The older woman turned back to the window. Her view, of the buildings of London, of the bustle of city life, gave her the greatest satisfaction, because buildings meant people, and people, she knew, would always need to be mended in the best possible way. She had been brought up in the country, but it was to London that she had always aspired, knowing that her deep desire to heal could only be satisfied by a city, or – and God forbid that it should happen – a war. She had needed to found a nursing home because she had a vocation to heal, and because she herself had needed to be healed.
By touching sick and wounded people, finding people who needed her, in turn she had found her self-respect. That respect which had been removed from her by her parents in childhood had, bit by bit, returned to her once she had set up her nursing home. She had become a person, a figure, someone to whom others could turn. She hoped very much that this was happening to her poor dead friend’s daughter, that she too would find her self-confidence replaced by something more important than family pride – fulfilment.
Outside the door Leonie drew herself up, smoothing her hands down the sides of her crisply starched apron. She had been through a horrible ordeal, and it was useless to pretend otherwise. She had known, somehow, as Lady Angela spoke to her, that the principal must be aware of Leonie’s origins, and that she understood that she was neither fish, nor flesh, nor good red herring. She was one person sometimes, and another at others. She did not now belong in Eastgate Street, but she was only, when all was said and done, a lodger, however welcome, in Mrs Dodd’s house. Realistically she knew that no-one from a distinguished family could ever marry her, yet she could not see herself marrying a man from the same background as herself. So, truly, her vocation was everything to her. It had to be. She resolved to think of nothing else from now on. And although her zeal to heal could not now include Lord Freddie Melsetter, nevertheless she knew that she was needed, and that, when all was said and done, was as much as anyone should ask of life.
Mercy stared out of the window at the black of the night. Sometimes it seemed to her that the darkening sky outside was reaching forward and enveloping her, and never more than at that moment. She did not want to think about John and why he was not coming back to her, and so she thought about her brothers, and how jolly they were, and how much she longed to see them.
Their childhood had been a happy one, despite the loss of their mother. Perhaps it was due to the kindness of their nurse, who was not the normal run of strict nanny, and was married to a husband who worked on the Cordel estate. Or perhaps it was just because if you give children a pony, or a bicycle, a hoop or a bat and ball, and fields in which to run about, and streams in which they can jump, they are as happy as the livelong day.
And of course she had always felt safe at Cordel Court. Never mind that her father had been taciturn and shy of his children, at no time while she was growing up did she feel that unhappiness was just around the corner, that because her mother had died nothing was ever going to go right for them. On the contrary, if, as sometimes happened, she stayed out too late riding and saw the lamps of Cordel far off in the distance, she would ride towards them as fast as she could, fearing all the time that perhaps they might go out, and she would never find home again. Now, all alone as she was with only her little dog Twissy and the servants, she was coming to feel the same about Brindells. Whatever happened, it was there for her now, it was home.
Not wanting to give in to her feelings, she stood up and decided to start to rearrange her bedroom and dressing room. It would take her mind off her loneliness, and tomorrow she would drive herself and Twissy into Ruddwick and call on dear Gabriel Chantry to ask him to come and advise her about the hangings in one of the bedrooms. They were falling into ribbons and she did not know whether it was worthwhile to restore them or to have them copied, but what she did know was that if she folded them up and took them in to Gabriel Chantry he would tell her straight away.
Besides, nowadays she rather longed to see him again. He was so cheerful, such a delight to be with. She had missed him, and since the house had been all but finished there had been no excuse of which she could think to call him back, until now.
There was a great deal of commotion in the high street as Mercy drove the fly into Ruddwick the following day, with Twissy, not Josephine, sitting up behind her. She pulled the pony to a halt and watched with some amusement as two chauffeurs, irate to the point of comedy, shouted and pointed to their privately owned cars while the owners sat, unmoving, in the front passenger seats.
‘How much better,’ she said smugly to Twissy, ‘to bump, bump, bump into Ruddwick with the pony.’
