But Austria was looking dangerous, too.

  She saved up her allowance, and by the end of June she was quite rich. ‘The papers seem to think there’ll be a war,’ she said to Boris, who was as usual chewing at a rug. ‘So if the men go off to fight, women are going to have to do their work – and look after any who get hurt. I don’t suppose they’d let me be a nurse…’

  ‘Sir Thomas and Lady Easton will be motoring over here for luncheon,’ Lady Courtenay said at breakfast, one hot morning in July. ‘Michael and Celia are coming too. I was thinking you young people might like to take a picnic to the beach.’

  ‘I’m going to the village.’ Rose put down her fork. ‘Polly said the church hall’s being turned into a cottage hospital. The Red Cross is collecting sheets and blankets. Marjorie and Polly are going to wash the china that people have donated, and I’m going to help them.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Rose.’ Lady Courtenay frowned. ‘You would meet some very common people.’

  ‘Mummy, I’d meet the people from the village. I’ve known them all my life!’

  ‘Don’t be silly, darling,’ said her mother. ‘We don’t know them socially. In any case, I don’t think you should do that sort of thing.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘You’d ruin your lovely hands. Now, what about this picnic?’

  ‘It’s far too hot,’ said Rose. ‘In any case, I have some things to do.’

  ‘My dear, Michael and his sister–’

  ‘May talk to you and Daddy, have a game of croquet, eat potted shrimps and strawberries – I’m sure they don’t need me to entertain them.’

  But when Michael Easton and his family arrived, Rose dutifully went downstairs to greet them.

  ‘My dear child, you grow prettier every day,’ said Lady Easton, as she offered Rose her cheek to kiss.

  Rose couldn’t say the same for Lady Easton, who was heavily pregnant once again, with her twelfth or possibly thirteenth child – Rose had long lost count. Michael was grown up, Celia would be coming out next year, but still at boarding school and in the nursery was a swarm of children, eating their parents out of their dilapidated home.

  Rose knew Michael had some money left him by an uncle. But the other children would have nothing, or maybe less than nothing. As his farms and cottages decayed, as his fields grew crops of thistles and the equinoctial gales blew masonry from Easton Hall into the English Channel, Sir Thomas bought motor cars he couldn’t drive and often crashed, and gambled his inheritance away.

  But, reflected Rose, Sir Thomas was a baronet. The Courtenays might be rich and long-established in the district, but were mere country gentry all the same. Sir Gerard’s knighthood, his reward for sitting as a magistrate for almost thirty years, was only six months old.

  ‘Rose, what a lovely dress.’ Celia Easton, plain and gangling in a faded cotton print, looked at Rose’s pale green watered satin enviously.

  ‘Green has always suited Rose.’ Lady Easton smiled, and Rose saw she’d lost another tooth. ‘She looks like a water-nymph in green.’

  ‘Yes, indeed she does.’ Lady Courtenay smirked complacently. ‘But that colour is quite hard to wear. It wouldn’t do anything for Celia. She would look washed out.’

  Rose blushed pink, embarrassed by her mother’s tactlessness. Celia was too tall, too thin, too awkward, and she never had any pretty clothes.

  ‘Have you done any of your lovely paintings recently?’ Lady Easton gazed around the drawing room as if expecting to see Rose’s latest watercolour hung in pride
of place. ‘You’re such a talented little artist. I was saying to Michael yesterday, Rose is such a clever girl, she can paint and draw so beautifully–’

  ‘It seems we’re going picnicking,’ interrupted Michael, who looked very handsome in comfortable flannels and a plain white shirt that set off his light tan. ‘Celia, Miss Courtenay and I are going to walk along the beach, so you go round the headland.’

  ‘Why can’t I come with you?’ asked Celia, pouting.

  ‘We have things to talk about, that’s why.’ Michael Easton handed Rose her hat. ‘We’ll see you at the usual place, so now be a good fellow and buzz off. You could take the basket, actually.’

  ‘You didn’t have to be so mean to Celia,’ said Rose, as she and Michael walked along the tide line, where the sand was firm.

  ‘Actually, I did.’ Michael skimmed a pebble and it bounced across the waves. ‘She’s so jolly nosy, and she couldn’t keep a secret if she tried. I say, Miss Courtenay – may I call you Rose?’

  ‘Yes, of course you may.’ Rose smiled at him. ‘You always did. I’m not sure why you stopped.’

  ‘But you’ve come out now, so I thought it might seem disrespectful.’

  ‘I don’t think so, we’re old friends,’ said Rose. ‘What’s this secret Celia couldn’t keep, and why do you want to talk to me?’

  ‘Your father’s been discussing things with mine.’ Rose saw Michael flush beneath his tan. ‘They talked about my trust fund, and the settlement Sir Gerard means to make on you.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ Rose had always known that as her father’s only child she would make her husband an extremely wealthy man. ‘Michael, let’s not spoil–’

  ‘Please, Rose, hear me out!’ Michael cleared his throat. ‘We’ve known each other all our lives. I’ve always thought you were a splendid girl. We had a lot of fun together as children, and now we’re both grown up we get on famously. The parents are all for it, so why don’t we get engaged?’