Summer House

by Nichols, Mary

  Donny mulled this over for several minutes. They were turning into the farm gate before he spoke. ‘You sure Mr Moreton’s been arrested. They won’t let him go?’

  ‘Not until the war’s over. You don’t need to be afraid.’

  ‘Ain’t afraid.’

  She let that go. Later that afternoon she accompanied him to the policeman’s house where he told the whole story of how he had got into Ian’s clutches and how he had been threatened with a beating if he didn’t do as he was bid. Questioned, he told the policeman where most of the stuff had been hidden. Gamely, he insisted Lenny had had nothing to do with it. Charlie, who had had no intention of arresting the boy, was satisfied and let him go with a stern warning. Later, he went and retrieved what was still hidden and took it up to the airfield, where he asked to speak to the commanding officer. He didn’t know whether anything would be done about it, but as far as he was concerned, he had done his duty. It gave him a great deal of satisfaction.

  Alec, as he had come to expect, was made very welcome at Bridge Farm and was told to make himself at home, which he was very glad to do. He had no real home, nor would he have until the war was over, but an idea was forming in his mind, an idea of a future that looked far rosier than any dream he had had before. If Daphne agreed, of course; some women might not be prepared to take on two growing boys, but he was hopeful that she might. The twins liked her and she seemed to have a way with them their own mother never had. As soon as he could get her alone, he’d put it to her. In the meantime, he must be polite to everyone and answer their questions, the most urgent of which, after he had assured them he was hale and hearty, was how he had come across Wayne Donovan.

  ‘We fished him out of the water,’ he said. ‘He’d been swimming for hours and was miles from the coast. The lookout spotted him first, but we thought it was a body, moving up and down on the swell, but then we saw him raise an arm as if he was trying to wave to us. We lowered a boat and fetched him aboard.’

  ‘You said in your letter he was wounded,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Yes, shot in the arm. He was very weak and cold, but we soon had him in the sick bay, wrapped up warm, and a doctor fishing the bullet out. He’ll be OK.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’

  ‘How did you know who he was?’

  ‘I didn’t, not right off. When he came to, he told the doctor his name but that didn’t mean anything to the medics. It was only when he started chatting to Eric Marsh, the sick bay attendant, about Beckbridge and how he ought to let his aunt know he was OK, that Eric remembered I’d said my boys were in Beckbridge and I’d spent my last leave here, so he came and told me. I went to see him and we had a long chat and I promised to let everyone know he was all right. I thought you’d pass the news on to Mrs Moreton.’

  ‘Yes, we did. Why couldn’t you tell us that in your letter?’

  ‘Letters are censored and I didn’t know what I’d be allowed to say.’

  ‘Seeing as it was a fiasco,’ William said. ‘You are talking about Dieppe, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. We took the men in and got as many out as we could, but we had to leave a lot behind. Captain Donovan was lucky.’

  ‘Do you know where he is now?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘Sorry, I don’t. They took him off on a stretcher as soon as we docked, along with all the others we had on board. He wasn’t that badly hurt, mostly suffering from exposure and he was on the way to getting over that when we docked, so no doubt he’ll get in touch.’

  With that the subject was dropped. After a meal the like of which Alec hadn’t had since the outbreak of war and even before that, he took Daphne for a stroll to the pub and asked her to marry him. ‘I’ll leave the Navy as soon as the war is over,’ he said. ‘We’ll set up home anywhere you like and I’ll get a job onshore.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s what you want, to leave the Navy, I mean? You’re not just saying it for my sake?’

  ‘No, it’s what I want. I’ve spent so little time with the boys, they are almost like strangers and I want to remedy that. But I also love you and want to be with you, every possible minute not every so often when I’m on shore leave. So what do you say?’

  He was not demonstrative; he didn’t gush, but his quiet steadfastness was enough for her. He would never let her down and she happily agreed. Until then his kisses had been friendly pecks on the cheek rather than passionate, but now, in front of a pub full of people, he grabbed her in his arms and kissed her long and hard, to the accompaniment of ribald cheers. ‘Let’s go and wake up the boys and tell them,’ he said, grinning at their audience.