When the shop bell rang out and Gabriel Chantry appeared out of the darkness of the back room, he looked astonished to see Mercy. Since the house had been finished they had not so much as caught sight of each other in the village.
‘Mrs Brancaster, how perfectly delightful to see you. Come in, come in.’
He escorted her into his shop, and at the same time twisted the card on the door to read ‘Shut’.
‘Mr Chantry––’
Mercy stopped, and stared. The shop had been transformed. Whereas before she had to creep about poking and peering between any amount of chaos, now everything was in its place, and there was a place for everything.
Gabriel looked suddenly concerned. ‘There is nothing wrong, is there? I mean, your husband’s bed has not collapsed, or the ceiling in the kitchen fallen in? You seem to have arrived in such a flurry.’
‘No, bless you, heavens, no. Why would you imagine such a thing?’
‘Probably because you have not brought your maid with you, I think.’
‘Josephine, my maid, is sick with a feverish cold. You haven’t met Twissy, have you, Mr Chantry? She is acting as my maid today.’
‘Good morning, Twissy.’ Gabriel Chantry patted the dog courteously, but straightening up once more he looked at Mercy anxiously.
‘I do not wish to be presumptuous, Mrs Brancaster, but it appears to be about to snow. The sky is quite blue and heavy in its greyness out there. I am sure it is a snow sky. And that being so, was it quite wise to drive yourself in – in this way?’
He did not say in your condition, but they both knew perfectly well what he meant.
‘Oh, I know, probably not – why, Mr Chantry, you clever person, what a perfectly delightful bed!’ Mercy exclaimed, trying to change the subject.
‘Don’t you think I should drive you back, before the road becomes impassable? If Mr Brancaster knew, what would he say? I mean, he would be quite upset, I should have thought.’
‘Mr Brancaster is in Leicestershire. Or is it Yorkshire, or has he gone to Somerset, to Blackmore Vale country? At any rate he is hunting foxes, while I am hunting a beautiful oak bed, which you just happen to have here in your shop.’ She stopped, smiling at him, her head on one side. ‘As a matter of fact, Mrs Blessington told me of your bed, and to tell you the truth, since I have seen no-one but Mrs Blessington for months and months, or so it seems – actually it’s weeks and weeks – I was determined to bring myself here, willy, nilly. So here I am.’
‘Nevertheless, I will drive you home. If I may say so, it seems a little foolhardy to have come all this way in the fly.’
Mercy turned away. She could not confide in him, much as she would like to. She could not tell him how lonely she felt, and how much she wished that she had not married in such a hurry, for she suspected now, as she had thought at the time, that she had been far more in love with John Brancaster than he had been with her. For if not, surely he would not have left her to return to Leicestershire, or Yorkshire, or wherever it was? And if he did love her why was it he wrote so seldom, always ‘in haste’ and then only a scrawl between convivial dinners and entertainments, not to mention the hunting.
‘I must confess, I just had to get out, I just had to do something. It is always better to do something, is it not, Mr Chantry, than to do nothing, wouldn’t you say?’
Sh
e spoke with such simple charm, and for all her added girth had such a forlorn dignity about her, that Gabriel Chantry found himself suddenly moved. If she was his wife and in such a state, he could not prevent himself from thinking, he could not leave her to go hunting.
‘You are all alone, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, quite alone, except for the servants, and I am afraid, since I have inherited all of them from my husband’s bachelor days, they do not like me very much. Servants much prefer to work for bachelors than for a married woman. It is just a fact.’
Gabriel Chantry’s maid of all work, Mrs Dewsbury, appeared from the back room of the shop at that moment. Gabriel at once waved a warning hand at Mercy, who, equally promptly, sat down on the antique bed behind her and started to bounce up and down on the mattress.
