Her effect on the natives of Bells and the surrounding area had been profound and lasting. She had first shocked, then bewitched them. At the harvest celebrations in the first year of her marriage, halfway though the St Bernard’s Waltz, she had broken into a tarantella-like dance which was only barely respectable and that only because she could claim Latin blood. But she had then silenced the whispering by persuading several other ladies of the village, of varying ages and stations in life, to join in, clapping and twirling like dervishes. When Hugo was born she was often to be seen out walking with the baby tied in a fringed shawl on her back, and when Harry arrived she did the same with him, while Hugo rushed about and swung from her hand. The locals had not exactly designated her one of them, she was a little too strange and foreign for that, but they regarded her as they might have done a unicorn that had suddenly appeared on the hillside – with wonder, delight and a sense of privilege. Besides which her presence proved beyond doubt that Mr Latimer was no dry stick.
Hugo, his mother’s son through and through, certainly was not. He discharged his responsibilities at Bells as though they were child’s play. And in fact games of various sorts were the hallmark of his stewardship. He wasted no time in reinstating the Mickelmas Charge, a neglected tradition whose origins were lost to memory and which involved the young men of the neighbourhood competing in a race around the perimeter of the village. The unique characteristic of the race was that the competitors should overcome rather than avoid all obstacles on the prescribed route – ditches, hedges and streams must be gone through, walls and fences climbed over, and irate bulls outpaced, egged on by a shrieking crowd of girls and children, and accompanied by a scampering pack of overexcited dogs. It was hectic and dangerous, and for both these reasons hugely popular. Hugo took part in the race himself never winning, but always courageous and enterprising. At the end he was invariably the muddiest, the bloodiest and the most elated in the field.
Apart from the charge there was the annual cricket match between a Bells team and the locals, an event which Percy had instigated but in which he had never taken part. Hugo was a fast bowler and lower-order batsman of unorthodox power. Bells rarely distinguished themselves, but they did keep the onlookers amused. Maria’s summer party for the younger children was another occasion suited to Hugo’s talents – as soon as he was old enough he organised all kinds of races and games which though boisterous were also diplomatically engineered to take account of the children’s varying strength and abilities and so ensure that honours would be evenly divided.
In other words Harry had come to realise that his elder brother was like a child himself. There was a simplicity in his nature, a lack of guile and an unguarded enthusiasm, which was both a strength and a weakness. Boyishness in a grown man and an employer won over even the most sceptical hearts, but it was perceived by some as a quality of incompleteness – of growing up yet to be done. Latterly, Harry had often felt sad for Hugo, and when he examined this sadness concluded that it was because fate dictated that such happiness and popularity could not last. They were the attributes of a certain kind of carefree youthfulness, which could not itself continue for ever. And yet it was hard to imagine Hugo changing.
Tonight he was on his most sparkling form. His manner took no account of the complications and imponderables of life. All for him was fun and frolics, sunshine and light, in which the rest of them were content to bask.
‘This is so utterly delightful!’ exclaimed Maria, holding out her arms to encompass the four of them. ‘We are such a fine family!’
It was inevitable that at this moment Harry should catch his father’s eye. They both looked away again at once, discomfited by a complicity which amounted to a small betrayal of the others.
As they left the table, Hugo said: ‘Come on out to the stables and I’ll show you Piper.’
‘At this time of night!’ exclaimed Maria, not wanting to lose them. ‘Are you mad?’
‘No, my dear,’ observed Percy, taking her arm. ‘They are young.’
Maria’s eyes narrowed at this reversal of the usual roles. She was a squeak taller than her husband and could if she wanted give the impression of looking down at him from a great Castilian height.
‘It’s just as well, Percy,’ she said, ‘that I am not a lady of fragile sensibilities, or I should construe that remark as most ungallant.’
