by Georgia Hill
Before he left for the Parkers’ London house that weekend, I argued with Richard once again. This time it was the death knell.
Superficially, it was about Flora. But our enmity went deeper than that and was darker in hue. All the old petty jealousies had come back to haunt me. I’d seen how Flora and Richard had looked at one another as we had trundled back to the house, with me on the bicycle between them. I had sensed their lust for one another burning through me. They had knowledge of something unknown to me and I detested them both for it. Oh, and how I envied them!
The memory twists in my gut as surely as if it happened yesterday. There were times in my youth when I thought I would never escape Delamere and would never have the chance to be someone other than the cuckoo child. Edward was about to join the Worcestershires, Richard was to spend Easter in London with the Parkers and I was to be left behind once again. My frustration, combined with the old jealousy of Flora, ignited a fury within me that I’d rarely experienced before or since.
Richard and I were in the old library. Leonora had tasked us to find Papa’s old atlas to map Edward’s route to Egypt.
‘You and Flora seem awfully close,’ I began.
‘Yes we are. At least she knows what’s what,’ Richard sneered.
I had obviously not been forgiven. I wasn’t sure what he referred to, but could hazard a guess. I rounded on him. ‘She’s…she’s immoral. Fast!’
Richard roared with laughter.’ Oh yes, pettish little Hetty, she might well be, but Flora’s more fun than you’ll ever be.’
I thought back to the hunt ball and flushed. I’d never felt more gauche or ignorant. Everyone, Edward, Richard even Flora and her brothers were doing things, going to places that were more exciting than Delamere. And I was doomed to be stuck here, preserved in aspic like the aunts.
I puffed myself up. ‘I come into my money soon and then we’ll see who is more fun. I’ll…I’ll –’ I cast around wildly for something to say to fight back. ‘I’ll marry Edward!’ As soon as the words came out I regretted them. I watched as Richard’s face paled.
‘I’ll marry Edward and be an army wife and travel the world. As soon as his commission comes through he’s off to Egypt. I’ll marry him and go as well. So you can keep London and the Parkers’ parties. I’m going to Egypt!’ I stopped, having run out of breath.
Richard’s face closed, his lips tight. ‘Has he asked you?’
‘Of course,’ I lied airily. ‘He asks me constantly.’
Richard laughed, in a peculiar way. ‘Of course you’ll marry him,’ he sneered. ‘Isn’t that why your father dumped you with us?’ And, at this, he came nearer and I could smell the tobacco on his breath. ‘Why else would anyone marry you, Hetty? You’re not the greatest catch, you know.’
I gasped. His teasing of my freckles, of my snub nose, all came flooding back. Only this time it was no longer a tease. Richard said the words with venom.
‘You are vile,’ I managed. ‘At least I’ll have a husband. At least I’ll get away from here and the aunts. What’s going to happen to you, Richard? Do you think your precious Flora will want to marry you? How would you pay for her horses and dresses? You haven’t got any money at all! You’ll end up being louche!’ I said the word without any idea of its meaning. And, as soon as I had uttered it, knew I had gone far too far.
Richard took a step towards me, one fist raised, his face puce with rage.
‘Don’t you dare put a hand on me Richard Trenchard-Lewis! Don’t forget I’m to marry the heir to Delamere.’ I said, in desperation. ‘I can decide your fate!’ I tipped my chin up in false bravery.
Richard’s hand raised an inch more and I tried not to flinch. There was a beat pulsing wildly at his neck. Then he grinned, lowered his fist and laughed; a cold harsh sound.
‘If you marry Edward, you might have money and this joke of a house, but you’ll never have me. Admit it, Hetty, you love me – just as I love you.’
I was so shocked that, for a second, I could not speak. ‘Love!’ I gasped. ‘Love? You call hitting a woman love? What do you know of it, Richard? You, a mere boy!’ I spat out the last words. I pulled myself to my full height and glared at him.
He seemed, at that moment, to be nothing more than a wilful, indulged child. As, indeed, was I.
My parting shot was, ‘Edward is a man. More of a man than you’ll ever be.’ I turned and stomped to the door. Pausing before I went through and mindful of servants’ ears I hissed, ‘You Richard Lewis, are a boy!’
