Cast the First Stone: A stunning wartime story

by Angela Arney

  Afterwards when he thought about it, Donald Ramsay felt irritated. He realized that he would have sworn black was white if she had asked him to do so, such was the magnetic power of her gaze. No wonder Nicholas succumbed to her charm, he reflected wryly; and no doubt would continue to succumb for the rest of his life! But he kept his own counsel, and did not mention it to either Dorothy or Lady Margaret, not least because he was baffled by his own behaviour. It was strangely out of character, and he could think of no rational explanation. They would laugh at him – an old man beguiled by a pair of dark eyes!

  So he merely told them that in his professional judgement, Liana was perfectly fit and healthy, and the baby should arrive some time towards the end of January, beginning of February.

  Liana left his surgery promising faithfully to see him for regular check-ups, then arbitrarily dismissed the pregnancy from her mind. It was not from callousness or lack of love for the coming baby that she refused to let herself dwell on it. It was because it was so much easier to keep thoughts of Raul at bay if she concentrated on formulating plans for the future. Raul had gone from her life for ever. She had to be practical; had to stop crying for the moon which had long since passed from her heaven. The sun shone on Broadacres, and that was her future, hers, and Nicholas’s and the baby’s.

  Her aim for the future was to ensure that the following year the whole Broadacres estate and farm would run at a profit. In this respect she was more than aided and abetted by Bruno who had the same courage as Liana when it came to taking a gamble. Reckless sometimes, Wally thought. But whatever his doubts he knew Lady Liana would have him agreeing with her before she had finished.

  ‘How can I not agree with her, Mary?’ he asked one night after Liana had persuaded him that it was a good idea to sell the old Fordson tractor, although it was still going well, and buy an older model which Bruno said he could renovate in a couple of days. The surplus money, plus some of her own, would be used to buy a combine harvester. ‘She looks at me with those damned great eyes of hers, and I finds myself saying yes every time.’

  ‘Not only can we cut and bind the rest of our own wheat this year,’ Liana said enthusiastically, ‘but we can hire it out to other farmers.’

  ‘Most farmers hereabouts have nearly finished with harvesting,’ Wally had protested. ‘’Tis nearly the middle of September.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of hereabouts,’ said Liana, laying what she knew was her trump card on the table. ‘I was thinking of the Midlands and then further up in the North of England. They harvest much later there, and through the Farmer’s Weekly I have made contact with several groups of farmers in the North. They are only too anxious to hire our machinery at the right price.’

  ‘Trouble is,’ grumbled Wally now to his wife, ‘’tis all very well in theory, but supposing something goes wrong with the machinery.’

  ‘If you don’t agree, then you should have said no,’ said Mary, with a noticeable lack of sympathy.

  ‘Haven’t noticed you saying no to anything,’ returned her husband, feeling slightly aggrieved at her attitude. ‘I hear we’ve got to move the old caravan down to the main road so as you can have a farm shop. Why didn’t you say no? And who’ll be doing the housework here in this house?’

  ‘There’s no need to say no when it’s a good idea,’ replied Mary tartly. She was looking forward to a change from housework. ‘And Mrs Larkin is coming in three mornings a week to do for me, so you don’t have to worry about the house. Lady Liana is paying her out of my wages from the shop. This winter we’ll be selling potatoes, carrots, parsnips and cabbages from the farm. Meg will be making some bread and cakes from estate produce for sale, and then Lady Liana says we can sell our own honey and any extra cakes Meg can make from her own ingredients. We will all be better off. I will get my wages; Meg will get a percentage on what she makes for the estate plus taking all the profit on her own stuff; and we’ll take all the profit on our honey.’

  ‘The Lord preserve me from organizing women,’ grumbled Wally but it was a good-natured grumble now. Mary was more vivacious and excited than he had seen her for a long time. Quite like a young girl. He grabbed her as she passed. ‘Let’s go to bed early tonight,’ he said. It was good to feel her full breasts squashed against him.

  ‘I think maybe you’d better stop looking into Her Ladyship’s eyes,’ replied Mary, startled at her husband’s unexpected display of randiness.