The crystalline sunshine of the day had transmuted into a diamond-sharp night of glacial moonlight, the sky glittering with frozen stars. At ten o’clock a frost had already breathed on the grass at the front of the house, and there was a sheen of ice on the water trough in the stable yard which Hugo broke with his hand in passing.
‘Here’s my fine fellow,’ he said quietly, opening the door of the stall. ‘Move gently now.’
If this was a warning, Harry took it seriously. He had enough experience of his brother’s predilections to know that they leaned towards excitement rather than ease.
The two-year-old Piper was dark and restless, as much Hugo’s familiar as any witch’s cat. Harry stood obediently at the side of the loosebox as the two greeted one another, and Hugo slipped a headcollar on to the horse and turned him to be admired. Even in this confined space Piper swished his tail and arched his neck in a pretty display of youthful high spirits.
Hugo kissed his head tenderly, just below the eye.
Harry shivered at the thought, quite unbidden, of how short a shrift his fellow officers would have granted this gesture. The officers’ mess of the 8th Hussars was a place of fierce regimentation in all its forms, home to proud and privileged men – some admirable, many best left alone – with no sympathy or understanding for those not blessed with their own set of certainties. For this reason Harry kept his head down and his private opinions to himself, and was treated in turn with the lofty tolerance generally extended to those who were different but who had the sense nonetheless to behave themselves. Whereas Hugo, in that one unwary moment, would have placed himself beyond the pale.
‘. . . heart of a lion, speed of a jack rabbit,’ he enthused. ‘And lives of a cat, though he may have used up one or two of those – did I tell you he tried to kick down the box when the farrier came, and sliced his back leg almost to the tendon?’
‘You described it in one of your letters.’
Hugo smiled ruefully. ‘That’s the trouble with being stuck in the country, there isn’t enough news to prevent one repeating oneself. Here, make friends.’
He handed the headcollar to Harry, who could have sworn he felt a warning vibration pass along the rope. He ran one finger gently up and down the horse’s nose until the tremor subsided. Hugo looked on benignly, a philanthropist observing the fruits of his labours.
‘That’s good . . . excellent . . . the two of you will be firm friends in time.’
‘Is he good to ride out?’
‘To ride out, to hunt, to jump – I tell you, Harry, this is the horse I dreamed of owning when we were boys. Like that one of Sir Lancelot’s in the King Arthur book.’
‘You’ll remember,’ said Harry, ‘that the artist was mistaken, or fanciful, because the Knights of the Round Table would have ridden palfreys – great lumbering beasts like carthorses. This chap’s knees would have buckled under the weight of a knight in full armour.’
‘Don’t be such a pedant, little Hal! You do remember the picture?’
‘Of course.’
‘And you remember me saying that I’d own a horse like that?’
‘I do. And here he is.’
Hugo’s beam of gratification was such that in spite of having been recently referred to as ‘little’ Harry felt like some beneficent elderly uncle who had just parted with half a crown.
‘And now,’ declared Hugo, taking the rope and slipping off the headcollar, ‘I have something still more astonishing to tell you. And you will be among the first to know.’
‘I’m honoured – or should I be appalled? I think you owe it to me to prepare me.’
> ‘It’s nothing you need be prepared for.’ Hugo opened the door. ‘Come, come on and walk.’
They left the stables and, Hugo struck out along the side of the hill to the north, at the back of the house. A darker mass, glowing here and there like the rubble of a domestic fire, showed where the village lay in the valley to their right. The pale chalky cart track wound away before them.
‘I’m going to be married,’ said Hugo.
He spun round and walked backwards in front of Harry, grinning exultantly. ‘I’m going to be married! What do you make of that?’
Astonishment was too weak a word for what Harry felt.
‘Hugo! Married?’
‘Yes!’
‘But who ...’
Hugo let out a great ‘Ha!’ of laughter. ‘You can’t believe any girl would have me, can you?’
‘It isn’t that—’
‘And you don’t believe I have it in me to be a husband!’
