Past Love (Part Four of The People of this Parish Saga)

by Nicola Thorne

  Massie fled from the room and, without changing her shoes or grabbing a cardigan, she ran all the way up to Pelham’s Oak to get one of the servants to summon the doctor.

  Finally the flow ceased and Nelly, gasping, lay back on the bed, quite unable to speak. Trying to control his panic Carson stroked her brow and when she had recovered a little called Massie who came in, changed her bed, washed her and put a clean nightdress on her while Carson stood gazing out of the window, anxious for sight of the doctor.

  When at last he arrived, Carson left him alone with Nelly. He slumped morosely in a chair in the sitting-room while Massie made herself as busy as she could in the kitchen, scarcely able to contain her tears.

  Finally Doctor Hardy appeared, shaking his head. He was the latest in a line of doctors from the same family who had looked after the Woodvilles and the parishioners of Wenham for generations. People liked him and trusted him, and he asked no questions. He had looked after Nelly without asking Carson who she was and how she came to be here, even though he had delivered all Carson’s children and knew Connie well. Carson respected him for this.

  “How long has she got, Philip?” he asked of the doctor who was his contemporary.

  “Days,” Philip Hardy murmured. ‘Hours maybe.”

  “Is there nothing more you can do?”

  “I’ve left some medicine by the side of the bed. I’ve given her a sedative.” He pressed Carson’s arm as he was shown to the door. “You should notify the undertaker, Carson,” he whispered on the doorstep. “Her heart is very weak. It will be any moment now.”

  When Carson returned to the room Nelly lay asleep. She looked so beautiful with her black hair loose on the pillow. She appeared better than he’d seen her for some time, pink cheeks, lips glowing. But it was the fever that was killing her that, paradoxically, made her look well.

  He sat by her side all afternoon and then, just as the sun was going down, she opened her eyes.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” she said in a clear, strong voice.

  “What, my beloved?” he whispered.

  “The sunset.”

  “Beautiful,” he replied, looking at her, not out of the window.

  “Don’t sound so sad, darling.” She looked tenderly at him. “I feel much better. That medicine the doctor gave me has done me good. Maybe I have a few more weeks, months even. Oh, Carson,” she put her arm around his shoulder, “wouldn’t it be wonderful if ...”

  “You are going to get better,” he insisted. “We will have a future. We shall tell Alexander we are his parents.”

  Suddenly Nelly’s mood changed again, one of the symptoms of her illness.

  “I know it’s a pipe-dream, darling,” she said sadly, “and it’s not fair to your family. You have three young children. You will have to make your peace with Connie after I’ve gone.”

  “Don’t say that word again,” he commanded sternly. “I forbid it. But, Nelly, I must ask you one thing. I must be sure.” He gazed earnestly into her eyes. “Alexander is my son, is he not? There is no question of error? You see, I feel I must know.”

  “He, is your son.” Her voice suddenly sounded weaker. “After you I never went with another man. Ask Massie. I loved you, Carson, and always have.”

  As if even such a brief speech had exhausted her she sank once more on to the pillow and closed her eyes.

  Nelly was never to open them again. Towards midnight, still clasped in Carson’s arms, her breathing became stertorous. There was a brief struggle, although she appeared not to wake, and then she sank into a lasting sleep, embarking on that final journey, the one from which no traveller returns.

  Carson remained with her until morning, when the birds began to sing again. Then he woke Massie.

  ***

  “Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth, as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.

  “In the midst of life we are in death ...”

  Slowly the coffin was lowered into the grave as the Reverend Turner intoned the words of committal from the burial service. It was watched by only five people: Carson, Lally, Sophie, Eliza and a very tearful Massie, all in deep mourning. It was a day full of sunshine. Spring had arrived in all its glory and the branches of the trees, heavy with buds, seemed to sway in a gentle benediction of farewell as Nelly’s coffin sank out of sight.

