by Erica James
He was sitting with his back to her when she pushed open the study door, looking out towards the garden. With its book-lined walls, comfortable armchairs covered in soft chestnut-brown leather, and French doors that led onto a small terrace, it was his favourite room in the house.
‘Hello, darling,’ she said, ‘I’m home.’
When he didn’t respond, and noticing that the gramophone player had reached the end of the record and the needle was stuck, she smiled. So he had nodded off, had he? Well, she would wake him with a kiss.
But when she placed her lips against his cheek, she let out a cry of shock.
Chapter Two
Roddy Fitzwilliam contemplated the man lying in the bed next to him. To see his oldest and dearest friend reduced to this pitiful state was hard to bear. He wanted to believe that Jack would soon be up on his feet and giving everybody hell for making a fuss, but that didn’t seem at all likely.
Roddy’s own father had suffered a severe stroke some years ago and had died within days. He feared the same thing would happen to Jack. With painful difficulty, little more than grunts and mumbles through his lopsided mouth, Jack had indicated that he knew he wasn’t going to live. With considerable effort, which had left him exhausted, he had also managed to state his terms: that he was not to be taken to hospital to die amongst strangers; he wanted to die here at Island House with Romily by his side. Roddy’s initial reaction had been to disregard Jack’s wishes and insist he go to hospital, where he would receive the best possible care and where his chances of survival might be improved. However, within minutes of his arrival this morning, he had been persuaded by the evidence of his own eyes that everything that could be done was being done for Jack right here. Two nurses had been engaged and the doctor from the village, Dr Garland, seemed highly competent.
A soft breeze blew in at the window, fluttering the pages of the newspaper Roddy had been reading to Jack before he’d fallen asleep. The news was going from bad to worse, with Nazi Germany hell-bent on adopting a stance of hostility that could lead only in one direction. For once in his life Roddy was glad he wasn’t married and didn’t have sons who would have to go and fight. Jack, on the other hand, had two sons who would be called upon to serve their country, although with Arthur being blind in one eye, his contribution would probably be limited.
How would Kit and Arthur, the girls too, Hope and Allegra, react to the news of Jack’s stroke? If the telegrams Roddy had sent reached them in time, would they put their animosity aside and come and make their peace with Jack before it was too late? Surely they would.
In his capacity as a lawyer, Roddy had come across many a family who’d fallen out, but it had been a great disappointment to him when Jack’s family had disintegrated to the extent it had. Of course, it had started a very long time ago, when in 1915 Jack’s first wife, Maud, died shortly after giving birth to their third child, Kit. From that moment on Jack was a changed man. Maud’s death left him heartbroken, and nothing filled the void that her passing created. In his mid thirties, with the Great War raging and his own rage burning ferociously inside him, Jack left his business in the hands of his younger brother, Harry, at the same time abandoning his children entirely to the care of what would prove to be a series of nannies, and volunteered to join the army. It was in northern France in the summer of 1916 that Roddy and Jack met and their friendship was born during the Battle of the Somme.
In January of this year, over dinner at the Connaught, they had celebrated their sixtieth birthdays together, their conversation mostly centred on the past and how they’d come from such very different worlds. Roddy’s upbringing had been one of wealth and privilege, whereas Jack had grown up in the East End of London and left school at fourteen to work as a barrow boy. Wheeling and dealing was second nature to him, it was what he lived for. He was seventeen when he took himself off to South Africa and got a job in a diamond mine. Before long, he was working as a diamond trader, and on moving back to London he had invited his brother to join him in his enterprise. It was, he believed, a way of keeping the wayward young man on the straight and narrow.
Unfortunately there was no force on earth that could do that, and after Jack and Roddy were both invalided out of the war – Roddy returning to the law firm in Mayfair where he was a partner, and Jack to the diamond business he had left in his brother’s care – he discovered that Harry had all but run the business into the ground in his absence.
Furious, Jack left him to it and started up a new company, relying on all his old contacts and clients. When Harry was then accused of fraud, he seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth, until years later Jack heard that his brother had died of cholera in North Africa. He also learnt that Harry had fathered a child – the result of a brief liaison with a dancer from Naples. The girl was then nine years of age and had been living in an orphanage since her birth.
A change in Jack’s breathing had Roddy sitting upright and glancing anxiously at his old friend, but no sooner had he wondered if he should call for one of the nurses than the laboured heave of Jack’s breath settled again. Restless with myriad thoughts, Roddy rose stiffly from the chair he’d occupied for the last hour and went over to the window. He wasn’t a man inclined to mawkish sentiment, but the idea that Jack might not be a part of his life any more left him feeling utterly defeated.
To distract himself, he thought of the will he had drawn up for Jack while Romily had been away in Europe. Almost as if he had had some kind of premonition, Jack had visited Roddy in London and explained that he wanted to make a new will, which was perfectly understandable given that he was now married. But what had surprised and alarmed Roddy was Jack’s wish that unless his family fulfilled the terms laid down in it, they wouldn’t inherit. Not a penny. Roddy had cautioned against it as being too heavy-handed and antagonistic, but Jack had insisted, claiming it was the only way he could bring them together. Since meeting Romily, it had suddenly become important to Jack that he put things right with his family. As a consequence, he had recently, and on several occasions, invited them to join him at Island House, but they had turned him down flat each time. ‘I just want them to come home so I can say I’m sorry,’ he confided in Roddy. ‘Why the hell do they have to make things so difficult?’
