In Distant Fields

by Charlotte Bingham

  Tully’s right, Tom Taylor,’ Wavell told the younger man. ‘You can think all you like about joining the army—’

  ‘And doing our bit, Mr Wavell. For king and country,’ Taylor interrupted.

  ‘And doing your bit for king and country, except that is exactly what you are doing here, Taylor. You are doing your bit here, do you see? Being in service in a great house such as this is its own form of serving your country.’

  It’s hardly defending the Empire, though, is it, Mr Wavell?’

  ‘In its own way it is, Taylor. This personifies what the Empire stands for, and while you’re in service here you are helping to protect the interests of the Empire. Places like this represent England and all that she stands for. We all do, everyone who works and lives here. By working here we are all doing our bit to preserve what we hold dear. Don’t ever forget that, Taylor – you neither, Tully. This is what your father fought for in the Boer War, Taylor – and your father, Tully. So that places like this, the very heart of England, should be safe. Don’t ever forget that, either of you, and let’s have no more idle talk about joining up and doing your bit – because you don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘No, Mr Wavell,’ Taylor said with a frown after the retreating figure of the butler. ‘Never saw it like that before, but I do now.’

  ‘Catch me joining up,’ Tully said once more. ‘Catch me leaving here. Come on, dropped scones for tea.’

  Kitty was relieved to see that Waterside House could almost certainly be described as cosy. Built in the early 1890s, the house had something of the style of an Arts and Crafts house, with its tall chimneys, and windows with the leaded-paned Tudor look. Its immediate charm undoubtedly lay in the fact that it overlooked the sea, with balconies outside all the seaside bedroom windows, taking advantage of the wonderful views.

  Either side of the main house was set a smaller house, each also with balconies outside the upper floor to take advantage of the sea views. Both houses were designed for male guests, and there was also a small cottage for the handful of hired servants. The grounds of the house were made up solely of well-kept lawns, and mature trees, which had withstood the winter gales that swept in off the Channel.

  Waterside was always referred to as Circe’s ‘little beach house’, which, given its size, could have been more than irritating had Circe not been a Duchess who lived in a house as grand as Bauders. As it was, the people who came to stay understood that the little beach house was so called because that was how it appeared after life at Bauders, whose rooms no one of the present generation had yet been able to swear they had ever been able to count.

  Once they had been welcomed to Waterside by Circe and her family, and after a delicious light supper taken in the dining room where everyone served themselves, à la russe, Kitty was astonished to find waiting in the room she was sharing with Elizabeth Milborne a whole wardrobe of summer clothes the Duchess had sent for ‘her girls’, as she now referred to them all. They were not just new clothes, they were fine new clothes; so fashionable were the dresses and so thin and silky the stockings and underwear, that when Kitty and Elizabeth first held the dresses up against themselves, they turned to each other nervously, both suffering from a vague sense of shock as they realised not just how expensive the clothes were, but how revealing.

  ‘Should we wear them, Kitty?’

  ‘Certainly we should wear them, Elizabeth,’ Kitty affirmed. ‘After all, if the Duchess has sent for them then she must mean us to wear them, and after all, not to wear them would mean that we look as if we are questioning her taste.’

  Kitty quickly undressed and held a dress up against her, standing back from the dressing mirror as she did so, her head on one side.

  ‘They leave very little to the imagination,’ Elizabeth announced, really rather unnecessarily.

  ‘It seems that everyone has been wearing these dresses to Ascot, and everywhere else for the past year at least,’ Kitty told her airily, although she herself was privately amazed at the revealing cut of the dresses, all of which sported little trains. ‘Besides, what is the difference between wearing this in the evening, or at lunch, when we have all been spending the day in bathing suits on the beach?’

  ‘Well, that is certainly true.’

  Elizabeth started to undo her long, brown hair and brush it vigorously. The journey had been long, supper late, and she was ready to sleep.

  ‘Ssh!’ Kitty put a finger to her lips, and going to the door she opened it slowly to reveal the three Knowle sisters all dressed in their new frocks, and quite obviously determined to show the dresses off.

