The Fairbairn Girls

by Una-Mary Parker

  ‘Laura’s got the ridiculous idea that she can make her own wedding dress and I’m just telling her she’s going nowhere near mine.’

  ‘Since when are you getting married, Lizzie?’ her mother demanded sarcastically. ‘To my knowledge no one has so far asked your father for your hand.’

  ‘I’m sure James Fraser is going to marry me, Mama. I love him and I really want to marry him.’

  ‘The man you fall in love with isn’t necessarily the man you should marry,’ Lady Rothbury said firmly.

  Laura flushed with anger. ‘Mama! That’s a terrible thing to say. Of course you must marry the man you love. I wouldn’t be marrying Rory if I didn’t love him madly.’

  Lady Rothbury remained serene. ‘You’ve been very lucky in finding the right man, Laura, especially as you’re so young. His father is a baronet. He has wealth and a good career. Your sisters may not have the same good fortune.’

  ‘I’m sure I will,’ Lizzie retorted. ‘I’ve known James since I was fifteen. It’s not a question of if we’ll get married, but when. You’ve cultivated all the right people for our benefit and we’re very grateful, Mama,’ she added slyly.

  Her mother beamed, taking it as a compliment for her parenting skills. ‘I want you all to be happy, my dear, and a young woman is doomed if she marries a man who does not belong to the same religion, the same political party and the same class as herself. He must be a man of means, too, of course. Marriage is about suitability, compatibility and eligibility. It’s got nothing to do with love.’

  The silence that followed spoke volumes of the dashed dreams held so dear by Lizzie and her sisters, who imagined they would all be swept up by their very own Prince Charming and carried off to a magical place where love and passion would last for ever.

  ‘When poverty comes in at the door love flies out of the window,’ their mother intoned with a final flourish as she turned to leave the room.

  Laura burst into silent laughter. ‘So now you know,’ she murmured. She had no doubts Rory would always be there for her, looking after her and loving her until the end of time, and she thanked God for her good fortune.

  For the next two months Laura worked under the supervision of Mrs Armitage, being taught everything from how to take measurements to cutting, pinning, tacking, pressing, machining and finally finishing off by hand. She learned to cut the lining for coats and jackets a size larger than the actual garment and how to make buttonholes. She was taught how to hemstitch, frill and pleat and edge a garment with piping. Soon she was able to emboss a silk bodice with lace and embroider it with crystal beads. Mrs Armitage was amazed at how quickly Laura learned and how dedicated she was to the craft of dressmaking.

  Laura herself was in her element and the hours flew by as she dedicated herself to this new skill with a sense of growing excitement at what one could do with a length of fabric.

  At last it was her turn to make her own wedding dress and, as she worked on every stitch, she had visions of the expression on Rory’s face as she came up the aisle towards him. In her mind’s eye he’d be full of love and admiration, longing for the moment when they’d be man and wife with the rest of their lives ahead of them.

  When it was finished the only person who was allowed to see it was her mother. Mrs Armitage went to fetch her and as Lady Rothbury entered the room she stopped in her tracks, overwhelmed for a moment as she gazed at her second daughter. Then her eyes brimmed with tears which she didn’t attempt to hide. ‘Dearest girl,’ she said softly.

  ‘Do you like it, Mama?’ Laura turned slowly, showing all the little buttons down the back of the close-fitting bodice and the cleverly cut skirt that flowed into a train.

  ‘You look beautiful. You really made it all by yourself?’

  ‘All by herself, M’Lady,’ Mrs Armitage vouchsafed. ‘I only did the fittings.’

  Lady Rothbury shook her head in wonderment. ‘It’s quite marvellous. I love the way you’ve swathed the lace around the shoulders and on the bodice and as for the bead work . . . don’t tell me you did that, too, Laura?’

  ‘Yes, I did. I had to use the finest needle in the pack and it was quite a strain on the eyes. Do you think Rory will approve?’ she asked eagerly, longing to hear more praise.

  ‘There’s no doubt about that.’ Lady Rothbury turned to Mrs Armitage. ‘You must be very proud of your pupil?’

