Mrs Lynch had at last found her handkerchief and was wiping her eyes with it, and having removed her pinny was now standing in glorious array in her best skirt. Among all the numerous children at number fifty-three, that skirt had always been called Mother’s Sunday Skirt. Looking at it now, Leonie realized, brought back such memories, it was like bumping into an old friend. As a child she had always revered its embroidery, and even knew its history.
It had been given to Mrs Lynch by the grateful daughter of a woman whom Aisleen had nursed when she was dying. All the flowers and fruit on the border were raised and heavy, so that when she was little Leonie had found herself imagining that one day they might take it into their head to imitate real flowers and fruit and shed their petals or fall to the ground.
‘I brought you a fruit cake, Mother.’
‘A fruit cake. My, Ned. Look, a fruit cake.’
‘And Father, I brought you some tobacco.’
‘Tobacco, Ned. Look, tobacco.’
Ned took the tobacco. ‘Never tried that, but won’t stop me, will it, Mother?’
‘No, Ned. It won’t stop you.’
‘Silk for Mary.’
‘My, Ned, silk for Mary.’
‘Teacup and saucer for Susannah.’
‘My, Ned, teacup and saucer for Susannah.’
And on the gifts went until the small living room of Eastgate Street was beginning to resemble a shop of great quality with numerous fine wares.
Finally Ned, pulling happily on the new tobacco, asked, ‘Have you married and not told us, young Lee?’
She was always Lee to her foster father.
‘No, Father, I have not married, but I have had the best fortune. I was left – now don’t faint, Mother – a patient left me five hundred pounds. Imagine. A man who never saw me.’
Her foster parents stared at her, horrified, and there was a long and terrible silence following her happy announcement.
Finally Mrs Lynch said, ‘If you never knew him, dear, why would he leave you money like that?’
Leonie stared at the two faces looking at her so grimly, and gradually the penny dropped and she realized what they were thinking.
‘He never saw me because he was blinded, and paralysed, in a hunting accident,’ she told them gently. ‘You must not think wrong of him, or me. It seems that he was like that, apparently, a ne’er do well in his youth, but suddenly foolishly generous, if he took a shine to someone.’
‘Foolhardy, more like.’
Ned stood up and knocked the still smoking tobacco out of his pipe. There was a look to him now as if he no longer wanted to smoke tobacco that might have been bought with ill-gotten gains. The Lynches were churchgoing folk and proud of it. Now Ned rocked to and fro on the balls of his big feet, the collar line of his collarless shirt showing white against the deep tan of his neck, the shine on his best shoes catching the light that came through the small window.
‘Should our Lee have accepted this, Mother?’ he asked Mrs Lynch, finally. ‘Should she have accepted money from a man she hardly knew, would you say?’
Mrs Lynch’s eyes searched the floor as if she was convinced that she would find the words necessary to her sense of fair play and good judgement somewhere on its pristine surface.
‘I dare say,’ she said, eventually. ‘Leonie was left the money as a nurse, Ned dear. Same as when, if you remember, Mrs Zwyvoski gave me this skirt handed down through her family. Nurses are often left money and china and so on by grateful patients in nursing homes and hospitals and such like. Nurses are different now, Ned dear. People appreciate them now, love, not like when we were young and they were – well not considered very nice.’
‘Very well, Mother. If you say so.’
Satisfied, Ned began to top up his Sunday pipe once more. He would not want to smoke tobacco that was tainted by sin, but once he was assured it was ‘nursing money’ that had bought it he could not wait to draw on its rounded flavours once again.
Finally he beamed at his foster daughter.
‘If you’re so rich I dare say you could buy our house!’
Leonie jumped to her feet, at once abandoning any idea of buying herself a cottage in the country in some dim and distant future, for it came to her immediately that this was what she would do. She would buy her beloved foster parents their house in Eastgate Street. After all, once the house was theirs, there could be no more dread of bad times to come.