  ‘Aren’t they just too-too?’ asked Allegra, ‘Mamma has such exquisite taste.’

  Allegra twirled in front of the admiring Kitty and Elizabeth, while Cecilia stared at herself in their dressing mirror and Partita, eyes half shut, did a tango with a non-existent partner down the full length of the bedroom.

  Out of the three of them, Kitty quickly realised, Partita, because she was startlingly blonde, would always have caught every eye from first to last, and of course once Partita realised that everyone had indeed finally turned to watch her as her quite outrageous dance became ever more extravagant and exaggerated, until she finally danced up to the French windows, opened them, and disappeared onto the balcony outside.

  ‘Mamma told me that she has chosen the most outrageous costume for Partita – is it in the wardrobe?’ Allegra asked in a tone that was half affectionate and half jealous, because Partita, being the youngest, it seemed was always being singled out for special preference.

  Kitty peered into the oak wardrobe, and thinking that she might have spied the outfit, she removed it.

  ‘Would this be it?’

  Allegra nodded, and sighed. It was, it had to be – Turkish trousers and an embroidered silk jacket. Partita would simply scintillate in it.

  ‘It is worn over flesh-coloured tights and underwear,’ Cecilia stated, taking the diaphanous outfit from Kitty and wafting it towards the dressing mirror where she held it up to her, before discovering, just seconds too late, that it did not suit her darker, heavier looks, ‘Gracious,’ she exclaimed. ‘It would not suit you or me, Allegra. It would make us look like Pirate Queens!’

  At that moment a cry of help came from beyond the French windows, followed by an eerie silence, during which only the sound of the sea pulling and sucking at the pebbles outside the window could be heard. The three girls ran to the balcony, only to find Partita, hand over her mouth, laughing silently as the stars above shone down on the jewelled confection in her hair, on the mischievous look in her eyes, on her beauty.

  ‘Next time you do that, Tita, I shall slap you hard and long,’ Allegra grumbled.

  ‘You are really no fun at all,’ Partita said, sighing and following the other three back into the room. ‘That was meant to be funny.’

  ‘What is meant to be funny can sometimes turn to tragedy, just remember that,’ Cecilia opined, a statement so pompous that Partita started to giggle.

  Kitty turned away, struggling not to laugh at the sight of Partita’s helpless giggles, made worse by her sisters’ solemn, patronising expressions of disapproval.

  ‘Well, the boys have arrived at last, I hear, and are having a pillow fight in the bachelor wing, so all is set fair for the summer holiday.’

  Allegra turned to go and left the room, closely followed by a dutiful Cecilia.

  Partita was the last to leave.

  ‘I wish I was in here with you two. The other two are too old for me, really they are. It’s like sharing with a couple of governesses, truly it is.’ She pulled a face before shutting the bedroom door behind her.

  Kitty and Elizabeth stared at each other, but much as they both loved Partita, they were secretly glad to be on their own, for when all was said and done, Partita was more than a handful, she was a constant drama. She was always so intent on making everyone’s life more exciting.

  ‘Partita has such a generous personality,’ El
izabeth said, speaking into the darkness of the room as Kitty and she listened to the rhythms of the sea beyond the windows. ‘She is always trying to help everyone enjoy themselves.’

  ‘She pretended to fly off the balcony only because she was sure that the relief that she hadn’t had an accident would be perfectly marvellous.’

  ‘She is perfectly marvellous, that is exactly what she is,’ Elizabeth agreed in her gentle, musical voice.

  ‘Elizabeth?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If you were a flower you would be a white Elizabethan rose, but if I was a flower what would I be, do you think?’

  There was a short silence before Elizabeth finally said, ‘A sweet pea, ancient as the world, and blooming all summer with a subtle scent and a brilliant colour.’

  Kitty smiled at the moon and the stars beyond the window, at the sea that was as calm as the night sky above it. She liked that. She liked the thought that she was a sweet pea, a cottage flower, not too exotic, but with a variety of colour. She drifted off to sleep, not to wake until morning when the maid came in and pulled the curtains.

