“Well, Alexander and Irene are together again, as I think I told you in my last letter. Her health has dramatically improved. What is more Alexander is considering buying Upper Park from Sam who doesn’t want to live there any more. Sam and Minnie are to make their home in America and take the children with them of course.”
“Of course? What does Alexander say?”
“He loves his children but feels he is in no position to bargain with Minnie. Nor does he want to. They will come over on long visits when they are older or he will go there. It is all very amicable, very civilised.”
“How will Lally take that?”
“Oh, quite well. She realises Irene and Alexander want their own home, and they will be near. Besides, Irene is expecting.”
“That’s marvellous news.”
“The doctors weren’t too thrilled. It was unexpected and apparently unplanned. She will have to take it very easily, but I am very, very happy for them. Even Kate is pleased, but she’s spoiled, of course.”
“Do you like Irene as much as you liked Minnie?”
“Yes, but in a different way. She’s much more mature. She has to be. I guess all the fun was knocked out of her by her experiences. She put no pressure on Alexander, but he clearly cherishes her and that’s what matters.” Carson studied her profile. “All in all, things have turned out for the best. Don’t you agree?”
“Oh, yes.” Suddenly Connie became excited. “Oh, there’s the house. You know I’ve missed it too. I’ve been living out of a suitcase. A little stability will be nice.”
As Carson stopped the car outside the main door, David ran down the steps, a smile on his face and hurried over to take the bags.
“Welcome home to Pelham’s Oak, Lady Woodville,” he said.
“Contessa, if you please,” Carson corrected him woodenly. “Colomb-Paravacini.”
“I’m very sorry, sir, madam.” David looked abashed.
“However that might soon change.” Carson glanced across at Connie who looked away, pretending to ignore his remark. “You may be right after all, who knows?”
After a leisurely tea during which Connie told Carson about the conditions in the refugee camps in Europe and he filled her in on more of local gossip, they went upstairs with her bags. They’d felt very easy and natural with each other from the moment they’d met at the station.
“I’ve put you in your old room,” Carson said opening the door. “I hope you don’t mind.”
Connie walked across to the window of the room where they’d spent the first night of their marriage. Her heart felt very full as though this was the dawn of a new experience. She was aware of Carson close behind her and, as she reached the window she turned and put her arms around his neck.
Simultaneously his encircled her waist.
“I missed you terribly,” he said looking into her eyes. “It has been a very long year. Have you thought about what I said before you went away?”
“Yes.”
“And the answer?”
“Is yes. Did you ever think it could be anything else?” Her expression was grave, but there was an impish twinkle in her eyes. “Besides, as you said, we owe it to our children.”
When they kissed it felt as if they were first-time lovers, beginning their lives together all over again.
Epilogue
Closing the Circle
August 1950
Almost all the inhabitants of Wenham were in the parish church for the service to mark the departure of Hubert Turner who had been their rector for thirty-seven years. It was also the occasion of the induction of the new rector, the Reverend Duncan Fairbrother who had been an army chaplain in the war. The rectorship of Wenham seemed conducive to longevity. Hubert’s father-in-law, the Reverend Austin Lamb, had served the parish for forty years.
Watching her husband process with the new rector to the sanctuary, Sophie, whose own life was so bound up with this small town in the Blackmore Vale, recalled that day in August 1913 when a very similar ceremony had been enacted. It had also been a beautiful day then and the future had seemed promising, as they could not hear the distant rumble of war.
This time war was behind them, though the world was still an uneasy place and no one slept too soundly in their beds while the great powers hurled abuse and issued threats against one another.
In 1913 they had dedicated a window in memory of Sophie’s first husband, George Woodville, who had died of fever in New Guinea. Today the sun, as it had then, shone through the window and caught the exact angle of the cross casting its shadow over those portrayed beneath it.
Thirty-seven years. It seemed a lifetime, full of memories, good and bad. But, since deciding to move north to Hubert’s beloved Lake District, where they’d bought a house, Sophie had many times regretted that decision. After all she was Wenham born and bred and, except for the years in New Guinea, had lived there all her life.
She turned to look at her friend Eliza, sitting next to her, who gave her a sympathetic smile. Eliza, always a support whatever the occasion, and now in her eighty-ninth year, was also born and bred in Wenham and had never left it.
Eliza’s memories on this milestone day went back a very long way, were just as full as Sophie’s, just as profound and, in many ways, just as sad.
The window dedicated to Sophie’s husband, George, who had also been her nephew was also dedicated to the memory of her son Laurence. Laurence and George, for ever etched in glass, were the figures looking up at the cross, their hands eternally clasped in prayer. In their way they had achieved immortality; no one would forget them. Would that everyone close to her could have a similar memorial. Her first husband, Ryder, was buried in the family vault together with Laurence, her brother Guy, his wives Margaret and Agnes, and all the family who had passed away. One day, inevitably, she would join them. Rather than frightening it was, strangely, a comforting thought.
Eliza squeezed the arm of her old, old friend; they exchanged glances. She thought of all the people who had been alive in 1913 and were dead now, of the cruel fates that had overtaken members of her family including Laurence’s widow Sarah-Jane who had been murdered by a man who had never been found; her son-in-law Jean who had been shot as a partisan in the war. Dora standing beside her had her share of deprivation and suffering, Connie had been cut off from everyone for the duration of the war. Yet, by a strange irony, good had come out of it too. Carson and Connie had been joined together again in marriage, and Alexander’s wife Irene had been miraculously restored to him after six dreadful years. Their baby, Reuben named after her father, was at home with his nurse. Alexander’s daughter Kate stood between them in the pew behind her. On Alexander’s other side was Lally, also a beloved friend, now aged ninety yet able to hold her own with the younger generation.