Never again would Mr Elliott, the rent man, come round banging on the door. Never again would Ned Lynch have to pawn his only suit, as he had done once when they were young, to buy them a Sunday joint. Leonie could pay them back for everything they had done for her, above all for the toughness they had given her, the ability to survive. With one single stroke of good fortune they would never again have to be afraid.
‘I will buy your house for you, Ned. It will be my way of thanking you for loving me and taking care of me. For seeing that I have landed on my feet, and have my feet under the table now. I can give you your own roof over your heads, for the rest of your lives. And never again will the poorhouse beckon. Not ever.’
Mrs Lynch promptly fainted into her husband’s arms. Of course it was only a pretend sort of faint, and they all pretended to sigh with relief as she ‘came round’ laughing and crying by turns.
As for Leonie, she thought this must be the happiest day of her life, or anyone else’s for that matter, and no exceptions; but, as it turned out, she was to be proved wrong.
Part Three
Crossing Paths
Twelve
The snow in Ruddwick’s main street had long ago melted, and John Brancaster was still away. Sensing Mercy’s loneliness and confusion, Gabriel Chantry had made it his business to continue to call in at Brindells on every conceivable occasion. As her decorator it was not difficult to find some excuse – a piece of material that needed matching, some embroidery work he had found that would be just what was wanted to go with the new crewel work curtains in the informal sitting room. It was easy for him to call at the house without causing suspicion.
This particular afternoon he had a chair to take back after rewebbing, and a pair of wall fittings to try in that same informal sitting room which, he had noted during past days, Mrs Brancaster had really rather made her own.
He was about to fetch his caped coat and wide-brimmed hat when the street door opened. Hearing the light-sounding tinkle of the Austrian cow bells that his new maid of all work had insisted on hanging on its back, he turned.
The young woman was wearing a ravishing blue coat, close fitting to her silhouette, a lace jabot at her throat, and a brilliantly tailored matching skirt with tightly laced buttoned boots. Through the thick veil of her motoring hat Gabriel could see that she had burnished red gold hair and a pair of the most mischievous sparkling eyes, so blue in colour that they outshone even the sapphire cloth of her coat.
Gabriel stared at her. She was the most extraordinarily lovely sight, particularly in Ruddwick of an afternoon, where normally all that could be viewed would be elderly folk taking their constitutionals or stout ladies emerging from the haberdasher’s with mysterious packages. As soon as the visitor addressed him, however, Gabriel realized that she could not be quite English. There was something about the way she spoke, quickly, almost nervously, as if she was anxious not to bore the listener, and at the same time aware that he must be amused, that told him she was just a little foreign.
‘I am so sorry to trouble you, but I have lost my way. My friend Miss Lynch and I are here to visit an acquaintance who lives close by, we think. A, er, Mrs Brancaster.’
She said ‘Mrs Brancaster’ as if it were some sort of pseudonym, or as if she might long for it to be such, just in order to make life more interesting and exciting.
‘Mrs Brancaster?’ Gabriel was astonished. ‘But I am about to visit Mrs John Brancaster at Brindells. It must be the same one?’
His visitor – for by the look she gave his oak furniture she was certainl
y not going to be a customer – opened those large violet blue eyes and looked as amazed as Gabriel himself.
‘But how fortuitous!’
‘I shall be taking my pony and trap. Will you wait until I am round the front and come after me, Mrs…?’
‘Mrs Lawrence Leveen.’
A slight hesitation before they shook hands, for Gabriel had heard of Lawrence Leveen. It was common knowledge, and often discussed in the papers, that King Edward liked to surround himself not just with racing men but with men of business like Leveen, shrewd men who knew how to manage his affairs to his – and their – greatest advantage.
Nothing could have been more revealing of the visitors’ different stations in life than their progress to Brindells, with Gabriel, head down, keeping his hat on with difficulty against the still cold spring wind, the pony clip-clopping its way through the narrow Sussex lanes, and Mrs Leveen and her friend in their sumptuous new chauffeur-driven motor car, followed by another in case the first broke down.