‘This is surprisingly comfortable for a bed which dates back to Tudor times, or so you are about to convince me, are you not, Mr Chantry?’ she said, laughing. ‘It is most bounciful and beautiful, and – and – and – oh, oh, dear!’
Leonie knew. She did not know how, she just knew that Lord Freddie was no longer on this earth. The feeling came upon her perhaps because it seemed she had suddenly awoken in the middle of the night, so sharply that it had been as if she had been shaken awake by someone who had come into her room and put a hand on her shoulder.
She lit the candle beside her bed, sat up, and stared around her. It was still the same room, and she was still the same person who had gone to bed that night in her thick cotton nightdress and, with the aid of her Bible, read herself to sleep.
But now it was quite different. She was sharply awake, and the light from her bedside candle flickered around the room, creating pockets of darkness where she was sure someone was standing watching her, silent and unmoving.
She trod across the carpet and turned on the newly installed electric light by the door. There was the heavy old mahogany chest, and there the red upholstered easy chair, and there the embroidered prie-dieu. Opposite her on the wall above the chest was a print of one of the Queen’s favourite pictures, a stag at bay, and on the chest a pair of Staffordshire pottery figures of Chelsea pensioners.
In other words, everything was in its place, just as it had been when she had finally fallen asleep.
‘Who is it?’
She felt absurd asking a room with no-one else in it such a question, for although she believed in an afterlife in heaven if you were good, and in hell if you were bad, she had no belief in spirits or ghosts. Up until now reality had been quite enough for Leonie Lynch.
And so it was with a great many misgivings that she now gave in to this urgent feeling that there was someone watching her, someone whom she had known who had come to see her in spirit, for some reason that she could not guess.
‘Who are you, and why have you come here?’
She knew, and her blood became chilled at the realization, that there was someone there. Someone whom she knew. She crossed herself, feeling a deep unease because the person, whoever it was, was not happy. They were disconsolate, their soul unrested. They were waiting for someone or something. She now knew the meaning of the phrase ‘frozen to the spot’. She could not have moved even had she wished to, not if there had been someone screaming for help outside her door. She could move neither forwards to where she felt the presence, nor backwards to where she might free herself from the feeling.
My life has been spent in drunkenness and fornication. You must redeem me with your prayers, free me from my wretchedness, or I will be condemned to roam the spirit world with no resting place.
There followed a terrible sound, a sound that Leonie had heard described as a witness to the torment of the human spirit, a groaning of such a sonorous nature that it could have no earthly connection, and yet a sound which she had heard sometimes in the night when she, in company with some other nurse, lantern in hand, would hurry to check on a patient thinking to find them in their death agony, only to find them sleeping.
I will pray for you, she silently told the tortured presence.
Seconds later Leonie again felt a hand on her shoulder, but it was no more than Mrs Dodd shushing her, saying, ‘That was a terrible dream you were having, dear. Such groaning as you were making. I came in thinking you were ill, really I did.’
To Leonie it was as if her room was heaven, after the hell of her dream, despite the dream being so real. But now it was truly real and there were the curtains being drawn, heavenly curtains, and there from outside the large old window came the sounds of the first carriages of morning going past below in the street. And there was a London sparrow on the sill outside her window and Mrs Dodd wearing an old-fashioned deep maroon top with the wide balloon sleeves of some ten years before, and a skirt with velvet bandings.
Leonie jumped out of bed. She was so pleased to see daylight that she found it hard not to point to the light beyond the window, as if she had been blind and could now see again.
And it was hard not to hug Mrs Dodd, and dance around the very room where the spirit had silently begged for her prayers. And hard not to run round to the nursing home, which was so near to Mrs Dodd’s house, and jump up the steps, and find that Lord Freddie was just as he had been the day before. Not dead as she had dreamed, but terribly, beautifully alive.
‘Oh, oh, yes, yes. It is a most handsome bed. Oh, yes.’
Gabriel held out his hand to Mercy, for what with one thing and another she was finding it a little bit of a struggle to get to her feet.