  Hubert took a handful of earth proffered by the verger and cast it upon the coffin. Then he stood back as the verger offered the same to Carson, who took it in his hand and, for a moment, stood gazing down upon the coffin inscribed with the simple words: ‘Nelly Allen, Born 1889, Died 1931.’

  “For as much as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take our dear sister here departed, we therefore commit her body to the ground: earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life ...”

  The four women also each, in turn, cast earth upon the coffin and then stood back as Hubert came to the end of the service.

  Carson, taking a rose from the flowers placed near the grave which had covered her bier on the journey from Pelham’s Oak, tossed it upon the coffin. He stood, head bowed, grave-faced, for several seconds until, composed, he moved back. He then took Massie by the hand, leading the small procession away from the grave where, after a respectful pause, the grave-diggers began filling it in.

  At the church door Carson shook hands with Hubert and thanked him for such a dignified service. Then he turned to Eliza, Lally and Sophie and kissed them each on the cheek.

  “Carson, please come back to the Rectory for a drink,” Sophie said, “and bring Massie too.”

  Carson shook his head.

  “Thank you, Sophie, but we want to get back. We have so much to do. Thank you all for coming.”

  Massie gave an awkward little bob and, still clutching Carson tightly by the hand, returned with him to his car parked outside the churchyard.

  The three women stood watching the car drive away then, with one accord, they entered the Rectory where Polly had coffee waiting in the drawing room.

  “There seems so little to say.” Eliza wearily sank on to a chair near the fire. “Except that it’s very sad.”

  “Forty-two,” Lally murmured. “No age to go.”

  “Carson was very good to her,” Eliza went on. “He made her last months very peaceful.”

  “Yes, but at what cost?” Sophie indicated to Polly, who was loitering in the hope of picking up a smattering of gossip, that she should go and shut the door, and handed Eliza her cup.

  “You mean Connie?” Eliza asked, then, glad of the drink, sipped it gratefully.

  “Who exactly was Nelly Allen?” Sophie asked, taking a seat by the window. “You must know.” She looked at the two women, who exchanged glances.

  “We do know, but I don’t know that we’re at liberty to tell you.”

  “I’m sure Carson wouldn’t mind, knowing how discreet Sophie will be.” Lally was standing in front of the fire warming her hands. “We have kept the secret and,” she glanced severely at Sophie, “so must you.”

  “Of course.”

  Eliza, despite the fire, still felt cold and her fingers tightly clasped her cup. Then, slowly and carefully, choosing her words, once again she related the sad sad tale of Carson, Nelly and the baby, Alexander.

  When she had finished the profound silence that followed was finally broken by Sophie.

  “No wonder Connie went away. I can hardly believe such a story.”

  “Carson was always a romantic,” Eliza murmured. “Unfortunately I think in this instance sentiment got the better of common sense. He could have had Nelly looked after without hurting Connie so much. Naturally she resented this woman from his past, and the attention he paid her, however sick she was. I hope that, now Nelly is dead and Carson has done his duty, he will try and make some attempt to repair his marriage.”

  “
And Alexander,” Sophie ventured, “does he know?”

  Lally shook her head. “We did discuss it, but thought it better not to tell him. We felt it might ruin his life, make him very unhappy. Nelly agreed to this. She only wanted to know he was well when she was dying and, if possible, to see him. That’s why she contacted Carson or, rather, her little friend, Massie, wrote on her behalf.

  “I imagine she thought that it was unfair, after all this time, to spring on him the truth about his birth. It is also possible that she too was afraid of a meeting with the son she, after all, abandoned. Maybe she felt guilty about it. She did see Alexander when he was riding one day with Carson close to Ryder’s cottage. It was done deliberately and she and Alexander waved at each other.” Lally paused on the brink of tears. “Carson said it was a very touching moment, and later Nelly told him she was content. As far as we know she died happy in knowing what a fine young man he was, how well he had been cared for and what prospects he had. I suppose we did the right thing.”

