It was a cold but sunny afternoon, and the bare branches stood out against the ice-blue sky. Some of the wider branches reached out to each other, their tips touching as they moved with the breeze.
“I wonder which one is Tom’s,” said Rachel.
“I’ve been trying to think back,” Rose said. “I have this recollection of being here in the dark and being scared, but I’ve no idea which tree my mother planted.”
Rachel moved to each tree, placing her hand on its trunk, feeling the roughness of the bark, wishing she could tell. Then she turned and smiled at her grandmother, “Come on, Gran, you’ll get cold.”
They went back to the car and Nick drove up the lane past the church slowing to turn in at the gates of the manor.
“I should have guessed,” said Rachel almost to herself.
Nick laughed. “Yes, you should,” he said. “I told you, a new roof and re-wiring!”
They drove up the weed-covered drive and pulled up on the turning circle outside the front door.
“I haven’t been here since I was a little girl,” Rose said wonderingly. “I came here once with my mother, but I don’t know why. She left me in the garden while she went in. I remember the lion.”
The panelled front door stood within a portico and beside the step was an old stone lion, its features weathered almost smooth, but its mane still curling round its head.
“I think I’ll stay in the car, if you don’t mind,” Rose said. “You two go on inside.”
As Nick opened the front door, Rachel went to the lion and ran her hand over its head, realising as she did so that she must be echoing many another hand, the stone was so smooth.
The door opened into a square hall with doors opening off it and a staircase curving up to the first floor. Nick stood in the hall, looking round him and Rachel said softly, “Have you really bought this?”
Nick grinned at her, “Me and the bank,” he said. “I saw it in the summer and simply fell for it, even though it needs a cartload of money spent on it.”
Rachel laughed. “Have you got a cartload?” she asked.
“Not even a wheel-barrowful,” said Nick cheerfully. “But it doesn’t all need to be done at once. Come on, I’ll show you round.”
He took her hand and together they wandered round the house where Sarah and Freddie Hurst had grown up; where Molly Day had worked, cleaning and polishing. The house from which they had all three left for the war and to which none of them had returned. Rachel found herself trying to see the house as it would have been then, not the tired, dirty place it was now, just empty rooms in a once gracious home. The drawing room, high-ceilinged with its Adam fireplace, filthy but intact, looked across what had once been a lawn and the windows of what must have been the library faced west, catching the last of the sun. They went into the kitchen, which contained only an old stone sink, shelves along one wall and some hooks in the ceiling. There was nothing to heat the place, or to cook on. The windows gave onto a yard at the back and an old stable block, sometime converted into garages.
All the downstairs rooms were completely bare, their floor-length sash windows looking out over the wilderness of garden beyond.
“How long since anyone lived here?” asked Rachel with a shiver.
“Several years,” replied Nick. “It was left in trust by the last owner, to someone in Canada, so all that had to be sorted before I could buy it.”
Upstairs, the bedrooms were large and airy, the single bathroom cold and dark, with brown paint and ancient plumbing. One of the bedrooms had a window seat with an old padded cushion on it, and Rachel could imagine Sarah sitting there, looking out over the garden, watching the moon rise.
“Quite a bit to do, you see,” said Nick cheerfully as they inspected it, “but it has great possibilities, don’t you think?”
Rachel laughed. “There speaks the architect,” she teased. They went up to the servants’ quarters on the third floor, peering into the little rooms that had been partitioned off for servants’ quarters. Rachel wondered which of them had been Molly’s.
Nick took her hand again and they went back down to the car, but as they reached the hall, Nick pulled Rachel gently into his arms. “I’m buying this house, whatever,” he said, “and I’m selling the other.”
Rachel looked up at him and said, “I know. I shouldn’t have said what I did. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said “It was Rachel the journalist who spoke then, and she had every right to.” He kissed her then, standing in the dusty hall of the house where her great-grandmother had been a maid, before saying, “Come on, or Rose will be getting cold.”