That had been the last I’d seen of Richard until my wedding day.
What a foolish, reckless girl I had been. Any misunderstanding at the ball had been cemented with that argument. Would I have acted differently had I known what the future would hold? Marry Richard not Edward? Had it been that which had tipped Richard over the edge?
Hetty put her head in her hands and felt very old, very weary. She no longer wanted to delve into her past, to reread her diaries. There were too many bad memories. Too much death. A time black-fringed with loss and misery. Enough. No more. No good could come of it.
She looked out into the gathering June evening and took a deep breath. A bat flitted quicksilver against the sunset. Something about it lifted her mood a little. She must remember the good times. There had been many, even if she had continued as a cuckoo in other people’s families, caring for their children, travelling their world.
And she had been lucky; many women of her generation had no husband at all. And then there had been Peter. Dear Peter.
As her eyes became accustomed to the gloom, she stiffened. There was a man striding up the track. Was it that young whipper-snapper Stanley again? He and his young lady thought Hetty didn’t see them, courting in the shadows. But she did. And left them alone. Most of the time. She had learned, through experience, that you had to grab at love’s chances whenever you could.
This man was taller than Stanley, with a more familiar, gangling gait. It couldn’t be. Could it?
Chapter 28
Gabe rolled over and slid a lazy hand along Rachel’s thigh. ‘Morning.’
It was Saturday and his day off. He planned on staying in bed as long as he could get away with it, preferably in Rachel’s company.
Rachel giggled, Gabe’s touch tickled. She twisted to look at the clock and then sighed with pleasure. Seven o’clock. One good thing about summer, the light always tricked you into waking earlier. She began ticking off a list of things to do in her head. Washing, plant up the geraniums Stan had bequeathed, go into Fordham for a coffee, maybe, pick up the papers, have a leisurely lunch. Then she got distracted by Gabe’s fingers. Evidently he had rather different plans.
Later, Gabe tried to sleep but couldn’t. Rachel, despite his vigorous attempts to keep her in bed, had got up, claiming it was far too nice a day to laze in bed all morning. Gabe, anticipating a lazy lie-in, couldn’t persuade Rachel otherwise.
Turning the pillow over to the cool side, he flipped onto his back and spread out across the double bed. Cool white cotton sheets – no duvet as it was far too hot.
The whole room was evidence of Rachel’s innate good taste. Cream, pale blue and white. Decorated, now most of the new electrics and the radiator pipes had been installed upstairs. Most of the work was nearing completion. Just one or two snagging issues to sort and it would be finished. Gabe wondered if Rachel would carry on seeing him. The wicked fairy on his left shoulder whispered that she was only sleeping with him as it was so convenient. Get two jobs done in one, so to speak.
He hadn’t a clue why she was with him. Take today; they had very different ideas of how to spend the time. Had even had a slight post-coital tiff about it, until Gabe relented and let Rachel get up to do whatever imaginary chores she had lined up. She’d warned him she was going to change the bedding this morning and he’d got until eleven.
Gabe gave a gusty sigh and stared at the ceiling. The sex was great, no denying that, but he wanted more. He suspected Rachel was happy with
what they had. So what did that make him? A stud? A toy boy? Her bit of rough on the side? Flicking back the sheet, he gave in and headed for a bath.
Rachel, halfway through potting up the geraniums, heard the water gurgling and smiled. Great! Gabe was getting up and now they could go into town. She hoped Gabe wouldn’t put wet feet all over the newly sanded and painted bathroom floor. It looked so nice when Kev had finished it the other day. She was about to go up and remind Gabe to borrow her towelling mules when she spotted Stan making his way up the track.
Straightening and wincing at the stiffness in her shoulders from a long stint at the drawing board yesterday, she smiled and waved. ‘What brings you here today?’
‘Mornin’, Rachel.’ Stan paused to get his breath back and felt in his pocket for the inevitable roll-up.
As he lit up, Rachel had it on the tip of her tongue to suggest he gave up, but kept quiet.
