Isobel's Story

by Jennie Walters

  ‘I knew Iris had had a baby,’ Mum said, after a pause, ‘but I thought it had died along with her in the workhouse. She wasn’t married, you see, so she lost her job at the Hall and ended up there. The Vyes threw her out to fend for herself.’

  ‘Yes but, Mum - the amazing thing is, he was here!’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked sharply, her face darkening. ‘Who was where?’

  ‘Iris’s son!’ My voice was high with the thrill of it all. ‘Ralph Chadwick, his name is, and I showed him around the Hall a couple of months ago. He’d stayed here in the war when the house was a convalescent home. It’s the same person, I know it is! We have to tell Gran as soon as she’s better.’

  ‘No.’ Mum covered the distance between us in a few paces. ‘You’re not to breathe a word to her about any of this. Do you understand?’ She took me by the shoulders. ‘Not a single word. It would be too much of a shock.’

  ‘He was so nice, though,’ I protested. ‘Well-dressed and pots of money. Wouldn’t Gran want to know he’d turned out all right? She loved Iris, didn’t she? And she sounded so worried just now when she was talking about it.’

  ‘There are things you don’t know about the whole sorry business. Let sleeping dogs lie, Isobel, that’s the best thing. Now off you go. There are sandwiches in the kitchen for supper.’

  She was treating me like a child again, and I hated it. If there were things I didn’t know, why couldn’t she explain what they were? What possible harm could there be in telling Gran her friend’s baby was now a respectable grown-up man? And not only Gran - there was Ralph Chadwick to think about, too. Didn’t he have the right to find out who his mother was, and talk to someone who had known her? I had discovered something important but Mum was trying to sweep it under the carpet. Well, I wouldn’t let her.

  It would be the second night I’d spent under a blanket on the sitting-room sofa, which wasn’t quite long enough so I had to lie on one side with my knees drawn up. Dr Hathaway came to check on Gran again at about ten and have another of those serious conversations with Mum. Even with my ear to the door, all I could catch was the odd phrase: ‘complete rest’, ‘pneumonia’, ‘time will tell’. Still, at least they were spending some time together. I liked Dr Hathaway. He was obviously fond of Gran and, as for Mum - he couldn’t take his eyes off her. It was as though he couldn’t quite believe she was actually there.

  I’d just changed into my nightgown when an uncomfortable thought struck me: maybe I should go and find those letters Gran had mentioned. It meant admitting to myself how ill she was, but on the other hand, there might not be a better chance to retrieve them; nobody would be anywhere near the library at this time of night. I sat on the edge of the sofa, wondering what to do, before at last letting myself quietly out of the room. I could always put the letters back in the morning.

  Moonlight streamed in through the library windows so there was no need to switch on a light. Dark outlines of furniture were dotted about like islands in the sea: comfortable chairs for reading, side tables with lamps, a globe on its stand, two huge urns, one on either side of the marble fireplace. It was strange how this fire had opened up the house, I thought, making my way over to the writing desk; it felt as though we had the right to go wherever we pleased. Everyone used the same staircase now, and there was Gran in one of the guest bedrooms with Sissy and the girls upstairs, right next door to the Vyes. No wonder Lady Vye was off to London.

  The desk was a lovely thing, standing on thin, elegant legs with painted oval panels and swags on its many drawers. I sat down on the spindly chair beside it and carefully eased out the top right drawer, holding my breath. Surely this space was too small to hold anything? I felt all over the smooth wooden cave the drawer had left behind. Nothing. Maybe someone had found the letters first, or maybe Gran had made a mistake. Had she put them there, or merely been told about them? I sat back on the chair, looking at the desk. There was another possible drawer but it was under one of the painted ovals at the extreme righthand side - not exactly on top. Still, it was worth a try.

  This drawer fitted more snugly and I had to tug hard on the brass handle before it finally came all the way out. The drawer was shorter than it should have been, I could tell, and the back of the desk behind it seemed foreshortened too. I had to risk turning on the lamp. Yes! There was a tiny ring set into the wooden panel. I pulled it and the whole piece came away in my hand. Reaching in, my fingers touched paper. There were three letters jammed into that small space, all of them addressed to Philip Hathaway Esquire at Swallowcliffe Hall in handwriting I recognised as my mother’s. And the strange thing was, none of them had been opened.

