The Very Thought of You

by Rosie Alison

  THE VERY THOUGHT OF YOU

  ALMA BOOKS LTD

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  First published in UK by Alma Books Limited in 2009 (Reprinted June 2009)

  This mass-market edition first publshed 2010

  Copyright © Rosie Alison, 2009

  Epigraph: ‘Late Fragment’, from All of Us by Raymond Carver, published by

  Harvill Press. Reprinted by permission of the Random House Group Ltd.

  ‘Oh, Lady Be Good’, words and music by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin

  © 1924 (Renewed) WB Music Corp. (ASCAP)

  ‘The Very Thought of You’, words and music by Ray Noble © 1934 Campbell

  Connelly & Co Ltd. All Rights Reserved, Redwood Music Ltd (Carlin) London

  NW1 8DB for the Commonwealth of Nations, Eire, South Africa and Spain

  ‘The Way You Look Tonight’, words by Dorothy Fields, music by Jerome

  Kern © 1936 T.B. Harms & Company Incorporated, USA. Universal Music

  Publishing Limited (50%). Used by Permission of Music Sales Limited and

  Shapiro, Bernstein & Co., Inc. o/b/o Aldi Music.

  All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.

  ‘somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond’ is reprinted from COMPLETE

  POEMS 1904-1962, by E.E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage, by

  permission of W.W. Norton & Company. Copyright © 1991 by the Trustees for

  the E.E. Cummings Trust and George James Firmage.

  Rosie Alison asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either

  are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any

  resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events

  or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Printed in Great Britain by CPI Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berkshire

  ISBN: 978-1-84688-100-8

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-84688-116-9

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or

  introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means

  (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the

  prior written permission of the publisher.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired

  out or otherwise circulated without the express prior consent of the publisher.

  THE VERY THOUGHT

  OF YOU

  ROSIE ALISON

  For my daughter Lucy

  And did you get what

  you wanted from this life, even so?

  I did.

  And what did you want?

  To call myself beloved, to feel myself

  beloved on the earth.

  Raymond Carver, Late Fragment

  Contents

  Prologue

  Evacuation 1939

  Affinities 1939–1945

  Back to the Old House 1946–2006

  Prologue

  May 1964

  My dearest,

  Of all the many people we meet in a lifetime, it is strange that so many of us find ourselves in thrall to one particular person. Once that face is seen, an involuntary heartache sets in for which there is no cure. All the wonder of this world finds shape in that one person, and thereafter there is no reprieve, because this kind of love does not end, or not until death—

  From Baxter’s Guide to the Historic

  Houses of England (2007)

  Any visitor travelling north from York will pass through a flat vale of farmland before rising steeply onto the wide upland plateau of the North Yorkshire Moors. Here is some of the wildest and loveliest land in England, where high rolling moorland appears to reach the horizon on every side, before subsiding into voluptuous wooded valleys.

  These moors are remote and empty, randomly scattered with silent sheep and half-covered tracks. It is unfenced land of many moods. In February the place is barren and lunar, prompting inward reflection. But late in August this wilderness surges into bloom, igniting a purple haze of heather which sweeps across the moors as if released to the air. This vivid wash of colour mingles with the oaks and ashes of the valleys below, where the soft limestone land flows with numerous streams and secret springs.

  It is hallowed territory, graced with many medieval monasteries, all now picturesque ruins open to the sky. Rievaulx, Byland, Jervaulx, Whitby, Fountains – these are some of the better-known abbeys in these parts, and their presence testifies to the fertile promise of the land. The early monastic settlers cleared these valleys for farming, and left behind a patchwork of fields marked by many miles of drystone walls.

  Nearly two centuries later, long after the monasteries had been dissolved, the Georgian gentry built several fine estates in the valleys bordering these moors. Hovingham Hall, Duncombe Park, Castle Howard and others. Trees were cleared for new vistas, grass terraces levelled, and streams diverted into ornamental lakes – all to clarify and enhance the natural patterns of the land, as was the eighteenth-century custom.

  One of the finest of these houses, if not necessarily the largest, is Ashton Park. This remote house stands on the edge of the moors, perched high above the steep Rye Valley and theatrically isolated in its wide park. For some years now, the house and its gardens have been open to the public. At one corner of an isolated village stand the ornate iron gates, and the park lodge where visitors buy their tickets. Beyond, a long white drive leads through a rising sweep of parkland, dotted with sheep and the occasional tree. It is a tranquil park, silent and still, with a wide reach of sky.

  Turning to the left, the visitor sees at last the great house itself, a Palladian mansion of honeyed stone, balanced on either side with curved wings. Topping the forecourt gates are two stone figures rearing up on hind legs, a lion and a unicorn, each gazing fiercely at the other as if sworn to secrecy.

  The house appears a touch doleful in its solitary grandeur, an impression which only intensifies when one enters the imposing but empty Marble Hall, with its scattering of statues on plinths. Red rope cordons mark the start of a house tour through reception rooms dressed like stage sets, leading this visitor to wonder how the house could have dwindled into quite such a counterfeit version of its past.

