Rachel went home to put the notes she had made into her computer and as she sorted them she considered exactly what she had learned. The ownership of the trees had not been the only thing of interest Paula Sharp had told her. It was the question of the actual land involved.
“The village green used to be part of the Manor estate,” Paula had said. “Though the village people had various rights over it. When Sir George died he left the green and the piece of land beyond it to the parish council, to be used for the public benefit of the village. The village green was left as it was, but the extra piece of land was fenced off and offered as individual allotments to residents of Charlton Ambrose at peppercorn rents. They were all taken up and worked by local people, though the ownership of the land still rested with the parish council.”
“And now the council has sold that land to Brigstock Jones,” said Rachel.
“Yes, subject to planning permission.”
“Didn’t the wording of the will prohibit that?” asked Rachel, surprised.
“We took legal advice on that,” said Paula Sharp. “It was considered that new housing and a new village hall was for the public benefit of the village, the village as it is today. In 1918 there was no question of there being no pub or shop or school in Charlton Ambrose, but now there is a very real danger of all three disappearing. We have to move with the times, and help provide the sort of housing needed now. By using the money from the sale of the allotments, we are able to fund the new hall. Part of our deal with Mr Bradley is that he will build the hall at cost. We already own the land, so it is just the building costs we have to find. The sale of the allotments covers those.”
“Let me get this straight,” said Rachel. “You mean building the hall is the price Mike Bradley has paid for the allotments?”
“Not exactly in those terms,” Paula Sharp replied, “but I suppose that’s what it boils down to, yes. As far as the parish council is concerned, it really is a deal beneficial to the whole community. We need a new hall, but more than that, we need those new houses. We must attract young families to Charlton Ambrose. At the meeting Mike Bradley said that it would bring our village back to life and he was quite right.”
“But you must have known about the trees,” pointed out Rachel. “You must have known that the developers would have to cut down the trees to get access to the site. It’s clear from the plans.”
“We did,” admitted Paula. Her face was pale and strained as she spoke. “We did, but none of us knew why they were there. Of course there are families still in the village who have been here for generations, and presumably they knew all about them, but many of us have moved here more recently and didn’t. There is no one from one of the older village families on the parish council at present, you know. None of us knew the significance of those trees.” She looked across at Rachel earnestly. “Have you been to look at them?” Rachel nodded. “Well, there’s nothing to identify them as a memorial now, is there? And none of us knew that’s what they were. It is extremely embarrassing. I went to the public record office yesterday and found the document recording the donation of the trees to the families. It’s quite explicit; the trees are theirs. We’d only checked Sir George’s will when we wanted to sell the land, and the trees were planted when the land still belonged to him. They weren’t mentioned in the will.”
Rachel mapped out her article. She needed to speak to the planning office, but there would be no one there now until Monday. In the meantime she would begin her research on the families.
4
Saturday morning found Rachel on the road to Charlton Ambrose on her way to visit Cecily Strong again.
She had phoned first thing, to see if she might call and Cecily, pleased to hear from her, had invited her to come round for coffee. Rachel readily accepted. Since her research in the Chronicle archive she had some more, specific, questions she hoped the old lady could answer. With luck, Cecily would be able to put Rachel on the trail of some of the other families still living in the village.
Over her breakfast coffee, she had looked up the surnames from her list in the phone book. Several of the names were listed, but whether they were actually the same families, only time would tell.
Rachel parked outside Cecily’s cottage, but before she called there she went to the church to look for the memorial Tim had mentioned. The church was old, its golden sandstone smooth and mellow. Huddled all round it, like chicks about their mother, were the gravestones of the people of Charlton Ambrose, a higgledy-piggledy mixture of stones and crosses and two large sarcophagus tombs, one on each side of the path. The winter grasses straggled between the stones and grassy mounds. There were one or two graves with fresh flowers, an occasional Christmas wreath, but several were marked only by withered stems standing spikily in jam jars, or long-dead, skeletal pot plants.