  ‘Will they be all right about it, do you think?’

  ‘Yes, they’ll be pleased as punch.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I asked them.’

  She laughed and allowed him to lead her by the hand back to Bridge Farm and congratulations all round.

  Wayne arrived back in the village in time for the wedding at the end of September. After a spell in hospital while his arm healed and he slowly regained his strength, he was given three weeks’ leave to recuperate before returning to his regiment. He couldn’t get home to Canada but Beckbridge was the next best thing. He wanted to see Laura, and as soon as he had answered all his aunt’s questions and been given all the news, he set off for the Hall.

  The fields, which had been growing corn the last time he had been there, were stubble now and the leaves on the trees were beginning to change colour, reminding him of home, where the fall was the most wonderful time of the year. He was feeling homesick but buoyed up by the prospect of seeing Laura and telling her what was in his mind. It had been her voice calling to him when he was ready to give up, her voice which had given him the will to wake up to the cold and pain and fight for his life. If he hadn’t made that last effort, he wouldn’t have been seen.

  Someone had tidied up the garden of the lodge, he noticed, as he turned into the drive and walked purposefully towards the house. Most of the summer flowers had finished but there were yellow and red dahlias, bronze and white chrysanthemums, mauve Michaelmas daisies and one or two pink roses still blooming. He plucked one and stuck it in his buttonhole, sniffing its perfume. He almost danced up the steps to the front door and rang the bell.

  ‘Sister Drummond about?’ he asked the young girl who answered it, but his question was answered by Laura herself, who came from one of the downstairs rooms. He stood, grinning foolishly, drinking in the sight of her. Not even her severe hairstyle and that wide starched cap could diminish her loveliness in his eyes.

  ‘Wayne!’

  ‘Who else?’ He flung his cap on a nearby table and moved swiftly forward to take both her hands and lean forward to kiss her lips. ‘Oh, how good it is to see you again.’

  ‘And I see you have recovered. Are you on leave?’

  ‘Yes, three whole weeks. And don’t tell me you’re too busy to spend some of it with me, because I won’t believe you.’

  ‘We are quiet at the moment. Three boys who’ve been coming backwards and forwards for over a year have finally been discharged to return to their families.’

  ‘That must please you.’

  ‘Oh, it does. Everyone is over the moon when we can give a man back his pride in himself and send him off happy.’

  ‘I hope you will send me off happy,’ he said quietly, then added. ‘Well, not send me off, not now, but in three weeks when I have to go back.’

  She laughed, pretending she didn’t understand. ‘I’ll do my best. Now come through to the kitchen and I’ll make a cup of tea, then you can tell me all about it.’

  ‘Now, tell me everything,’ she said when he was seated at the kitchen table and she was filling the kettle. ‘You didn’t say much in your letter apart from the fact that you had been wounded, which Stella had told me anyway. And she got it from her mother, who got it from Jenny, who learnt it from the twins’ father, who wrote to Daphne.’ She laughed. ‘It’s better than any telegraph the way news gets roun
d this village.’

  ‘It was Dieppe,’ he said. ‘And some Jerry decided to take a pot shot at me when I tried to swim out to one of our ships standing by to take us off. Got me in the arm, which at the time was the only part of me above water. Either he was a crack shot or very lucky. Or I was, whichever way you care to look at it. I left a lot of men behind and that haunts me. God knows what the powers-that-be were thinking of; it was a harebrained scheme. They said we had learnt valuable lessons. Too true we did.’

  She turned from spooning tea leaves into the pot and put a hand on his. ‘Don’t be bitter, Wayne.’

  ‘No. How does it go? “Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die”?’

  The kettle whistled and she turned from him to make the tea. By the time she had poured it and put a cup in front of him, he had regained his good humour. ‘So, let me have chapter and verse,’ he said. ‘How are you? How’s little Robby and Lady Barstairs? Where is she, by the way?’