  ‘Yes, M’Lady. Lady Laura has a natural aptitude for design and dressmaking. It took me years to acquire the skill she’s shown. I was telling her she’ll be doing me out of a job if I’m not careful.’

  They all laughed at the absurdity of a future where Laura would become a seamstress, but she still blushed with pleasure at the compliment.

  ‘You look beautiful, my dear. Rory is an extremely lucky young man.’

  They were the nicest words Laura had ever heard from her mother.

  When she’d changed back into her own clothes she and Lady Rothbury went downstairs together to be met by Lizzie, who was standing at the bottom in a state of great agitation.

  ‘Laura’s wedding dress really is wonderful,’ Lady Rothbury announced, not noticing her eldest daughter’s distraught manner.

  ‘Damn her wedding dress!’ Lizzie exclaimed wildly. ‘Something terrible has happened.’

  Lady Rothbury froze. ‘Not Papa?’ she breathed in terror.

  Lizzie burst into tears as she sank on to the bottom step, bent over with sobbing.

  ‘What is it?’ Laura’s features were sharp with fear. Their father was a reckless rider, taking his horses over fences and dry walls that were treacherously high. He’d already had some bad falls and broken bones but the older he got the more risks he seemed to take, as if to prove he was still young and active.

  ‘Lizzie, tell me,’ Lady Rothbury spoke angrily. ‘Pull yourself together, girl, and tell me what’s happened.’

  Lizzie drew in a long, shuddering breath and raised her tear-stained face. ‘I’ve just heard that James Fraser has announced his engagement to Araminta Maclean.’ She started sobbing again. ‘I was so sure it was me he loved.’

  A subdued atmosphere pervaded over Lochlee Castle for the next few days. No one could comfort Lizzie, who looked upon James’ engagement to someone else as an act of hideous betrayal.

  ‘Poor you,’ Diana sympathized as Lizzie wallowed in bouts of weeping between reading passages of Longfellow poems.

  ‘Perhaps Araminta MacLean is prettier than Lizzie,’ Georgie suggested unhelpfully.

  Beattie looked scandalized. ‘That’s a horrid thing to say,’ she snapped as Lizzie dissolved into a fresh bout of crying. ‘Araminta probably seduced him and maybe he’s been forced to marry her.’

  Lizzie stopped mid-sob and looked up, her face stricken. ‘You mean he might have made her pregnant?’

  Diana frowned disapprovingly. ‘I think we should be careful what we say, especially when the servants are around. We don’t know anything about Araminta and you know how gossip spreads.’

  Lizzie was not to be comforted. For the past few years she’d harboured the thought of marrying the handsome James Fraser, known as Jamie to his friends, but now the realization that she’d woven his friendly attitude towards her into something far deeper hurt most of all. Her fantasies were shattered. Her dreams gone. There was no way now she was going to be his fiancée, his bride, his wife and the mother of his children.

  There was no hope of her getting married before Laura. The empty void that she gazed heart-brokenly into spoke of failure. She also looked stupid for so badly misjudging his intentions.

  So her sisters’ words of sympathy fell on barren ground where no green shoots of hope for the future were ever likely to appear.

  Three

  Lasswade Hall, 1906

  The stumbling thumps were coming down the stairs now. Laura heard a framed picture being knocked off the wall and landing with a shuddering crash in the hall below. Then the sudden howl of a maddened dog barking furiously rent the air. Only it wasn’
t a dog.

  She clasped her hand over her mouth to stifle a cry of fear. Then she hurried, half-staggering on legs weakened by terror, across her sitting room. She must lock the door. Every room in the house had a key on the inside lock. The drawing room. The dining room. The library. Her bedroom. Oh, God! Especially her bedroom. Fumbling frantically with trembling fingers, she groped for the cold metal key but it wasn’t there. Where was it? God in heaven, where was it? Who had removed it?

  She dropped to her knees, scrabbling around on the carpet and all the while the heavy thuds and crashes and bellowing roars were coming closer, reverberating through the house.