  I sat looking at those letters for some time. The ink had hardly faded, even though they’d been written over twenty years before: they were postmarked Glamorgan, October 1916. I knew Mum had worked as a land girl in Wales for part of the war. She must have written to Dr Hathaway from there but he’d never got the letters. Somebody - Gran, I supposed - had intercepted and hidden them. It would have been easy to do with the butler’s help, since all the post went through him. So that was why Mum was so sniffy with Dr Hathaway. She was proud, and to have written to him not once or twice but three times without any reply would have been more than she could bear.

  And why had Gran done it? I knew the answer to that question. She was trying to protect Mum because Dr Hathaway came from a different class and she thought it would never work. Mum had been hurt anyway, though, and as far as I could see, Dr Hathaway still loved her. Perhaps Gran realised that too, which was why she’d asked me to make amends by giving Mum her letters back. I turned out the lamp and tucked them in my dressing-gown pocket. There was so much to think about, and I had to be sure of doing the right thing.

  Fifteen

  Advice to Refugees

  Take particular care not to push yourself forward in shops. There are ample supplies of food and clothing in the country. Take your turn, ask for no more than your due ration, and the English shopkeeper will treat you fairly and courteously. Do not try to barter about prices. The English shopkeeper has fixed prices …and it gives offence to imply that they are too high.

  From a leaflet given to refugee children arriving at Dovercourt camp in 1938/9

  I was woken by sunshine leaking round the edge of the heavy velvet curtains. Mum hadn’t called me; I’d slept right through the night until the kind of morning where anything seems possible, and Gran was lying peacefully in her bed next door.

  ‘The fever’s broken,’ Mum said, throwing herself into an armchair. ‘I think she’s going to be all right. Oh, Izzie! I can’t tell you the relief. Maybe later on today we’ll be able to move down to the gate house so I can keep a proper eye on the boys, too. Mrs Oakes and Sissy can’t look after them for ever.’

  ‘I’ll go and sit with Gran.’ I stretched my stiff legs and then swung them on to the floor. ‘You must be worn out.’

  ‘No, it’s all right. I think we can leave her alone for a while now. Tell you what, though.’ She reached for her handbag. ‘After breakfast, why don’t you walk down to the shop and buy a quarter pound of those barley sugars she likes? The fresh air will do you good. And a bottle of elderflower cordial, if they have it. She was asking for some a little while ago.’

  I hadn’t been to the shop for ages, but somehow the thought of seeing Mr Tarver wasn’t so frightening now - not after what we’d been through, and Andreas out of the way in hospital. What could Mr Tarver say to hurt either of us? After taking a quick look at my granny, I got dressed slowly and went off to wash in the cloakroom. We’d been camping out for long enough; it would be good to sleep in a bed again. Through the open drawing-room door, I could see Mr Huggins and Mrs Oakes hoisting a dustsheet over the bureau bookcase. They were putting the house to bed, Mum had told me. Some favourite pieces of furniture were going down to the Dower House but the rest would stay under covers until Her Ladyship decided what was to be done with it.

  ‘How is Mrs S?’ Mr Hu
ggins called to me as I went past.

  ‘Much better, thank you. I’m going down to the shop to fetch her some things, but I’ll come back and help you after. Are the boys causing you any trouble?’ I asked Mrs Oakes as an afterthought.

  ‘Mr Oakes has them washing the motor,’ she replied. ‘The devil makes work for idle hands and there’s plenty to be done. That Alina’s gone, left early this morning.’

  ‘Without saying goodbye?’ I was disappointed, but not exactly surprised.

  ‘She gave Sissy her forwarding address in case any letters arrive.’ Mrs Oakes gave the dustsheet a vigorous tweak. ‘Well, she’ll probably be happier in London. She was a good worker, though - pity to lose her when we need the help.’

  We were all about to go our separate ways. I shouldn’t have liked to be Mr and Mrs Oakes, left alone to hold the fort in a couple of rooms. Swallowcliffe was soon going to look like Sleeping Beauty’s castle inside as well as out, I thought, walking past a row of white-shrouded chairs in the hall. They would stand there, lonely and unloved, while moths chewed through the calico covers and the silk upholstery rotted away underneath.