The old oak door was open and when Rachel pushed it wider, she found two women inside, cleaning the church. They werehatting to each other as they worked and took little notice of Rachel as she wandered round cthe church looking at the various memorial tablets and plaques.
She found what she was looking for at the back, beneath the large west window. The first was a brass plate which said:
TO THE GLORY OF GOD
AND IN LOVING MEMORY OF THOSE BRAVE MEN FROM
CHARLTON AMBROSE
WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES FOR KING AND COUNTRY
IN THE GREAT WAR 1914–1918
CAPTAIN FREDERICK CHARLES HURST
PTE HARRY COOK
PTE JOHN DAVIES
PTE WILLIAM ARTHUR STRONG
PTE ALFRED JOHN CHAPMAN
SGT DANIEL DAVIES
SGT GEORGE HAPGOOD
CPL GERALD WINTERS
THEY LIVE ON IN THE HEARTS OF THOSE WHO ARE LEFT.
Underneath on a different plaque, almost as if it had been wedged in as an after-thought, was a second plate on which was inscribed:
ALSO THOSE MEN WHO DIED FOR KING AND COUNTRY IN
THE SECOND WORLD WAR
1939–1945
SIMON BRADWELL
PAUL ANDREW CARR
STEPHEN DREW
DONALD STEWART
JACK TURNER
GORDON DAVID BLUNT
HAROLD CHAPMAN
CHARLES FINCHAM
THOMAS SWINFORD
GEORGE JOHN WEST
LEST WE FORGET
Rachel read through the names on both tablets, before taking out her camera and photographing them. The flash drew her to the attention of the cleaning ladies and one called to her, “There’s a postcard of the west window in the stand by the door.”
Rachel turned round. “The west window?”
“Yes,” the woman pointed to the window above the memorial tablets. “There’s a postcard of that if you want to buy one, and a history of the church too.”
“Oh, thank you,” Rachel replied. “It was actually the war memorial I was looking at, not the window. Though,” she added hastily, “it’s very beautiful.” She raised her eyes to look properly at the stained glass and found that it was indeed a beautiful window. Even without benefit of sunshine to illuminate it, the colours were rich and strong, depicting the story of the Good Samaritan; the man lying injured at the side of the road and the Samaritan tending him, holding a cup to his lips, while the donkey the Samaritan had been riding waited patiently on a windswept road.
Underneath the picture were the words:
“And when he saw him, he had compassion on him”
Below the quotation was an unfurled banner with the words:
Rufus Hurst
Captain 1st Belshire Light Infantry
Died of wounds 5th November 1854
after the Battle of Inkerman
Reading its inscription for the first time, Rachel realised that the window too, was a war memorial, in memory of another Hurst, an earlier Hurst than Freddie; killed in an earlier war. The Hursts had given up more than one son for their queen, or king, and country.
The wo
man had left her polishing and crossed to stand by Rachel. She looked up at the window too and said, “It’s a dreadful waste, isn’t it… war? All those young men never having proper lives, never seeing their children grow up… never having children.”
Rachel nodded and then remarked, “There are several names the same here… they must have been brothers. How dreadful to lose two sons or two brothers.” She stared at the lists again and then said, “Look, there was a Chapman killed in each war, I wonder if they were father and son.”
“I don’t know. Probably relatives of some sort anyway.” The woman smiled: “I’m afraid we’re comparatively new to the village, so I don’t know much about its history.” She thought for a minute and went on, “The rector might know I suppose and of course, he’ll have all the parish records. He might let you see them if you’re interested; you could always ask him. The rectory is across the road.”
“Thank you,” Rachel said. “I might just do that.”
“His name’s Adam Skinner.”
Rachel thanked her again and the woman went back to her duster. As she left the church Rachel bought a postcard of the west window and the history of the church. Glancing through this she found the paragraph that dealt with the window.