  Clambering to her feet, she rushed to the sash-cord window on the opposite side of the room and reached for the snib to open it. Then she pushed up the bottom half as far as it would open. The gap was only wide enough for her to lie on her stomach on the window sill then wriggle out feet first. A moment later she tumbled down into the thorny rose bushes that surrounded the house.

  She lay there for a moment, bruised, scratched and shaken. Then she heard it. The sickening sound of splintering wood as her sitting-room door was being kicked in.

  Struggling to her feet, although the soft, damp earth seemed to cling and pull her back down and her dress got caught on the sharp thorns, she managed to stand up and run across the lawn, where at the far end Greg the gardener kept his tools in a sturdy little wooden shed. The key was kept under a nearby log. Once inside she locked herself in and, sitting on a bundle of old sacks, watched through a small window and waited as darkness started to close in.

  The house was pitch-black. She’d purposely given the servants the day off. The previous evening she’d sent Caroline to stay with Diana because this was no place for a two-year-old child.

  Now there were just the two of them. In combat. In a war zone that could last all night. Closing her eyes, she leaned back against the comforting solid feel of wood and breathed in the earthy tang of seedlings growing in recently watered soil. She could still hear bangs and thumps coming from the house but she refused to think about the damage being inflicted on their home.

  The garden was in darkness now, the house no more than a large shadow among the trees. For the past hour there had been silence and, exhausted, she had dozed off for a few moments – perhaps even a few minutes – but now she felt alert, as an animal intuitively senses an impending unknown danger.

  Gazing into the blackness towards the house, she saw a flicker of light through one of the windows. The silence hung heavily in the still, cold night as she watched and waited.

  Then there was another flicker, coming from another room this time. Was an oil lamp being lit? Was a match being struck to light a cigar? She watched unblinkingly. It was a large three-storey house with many windows and it stood silent now as if it, too, was waiting for the inevitable crisis to happen.

  Then she saw it. The light came from a candle held by a hand, moving from room to room as if searching for someone. The other hand was also raised and in its clenched fist was an axe.

  The next morning Laura discovered that the portrait of her which hung in the drawing room had been slashed, the canvas hanging in ribbons over the gilt frame.

  Four

  Lochlee Castle, 1892

  Spring had arrived after a long, dark, cold winter, and Lord Rothbury strode into the dining room for breakfast with a spring in his step because the ground was perfect for riding and the dogs were jumping around his feet, eager for a good run.

  Placing the morning’s post on one side, he helped himself to porridge from the sideboard before sitting down and ripping open the envelopes with a knife.

  ‘Bills! Bills! Nothing but damned bills!’ he muttered to no one in particular. Then he paused. ‘Dear God!’ he groaned loudly, and the room fell silent.

  Lady Rothbury looked nervously at him. ‘What’s happened, William?’

  Laura, entering late for breakfast, sat down at that moment just as he was answering his wife’s question. Suddenly the room turned into a long, dark tunnel; it was freezing cold and someone was screaming. Laura found herself clinging to the dining-room table as if it were the side of a fishing boat and they were out on choppy waters. There were more screams and she heard a voice asking from somewhere, ‘What happened?’ Then she realized the person who was screaming, ‘No! No! Please God, no!’ over and over again was herself.

  From a thousand miles away her father was reading aloud from a letter he’d opened. ‘There was a suddenstorm. Rory was out riding. A terrible gale blew up. Nothing anyone coulddo. Trees were being blown down. A branch fell. He didn’t stand achance.’

  He didn’t stand a chance. The words were lodged in her brain, going round and round, and she couldn’t stop them no matter how hard she said no.

  In the days that followed, Diana and Lizzie and Beattie clustered around her, patting and stroking her, desperately anxious to ease her pain.

  Beyond accepting comfort or compassion, Laura simply wanted to die herself. Without Rory what was the point of anything? She believed that no one would ever understand how much she’d lost. The moment he’d died he’d taken with him the rest of her life. She felt desolate and nothing and no one could console her.

  She would never be his wife now. Never be embraced by the gentle surroundings of a country house in the south of England. Never enjoy the excitements of going up to London for a trip to the theatre and dinner in a restaurant. All her hopes, all her plans had been demolished in a single moment when she’d heard the words he didn’t stand a chance.