  Partita was awake long before Allegra and Cecilia, which was not unusual, for ever since she was quite young she had always been the first to be awake, creeping out sometimes to trot down the corridor and from there up to the maids’ floor where she would slide into bed beside Tinker. She was too old for that now, and not so young that she did not have a real purpose to her early awakening.

  She bundled up her clothes and, sliding out of the two connected bedrooms, which, as always, she shared with her sisters, she fled to the large marble bathroom where she quickly changed, after which, clutching her bathing suit and towel, she made her way determinedly down the garden, past the few crooked, ancient trees that lined the edge of the lawn, which reached down to the pebbled beach.

  The family beach huts were quite isolated, and since the access to the beach was private the huts were always left open, so it took only a small tug at the door marked ‘Ladies’ for Partita to step into the friendly beckoning darkness.

  Once inside, the aroma of seaside holidays came to her instantly, not on tiptoes, not quietly and secretively, as she herself had left the house and garden, but at full gallop.

  Up above her, lit by small windows, she could see beloved family swimming items. Her mother’s striped bathing hats and matching swimsuits. Her sisters’ costumes in a variety of styles, hung on pegs. At the back of the hut there was a stack of striped bathing towels, and a large basket filled with swimming shoes made of canvas with strange woven soles of rope. She stripped off and pulled on a demure black costume, and a pair of the shoes chosen from the basket, before, towel in hand, she crept off down the beach – towards the desultory sea, which seemed to be in two minds as to whether it should be coming in, or going out.

  She moved slowly into the deeper water before finally jumping into the middle of a wave that seemed determined to welcome her into its midst, urging her to start to swim through it. As she dived into its middle, only to surface a few seconds later, she knew that she had never been happier, or more at ease, so that as she swam it seemed to her that she was becoming the water, and the water in its turn seemed to be becoming her. It was as if the water, not to mention the blue sky above her, understood her need to be up earlier than everyone, to be alone, to be a minute part of the vast sea, of no more importance than one of the tiny grains of sand or the pebbles over which it was passing. She was, in short, satisfyingly unimportant, and by the same token, able to be as irresponsible as the self-willed sea.

  She started to play about in the water, diving down to retrieve a stone, before swimming off once again towards the always distant horizon. As she swam she allowed herself to imagine that she was a child once more, heading out into the unknown, in the distance a gloriously uncertain future only vaguely discernible as a jumble of sparkling colours.

  ‘I thought I saw you!’

  The voice came towards her as she waded ashore and picked up her towel from a nearby sea break whose green surface was so thickly draped with seaweed that its texture fleetingly reminded her of some old fabric. On hearing the voice Partita looked up, puzzled, shading her eyes from the sun.

  ‘I thought it was you,’ the voice continued. ‘And just when I thought I was going to be the first to take a dip before breakfast. Instead of which I find a water imp, leaping in and out of the waves, doubtless up long ago.’

  Partita took off her bathing hat and shook out her long blonde hair. Too late she realised that the simple gesture might be deemed flirtatious, but she felt so well and happy, she could not have cared less. She felt beautiful, and was well aware that because of that she probably looked beautiful, and that was all to the good, considering who it was that was standing in front of her.

  ‘Good morning, Peregrine,’ she said, taking care to adopt a careless tone.

  ‘Good morning, Partita.’

  ‘So … so you were saying that you were watching me from your balcony? I might have known that no moment at Waterside is ever truly private.’ She sighed with sudden and genuine regret.

  ‘Had I known that you needed privacy I should have turned away,’ Peregrine told her, feeling vaguely guilty. ‘But as it was – well, as it was, it seemed to me that the sight of you swimming was one of the most delightful that one could wish for.’

  Partita nodded, looking momentarily bored, which amused Peregrine. It was as if, because they both knew that she was beautiful, she found the subject of being delightful to watch a trifle tedious.

  ‘You are just going in,’ she stated, looking Peregrine in his one-piece costume up and down with feigned detachment.

  ‘This very minute,’ he agreed.