  The guide brochure explains that when the last Ashton died, in 1979, there remained only a distant cousin in South Africa. Mrs Sandra De Groot, wife of a prominent manufacturer, appears to have been so daunted by her inheritance that she agreed to hand Ashton Park over to the National Trust in lieu of drastic death duties. But not before the estate was stripped of its remaining farmland and other valuable assets. Two Rubens paintings were sold, alongside a Claude Lorraine, a Salvator Rosa and a pair of Constables. Soon after, her lawyers organized a sweeping sale of the house contents – a multitude of Ashton treasures accumulated over three hundred years, all recorded without sentiment in a stapled white inventory.

  “One pair of carved George IV giltwood armchairs, marked; one Regency rosewood and brass-inlaid breakfast table; one nineteenth-century ormolu centrepiece…”

  Antique dealers from far and wide still reminisce about the Ashton auction of 1980, the final rite of a house in decline. It is said that a queue of removal vans clogged the drive for days afterwards.

  Mrs De Groot was apparently not without family feeli
ng, because she donated a number of display cabinets to the National Trust, together with the house library and many family portraits and papers. In a curious detail, the brochure mentions that “the exquisite lacquered cigarette cases of the late Elizabeth Ashton were sent to the Victoria and Albert Museum”.

  According to the notes, Ashton Park had fallen into disrepair before its reclamation. But the curators retrieved plenty of family relics and mementoes, and the walls are now hung with photographs of the Ashton sons at Eton, at Oxford, in cricket teams, in uniform. A look of permanence lingers in their faces. Downstairs are photographs of the servants, the butler and his staff all standing on the front steps, their gaze captured in that strange measure of slow time so characteristic of early cameras.

  Beyond the Morning Room and past the Billiard Room, a small study displays an archive of wartime evacuees. It appears that an evacuees’ boarding school was established at Ashton Park in 1939, and a touching photograph album reveals children of all sizes smiling in shorts and grey tunics; handwritten letters, sent in later years, describe the pleasures and sorrows of their time there.

  In the last corridor there is only one photograph, an elegant wedding picture of the final Ashton heir, dated 1929. Thomas Ashton is one of those inscrutably handsome pre-war men with swept-back hair, and his wife Elizabeth is a raven-haired period beauty not unlike Vivien Leigh. Their expressions carry no hint of future losses, no sense that their house will one day become a museum.

  On high days and holidays, Ashton Park attracts plenty of day trippers. An estate shop sells marmalade and trinkets, while the gardens offer picnic spots, woodland trails and dubious medieval pageants on the south lawn. And yet visitors may drive away from Ashton Park feeling faintly dejected, because the spirit of this place has somehow departed.

  This melancholy cannot be traced to any dilapidation. The roof is intact, the lawns freshly mown, and the ornamental lake looks almost unnaturally limpid. But the dark windows stare out blankly – a haunted gaze. Beyond the display areas are closed corridors and unreclaimed rooms stacked with pots of paint and rusting stepladders. The small family chapel remains, but is rarely visited: it is too far out of the way to qualify for the house tour.

  Perhaps it is the family’s absence which gives Ashton its pathos. It appears that there were three sons and a daughter at the start of the last century, and yet none of them produced heirs. By what cumulative misfortune did this once prosperous family reach its end? The brochure notes do not detail how or why the Ashton line died out, yet a curious visitor cannot help but wonder.

  But for all this, one can still stand on the sunken lawn and almost apprehend the house in its heyday, even amidst the signposts and litter bins. One can imagine how others – in earlier times, in the right weather – might have found in this place a peerless vision of English parkland.

  There is one tree which particularly draws the eye, a glorious ruddy copper beech which stands alone on a small lawn by the rose garden. It was on a bench under this tree that the duty staff recently found an elderly woman sitting alone after closing hours, apparently enjoying the view. On closer inspection she was found to be serenely dead, her fingers locked around a faded love letter.

  Evacuation

  1939

  1

  London, 31st August 1939

  There was a hint of afternoon sunshine as Anna Sands and her mother Roberta stepped off their bus into Kensington High Street. To Anna, the broad street fickered with colour as shoppers flowed past her, clutching their bags. Beyond the crowds, she could see the parade of shops tricked out with displays of every kind: tins of toffee, new-minted bowls and cups, rolls of ribbon, hats, coats and gloves from every corner of the Empire.

  Mother and daughter set off down the wide pavement, Anna swinging her arms, always a little ahead. But she kept crisscrossing in front of her mother, as if uncertain whether to turn and hold her hand. For tomorrow, early, she and thousands of other children were to be evacuated from London – “In case of German air raids,” her mother had told her airily, as if this was a standard routine for all families.

  “Once this crisis is over, you can come straight home again,” she had explained. Anna was looking forward to country life – or seemed to be, when asked. There were things to buy for the journey, but Anna’s impending departure hovered between them and lit every moment with unusual intimacy.