  ‘Gone into Attlesham to do some shopping. She’s fine, and so is Robby. Stella’s taken him down to the village in his pushchair. I was just about to break off for lunch. Would you care to join me?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You heard about Alec and Daphne?’ she asked, scrambling dried egg in a small saucepan with some milk and margarine.

  ‘Yes. I’m invited to the nuptials. I’m told the wedding breakfast is to be at Bridge Farm.’

  ‘Have you been there yet?’

  ‘No, I’ll pop in on my way back.’

  ‘Jenny will be pleased to see you. She wanted to visit you in hospital but until you wrote no one knew where you were.’

  ‘Laura, you don’t think… She doesn’t think…’

  She laughed lightly. ‘You spread your net pretty widely when you were last here and left a whole heap of broken hearts behind you.’

  ‘Not yours?’

  ‘No, not mine.’

  ‘Because you knew I would never knowingly break your heart or because you haven’t got one to break?’

  ‘Do you think I’m heartless?’ She rescued two slices of toast from under the grill.

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You know how it is with me? How I feel about you?’

  ‘No, how do you feel?’

  He grinned at her. ‘Besotted.’

  ‘Don’t worry, it will pass.’

  ‘I don’t want it to. It’s a great feeling. Do you know you saved my life?’

  ‘Goodness, how did I do that?’ It was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the light tone of the conversation in the face of his earnestness, but something – she didn’t know what, a still small voice perhaps – was telling her to beware.

  ‘When I was struggling in the sea, cold and miserable, I almost gave up. It would have been so easy to stop trying, to go to sleep and let myself slip down. Then I heard your voice, very bracing it was, telling me to pull myself together and keep going. You said, “Come home.”’

  ‘That wasn’t me, that was your own inner voice, your will to survive.’

  ‘Same thing. Anyway, here I am. Home.’

  ‘Your home is in Canada.’ She remembered Steve asking her if she would ever go to Canada and her half-hearted denial. Had he guessed this was going to happen?

  ‘Home is where the heart is.’

  ‘Wayne, please don’t.’

  ‘Why not? You know I love you, don’t you? It’s as if I’ve always known you were there, in the background of my life, waiting for something to throw us together. It’s a pity it had to be a war.’ He looked down at the scrambled egg on toast she had just put in front of him and never felt less hungry in his life.

  ‘The war,’ she said, with a hint of bitterness. ‘It tears people apart as well as throwing them together, that’s what Helen said, and I remember someone else saying that we might try to forget it for a few hours, but we can’t. It always comes back uninvited.’

  ‘You are changing the subject.’ He reached out and grasped her hand. ‘Laura, I’m asking you…’

  He never did finish the sentence because Helen breezed into the room, throwing off her hat and dumping a string bag full of shopping on the table. ‘I swear the queues get longer every day. Two hours for a little bit of fish. Hallo, Wayne, you’re back, I see.’

  He stood up and shook her hand. ‘Lady Barstairs, how are you?’

  ‘Fighting fit,’ she said. ‘Fighting fit.’ She had arrived home several minutes before and had been on the verge of entering the kitchen when she recognised the man’s voice, so exactly like Oliver’s, and stayed to listen. And what she had heard filled her with dread.

  Chapter Ten

  THERE WAS SILENCE in the kitchen for a moment. Helen didn’t know what to say to fill the void. She had managed to stop Wayne asking his question, but he was undoubtedly on leave and would find another opportunity. She couldn’t keep appearing at crucial moments. And suppose he were to mention to his aunt or grandmother what he had a mind to do, they would almost certainly tell him why he could never marry Laura Drummond. After her confrontation with Ian Moreton, Helen did not doubt they knew the truth, although it didn’t look as though anyone had said anything to Laura or Wayne. But if they did? Wayne might disbelieve the story, or pretend to, but the doubt would have been planted and he would be sure to ask Laura to deny it. The thought of Laura finding out that way horrified and frightened her.

  ‘We’re having scrambled eggs,’ Laura told Helen, breaking the uncomfortable silence. ‘Would you like some?’