The trouble was, they probably associated invitations back to Island House with being forced to meet the latest woman Jack was seeing. The last time an invitation had been extended – Roddy had been included as well – they had made their feelings all too clear: that they regarded the aspiring actress sitting at their dining table as nothing but a vacuous gold-digger, a view that coincided with Roddy’s own. The children, sensing some sport, or perhaps out of boredom, had run rings round the simpering, dim-witted young woman, making her appear even more foolish than she already was. His hackles up, Jack had hit the roof and demanded that if his family couldn’t be civil to his guest they should leave. A stormy row ensued, during which even mild-mannered Kit had accused his father of never considering their feelings, and then they had all left for the station.
Roddy genuinely had no idea how Arthur, Kit, Hope and Allegra would react to the instructions in Jack’s will. Would they go along with it, or would their pride – an inherently strong Devereux character trait – dictate one last act of defiance and prevent them from complying? Yet as the family lawyer, and assigned by Jack the task of creating modest trust funds for the children, Roddy knew that their pride did not stop them from taking advantage of the funds available to them.
Still standing at the window, he looked out at the well-kept garden and the lily pond beyond. It was a place of great enchantment, where Jack had felt most settled in recent years, so much so that he’d sold his lavish flat in Mayfair last summer. He had bought Island House as a country retreat when the children were young, a place where he thought they would be happy. Poor Jack. What he had never understood was that the children had wanted only two things from him, his love and
his time, neither of which he had been fully able to give.
Behind him Roddy heard the door opening. He turned around and saw Romily carrying a tray of tea things. He went over to offer her his assistance, such as he could.
‘It’s all right,’ she said, painstakingly mindful of his useless right arm and missing hand, ‘I can manage.’ She placed the tray on the table and gave Jack a long, searching stare. ‘In spite of everything, he looks so very peaceful,’ she said quietly.
Roddy thought much the same. It was when Jack was awake that his features seemed cruelly distorted. ‘He’s been asleep for about half an hour,’ Roddy said. ‘I think I bored him reading from the newspaper.’
‘I’m sure that’s not the case,’ Romily said kindly. She poured two cups of tea and passed one to Roddy. ‘If you want to stretch your legs and go for a breath of fresh air, please do. I’ll sit with Jack for a while until the nurses send me away. Dr Garland is calling in shortly.’
Roddy took a sip of his tea and not for the first time thought how composed Jack’s wife was. She was one of the most admirable women he knew; he could quite understand how his old friend had fallen for her. If he were honest, he was a little in love with her himself.
When Jack had confided in him that he was going to propose to Romily, Roddy hadn’t been at all surprised. There had been any number of women in Jack’s life over the years, many of them wholly unsuitable, but they had come and gone without making any real impact on him. But then he’d met Romily and his life had been turned upside down. Even Roddy, a confirmed bachelor and no expert when it came to matters of the heart, had recognised in an instant that his old chum had finally found love again. ‘If only I’d met her twenty years ago,’ Jack had said wistfully, ‘we’d have had so much to look forward to.’
‘And if you had met her that long ago she would only have been thirteen years old,’ Roddy had teased him.
‘Any news from the children?’ he asked Romily now.
She was about to reply when they both turned at the sound of Jack stirring. Hastily placing her cup and saucer on the table, Romily went to her husband. ‘There you are, darling,’ she said, as though he’d been out for a walk somewhere. She took his hand in hers and gave him a look of such loving tenderness that Roddy took it as his cue to leave them alone.
Chapter Three
It was taking all of his strength to open his eyes. Such a little thing, but such a gargantuan struggle that made Jack feel as though heavy weights had been put on each of his eyelids. It was a thought that filled him with sudden terror. Had he been mistakenly prepared for burial with coins placed over his eyes? No! he wanted to yell. He wasn’t ready for the boatman to ferry him across the River Styx; he wasn’t dead. Not yet. Please God, not yet.
Still unable to open his eyes, he recalled the horror of another time when he had pleaded with God – a time when he had begged not to live, but to die, for his suffering to be over. He had been crammed into the back of a blood-soaked ambulance with a heaving mass of other wounded soldiers, some screaming aloud, some whimpering, and one poor devil, no more than a boy, with half his face blown away, crying for his mother. Above the din, and through the excruciating pain of his own injuries, Jack would have sworn that it had been a madwoman at the wheel of the ambulance driving them at great speed, and very little care, to the field hospital, all the while belting out the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ at the top of her not so tuneful voice. He’d been conscious enough to consider it an ironic choice of music, given that the composer was German and Germany was the enemy.