  But later, as they snuggled together like two sleepy dormice in the middle of their billowing feather mattress, she was glad she had not given in to her first impulse and resisted. Everything was looking up since Lady Liana arrived, including it seemed, her own sex life.

  September drew to a close. Liana was so busy teaching herself the ways of the land, learning as much as she could from Wally and Bruno and reorganizing practically everything in sight that sometimes Lady Margaret reprimanded her for not resting and eating. ‘I worry about her,’ she said to Donald for the umpteenth time.

  ‘And I order you to stop worrying,’ replied Donald sternly, knowing his words would fall on deaf ears. Margaret was a worrier; nothing would ever change her.

  ‘But she is working so hard.’

  ‘She enjoys work. She loves being busy. Leave her alone.’

  It was true, Liana did enjoy it, for two reasons although she could never decide which reason motivated her most. Was she busy because she wanted to start making that fortune she had promised herself she would make for Nicholas? Or was she busy so that there was never time to think? Work was a very effective way of slamming the door shut on the emotional powerhouse within her mind. She had discovered that years ago, after her mother had been murdered, and then later when Raul had disappeared. Then, she knew she had only survived their losses by concentrating her mind on the project in hand to the exclusion of everything else. First it had been caring for Eleanora, and later securing a future for her baby. Only when occupied was it possible to obtain some kind of comfort. Only then did some kind of soothing balm seep over her – when her mind and body were exhausted and she lacked the energy to open the door to pain and torment. So she made certain now that every ounce of energy was used to gain what she had set her heart on, the accumulation of money. And to this end she ruthlessly directed her intelligence and determination.

  Her love affair with Broadacres continued unabated. She wanted to know everything. Nothing was too much trouble. She stayed up with Wally one night, watching two of the late summer calves being born.

  ‘She cried,’ said Wally when he told Mary. ‘You know, sometimes I think she is tougher than any man I’ve met. But she was woman enough when she saw those new-born calves.’ Then he added softly, ‘But ’tis always a miracle to see those wobbly little heads feeling for the teats.’

  ‘You’re a big softie yourself,’ said Mary smiling.

  Liana watched spellbound: the colour of the harvested land gradually changed from gold to brown as the earth was ploughed after harvesting. In a sky streaked with the lustrous pinks of autumn, flocks of birds in their impressive V-formations flew south to warmer lands; they could feel the impending chill of winter. The field hedges were trimmed back from their summer wildness and the air was filled with the fragrance of burning greenwood.

  Liana remembered her first impressions of England when she had landed in Southampton. Then the memories of Italy had been fresh in her mind. How traumatic those first few hours had been. She had never been back to Southampton. That ugly grey seaport was not the place for her; she loved the countryside with its ever-changing colours. It helped soften the ever-present, underlying sorrow of Raul’s loss and soothed away the worries which surfaced every now and then concerning Nicholas’s eventual return. The peace of the countryside was a better tonic than anything Donald Ramsay could have prescribed, and Liana relaxed. She was worrying about nothing. There was no need to fear Nicholas’s return.

  The Broadacres’s combine harvester was now far away cutting and binding wheat in the Midl
ands, and so far, in spite of Wally’s doom-laden prophesies, had not broken down. Fat cheques were making their way into the farm account as each group of farmers paid for the hiring. The elderly bank manager was pleased and not a little astonished. After years of mismanagement, it had taken a foreign slip of a girl to size up the situation and do something about it. English to the core and distrustful of anything foreign, he had never crossed the English Channel and had no intention of ever doing so. Nevertheless, he was not immune to her charm and he too fell under Liana’s spell.

  It pleased Mr Porter to entertain her to tea and biscuits in his office. Not only did she bring a sparkle of glamour into his otherwise rather dull life, she also boosted his ego by listening carefully to everything he said. She took his advice on the various accounting methods he devised and did the accounts herself, under his close supervision at first. It was a source of delight to both of them, watching some of the debts gradually disappear. By Liana’s reckoning, with the added income from the shop and the hire of farm machinery, the home farm would be breaking even by December of that year. Unless there was a fire, flood or some other natural disaster. Mr Porter agreed with her.