‘Not in the least, I—’
‘But out there—’ Hugo pointed a wagging finger towards the village, and then changed direction ‘—or to be precise out there, is the woman who could make a devoted and uxorious husband out of the worst roué imaginable.’
‘Really?’
Harry had stopped in his tracks, stunned, but now Hugo put an arm round his shoulders and propelled him onwards. ‘Truly!’
‘Tell me about her.’
‘Oh ...I want to say she is beautiful and good, except that you might infer from that that she’s dull.’
‘I might,’ conceded Harry, ‘if the person who made the observation was anyone but you. I can’t conceive of your taking up with a woman who was dull.’
‘Thank you.’ Hugo gave his shoulders a squeeze. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment. Though naturally I wouldn’t want to be thought intolerant, either.’
‘And do I already know this paragon?’
‘I believe not, she wasn’t one of those whinnying girls we used to have to dance with. Her name’s Rachel Howard.’
Harry shook his head. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘She’s wise, and clever, and quiet.’
The first two adjectives Harry might have expected, the third was more surprising.
‘In what way is she quiet?’
Hugo released him with a push. ‘Are there so many different ways? No, she is quiet, you won’t hear her across the room, or know her opinions on everything, or know what her laugh sounds like – not until you know her well. She keeps her own counsel. She’s – serene. I adore her.’
Impressed by his brother’s ardour and sincerity, Harry realised there was something important that he had so far omitted to say.
‘Hugo – congratulations! Many, many of them. It’s wonderful that you’re happy, that she – Rachel – makes you so happy.’
‘And even more wonderful perhaps, certainly more to be wondered at, is that she loves me.’
‘That isn’t so surprising.’
‘When you meet her, Harry, you’ll see that it is.’
‘I want to.’ Something occurred to him.‘I’m surprised that Mother and Father made no mention of all this.’
‘They aren’t sure what to make of it.’
‘You mean they aren’t pleased? But that’s extraordinary.’
Hugo’s pace quickened. ‘They’re suspicious.’
‘Of what?’
‘Oh – nothing! Rachel is older than me, and a widow, she simply doesn’t accord with their picture of a blushing bride. In spite of the fact that their own match was scarcely conventional. Or perhaps because of that.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps they see in me some sort of discomfiting echo of their own past, and consider that they and they alone have the strength of character to succeed against the odds.’
‘But—’ Harry shook his head. There were simply too many new and startling revelations to absorb all at once. ‘But they’re surely not raising any serious objections?’
‘Not objections – reservations. And neither would make the slightest difference.’
The track now began to descend towards the village and Harry said: ‘Shall we go back?’
‘I’d rather go on.’
Hugo raced ahead, abandoning himself to the steep incline. Harry followed, watching his step.
When they had reached the village, and were walking westbound along the valley road, Harry asked, ‘So Rachel is a widow?’
‘Her husband died four years ago. She’s almost thirty.’
‘Are there children?’
‘No. And he left her provided for. He was an engineer on the railways. She lives alone in Vayle Place. It’s that house with the turrets. The one we used to think of as haunted.’
Harry remembered the house. They’d used to ride past it simply in order to scare themselves. It was generally supposed to be a folly, built no more than a few decades ago by an eccentric with a penchant for Gothic novels. But this didn’t alter its strangeness, and it was stranger still to think of a solitary woman living there.
‘You’ve been to the house?’ he asked.
‘Naturally.’
‘And do you still think it’s haunted?’
‘Of course,’ said Hugo. ‘But not in the way we meant as boys. It has an atmosphere all of its own. It casts a spell.’
Not wholly frivolously, Harry suggested: ‘Your Rachel is a sorceress.’
‘Oh, yes,’ replied Hugo. ‘She is.’
‘She is a witch!’ hissed Maria as she and Harry went up the stairs that night. ‘There can be no doubt of it. What other reason can there possibly be for Hugo’s infatuation with her?’
‘I believe they’re in love,’ Harry reminded her gently.