  Lally looked anxiously across at Eliza, who nodded her support. “I hope so. We shall never know.”

  “Has he been told that Carson is his father?”

  Eliza shook her head, her brow furrowed. “What do you think, Sophie? Do you think we did the right thing?”

  Sophie gazed for a long time out of the window. She was daily reminded by the sight of the boathouse of her folly, her attempted suicide. It might have been her now lying in the churchyard. How wanton of her to have tried to take her life when that poor woman they had just laid to rest had died prematurely. A woman who had so much to live for, and who had wanted to live. She felt ashamed.

  She looked at her friends with a wan smile. “Who am I to judge?” she said with a deep sigh.

  Connie sat back in her deckchair, hands folded in her lap, her eyes on the three children playing in the sand in front of her, carefully watched also by their nursemaid. The waves rolled in from the Adriatic and, although it was not yet warm enough to swim, it was pleasant to play on the beach in front of the villa she had rented on the Venetian Lido for the summer when it would be far too hot for the children in the city.

  Next to her, Paolo Colomb-Paravincini sat with his straw hat pulled over his eyes, dozing. Connie looked at her watch. Soon it would be time to go in for lunch.

  Very soon it too would be time to make up her mind about something more serious: Paolo, a valued friend who she had known for many years, wanted to marry her.

  He had courted her during the war and after when she lived in Venice, and she had been on the verge of accepting his proposal when she met Carson again.

  Did she wish now that she had married Paolo? She flung back her head and closed her eyes.

  Her mind went back over the years that, at one time, had seemed so full of hope.

  There had been much love, yet there had also been heartache.

  Carson had proposed to her when she was young and vulnerable and had gone back on his word. A vulnerable, sensitive child, she had felt unloved and unwanted, cruelly rejected by a man she had adored, and had nearly suffered a complete mental breakdown. Miss Fairchild had taken her away and they had settled in Italy.

  Introduced to her by friends, Paolo had helped to restore her confidence in herself. Indeed he had given her that confidence. He was an urbane, distinguished aristocrat, a man of the world, cultured, musical, the possessor of one of the finest palazzi in Venice, with a long family tradition.

  He was also wealthy, but wealth didn’t worry her because she was wealthy too.

  The downside was that Paolo was her senior by seventeen years. He didn’t look it and he didn’t act it, but he was.

  On the other hand Carson was exactly her own age. He was attractive and, moreover, he was a Woodville, a family revered in the small town where she came from. To be Contessa Colomb-Paravacini, whose family had contained two cardinals, several bishops, not a few celebrated warriors and many distinguished men of letters, was quite something. But to a girl born in Wenham, to be Lady Woodville had to it a cachet that any right-minded young woman would covet.

  Besides, and more important, she loved the man.

  They had had many happy years, but when she learned about Nelly all the stories about Carson’s past surfaced to trouble and unsettle her.

  In his youth he had had a terrible reputation with women. Farmers had to lock up their daughters. Sir Guy was threatened by angry fathers. Carson’s wilful behaviour was supposed to have led to the premature death of his mother.

  And then, like some ghost from the past, Nelly appeared, an uneducated woman who had spent her life in domestic service; a woman who had borne him a child.

  Carson had called Connie a snob, but she wasn’t a snob. It wasn’t Nelly’s background that mattered, but the child, Alexander. They all knew and loved him, and Carson was his father, if Nelly was to be believed and Connie thought she probably was. Carson believed it anyway, and Carson still seemed to be in love with Nelly. For what greater, more potent, more nostalgic love was there than past love?

  No, despite her wealth and her title, all the insecurity of Connie’s former life, coupled with an intense jealousy of Nelly, had come home to roost. It was too much to bear. She snapped and, gathering up the children and their nursemaid, she took a train for London and then the boat train to Venice. And when she arrived in Venice she felt strangely at home, at peace, as if she were on the brink of a new life.