Epilogue
The wind whipped among the spiky black buds of the ash trees, but the crowd gathered round them was well wrapped up in the uncertain March weather. Even those in wheelchairs, with blankets round their knees and muffled in scarves and gloves, ignored the cold and waited expectantly.
Mary Bryson sat in her chair, surrounded by her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Rose Carson had Rachel on one side and Nick Potter on the other. Peter Davies and his wife stood between the two trees on the extreme left, and Cecily Strong was with her niece, Harriet, beside the tree on the right. There was a murmur of conversation as the small groups gathered, and more people walked across the green to join the growing crowd.
Rachel had worked long and hard tracing the families of the men on the church memorial and had reasonable success. Only the family of Corporal Gerald Winters were not represented, and, try as she might, Rachel had been unable to trace them. Sergeant Hapgood’s family still lived in Belcaster, and his great nephew, Paul Hapgood, had been fascinated to hear that one of the Ashgrove trees, which had caused such a stir in the paper recently, commemorated his grandfather’s brother.
“I shall certainly attend the dedication of the stones,” he had written to Rachel in reply to her invitation.
She traced Alfred Chapman’s family through the parish records, discovering that his daughter Jane had indeed married a man from Belmouth, as Cecily had thought, and, though she had died just a year ago, her three sons and one daughter were alive and well, and living in Belmouth. They would all like to be there for the service. Rachel’s greatest triumph was finding the descendants of Freddie Hurst. His daughter, Adelaide, had been adopted by her stepfather and had taken his name, but his surname, Anson-Gravetty, had been unusual enough for her to pick up the trail, and Adelaide’s grandson James Auckland was standing with his wife in the gathering crowd.
Under each tree was a small wedge of granite, engraved with the name and dates of the man it commemorated and hooded with a canvas cover. As part of his public relations exercise, Mike Bradley had agreed that Brigstock Jones should donate the stones and Rachel had researched them all with the War Graves Commission, to ensure each was correctly engraved. The crowd was swollen with people who had come out from Belcaster, the press, and not just the Belcaster Chronicle. The national press had latched on to the stories that Rachel had been telling each week in the paper and had come to see the dedication of the stones for the famous Ashgrove for themselves. Mike Bradley was there, with Tim Cartwright from Brigstock Jones, making sure any favourable publicity going came their way, and to add to the solemnity of the occasion, all the workers on the embryo building site beyond the trees ceased work and came over to watch the ceremony.
The buzz of conversation died away as the rector, Adam Skinner, came across the green, in cassock and surplice, and the service of dedication began. It was not long, there was an introductory prayer, a simple explanation of why they were there, and then he went to each stone, removed its canvas cover and read aloud the soldier’s name. As he reached the tree off centre at the back, Rachel gripped her grandmother’s hand. The rector drew off the cover, and there for the first time, with tears in their eyes, they saw the stone with the simple inscription,
PRIVATE THOMAS CARTER
1ST BELSHIRE LIGHT INFANTRY
1893–1916
<
br /> Rachel leaned down and kissed her grandmother on the cheek and whispered, “He’ll never be forgotten now.”
They joined in the Lord’s Prayer and then Freddie’s great-grandson read the Laurence Binyon poem. As he read the final lines
“At the going down of the sun, and in the morning
We will remember them”
the crowd echoed the words “We will remember them”, before a bugler played the Last Post, followed by two minutes’ silence.
When the ceremony was over, Nick took Rose back to the manor while Rachel did her journalist bit on the village green. He had moved in three weeks before, having made the kitchen useable and two other rooms habitable, and was camping out as the necessary work on the house was done. Wombat gave them an ecstatic greeting, and jumped up on to Rose’s knee, sure of his welcome. He and Rose had become old friends.
“How are you coping?” Rose asked Nick, as he brought her a cup of tea. They, too, were comfortable together, their friendship having grown over the months he and Rachel had been together.