Eliza glanced round at the family, their voices raised in the processional hymn ‘He who would valiant be’. As the two priests knelt in front of the altar and began the bidding prayers, Carson stepped forward to read the first lesson. Carson, who had the living of Wenham in his gift, had chosen a soldier as the new rector, a young man who had been awarded, like him, the Military Cross for gallantry.
Carson’s children as well as Connie were all in the church: Toby in military uniform, following in a tradition close to his father’s heart; Leonard a new graduate; Netta on leave from Germany. Deborah stood next to her mother, Sophie. As far away as possible her sister Ruth had slipped into a side aisle, clasping her prayer book in her hands, her eyes fixed on the pulpit. She had decided to move north to help look after her parents and shake the dust of Wenham from her feet. She had refused to let Abel have a divorce and she and Deborah never communicated with each other. Their eyes never met in church and probably never would again. For this reason Abel had stayed away. How sad it was when families fell out.
Sally, too, had remained in France to look after the vines – those precious vines. Sam and Minnie, together with Minnie’s children, had made their home in America.
Halfway down the church were Elizabeth, Carson’s half-sister, and her husband, Graham Temple. Their family had all turned out well, despite early poverty. Their sons, Robert and Tom, were studying to follow their father into the law. Their daughter Betsy had married a local, prosperous farmer and Jack Sprogett had been a hero in the war, an act which had revitalised his life. Only Mary, Alexander’s first wife, was no longer with them. On the way into the church they had laid flowers on her grave.
As the bidding prayers came to an end Carson, an impressive figure, tall, resolute, aristocratic, a true paterfamilias if ever there was one, slowly mounted the pulpit. Looking at him fondly, his aunt Eliza thought it was difficult to believe he had once been a feckless youth who had caused his parents so much grief, from whom no village maiden was said to be safe.
After glancing around as though he was in charge of the ceremonies he put on a pair of reading spectacles and cleared his throat before announcing in a clear tone, “The lesson is taken from the book of Ecclesiasticus, chapter 44, verses one to fourteen: Let us all praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us ...”
Sophie listened, absorbed, as he read on, a text so well known to her. How apposite all the words were, applying both to men and women. There were people rich in virtue, born of those who had left a name behind them. There were some to whom there was no memorial, who perished as if they had never been ...
She thought of Bart, who had once been her lover. He was Sam’s father. Somehow his fate had been the most cruel and, though she tried not to think of him, he hadn’t deserved it. He had disappeared, it seemed for ever. For the first time for many years she tried to force herself to think good of Bart, and said a little prayer for him in her heart. After all was this not a time for forgiveness, for a sense of joy and the hope of peace?
“Their bodies are buried in peace,” Carson concluded in resonant tones, “and their name unto generation and generation. Let the people show forth their wisdom and the church declare their praise.”
Carson closed the massive Bible, a gift to the church from a much earlier Woodville, and slowly looked round at the people crammed into every nook and cranny of the church. The rear doors were open and he could see the crowd pressing forward, straining to hear every word. The sun streamed through the stained-glass windows.
His heart was very full. It seemed a good day to be alive.
“I just want to say a few words,” he said, “on this day that we say farewell to one rector and welcome another. It is a day for looking backwards as well as forwards.
“All of you here have experienced many things since Hubert Turner was installed the year before the First World War began.
“A few years ago we finished another war. Let us pray that, during the time of the new rector, history will not repeat itself. I want to thank Hubert and wish him and Sophie well in their new life. I want to welcome Duncan Fairbrother who served all during the last war comforting many. I know he will be a worthy successor to Hubert and maybe, who knows, he might see the people of this parish through to the millennium, fifty years hence.”
There was a rustle of amusement at this notion while Carson fondly surveyed the congregation below him. They were his people, young and old. He and his family were one with them, inextricably linked. Their welfare was his; his and his children’s theirs. So it had been for hundreds of years and so, he was sure, would it continue.
Afterwards, the congregation streamed out into the sun, pausing to chat and greet one another, to shake the hand of the new rector and that of the one who was about to depart. Hubert’s handkerchief was never very far away from his eyes and he and Sophie clutched each other for mutual support.
Finally they were led away by Carson and Connie, and the rest of the family got into their cars and drove off. Then, as on so many momentous occasions in the past, the body of the congregation, having closed their shops and locked their houses, climbed into or on to various forms of transport – cars, carts, horses even a tractor or two – or made their way on foot, along the winding road to the home of the Woodvilles.
It was, after all, at Pelham’s Oak that, by tradition, the citizens of Wenham foregathered to mark the various milestones affecting the life of the town or that of the family, whether in war or peace, good times or bad, fair weather or foul, sadness or celebration.
So it always had been and so, as long as there were Woodvilles left alive, it always would.
Contents
IN TIME OF WAR
Publishing History
About the Author
By the same author
Contents
Synopsis
Part One
The Darkest Days
1939-1944
Chapter One
July 1939
Chapter Two
August 1939
Chapter Three
September 1939
Chapter Four
Spring 1940
Chapter Five
Summer 1940
Chapter Six
Spring 1941
August 1941
Chapter Seven
June 1942
December 1942
Chapter Eight
September 1943
December 1943
Part Two
The Turning of the Tide
1944-1947
Chapter Nine
March 1944
May 1944
Chapter Ten
May 1944
September 1944
Chapter Eleven
April 1945
Chapter Twelve
October 1945
January 1946
Chapter Thirteen
February 1946
Chapter Fourteen
August 1946
March 1947
September 1947
Epilogue
Closing the Circle
August 1950
In Time of War (Part Six of The People of this Parish Saga) Page 21