  Her reverie was suddenly interrupted.

  “Dearest?” The man beside her reached for her hand. “Yes?”

  “What are you thinking of?”

  She looked at him and smiled.

  “What do you think I ever think of?”

  “Carson?”

  “And other things. The past. Wenham. Pelham’s Oak.”

  “And the future?”

  “I think of that too.”

  “The children are very happy here.”

  They were.

  Toby was six and Leonard five. Netta four. The boys missed their father most but, strangely, no one missed him very much. Venice was exciting with boats and new people, land trips across the lagoon. The latest thing was a house overlooking the sea and lots of new friends to play with on the beach. No time to miss Daddy.

  But how long would Carson put up with this situation? Already there were angry, reproachful letters demanding answers. She had been away nine months, when she had told him originally that she was going for a visit. He told her Nelly was dead, but he didn’t say that he was sorry or that he wanted her back. He did however want his children. In the course of time Toby would inherit Pelham’s Oak and the title. Was it fair to bring him up in Italy, far from home?

  Paolo was incredibly good to them and with them, but they regarded him rather as a doting grandparent than a father. He had his own two children, now both married and living in Rome, and was a real grandfather to their children.

  “Are you going to make up your mind, Constance?” Paolo urged gently. “I think it is important for the children to be settled. Or ...” he paused, “do you still love Carson?”

  But that was a question that, at the moment, she couldn’t answer.

  Eliza threw back the shutters at Riversmead which had been closed since the winter when Sarah Jane and Solomon Palmer had decided to go and live in Brighton. The hostility of her children rather than the opprobrium of the town had helped to make up their minds. All of them were outraged at Solomon’s presence in the house when they were visiting, and an ultimatum was delivered.

  Solomon and Sarah Jane shook the dust of Wenham from their feet and went off, putting Riversmead on the market.

  “What do you think?” Eliza looked at Carson who was thoughtfully wandering around the sitting-room.

  “You really want to live here again, Aunt Eliza?”

  “Why not?” She removed the dust cover from one of the chairs and sat down. “I had many happy years here. If I don’t live here it will go out of the family. I’ve taken an option. M
y children were born here. It was a very happy place for me and could be again.”

  “In that case I think you should buy it.” Carson also threw back the sheet covering one of the chairs and sat down, stretching his long legs in front of him. “I should do it all up, completely. Throw out the furniture, get new carpets and curtains. Make it your own once more.”

  “And you, Carson, what will you do?” Eliza looked anxiously at her nephew, always a favourite, a very great favourite. She loved him like a son. “Pelham’s Oak is a very big place for a man on his own.”

  “Oh, I’ve lived there by myself before.” His tone was carefully guarded so as not to betray his real feelings; he was that sort of person.

  “What about the children, Carson? Is it really all over between you and Connie? Sometimes I can hardly believe it has happened. I grieve about it all the time.”

  “It was her decision,” he said defensively. “She left. She took my children and she left. I hardly had a day’s notice. How do you think I feel about that? I feel very bitter, as a matter of fact.”

  “But Nelly ...”

  “Nelly belonged to the past. I was just paying my dues. She came here, a dying woman, and Connie was jealous of her.” Carson rose and started to pace agitatedly around the room. “I can’t understand it. Imagine being jealous of someone who was dying? I found it incredibly difficult to understand and I find it hard to forgive even now. You would have expected Connie to want to make Nelly’s last days comfortable, not to be jealous.”

  “Perhaps she felt insecure?” Eliza suggested.

  “Insecure!” Carson banged the table he happened to be passing. “How could she be insecure? What did she have to feel insecure about?

  “Alexander. You had a son by Nelly. It must have been a shock.”

  “And I had three children by her! No, Aunt Eliza, my feeling is that when I needed, really needed, the support of my wife at a very difficult time in my life she failed me, and that has altered very much the way I feel about her.”

  “But what about the children? Supposing she stays in Italy and they grow up there?”