“Not too badly,” Nick said. “In some ways I’d have preferred to have got a bit more done before I moved, but Bradley needed the access to the building site. Still,” he smiled, “I love the house and I’m glad to be living in it.” He thought for a moment and then said, “Do you think Rachel might live in it with me, one day?” So far her independence had demanded that she keep her own flat.
Rose laughed. “Don’t ask me,” she said, “ask her!”
“Oh, I will,” Nick assured her with a grin.
When Rachel got back to the house almost an hour later she was flushed and excited. She had spoken to all the families who were connected with a memorial tree and had arranged proper interviews with the few whom she had only met for the first time that day.
She flopped down in an armchair and said, “It went well, don’t you think? The Ashgrove is a real memorial again, now.” She smiled at the two favourite people in her life and went on, “And I’ve more news, two letters came today,” she said. “Perfect timing!”
“Who from,” asked Rose.
“One’s from the convent at St Croix. You know I wrote to them, Gran, about Sarah? Listen I’ll read it to you.” Rachel extracted a letter from her bag and read,
7th March 2002
Dear Miss Elliott,
Thank you for you letter of enquiry about Sister Marie-Pierre. I am sorry to take so long to respond. She joined our Sisters in 1917. In 1938 she was elected Reverend Mother. During the Nazi occupation in the war, she sheltered many Jewish children in the convent and in 1943 she was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to a camp. She was never heard of again and we can only imagine that she died continuing the Lord’s work there.
Our numbers are small now, but we too continue in the Lord’s work, looking after the elderly.
With prayers and blessings
Marie-Therese
Mother Superior
Convent of Our Lady of Mercies
Rachel looked up at them, bright-eyed. “So, you see, Sarah was an unsung heroine in both wars,” she said. “She must have been very brave don’t you think? Now that I know the end of it, I can write her story. If he knew what she had achieved, I don’t think Sir George would have been disappointed in her after all, do you?”
“No,” agreed her grandmother. “I think he’d have been proud of her.” She smiled at the eager Rachel and asked, “Who was the other letter from, then? You’re obviously very pleased with that one as well.”
Rachel beamed at her and produced the other letter saying, “This is the other one, and it affects us more. You know I told you I wrote to the Belshires’ Regimental Archivist about Tom? Well, his reply came today as well. Listen. ”
10th March 2002
Dear Miss Elliott,
Thank you for your letter of the 25th February. I was very interested in what you had to tell us about Private 8523241 Thomas Carter of the 1st Battalion, Belshires. Of course, we knew of his execution in 1916 from our regimental records. In view of the move to obtain pardons for men shot for desertion and cowardice during the 1914–18 war, and in line with other regiments, we have already restored his name to the Regimental Roll of Honour. We are delighted to hear that he will also be commemorated in the Charlton Ambrose War Memorial Ashgrove, and that his daughter, Mrs Rose Carson will be at that ceremony.
Yours sincerely
David Hobart
Curator of the Belshire Regimental Archives
“So,” Rachel said, “all we need now is a pardon from the government.” Smiling at the surprise on the faces of Nick and her grandmother, she went on, “There’s a campaign already up and running, called the Shot at Dawn campaign, which is working for just that, and I’m going to join it. That’s what we need, a pardon for Tom and all the others like him.” And looking at the determination in her face, Nick knew she would never give up until she had got it.
THE END
~
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Gritty, heartrending and unputdownable – the story of two sisters sent first to an English, then an Australian orphanage in the aftermath of World War 2.
Rita and Rosie Stevens are only nine and five years old when their widowed mother marries a violent bully called Jimmy Randall and has a baby boy by him. Under pressure from her new husband, she is persuaded to send the girls to an orphanage – not knowing that the papers she has signed will entitle them to do what they like with the children.
And it is not long before the powers that be decide to send a consignment of orphans to their sister institution in Australia. Among them – without their family’s consent or knowledge – are Rita and Rosie, the throwaway children.