  ‘The water is clear and cold, and beautifully agreeable.’

  ‘Come in with me?’

  Partita considered this for a second.

  ‘Oh, very well,’ she replied, making sure that he knew that she was doing him a favour.

  She turned and went back down the beach, flinging her hat onto the ground as she did so, still shaking out her thick head of hair. Peregrine followed more slowly, since he was barefoot.

  Once in the water he raced towards the horizon, jumping and splashing, until he was far further out to sea than she was, or had been. Seeing this, Partita realised that he was throwing down a gauntlet to her; he was saying, ‘I expect you do not dare to follow me,’ so of course she had to follow him, swimming strongly against the tide, which seemed suddenly to have strengthened its purpose, and was now pulling towards the beach huts, and the walls at the top of the shingle, which edged the gardens of Waterside House.

  ‘I can’t swim any further.’

  Her voice, even to herself, sounded genuinely panic-struck. In a few seconds Peregrine had swum back to her and, turning her, he pulled her, he doing backstroke, she happily helpless in his arms, until they reached the shallow water once more, and she stood up, laughing.

  ‘I always used to do that to Al,’ she told an indignant Peregrine. She put on a mock helpless voice. ‘I can’t swim any more!’

  Peregrine leaned forward and gently shook her, laughing as he did so.

  ‘You are a very naughty little girl,’ he said. ‘You deserve to be stood in the corner.’

  Partita became purposefully helpless in his grasp, but he did not seem to notice this, only went on laughing as she allowed herself to be shaken.

  ‘Careful, I am not a cocktail.’

  Peregrine stopped shaking her and let go, but he was still slightly breathless, and laughing at her deception, which was probably why he did not seem to notice Partita closing her eyes and raising her face to his, so he only turned away, reaching for his beach towel and burying his face in it.

  ‘You have always been an imp – do you know that, Partita? Always. Ever since you were a little girl, you have been an imp.’ He rough-dried his hair and then, pulling off the towel, he smiled around him at the still quiet scene. ‘Aren’t we lucky, to have today, in a
place like this, and everyone here such friends? We must be the luckiest people in the world.’

  ‘All the pirates are here now,’ Partita agreed, walking up ahead of him as if he had ignored her closed eyes and raised face, while all the time comforting herself that he had perhaps not ignored her so much as not noticed. Peregrine, after all, was hers. She had been in love with him ever since she could remember. He was hers.

  No one else can have him, she repeated silently to herself.

  ‘Shall we all be meeting on the beach later?’

  He stopped outside the men’s bathing hut and looked down at Partita with his usual brotherly affection.

  ‘I expect we shall.’

  Partita shook out her still damp hair, but, despite this really rather abandoned movement there was nevertheless a set expression to her eyes. She was not so young, nor so stupid, that she had not noticed that Perry still had that irksome, detached brotherly look on his face. Well, she would pay him back for that, if it was the last thing that she did.

  ‘Is everyone – I mean, are both your sisters here?’

  ‘You know they are, Perry,’ Partita told him in a bored voice, pulling open the beach-hut door.

  ‘And Miss Milborne, and Miss Rolfe?’

  ‘Of course. Al would not forgive us if we did not invite those two, would he? Especially Kitty, with whom Al is madly and passionately in love, and whom I think is madly passionately in love with him.’

  She did not know why she had said that, except she did. She had said that because she did not want Peregrine to love either Elizabeth or Kitty, and because she knew that he had never loved her sisters so she had not bothered to include them.

  She also said it because she wanted Kitty to marry her brother Almeric. As she saw the expression on Peregrine’s face Partita could not help feeling satisfied that her inference had hit home, but she also saw that it had made him unhappy, because he turned away from her quite suddenly, and went into the men’s bathing hut, saying nothing more.

  Partita stared at the closed door, realising that her victory was not really a victory at all, because if Perry felt nothing for Kitty why would he have turned and left without a word? Why would he not have stayed to enjoy their usual banter together? Because – it dawned on her quite quickly – because he did not want Kitty to be in love with Al.