  As the canopy of leaves in the woodlands changed from green to brown, red and gold, and the berries in the hedgerows glistened bright red, they harvested the potatoes and other root crops. At Liana’s insistence, and with Bruno’s agreement, they sowed more diverse crops than ever before. As well as barley and wheat, they sowed sugar-beet on fields previously left fallow – a new crop for Broadacres.

  ‘We know nowt about beet,’ Wally protested.

  ‘Then we will learn, and in a few years’ time we will crush our own beet,’ Liana informed him. She was quite confident. After spending hours poring over leaflets from the Ministry of Agriculture and the National Farmers’ Union she knew the soil was of the right type. She also knew the more they diversified the more money they could make – a bad harvest of one crop would be balanced out by a good harvest of another.

  ‘How can we crush it?’ Wally found it difficult to keep up with Liana’s mind.

  ‘In our own sugar factory, of course. There will be plenty of vacant land for sale in Southampton after the war and plenty of men looking for work, according to the newspapers. We can build a factory there, and that way we shall control the whole process, from seedtime to harvest to selling.’

  Wally just nodded. ‘The things she thinks of,’ he told Mary in one of his nightly reports. ‘’Tis quite amazing!’

  Everything in the Big House was running smoothly now, thanks to Meg. Dolly was very happy to be useful; and Liana had persuaded the village schoolmistress to give Dolly lessons three evenings a week. She was learning to read and write and astounded her sister and parents with her rapid progress. The teacher told them that soon Dolly would be able to communicate with them by means of simple written notes.

  *

  On a still October afternoon, when the mist was already stretching eager cold fingers towards Broadacres house, Liana decided to walk to the home farm and join Mary Pragnell for afternoon tea. Margaret was out riding with the Hampshire Hunt. The excited baying of the hounds floated as clear as bells in the still air.

  Liana stood and listened, imagining the scene. Once, Dorothy Ramsay had taken her to a meet.

  ‘When you’ve had the baby, I’ll teach you to ride and you can join us,’ said Margaret when the meet was assembling, her face flushed from the stirrup cup, the cold and the effort of keeping an over-excited Rufus under control.

  ‘She might not like it,’ said Dorothy. ‘She might be like me – on the side of the fox.’

  ‘Thank you, Margaret, but no.’ Liana declined the offer quickly, adding softly, ‘It must be awful to be hunted.’

  But Margaret had not stayed to listen. Rufus bucked and, breaking into a sideways gallop, had taken her out of earshot.

  Now, as Liana stood listening in the still air, she hoped the fox would be lucky again and escape capture as he had that day. Her eyes strained towards the distant outline of the downs, looking for the tell-tale sign of birds scampering skywards, fluttering like smoke before the wind.

  But there were no birds and the sounds of the hunt vanished tantalizingly away up the valley. All was peace and silence once more. A sound from the stables caught her attention. Thinking it was one of the farm dogs accidentally shut in, Liana walked across and opened the main door to the stables.

  The smell of whisky hit her as the door swung back. It was William in the stable, not one of the dogs. He had fallen awkwardly, twisting his false leg beneath him.

  Not stopping to think, Liana flew across to him. ‘William, let me help.’

  Her outstretched hands were brushed away with rough impatience and William looked up. It was then that Liana knew for certain that William hated her. It was unmistakable, his eyes glittered with it. She caught her breath in fear and stared. Why, she wanted to ask. Why? What have I done to you? Is it because I try and curb your reckless spending? Should I have been more careful, taking greater account of your terrible injury? Are you in more pain than I know? But all these questions remained unanswered. She had no chance to speak before William lashed out violently at her.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ he snarled through slurred, drunken lips. ‘Don’t touch me, bloody Italian wop.’