‘Love?’ Maria snorted scornfully. ‘I think not. It isn’t in her. She is a cold, pale, provincial adventuress who has ensnared Hugo because she is able to do so.’
His mother’s jealousy was so raw that Harry thought it better not to respond.
Only two days later he had the opportunity to form his own opinion of Rachel Howard, when Percy and Maria held a dinner party in his honour to which their eldest son’s fiancée had naturally to be invited.
The moment that she entered the drawing room – the last to do so – Harry realised what Hugo had meant by her ‘quiet’. Here was a stillness so complete that it demanded attention. It struck a chord which resonated beneath the social chatter, and which caused him to look round as if someone had called his name. There was Hugo at her side, talking, laughing, putting her arm through his, quite disarrayed with pride and passion, and there the object of his love – calm, barely smiling, unreadable. Her hair was a silvery mouse, her complexion lily-pale, her eyes light as water. She was small and slight, and wore a dark blue dress not in the height of fashion. And yet her presence was such that Harry’s was not the only glance she drew that was more than simply curious. He watched as Percy greeted her with perfect, amiable correctness, Maria with more flourish and less warmth. If Rachel was aware of any reservations on their part she did not show it. Her composure amounted to a kind of passive power. He could not take his eyes off her.
When Hugo at last introduced her Harry was sharply aware of her hand lying coolly in his. Her grey eyes surveyed him unblinkingly: he felt transparent. When she said that she was delighted to meet him, had been told so much about him, he heard not the social platitudes but the soft, intense timbre of her voice.
At dinner he was seated next to her. She was polite and asked him questions about himself accepted his congratulations gracefully, spoke charmingly of her hopes for the future. At no point was there anything either effusive or disobliging in her outward behaviour, and yet he felt himself to be constantly at a disadvantage, as if she had some special knowledge or understanding of him which he himself did not possess.
‘And so,’ she enquired, ‘shall you make the Army your career?’
‘I believe so. Until I no longer have the stomach for it.’
‘ “Let him that have no stomach for this fight,
let him depart. His passport shall be made and crowns for convoy put into his purse”.’
‘You like the history plays?’
She raised her eyebrows and gave him a slight quizzical smile. ‘I don’t think that liking is quite apposite in Shakespeare’s case.’
‘No?’
‘He is a part of our lives and our language. Inescapable. Wouldn’t you say?’
‘Of course.’
At this point the gentleman on Rachel’s other side conscientiously turned towards her and Harry did the same with the lady on his left, aware that in the past few seconds he had caught a glimpse of the enquiring intelligence which she chose most of the time to conceal.
A glimpse which, a little later in the course of dinner, prompted him to touch on the matters which interested him most, though he had seen enough not to begin by eliciting personal information. Instead he remarked lightheartedly: ‘You know, I am quite jealous.’
‘Of whom?’
‘You, of course.’
‘Surely not. Why should you be?’
‘All my life,’ he explained, ‘I’ve looked up to Hugo, not simply as my elder brother who has led and protected me, but as someone with qualities completely different from and greater than my own.’
She consulted her plate. ‘And what do you perceive those qualities to be?’
At this moment there was a burst of laughter from the end of the table where Hugo sat, keeping the company around him amused. Harry nodded in his direction.
‘I rest my case . . . What everyone sees in him. Openness, humour, courage, generosity. A great embracing of all that life has to offer.’
‘And yet,’ she said tranquilly, ‘Hugo is here, and you are in London. He is looking forward to a life of blameless domesticity and filial duty in the country whilst you will probably at some time face danger and death in battle.’
‘If by blameless domesticity you mean marriage to yourself, then I don’t believe that is quite the unadventurous choice you imply.’
He had been bold, but was rewarded with a hint of a smile. ‘Nor a universally popular one.’
It would have been insulting to her to deny this, so he simply said: ‘You are unexpected. You concede that. Give them time.’
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