The west window depicts the story of the Good Samaritan, with the Samaritan tending the wounded traveller at the side of the road.
This example of Sir Howard Morgan’s work was placed in the church by Sir Frederick Hurst as a memorial for his son, Rufus, killed in the Battle of Inkerman in 1854.
Beneath this memorial window are tablets commemorating the dead of the two world wars, naming all those lost from the parish. It is interesting to note that there is also a memorial of nine ash trees on the village green to commemorate those who fell between 1914 and 1918. These were presented by Sir George Hurst, whose son Frederick was killed on the Somme 1916. They were dedicated by the rector, Henry Smalley, in 1921 to the memory of all who fell.
So, Rachel thought ruefully, the information about the Ashgrove was there for anyone to find if they simply read the little church history, but nothing to tell me about any of the men concerned.
She decided that she would certainly call on the rector to see if he could help her with the construction of the family trees that interested her. However, before that she had a date with Cecily Strong.
When she reached Cecily’s cottage she found the old lady waiting for her, with scones on the table and a pot of coffee already made. They sat down in the crowded sitting room, surrounded by ornaments and souvenirs, each a memory in Cecily’s long life, and Cecily poured the coffee.
As they drank their coffee, Cecily said, “I’ve got a photo you might like to see. It’s of Will. It was taken in France. He sent it back to us.” She picked up an ornate picture frame from the table beside her and held it out to Rachel. There, smiling cheerfully up at her, was a sepia Will Strong. Rachel studied him for a moment and almost without thinking she murmured, “He looks so young!”
“Seventeen,” Cecily said softly. “Only seventeen.”
Rachel handed the picture back and Cecily, setting it back on the table, said, “Now then, tell me what you want to know.”
“Well,” Rachel set her cup aside, “I need to trace the families who had people commemorated in the Ashgrove. I want to write a proper article on the Ashgrove; about what it meant to people when it was planted, and what it means to people today. It seems to me it would be dreadful if it were simply cut down as a convenience to the developers. I know that’s what you think too, so I was wondering if you could help me trace the living relatives of the men who are commemorated there.”
“I can try,” Cecily said doubtfully, “but most of them have moved away. Why do you need to find them?”
“Well, I reckon that Mike Bradley and his firm will be looking for them too, and I wanted to try and get there first. I want to know what they really think and feel, before they are offered a bribe not to make waves.”
“A bribe?” Cecily sounded shocked.
“Well, an inducement anyway,” said Rachel. “They’ll call it compensation. The thing is that Brigstock Jones have got too much to lose if this deal is called off, and planning permission could well rest on the consent of the relatives being obtained to remove the trees. It will be well worth their while to pay off the relatives, with the promise of another memorial in place of the Ashgrove, and cash in hand.”
“Well, they won’t get my consent,” Cecily said stoutly, “whatever money they offer.”
“No, but that may not be enough to save the trees. The whole point of the Ashgrove is that it is a communal memorial, all the men remembered together, irrespective of rank and family. It may be possible to do what they want by removing just some of the trees, but the memorial will still be destroyed as a whole.”
Cecily nodded glumly. “I see, so I can’t stop them.”
“Probably not on your own,” Rachel agreed, “but I’ve made a list here of all the men named.” She pulled out a paper from her bag and looked at it. “Captain Frederick Hurst. Well, you told me a bit about him last time I was here, and I’ve found out some more. He had a daughter, Adelaide, born posthumously, and his wife was married again to a man called Richard Anson-Gravetty. I read a report of Sir George’s funeral in 1921, and it said they were there. Do you remember that funeral? Did you go?”
“Everyone in the village went,” Cecily replied. “I was only a child still, of course, but I remember the school closed as a mark of respect, and we all stood alongside the road when the coffin was carried from the manor to the church.”
“Do you remember his daughter-in-law being there? Or the little girl? She’d have been about five.”