  Roberta’s nerves and Anna’s excitement meshed into mutual high spirits as they strolled through the penny arcades, just for the fun of it, before reaching Pontings, the famous drapers, with its fluted pillars and white-iron galleries.

  This was Anna’s favourite shop, an Aladdin’s cave of coloured cloths and trimmings, laden with rolls of silk and swathes of damask. On the ground floor, beyond the hanging boas, she chose herself a white handkerchief starred with violets.

  “Thank you,” she said, kissing her mother.

  While Roberta queued to pay, Anna glanced upwards to the bright atrium above, where sunshine streamed through the stained-glass flowers in rays of coloured light. Anna’s eyes swam around the shop, with its reams of ribbons and baskets of glinting buttons, brass, silver, mother-of-pearl. The sounds of the shop receded as the dream light washed through her until, for a moment, she vanished from herself.

  “You can carry your package, my darling,” said her mother, breaking her reverie. Anna sprang to attention, and was the first out of the shop, planning the next purchase. At Woolworth’s they bought a small cardboard case and luggage labels for Anna’s journey, then they crossed the road to look for shoes.

  Shiny brown lace-ups they bought, at Barkers. They smelt new and luxuriant. They reminded Anna of her father in his uniform, with his big black boots. She and her mother had seen him off a month ago, just after her eighth birthday; he had swung her right round when she hugged him goodbye. Sometimes he sent her letters with funny drawings, describing his army drills. She wasn’t really worried about him, because it was common knowledge that most of Hitler’s tanks were made of cardboard.

  “Britain has the greatest empire in the world, so the war won’t last long,” she announced to the bespectacled lady who fitted her shoes.

  Then mother and daughter were out on the street again. It was time for Anna’s promised treat: a knickerbocker glory. She had seen American films in which children sat at counters, with ice creams in tall glasses. That was her dream.

  Roberta led the way through the art-deco splendour of Derry and Tom’s department store, along lavish blue carpets, whisper-quiet, until they reached a wall of lifts and stepped into a cool chamber of copper and nickel.

  “Fifth Floor, ladies and gentlemen, world-famous Roof Gardens,” chanted the liveried lift boy. The gardens had opened with much fanfare a year ago, but they had never visited: it was too dear.

  But today was special, and they emerged to glittering sunlight amidst the rooftops of Kensington. Before them, a profusion of fowers stretched away on every side, outstripping all their hopes. There was a Spanish garden, with a terracotta Moorish tower, and tumbling bougainvillea. Beyond, through a winding courtyard, they found themselves in a water garden of lily pads with a hint of gleaming carp. Another turn took them through dainty Elizabethan arches with climbing roses.

  They found their way to the café, with tables set out beneath striped umbrellas, and a fountain tinkling nearby. From the tall menu Anna picked her ice cream with care: vanilla and chocolate, topped with cream and cherries and nuts. To her mother’s relief, she did not seem disappointed when the towering confection arrived.

  A small palm-court band played familiar melodies, muting any sound from the streets below. The unreality of the place and the peculiar occasion of their visit only increased their light-headed pleasure in each other.

  “Before today, have you ever sat in a garden in the sky?” asked Anna.

  “Never,” laughed her mother, “nor would I want to, without you here too.”

  “When I get home again, can we come b
ack here?”

  “Of course, sweetheart.”

  “With Daddy too?”

  “For sure,” said Roberta, and clasped her daughter’s hand.

  Later, when the ice cream was finished, and the teacups empty, and the garden’s secrets all explored, they set off together, subdued, for home.

  It was not until they reached the store’s entrance lobby that Anna admitted the one shadow lurking over her day: she had no bathing costume.

  Anna had seen the newsreels about evacuation, and they all showed children travelling westwards, to the seaside, to Devon and Cornwall. She longed to join them, but feared that with all they had spent today a bathing costume would be one item too many to ask for.

  “But how will I swim?” she blurted out.

  Roberta paused to hear her child’s fumbled request, and knew at once that she must keep this afternoon intact, not scupper her daughter’s hopes. Back to the lifts they went, and up to the sporting department. With abandon, Roberta spent two shillings on a blue striped bathing costume, and saw her daughter’s face shine with pleasure. It was more than she meant to pay, but it perfected the afternoon. Then they set off for the underground station, united in satisfaction.

  As Anna skipped ahead, Roberta rejoiced in her daughter, knowing that she was bright and resourceful, with an uncluttered face easily lit by smiles. That tiny gap between her front teeth gave her a frank charm.

  They clattered down the station steps, Anna always in front. A train rolled in and opened its doors, and passengers stepped past them. Suddenly, on the half-filled platform, Roberta found herself brimming over with love for her straw-haired child.

  “Anna—” she said, and Anna turned, her eyes bright and clear. In that instant, Roberta sensed the spontaneous rise of her daughter’s soul, which had flickered to life in her eight years before. She reached out for her daughter and held her fast in her arms. For a moment, they could feel each other’s heartbeats.