Mrs Tomkins, the housekeeper, was expecting Gabriel Chantry, but she was quite obviously not expecting Mrs Leveen and her friend. She coloured and then looked bad tempered as if, it occurred to Gabriel, he had brought these unwelcome visitors unannounced to Brindells principally to annoy her, and put out her tedious little afternoon routine.
‘Mrs Brancaster is in her sitting room. She is feeling a little better today.’
The housekeeper in her really rather stained gown nodded towards the small sitting room which Gabriel knew that Mercy liked to occupy, and sighed, but before she had finished sighing Mrs Leveen had taken stock of Mrs Tomkins and was lifting her motoring veil.
‘Mrs…mm?’
‘Tomkins, ma’am.’
‘Ah, Tomkins, yes. My husband had a Tomkins, a footman – alas, dismissed only last month, for all the usual reasons – gone to be a stoker. No relation I am sure. Mrs Tomkins. Should you not send for the footman, or the maid. The cold in this hall is too terrible, and so bad for Mrs Brancaster, if she should pass through here. And please do not let us stop you from announcing us to Mrs Brancaster. I know you will wish to do so.’
Gabriel’s eyes could not but register the amusement he was feeling at the sight of Mrs Tomkins being made to do her job. He knew all too well from Mrs Brancaster that the older woman made her life miserable, whenever and wherever possible, but it was impossible to dismiss her since she was employed by Mr Brancaster, and had been with him for over fifteen years.
As soon as they were announced Mercy sprang out of the chair in which she had been seated pretending to sew, and the expression on her face changed from funereal solemnity to something near to youthful gaiety.
‘My dear Miss Lynch! And Mrs Leveen! I have heard so much about you from Miss Lynch. And you live within driving distance! I now feel I have friends just around the corner, truly I do.’
Mercy might have felt twice the thing as soon as she saw her guests, but Leonie was horrified by the change in her former friend’s appearance. She thought that had she not already met her, she would not have even known her.
It did not seem possible that a young, vibrant girl had been reduced to such a pitiful state in such a short time – hardly more than a year, surely? Admittedly she had given birth only recently, but compared to Leonie and Mrs Leveen she looked as if she was about to expire, so pale and thin had she become, and so sad. That was the worst thing. The expression in her eyes was strangely defeated, as if she was lost in a place where she had never been before.
If this is what marriage and having a son and heir does to you, I shall never, ever marry.
As they all talked about nothing in particular the words kept stealing through Leonie’s mind. She had met Dorinda again some few months after her marriage to Lawrence Leveen. Since by marrying Dorinda had become once more respectable, the two young women had been able to renew their friendship. Following a gregarious tea together in London, Dorinda had invited Leonie down to Leveen’s country mansion – no-one could call it a house – while he himself was abroad on business for the King.
Leonie had been given a Friday-to-Monday off by Lady Angela, on account of the King’s having gone to Sandringham for a week, and she had travelled to Sussex by private coach to be confronted and indeed amazed by the grandeur of Dorinda’s country home.
It was a large and magnificent eighteenth-century house, which Dorinda’s Mr L had been able to stuff full of antiquities bought in from other less fortunate establishments. Indeed, it had been so filled with gates and columns, classical statues, marble fountains, and ancestral paintings from other sources, that Dorinda told Leonie that when she had first been shown around she had turned to Leveen and remarked, ‘You know, Mr L, this place is like nothing less than a pawnbroker’s palace where no-one’s come to claim anything back!’
Happily Mr L found this remark most amusing, and after that Mr and Mrs Lawrence Leveen, when alone at home, always jokingly referred to their country seat as Pawnbroker’s Palace.
The house was actually called Shepworth Place, and beautifully set in Sussex parkland with distant views of the sea, albeit quite liberally stuffed with ancestors who were not Leveens and furniture that had not been handed down from father to son.
‘Still, give Mr L his due,’ Dorinda told Leonie on their first evening together, when Leonie was finding it hard not to let her jaw drop at the sight of the gold plate at dinner, and the very idea of twenty indoor servants, ‘he did rescue Shepworth when it was falling into disrepair.’