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1
Belcaster 1948
Raised voices again. Rita could hear them through the floor; her mother’s, a querulous wail, the man’s an angry roar. For a moment she lay still in bed, listening. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it was clear that they were arguing.
Rosie, her sister, was peacefully asleep at the other end of their shared single bed, the stray cat, Felix, curled against her. She never seemed to wake up however loud the shouting downstairs. Rita slid out from under the bedclothes and tip-toeing across the room, crept out onto the landing. Limpid green light from a street lamp shone through the small landing window, lighting the narrow staircase. A shaft of dull yellow light, shining through the half-open kitchen door, lit the cracked brown lino and cast shadows in the hall. The voices came from the kitchen, still loud, still angry. Rita crouched against the banister, her face pressed to its bars. From here she could actually hear some of what was being said.
‘…my children from me.’ Her mother’s voice.
‘…another man’s brats!’ His voice.
Rita shivered at the sound of his voice. Uncle Jimmy, Mum’s new friend. Then Mum began to cry, a pitiful wailing that echoed into the hall.
‘For Christ’s sake!’ His voice again. ‘Cut the caterwauling, woman… or I’ll leave right now.’
A chair crashed over, and the shaft of light broadened as the kitchen door was pushed wider. Rita dived back into her bedroom, making the door creak loudly. She leaped into bed, kicking a protesting Felix off the covers and pulling the sheet up over her head. She tried to calm her breathing so that it matched Rosie’s, the peaceful breathing of undisturbed sleep, but her heart was pounding, the blood hammering in her ears as she heard the heavy tread of feet on the stairs. He was coming up.
‘Rita! Was you out of bed?’
His voice was harsh. He had not put on the landing light, and as he reached the top stair, Felix materialized at his feet, almost tripping him over.
‘Bloody cat!’ snarled the man, aiming a kick at him, but Felix had already streaked downstairs.
Jimmy Randall paused on the landing, listening. All was quiet in the girls’ room. Softly he crossed to the half-open door and peered in, but it was too dark to see anything, and all he could hear was the steady breathing of two little girls asleep.
Must have been the damned cat, he thought. Don’t know why Mavis gives it houseroom, dirty stray. If it was my house…
It wasn’t. Not yet. But it would be, Jimmy was determined about that. A neat little house in Ship Street, a terrace of other neat little houses; well, not so neat most of them, unrepaired from the bombing, cracked windows, scarred paintwork, rubble in the tiny gardens, but basically sound enough. Jimmy wouldn’t mind doing a bit of repair work himself, provided the house was his at the end of it. His and Mavis’s, but not full of squalling kids. All he had to do was get his name on the rent book, then he’d be laughing.
Rita heard him close the door but lay quite still in case it was a trick, in case he was standing silently inside the room waiting to catch her out. It was a full two minutes before she allowed herself to open her eyes into the darkness of her room. She could see nothing. Straining her ears she heard his voice again, not so loud this time, and definitely downstairs.
For a while she lay in the dark, thinking about Uncle Jimmy. He had come into their lives about two months ago, visiting occasionally at first, smiling a lot, once bringing chocolate. It was for Mum really, but she’d let Rita and Rosie have one piece every day until it had gone. But Rita was afraid of him all the same. He had a loud voice and got cross easily.
Rita wasn’t used to having a man in her life. She hardly remembered her daddy. Mum said he had gone to the war and hadn’t come home. He had gone before Rosie was even born, fighting the Germans. Rita knew he had been in the air force, flying in a plane high over Germany, and that one night his plane hadn’t come back. There was a picture of her daddy in a silver-coloured frame on the kitchen shelf. He was wearing his uniform and smiling. Wherever you moved in the kitchen, his eyes followed you, so that wherever she sat, Rita knew he was smiling at her. She loved his face, his smile making crinkles round his eyes and his curly fair hair half-covered with his air force cap. Rosie had the same sort of hair, thick and fair, curling round her face. Rita’s own hair was like Mum’s, dark, thin and straight, and she always wished she had hair like Rosie’s… and Daddy’s.
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