  After eating a slice of bread and butter standing up in the kitchen, I went out through the blue door, its paint now blistered and peeling. The smoke-blackened servants’ wing made me instantly think of Andreas. Even if it would be impossible to find out how the fire had started, at least I could see if anything of his was salvageable from the ruins. It hit me for the first time as I stood in the shell that had once been his bedroom, that of course all his precious photographs and letters had gone. The only furniture still standing in the room was an iron bedstead; everything else had been burnt to a cinder. I turned over a heap of charcoal and ash with my foot, searching for fragments. There was nothing left - only, after ten minutes’ or more diligent searching, a piece of sooty metal that had once been a silver spoon with the initial ‘R’ on its handle. It seemed very hard that someone with so little in the first place should have to lose even those few things he had.

  His Lordship’s studio was completely gutted. The paintings would have gone up in a second, but the big table on which the servants used to take their meals had been burnt, too, and it had always looked so solid and indestructible. I remembered taking Andreas’s picture to show Lord Vye and Mr Pennington after the disastrous dinner party. What a long time ago it seemed! The windows were all open now, and the glass in them either shattered or melted into rivulets like frozen teardrops down the wall. Why would anyone have wanted to break into the studio? There was nothing of any value here.

  Crouching down, I poked about in a layer of debris directly under the windows with Andreas’s spoon in the faint hope there might be something of interest. After a few minutes, it snagged on something: a broken chain, with a hollow cylinder attached to one end. I held the thing up to the light, wondering what it could be. The cylinder had a curved mouthpiece and a rectangular slot cut into it, like a miniature post box. It was a whistle. When I rubbed away the smuts on my skirt, three initials above the slot were revealed. ARP, I read, and everything became suddenly clear.

  My feet carried me down to the village shop without my head having much to do with it. I could see it all: Mr Tarver snooping around outside the studio at night under the pretext of carrying out his duties, hoping to find something incriminating. He just couldn’t bear the fact that Andreas had escaped his clutches. Perhaps he was the one spreading the spying rumours and thought he might find something to back them up. He must have struggled through the window somehow, losing his ARP whistle in the process, and lit a lamp rather than turn on the main light which would be easily seen. Maybe he thought someone was coming and fled in a panic, leaving the lamp alight, or maybe he stumbled in the dark and the lamp overturned. Why hadn’t he raised the alarm, though? We could all have been killed! The more I thought about it, the angrier I grew.

  Yet outside the shop, I stopped, wondering if confronting Mr Tarver was the right thing to do. Should I go straight to PC Dawes with the whistle? But what if it belonged to Mr Williams? That had to be a possibility. I had to give Mr Tarver a chance to explain, so I opened the door - and there stood Eunice behind the counter.

  ‘Isobel.’ Her face lit up. ‘Now how are you all doing?’

  I had to answer what seemed like a hundred questions as she weighed out the barley sugars and popped in a couple extra ‘on the house’. Mr Tarver was nowhere to be seen and the wait was nerve-racking. At last I managed to ask where he was. ‘Gone to the village hall,’ Eunice replied. ‘He’s putting up some notice or other. ARP business, it’ll be.’

  There was no elderflower cordial so I grabbed the bag of sweets and left. The village hall was close by the church, about a quarter of a mile further into the village. Mr Tarver stood outside in the porch, locking the door, and now my courage nearly failed me; only the thought of Gran and Andreas spurred me on. I had to find out what had really happened.

  ‘Mr Tarver? Please may I have a word?’

  He stared at me suspiciously, jangling the heavy bunch of keys, a bowler hat pushed back on his greasy hair. There was an ARP pin badge in his lapel and an ARP armband over the sleeve of his serge suit; no sign of a whistle, though. ‘What about? They don’t want some security advice up at the Hall, do they? Nothing like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.’

  So he was going to bluster it out. ‘Does this belong to you?’ I asked, holding up the whistle by its chain. ‘I’ve just found it. In what’s left of Lord Vye’s studio.’