  Most of all, beyond everything else, she bitterly regretted that she’d never let him sleep with her and that they’d never made love.

  Feeling cheated now, her first wave of grief turned into a deep, raging anger. She’d been denied the greatest emotional experience of all because of the teaching of the church and other people’s principles. If only she could turn the clock back to when he’d last stayed at Lochlee. She’d desired him then as much as he’d wanted her as he held her in his arms and pressed himself against her body. Then he’d released her with a long, deep sigh because he was an honourable young man.

  ‘Oh, God, why didn’t I let him!’ she burst out, oblivious of Lizzie’s presence beside her in the drawing room. ‘At least I’d have that to remember,’ she sobbed.

  Lizzie’s eyes widened in understanding. ‘Would you really have dared? Think of all the warnings Mama has given us. Supposing you’d got . . .’

  ‘I wish to God I had,’ Laura retorted angrily. ‘Then I’d have had something of his. Now I’ve got nothing. Nothing.’

  Lizzie sat in silence. Her loss, which she now had to admit to herself was more a case of being piqued because she’d been scorned, was nothing compared to the death of Rory.

  ‘You’re such a lovely person, Laura, and so beautiful. I know you’ll find someone else before long,’ she said comfortingly.

  Laura rose to her feet, shaking with fury. ‘I don’t want anyone else!’ she cried shrilly. ‘Now leave me alone.’ Bent over like an old woman, she stumbled to the door and slowly and painfully made her way up the wide oak stairs to her room.

  Lady Rothbury watched her from the landing above. ‘Come, dear girl. You need to lie down,’ she said gently, putting her arms around Laura. ‘You need to rest. Get some sleep, perhaps.’

  Laura allowed herself to be treated like a child as her mother helped her take off her dress and then tucked her up in her four-poster bed, before seating herself nearby so she could keep vigil. It was obvious that the last thing Laura needed at the moment was to be exhausted by the well-meaning attempts of her sisters to try to console her.

  For ten days Laura stayed in bed, with Nanny, who had looked after her since she’d been born, bringing her bowls of broth and home-made lemonade. Listless and disorientated, she finally came downstairs in a valiant effort to get back to normality. For the first time in her life, though, she was no longer sure what her place was in the family. For seventeen years she�
�d been the second daughter, a supposed role model with Lizzie for her younger siblings. She’d felt the need to be a good example in everything she did. Her mother’s lists of do’s and don’ts had to be learned like a catechism.

  Recently she’d moved on to become the ‘engaged daughter’ of the family and that meant the first big step into being Grown Up: the one stage in her life she’d been longing for since she’d been twelve. It meant more than that to her. It meant getting away from home, from the bleak dullness of Lochlee which she’d come to hate. Now she was stuck here. Swept away by the terrible catastrophe was the life she’d never have. A husband she loved passionately. The Queen Anne house in Kent she’d never see now. The children that would have filled the nursery, and the knowledge that when they grew up and left home she would still have the love and companionship of a husband. All gone. It was unlikely anyone else would want to marry her either. An old maid on the shelf nursing her grief. It made Laura also realize she didn’t even have the dignity awarded to a widow. She’d be known as the Fairbairn girl whose fiancé was tragically killed in an accident.

  ‘I’m worried about Eleanor,’ Diana remarked as she and Beattie walked in the grounds of the castle. Wrapped up against the freezing wind, they wore fur hats and big fur collars on their long tweed coats, and they tucked their gloved hands into fur muffs that hung from gold chains around their necks. Before them lay sweeping lawns that led to a fast-running river. Crossing it on the large, flat stepping stones that led to the far side, where pine trees flourished along the water’s edge, they sat to rest on the rocks.

  ‘Eleanor?’ Beattie asked in surprise. ‘Why Eleanor? What about Laura?’

  ‘We all know that poor Laura has good reason to be suffering, but haven’t you noticed how Eleanor has been creeping around the place as if she’s worried about something? She’s always looking out of the window, too. For hours, sometimes, as if she’s expecting someone to call.’