Stan noticed her look and waggled his baccy tin at her. ‘Don’t start! I’ve got enough with our Sharon going on at me. ‘Specially now.’
Rachel smiled. ‘Coffee?’
‘Ar and then I can tell you why I’m yere.’
When Rachel returned with their mugs, having taken Gabe some tea – he seemed to live on the stuff – she saw that Stan had settled himself on one of the charity-shop deckchairs. He’d worked hard on the front garden, fuelled by a desire to avoid his nagging daughter-in-law. The cottage now looked out on neatly planted raised beds and a gravelled space dotted with small lavenders and other fragrant herbs. It was exactly as Rachel had suggested to Stan all those weeks ago. Even the hostas had thrived, despite the hot, dry weather, with her tender care.
She passed over Stan’s coffee, trying not to shudder. It was instant and extremely sweet and milky, just as he always drank it. Sliding into the other chair, she handed over the biscuit tin. Stan was partial to a custard cream, or three, with his coffee.
He dunked one in silence and then said, without preamble, ‘I’m going to be a granddad.’
Rachel turned to him. ‘Oh Stan, that’s fabulous!’ He didn’t look thrilled.
‘You reckon so? I suppose.’ He drank his coffee, thoughtfully. ‘Won’t be a lot of room in that house, what with the four of us. Get in the way as it is.’
Ah. So that was it.
‘I’m sure they wouldn’t have asked you to move in if they hadn’t really wanted to.’ Poor Stan, he looked really worried.
Stan shifted uncomfortably. ‘No, but there ain’t nothing like putting your own slippers to warm by your own fire.’
Rachel, now unable to see herself living anywhere else but the cottage, couldn’t help but agree. ‘Do you know, somehow I think Hetty felt like that about here. That she’d found somewhere she could finally call her own. I know I certainly do.’
They lapsed into silence.
‘What did you do, Stan, for a living?’
Stan laughed. ‘Job got a bit interrupted like, what with the war.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I hadn’t realised you were in the war.’
Stan gave an indignant snort. ‘I’ll have you know I was too young. I’d only just started at my training at the Water Board, but had to go and do my National Service, didn’t I?’ He flicked a biscuit crumb off his shirt. A beady-eyed robin, hovering near by, spotted it, swooped down and it was gone. Stan laughed. ‘That one comes and sits on me spade when I’ve finished digging.’ He stared up at the sky. ‘Making the most of us keeping the swallows away. Territorial little beggars, swallows.’
Rachel’s thoughts weren’t on robins and swallows. She was confused. ‘You did National Service during the war?’
‘No, I had to go in ’48, that were when I was eighteen. Joined the Worcestershire Regiment.’
‘That’s who Edward Trenchard-Lewis served with.’
Stan finished his coffee in one gulp. ‘Who’s that, then?’
‘Hetty’s husband.’
‘Oh, Hetty.’ Stan put his mug down. ‘He’d be an officer, then.’ He began to roll another cigarette.
‘Yes. He died in the First World War.’
Stan nodded and, lighting his cigarette, took a deep drag. ‘Good many men from round yere lost their souls that way. My Uncle Reg, he went. Died at Passchendaele. Drowned in the mud, they said. His horse an’ all. God sent hell to earth that day.’ He coughed and pinched a bit of cigarette paper off his tongue.
Rachel couldn’t imagine the horror. Didn’t want to. The images of the First World War, the symbolism, the poetry and the poppies were so familiar, but it was another thing to hear about the squalid reality. Poor Reg. Poor Edward. The lost generation. How could she have coped with the thought of Gabe fighting – or dying? She shivered. Hetty was a stoic, bearing all with an astonishing bravery.
Rachel and Stan resumed their companionable silence, each lost in their own thoughts. They watched, as the robin returned, one eye focused hopefully on the biscuit tin.
Rachel opened it and crushed a biscuit into minute pieces. She threw them towards the bird. Brushing off her jeans, she asked, ‘Do you know anything about two brothers?’
‘You got any names?’
‘David and Lawrence Parker. They lived at Breckington Hall, somewhere near here. Hetty mentions them once or twice. One brother died quite early on in the war.’