  ‘No, thank you, I had something in the British Restaurant in Attlesham. I’ll have a cup of tea, if you’re making one.’ If she were the tactful friend she would go and leave them to their tête-à-tête, but she dare not. She watched him eating the eggs Laura had cooked for him and wanted him gone. Guiltily, she wished he had been too seriously wounded to return to Beckbridge; she wished he could be sent back to Canada. But even that would not serve, considering the Moretons seemed to know the truth. She busied herself putting away her shopping and eventually he left, saying he would call for Laura the following morning. Having seen him to the door, Laura returned to clear the table and do the washing up.

  ‘You told me you wouldn’t consider going to Canada,’ Helen said, as an opening gambit.

  ‘You were listening at the door.’

  ‘No, I was coming in, my hand on the doorknob, and heard Captain Donovan’s last remark, that’s all.’

  ‘And immediately jumped to the conclusion that I was going to rush off to Canada with him.’ Laura was almost certain Helen had been listening a lot longer than that and had timed her entrance on purpose to stop Wayne finishing what he was going to say. ‘Why does it matter so much to you?’

  ‘I don’t want to lose you.’

  ‘Helen, I didn’t promise to live with you for ever. Nor that I would never marry. And you have no right to ask it of me.’

  ‘I know. I wouldn’t. But not Wayne. You can’t marry him.’

  ‘Why not?’ She abandoned the washing-up, dried her hands and came back to stand over Helen. ‘Because you were once in love with his father and can’t accept that he married someone else? That has nothing to do with Wayne, or with me.’

  ‘It’s not that at all. Oh, this is so difficult.’

  ‘Well, there’s something bothering you, so why don’t you tell me what it is.’ She pulled out a chair and sat opposite Helen. ‘You’ve evidently got something against Wayne, so out with it.’

  Helen sat silent and miserable, unable to frame the words. In all the years she lived alone, while Anne was keeping a tight hold on her little girl, she imagined what she would say, knowing it would be difficult, but in her imagination it always had a happy ending. Not like this. Laura was already up in arms and she hadn’t said anything yet. The tears started to roll silently down her face. Laura went into the dining room and fetched a tot of brandy which she put on the table in front of her.

  ‘Drink this, it will steady y
ou.’ She sat down again and watched as Helen took a sip and sat twirling the stem of the glass in her fingers. She had always been upright and youthful looking, with more energy than many half her age, but now she appeared old and worn, her face and eyes betraying her anxiety. ‘It can’t be that bad surely?’

  ‘Oh, my dear, I don’t know how, but it’s got to be said. You can’t marry Wayne Donovan.’ She paused and took a deep breath. ‘You can’t marry him because…because he is your half-brother.’ There she had got it out and now there was no going back.

  Laura thought she must be joking and tried to laugh. ‘Tommy rot! I never heard anything so bizarre.’

  ‘It’s true. Oliver Donovan is your father.’

  Laura stared at her, not at all sure she had heard right, but Helen’s grey face and tortured eyes told her she had. ‘You’re out of your mind,’ she said. ‘Are you seriously trying to tell me my mother had an affair with Wayne’s father? Where is she supposed to have met him? Here? And what was my father doing while it was going on? Oh, but you are telling me he wasn’t my father, aren’t you? It’s a monstrous lie and I cannot think why you should say such a thing. I thought you were Mum’s friend.’

  ‘I was. In the end. As far as I know Anne was a loving and faithful wife and she looked after you as well as any mother, but she wasn’t your mother. I am.’

  Laura sat and stared at her with her mouth half open, unable to speak for a full minute. ‘You’re mad,’ she said at last.

  ‘No, it’s the truth. I didn’t want to have to tell you, but now I must.’

  Laura could not take it in. She didn’t believe it, not for a minute. Her mother, not her mother! It was preposterous. ‘I’ve got a birth certificate—’

  ‘Anne registered your birth.’ Helen was calm now, calmer than Laura. It was as if she had dived into the middle of a whirlpool and come up in its epicentre, where there was no disturbance.