They were on the second of their eight courses, and Leonie had only nodded, her overriding concern being not to hold up the procession of dishes being brought so painstakingly from miles away in the kitchens, so she had opted for listening and eating, rather than talking.
‘I mean it was really not of interest to anyone but Mr L, because it was so big, do you see?’ Dorinda continued. ‘And too much land, which no-one wants nowadays. And of course, no-one else could afford it, except perhaps the King!’
Dorinda’s large, sapphire blue eyes, so beautifully matched to her silk evening gown, had widened at this before she started to laugh.
It had been such a gay, light moment that Leonie thought she would always remember it, what with the footmen with their backs flat against the wall, and the candlelight playing on the gold of Dorinda’s hair.
‘I would call this place a bit of an albatross myself, but there – Mr L has to entertain the King. Mind you, every time I pass the lodge gates, I have to tell you, I find myself looking in and envying the inmates their cosy fires and being able to put a log on them without having to wait for some flunkey to do it for them. Such a bother sometimes, it seems to me, having to depend on so many for so little, but Mr L likes it, and nowadays I dare say he would not know how to light a fire himself, let alone find the log store, or the ice house, or indeed anything practical. Wealth does seem to have that effect, does it not? It makes men as helpless as babies.’
But all that was yesterday and now Leonie was at Brindells, trying to feel cheerful, despite the sad look to their young hostess, and despite Dorinda’s turning aside every now and then and asking, ‘What can be the matter with your poor friend Mrs Brancaster?’
Of course it did not take very long for the new Mrs Leveen to make it her business to find out.
‘May we see around the grounds, or would it be importunate to ask you such a favour, Mrs Brancaster?’
‘But of course. Let us go before the light fades.’
Even this most ordinary of remarks seemed to Leonie to be full of some kind of regret, as if Mercy was all too used to the light fading. And once outside she seemed fearful of the servants, always glancing round as they walked as if she thought they were being spied upon, which they well might be by the bad tempered housekeeper or one of the two large tweed-costumed footmen who seemed to be determined not to show their faces and had to be continually rung for to deal with the smoking fires, or to call one of the maids.
After only twe
nty-four hours with Dorinda, Leonie was only too aware of the difference between Shepworth and Brindells. The one so rich, so smoothly run, that it might be a remote fairytale palace, and the other so seemingly cosy, but full of recalcitrant servants and a hostess who looked as if one breath would blow her away.
‘I’ll go ahead and talk with Mrs Brancaster,’ Dorinda told Leonie, dropping her voice. ‘I think she needs my help. And seeing that we are practically neighbours I think it would be just as well if we furthered our acquaintance with each other.’
She moved quickly ahead of Leonie, leaving her with Mr Chantry.
At first there was a long pause, because although the gardens at Brindells were undoubtedly delightful, the spring colours at their best and many varieties of shrubs and trees in flower, Leonie, coming from Eastgate Street as she did, was as knowledgeable about gardens as she was about riding and horses. She could only murmur ‘Quite delightful’ until, at last, she finally had to confess her ignorance to Mr Chantry.
‘I am so glad that you have no knowledge of gardens, Miss Lynch,’ Gabriel told her, smiling broadly.
‘Why would you be glad, Mr Chantry?’
‘Because I live in a village, Miss Lynch, and no-one, ever, speaks to me of anything else! You see,’ he confided, dropping even further behind their hostess and Dorinda, ‘everyone in Ruddwick, and certainly everyone who comes to see me in the shop, is a gardener. So although I have no garden myself I have had to learn as much about gardening as if I had a large estate, or they would never have become the loyal customers they are!’
Leonie smiled. ‘What about Mrs Brancaster? I presume she is very knowledgeable?’
‘Mrs Brancaster,’ said Gabriel, with far too much reverence in his voice to be allowable, Leonie realized wryly, ‘is perfection in the garden. She has brought this place back to life in such a short space of time, she is to be congratulated.’
‘She has a young son, I believe?’ Leonie could not help remarking, as if to remind both of them that Mercy, besides being a wife, was also a mother.
The Love Knot Page 28