‘Breckington’s out Worcester way, just off the main road. You had a look on the War Memorial on the village green? No?’ Stan shrugged. Their names might be on there, but it’s not likely if they lived at Breckington.’ Seeing Rachel’s lack of comprehension he added, ‘There’d be summat in their estate church, I expect.’
Rachel frowned. ‘I suppose,’ she began, ‘but I get the impression from Hetty it was a new house, for the time, that is.’
‘New money, eh?’ Stan nodded. ‘Mebbe no church built then.’
‘So worth having a look at the village war memorial?’
‘Oh ar.’ Stan rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘Parker you say? Breckington Hall? Think that family paid for a bit of the school. The one on the Downs. It’s where our Sharon wants the little ‘un to go.’
‘Bit early to be thinking of schools, isn’t it? Rachel laughed.
Stan pulled a doleful face. ‘According to our Sharon, it’s never too early to get put down for a good school. Me and Eunice went there, an’ all. Remember a roll of honour in the hall.’
‘I’ll check it out if I can,’
‘Toffs were they, these brothers?’
Rachel shrugged. ‘Hetty suggests they had money, so I suppose so.’
‘Ar, well, they might be in the church as well. There’s some plaques in there. Rich folk paid to put them up. Death don’t recognise money, though, do it? Our Reg just got his name engraved on the memorial. Not much to show for his sacrifice.’
Rachel made a mental note to check out the church. She hadn’t yet ventured down that end of the village, where the squat building with its fat tower lay, nestled alongside the stream.
She looked at her watch. Gabe was taking his time in the bath. She was itching to get into town; there was a good market on Saturdays. Stan, obviously in no hurry to go anywhere either, had settled into his deckchair, with yet another roll-up dangling from the corner of his mouth. Still, it was a beautiful morning. Perhaps she should succumb to the pace of country life too? To ease her impatience, she went inside to make fresh coffee.
As she gave Stan his mug, she asked, ‘So, you were being trained up as a water board official, then you did your National Service?’
Stan squinted against the bright sunshine and nodded. ‘Got sent to Aldershot. Right ‘ole that place was. Then they sent us lads to do the Berlin Airlift.’
‘The what?’
‘You don’t know your history, do you?’
Rachel smiled. ‘My friend Tim, the one who was at the quiz night, says the same thing.’ She laughed. ‘I think I’ve learned more about history since living here than I ever did at school. Tell me what the Berlin Airlift was all about
, then.’
‘We had to airlift food and stuff into Berlin. The city was being starved to death by the communists, the Russians.’ He tutted. ‘Was the start of the Cold War, but we didn’t know it, then.’
Rachel was intrigued. It was strange how you were tempted to write off old people as, well, simply old. You forgot they’d had a past – and an exciting one in many cases. She leaned forward, ‘Did you fly planes?’
‘No, lovely,’ Stan looked gratified at her sudden enthusiasm. ‘I just carted the stuff into the hold. Exciting, though. To think you’d been in a bit of history, like. Allus thought I’d like to go back, to see the city, but I never did.’
‘You could always go now.’
‘What, at my age?’
‘Stan, you’re fitter and more active than most people of my age. Of course you could go!’
‘No, don’t want to go on my own,’ he said, childishly. ‘No fun that way.’ He squished his butt end between nicotine-stained fingers and pursed his lips. He ferreted out his tin and, putting the stub in, took out another. Then, seeing Rachel’s face, changed his mind. Snapping the lid shut, he shoved it into his flannels.
‘Then, what about the Social Club in Fordham?’ Rachel was wracking her brain, trying to think of ways to get Stan out of the house. He obviously felt uncomfortable being there and would be even more so when the baby arrived.
Stan snorted. ‘What, that place? Full of crotchety old women on the lookout for hubby number two to kill off. Bus don’t go at the right time, neither.’
Rachel giggled; she couldn’t help herself. It seemed that Stan was not in the mood to be helped. Then she had an idea. ‘What about a shed? Remember, you suggested a shed to go at the back? We could get a biggish one and you could have a chair and a radio and my old electric heater. I won’t need it once Mike and Gabe have finished putting the central heating in. You could be in there as long as you like. I won’t mind.’