  It might have been my imagination but I could have sworn he stiffened; at any rate, his eyes narrowed, locked on mine. He didn’t speak for a few seconds and I thought he was about to deny the whistle was his. But then he said, ‘Well, I’ve been wondering for weeks where that had got to. I knew the lad must have pinched it.’ In the blink of an eye, the whistle was out of my grasp and swallowed up in his chubby fingers.

  I hadn’t thought of that. ‘Incriminating evidence, wouldn’t you say?’ Mr Tarver was obviously enjoying my dismay. ‘Perhaps we should hand this in to PC Dawes.’

  But of course Andreas wouldn’t steal anything, least of all Mr Tarver’s whistle. What use was that to him? ‘Perhaps we should,’ I countered. ‘Then I can tell him what I saw that night.’

  ‘What? What did you see?’ The words were out before Mr Tarver could hold them back. We both knew he’d given himself away.

  ‘I saw you on your bicycle, riding up to the Hall in the middle of the night,’ I lied, not taking my eyes off his. He wasn’t to know I was bluffing, was he?

  Now the mask dropped. ‘Listen to me, young lady,’ he snarled, taking hold of my arm. ‘I don’t have to answer to you or anyone else in this village when I’m on official duty. There are matters of national security at stake and you’d do as well to keep your mouth shut or you could end up in a great deal of trouble. You and the … boy.’ He spat out the word.

  ‘Nancy nearly died in that fire!’ I was too angry to let him intimidate me. ‘Andreas is in hospital and my granny’s seriously ill. Don’t you care?’

  He pushed me back against the notice board. ‘I’ll only say this once. The fire had nothing to do with me. Do you understand? If you start spreading rumours about what you thought you saw, I shall go to the police and tell them things about your young German friend that’ll have him sent back where he came from quicker than you can say knife.’ A drop of his spittle landed on my cheek. ‘And who do you think they’re going to believe? A man of good character who’s lived in this village twenty years, or some little guttersnipe from London and a Jewboy?’

  I couldn’t help crying on the way back: tears of anger and frustration. How could I ever have thought myself a match for Mr Tarver? He’d outwitted me on every count and now I’d lost the evidence to prove his guilt. I should have gone to PC Dawes in the first place. Then again, Mr Tarver was right; the police would never take my word over his and Andreas would have ended up in more trouble. I’d only made ever
ything worse.

  The toot of a horn interrupted these gloomy thoughts as I approached the Swallowcliffe gates. ‘Can I give you a lift, dear?’ Mrs Hathaway sat behind the wheel of a small, very untidy motor-car, calling to me through the open window. ‘I’ve come to visit your grandmother. My son says she’s out of any immediate danger.’

  She talked about nothing for the rest of the way up the drive, tactfully ignoring my red eyes. When we’d parked by the front door, though (in a flurry of gravel), she patted my hand and said, ‘This must be a very anxious time for you. If there’s anything I can do to help, will you let me know? I’m fond of Polly and her family.’

  I nodded, climbing quickly out of the car. It was an anxious time, I thought, waiting outside Gran’s bedroom while Mum and Mrs Hathaway murmured together inside. Life was rushing past at breakneck speed - Gran turning into an invalid, the Hall being abandoned, war getting closer with each passing day - and there didn’t seem much I could do about any of it. Mr Tarver had pointed out how powerless I was. All I could do was sit there, waiting to be told what would happen next. Well, now it was time to think for myself. I put Mr Tarver out of my head for the time being - Andreas was the one to talk to about this - and concentrated on Ralph Chadwick. How could we let him simply walk out of our lives, knowing who he was? I had discovered this secret, and Mum had no right to decide for me what was to be done with it.

  Which was why I found myself in the passenger seat of Mrs Hathaway’s motor-car that afternoon, being driven up to London. I’d told her in the morning about trying to buy some elderflower cordial for Gran, and she’d said she was driving up to London later that day so she could easily stop by Fortnum and Mason, who were bound to have it. She looked a little surprised when I waylaid her on the way out of Gran’s room and asked if I could come too, to help with the shopping, but she didn’t seem to mind. ‘Of course. I’d be glad of the company and a change of scene would probably do you good. Let’s see what your mother thinks about the idea.’