For ever after he’d never been able to hear that piece of music without remembering the agony he’d been in. Singing had probably been the woman’s only means of keeping her sanity in what must have been a living nightmare as she, along with countless other women who had volunteered to go to northern France, ferried bodies, or what remained of men who had been blown apart by shells, from the battlefield to the relative safety of the field hospital. Listening to her singing, Jack had welcomed death, if not from the bullets lodged in his stomach and leg, then from the wholly possible prospect of the ambulance being driven recklessly into something hard and immovable.
The pain he’d been in had been unlike anything he had ever known, and no sooner had he surrendered his will to live than he felt a lightness in his body, as if he were floating away. This was it, then, he’d thought, surprised that his prayer had been answered so swiftly. This was death. And not as bad as he’d feared it would be at the end. It was almost pleasurable. He hadn’t expected that. But then, and as though she were there to welcome him into heaven, there was Maud, his dearest sweet Maud. Oh how he’d missed her since she’d died! Not a day had gone by when he hadn’t thought of her and longed for her to be by his side again. And now here she was. ‘Have you come for me?’ he asked her.
She shook her head. ‘Not yet.’
‘But I want to be with you. I want to die. I’m ready.’
She pressed a cool finger to his lips. ‘No,’ she said softly, ‘you have to go back; our children need you. You must go home to them.’
He reached out to her, but there was nothing to touch. She was gone, leaving him to cry for her like a frightened lost child. ‘Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!’
The next thing he knew, he was lying on a bed in a chaotic makeshift hospital with a young nurse in an incongruously smart Red Cross uniform studiously applying a bandage to his leg while telling him everything was going to be all right. ‘I saw for myself the bullets you caught,’ she said brightly. ‘No real harm done, so you’ll soon be up on your feet.’
In the bed next to him, a man laughed. ‘Nurse Wainwright says that to everybody. You could be brought in here with both legs blown off and she’d still tell you you’ll soon be right as rain.’
‘I’ll thank you to keep your sarcasm to yourself, Mr Fitzwilliam,’ the nurse said primly. She fastened off the bandage and then carefully covered Jack’s legs with a blanket. ‘Call me if you need anything,’ she said, ‘and if necessary I could find you a change of bed if Mr Fitzwilliam gives you any trouble.’ This last comment was said with a friendly wink.
When she was gone, his fellow patient introduced himself. ‘Roddy Fitzwilliam,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I would shake hands only …’ He held up a heavily bandaged arm that stopped short just after his elbow. ‘Bloody good thing I’m left-handed.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Bright side and all that.’
‘Jack Devereux,’ said Jack. ‘How long have you been here?’
‘Came in yesterday. Only popped in for a haircut, and look what happened to me.’
Jack smiled and entered into the spirit of the exchange. ‘Any chance of attracting a barman round here?’ he asked. ‘I could murder a whisky and soda.’
‘I’m afraid the service is not what it could be.’
Their friendship was sealed that day, and afterwards, when the war was over, neither of them could quite believe they’d actually survived the hell of the Somme. Not when so many they had known had not been so fortunate.
But now Jack was facing a fresh new hell; the battle once more for his life, a life he wasn’t ready yet to relinquish. He wanted one last chance to try and put things right with his family. He owed it to Maud to do that. It was what she would have wanted, and he had to do it while he still could, before it was too late.
With the certain knowledge that the sands of time were fast running out for him, he could see with unerring lucidity that stubborn pride had turned him into a dogmatic and overbearing father and uncle. Moreover, he was guilty of neglect and intolerance, of prejudice and arrogance. Even his recently made will was an act of supreme conceit. But how else to remove the battle lines and bring the children together?
He struggled again to open his eyes. He concentrated hard, forced his whole being into that one simple task. As if swimming up from the depths of a bottomless ocean, he dragged himself up, up an
d into the light.
‘There you are, darling,’ he heard a woman saying. Maud?
He blinked in the brightness of the sunlit room and focused on the source of the voice. No, not Maud, but another equally wonderful woman. And never had Romily looked more beautiful to him than in this moment, with the sun streaming in through the window and illuminating the radiance of her face. It was a woefully inadequate cliché, but her love for him had made him feel young again. It had also gone some way to softening many of his hard edges, awakening in him something he’d believed he’d lost – the ability to love; to love someone with all his heart and soul. In short, to care again.
He looked into the face that meant the world to him and willed himself to move, to lift a hand to touch his wife in the way that had brought him such joy. But all he could manage was a vague waggle of his fingers. The rest of him felt like a leaden dead weight.
She bent down close and kissed him on the lips. ‘You look so peaceful when you’re asleep,’ she said. ‘Can I get you anything?’
‘Whisky … and soda,’ he said. In his head, the words came out with crystal clarity, but he could see from the hesitant expression on Romily’s face that she was having trouble deciphering what he’d said. Then, as if slowly making sense of it, she smiled.
‘A whisky and soda, eh? Well I don’t see why not. Just don’t tell Dr Garland or the nurses, or they’ll ban me from seeing you.’
‘Let … them … try.’
Once more there was a small delay in her understanding.
She kissed him again. ‘You’re right, they wouldn’t stand a chance against me.’
‘Nobody … does,’ he said.
She smiled and stood up. ‘I’ll be right back.’