“I suppose I knew they were there,” Cecily said doubtfully, “but I can’t say I remember actually seeing them.”
“Not even at the tea in the village hall afterwards?”
“Us kids weren’t asked to the tea,” Cecily said. “We were packed off outside to play. All the grown-ups went into the village hall and there were some speeches and that, but we weren’t interested in any of that, we were just pleased to have the extra holiday from school.”
“So you don’t know where the Anson-Gravetty family lived in London?”
“No, love you, I haven’t a clue. I didn’t even know it was London.”
“It was in the report in the paper.”
“Then it must be right,” Cecily said. “All I know is that Freddie’s wife seldom came back here after Freddie died, and certainly not after Sir George did.”
“Well,” sighed Rachel, “it’s going to be difficult to trace Adelaide Hurst now. She may well have taken her stepfather’s name as she never knew her real father, she probably married and so had yet another name and on top of that, it’s quite possible she’s already dead. If not, she’s in her eighties and could be living anywhere.”
She glanced down at her paper again only to look up with a start when Cecily said, “And of course Miss Sarah never came home again either.”
“Miss Sarah? Who’s Miss Sarah?”
“Miss Sarah? She was Sir George’s daughter, Freddie’s sister. Went nursing, she did, in the war, though Sir George thought she ought to stay at home and look after him.”
“But I didn’t know Freddie had a sister. There was no mention of her at the funeral.” Rachel was amazed.
“No,” agreed Cecily, “I said she didn’t come home from France. I think she was killed there when the Germans shelled a field hospital.”
“Shelled a hospital?” cried Rachel.
“They did that kind of thing,” Cecily asserted.
“But on purpose? Surely not on purpose.”
“Who knows?” Cecily shrugged. “I’m sure she was killed. She didn’t come home, anyhow.”
“She isn’t mentioned on the war memorial,” said Rachel thoughtfully. “I wonder why? I mean, she was Sir George’s daughter and he arranged for the memorial. He must have wanted her commemorated too.�
��
“She wasn’t fighting,” pointed out Cecily.
“Maybe not,” Rachel agreed incredulously, “but she died for her country just the same!”
“Most people wouldn’t have looked at it like that,” Cecily said, and Rachel had the feeling that Cecily was one of them. Although she didn’t say so, Rachel got the feeling that Cecily didn’t approve of Squire’s daughter gallivanting off to France to nurse wounded soldiers and she wondered why.
“I still can’t believe he wouldn’t commemorate his daughter in some way.” Rachel was baffled and then she suddenly said, “Of course! The ninth tree! He must have planted the ninth tree for her. You know, there are eight men and nine trees.”
Cecily looked doubtful. “I never heard it was for her,” she said.
“Well if it wasn’t, who was it for?” demanded Rachel.
“I don’t know,” said Cecily, leaning forward to top up their coffee cups. “I’d forgotten that there was an extra tree, to tell truth, but I doubt it was for Miss Sarah, because it never had a name on it.”
Realising Cecily had nothing more to tell her about the squire’s daughter, Rachel made a quick note to try and find out exactly what had happened to Sarah and turned back to her list to ask, “What about Private Alfred John Chapman?”
“Jane Chapman,” said Cecily. “She was his daughter. We were at the village school together. She had an older brother. What was his name now?” She wrinkled her brow in concentration, trying to remember.
“Harold?” suggested Rachel, glancing again at her list.
“That’s right,” cried Cecily, delighted. “That’s right. Harold. Went into the RAF,” Cecily pronounced it “raf”, “in the second war and was killed in the Battle of Britain. Flew fighters he did, and got shot down. Poor Jane. Lost her dad in the first war and her only brother in the second.”
“What happened to her?” prompted Rachel. “Jane Chapman?”
Cecily shrugged. “She married a chap from Belmouth way. Can’t remember his name, but she got married in the village here, and Harold, he gave her away. Ever so handsome he was in his RAF uniform.”
The Lost Soldier Page 5