  Liana did not answer. Scrambling to her feet she left him where he was in the straw on the floor. He stared up at her, and, looking into his pale grey eyes, Liana could see that his hatred was all-consuming, illogical and completely beyond reason. Suddenly the unnamed apprehension which had been bothering her ever since she had first met William clicked into place. He did not need a reason. He just hated her and he was dangerous. The cold fingers of fear closed around her and, although the afternoon was still warm, Liana found she was trembling. Of course, she ought to have realized before but stupidly she had allowed the pleasure of living at Broadacres to lull her into a false sense of security. Fool! Broadacres was paradise but she had forgotten paradise had an attendant serpent.

  Leaving the stable Liana walked back to the house, the visit to Mary Pragnell forgotten. As she walked, she stared straight ahead, her gaze unwavering, a cold determined light in her eyes as she fought to rally her willpower. It is better that I know all is not perfection, she thought. Now that I know, I am prepared. There is nothing to be afraid of, nothing of substance anyway.

  But, even though she told herself she was being completely irrational, she was careful to lock her bedroom door that night. And for the first time since leaving him, she longed for Nicholas, longed for the solid comfort of his warm, protective body at her side. Retrieving all his letters from the bedside cabinet, she sat up late and re-read every one of them. Suddenly his cheerful presence seemed to be with her and Liana realized with surprise that she was beginning to look forward to his return after all. Well, well, perhaps brother William had done something good after all! Liana smiled. How infuriated William would be if he knew.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘Feeling cold, Your Ladyship? Wishing you were back in sunnier climes no doubt.’ William entered the room.

  It was late November. A week of hard frosts had robbed the deciduous trees of their remaining colour. Outside sleet hammered like stones at the window panes, and inside the temperature hovered just above freezing. Liana huddled almost inside the enormous open fireplace in a vain attempt to gain some warmth from the two logs smouldering grudgingly on the hearth. It was wasted effort. What little heat the burning wood did generate vanished immediately up the great yawning chimney.

  ‘Yes, I am cold.’ Liana ignored his second remark. She was getting used to his jibes and had schooled herself to let them wash over her. To William’s face she maintained a pleasant, impersonal front but inside she was wary, ever alert. Totally unpredictable, he could be hateful one moment, then switch on the charm so that he was almost like Nicholas in character, the next – almost but not quite. Liana was never fooled. Nor would she allow h
erself to become afraid of him, unlike Lady Margaret. Not that Margaret had actually admitted her fear, not specifically in so many words. But Liana knew the fear was there. Margaret’s continual excuses for whatever William did, her unwillingness to disagree with him on any subject.

  William’s drinking was increasing daily, and today his breath reeked even more strongly than usual of the whisky he habitually drank. But he was not obviously drunk. Liana tensed, knowing that alcohol always served to increase his aggressiveness.

  ‘Why don’t you go back to Italy where all the wops live? That’s where you belong. Not here.’ He never lost an opportunity to remind her of her foreignness. But he was crafty, always taking care to wait until they were alone.

  ‘Not any more. I belong here at Broadacres. I married your brother and this is my home.’ It was not easy but Liana kept her voice calm, devoid of the anger she always felt rising within her whenever William was in one of his insulting moods.

  ‘He must have been bloody mad.’

  ‘A matter of opinion.’

  ‘It’s my opinion.’

  ‘I’m well aware of that. But luckily Nicholas thinks differently.’

  ‘Maybe he’ll change his mind.’

  Liana came near to losing her patience. ‘William, the sooner you accept the fact that I am here to stay, the better. There is nothing you can do; our marriage is a fait accompli.’

  Liana turned and left the room. It had been cold and cheerless before William entered and seemed even colder now. There was no point in remaining when he was obviously in such an ugly mood. She would join Meg in the kitchen. At least it was warm there. In fact, it was the only warm place in the whole house because the giant kitchen range was never allowed to go out.

  A long Gothic corridor led to the kitchen, stretching down half the side of the house, and to Liana, now heavy with the baby, it seemed never-ending. Between each window, on marble plinths, stood some of the ancient Greek and Roman statuary collected by a pillaging Earl of Wessex during the eighteenth century. The walls and ceiling were finished in grey stucco which was beginning to peel, adding to the overall effect of gloominess of the day.