‘And I will buy this handsome bed from you, Mr Chantry.’
‘Thank you!’
Mercy felt literally warmed by just the feel of Gabriel’s hand, just the rich sound of his voice, which was, she realized suddenly, a most mellow voice, rounded and full of the same warmth as his hand. He had brown eyes which were large and kind, and dark brown hair which seemed to match his beard most exactly. He had always been, she realized, a good friend to her, such a good friend, such fun, that she suddenly found herself longing to stay with him in the shop for ever.
‘What else have you here, Mr Chantry? Oh, look––’
‘You must go home, Mrs Brancaster,’ Gabriel interrupted, perhaps already sensing her real reluctance to leave the cosy ambiance of the shop. ‘You should never have come, all alone without your maid, with only your dog. Look, outside, it is just as I said. It is beginning to snow.’
He hurried to the back of his shop to put on his caped coat and hurried back again, carrying his hat.
‘I will drive you home in the gig. Really, you should not be here, you should be at home. The trap might overturn, or you might become snowbound on the road. The consequences could be terrible.’
Mercy, feeling extraordinarily light of head and heart at the very idea that Gabriel Chantry was going to be coming back to Brindells with her, that she would not be all alone for yet another day with just the servants, went ahead of him to the pony and trap, Twissy following at her heels. Taking Gabriel’s proffered hand she climbed up into the fly.
‘If you insist on driving me, you will stay for luncheon, of course.’
But the wind had already got up and his head was bent, one hand holding on to his hat and his coat collar well up around his ears, and he did not hear.
The drive back to Brindells was conducted in double quick time, perhaps because the wind twisting and turning about them as the trap bowled along drove the scurrying snow into the pony’s ears and behind his tail, with the result that his spanking trot became faster and faster until even Gabriel, who was a good driver, feared he would lose control.
Mrs Tomkins, the housekeeper, looked astonished when she opened the door to Mrs Brancaster returning to the house without her maid, only her dog and Mr Chantry following along behind.
‘Mr Chantry is staying for luncheon.’
‘Yes, madam.’
Mercy watched her walking off in the direction of the kitchens with a feeling of resignation as she realized how deep was the old housekeeper’s disapproval o
f the new chatelaine of Brindells. Indeed, even after so many months it sometimes seemed to Mercy that she would never be able to settle the servants around her the way her stepmother had somehow managed to do at Cordel Court.
When all was said and done, they were still John’s servants, not hers. Clarice had been long ago reclaimed by her stepmother, and Josephine, who had taken up the position in her stead, seemed unaffectionate and wary, as country girls often did.
Mercy shrugged her shoulders and rang for one of the footmen to replenish the fire in the drawing room, which was looking sadly low, and at the same time smiled ruefully at Gabriel Chantry.
‘They know they should do all this, that they should keep the fire banked up, but, as you see, they still do not listen to me. I often think that servants despise women, and do not really like to take orders from anyone but men. Still, my husband is due back soon, so he will doubtless have them scurrying about like the mice in the eaves.’
Yet as she chatted on Mercy realized that, like the servants, Gabriel Chantry was not really listening to her. He was looking around the drawing room, in whose transformation he had such a hand, making sure that all was looking as it should be.
Indeed, as Mercy watched him, it seemed to her that he was filled with the kind of quiet pride that an artist might feel when seeing his picture hung in the right place. For herself, as she watched him moving about the room, his height and warm presence lending immediate vibrancy to the place, she could almost imagine that he was the master of Brindells himself.
In London Leonie had discovered that her dream had, alas, been a premonition. She had breakfasted as usual with Mrs Dodd – porridge, cream, honey, bacon, kidneys, mushrooms, kedgeree for Mrs Dodd, rolls and butter for both – and then walked briskly round to the nursing home as usual, only to find that Lord Freddie had indeed, despite all her dearest hopes and fervent prayers, died in the night.
The Love Knot Page 25
