Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor

by Melanie Dobson

  “You and Walter must leave here at once,” Aunt Priscilla insisted. “No one outside of Devonshire will question you about the dates of your wedding or the child’s birth.”

  “Walter would never leave the newspaper.”

  “You are his wife,” her aunt said, her spoon clinking as she stirred her tea, its ripples colliding with the sides of the cup. “It’s your job to compel him to go.”

  “But how—”

  “You’re smart, Margaret,” she said as she mixed in more sugar. “You’ve gotten yourself married, and that’s probably the best thing you could have done under these circumstances. Now you have to protect Walter and your child.”

  She didn’t say it, but Maggie knew the secret must be kept most of all to protect the Fraser family’s reputation.

  Aunt Priscilla sipped her tea and then stood. “If Walter really loves you, he’ll relinquish his position at the paper.”

  Maggie stared down at her full cup of tea. Walter loved her—she had no doubt of that. He’d spent more than a year in the steady pursuit of her hand before she agreed to marry him. But how could she ask him to choose between his two loves—his wife and his writing?

  Aunt Priscilla excused herself to visit the water closet; when Maggie leaned back in the chair, her gaze traveling out the window to the Bristol Channel in the distance.

  Walter wasn’t so enamored by the fame of a byline, but he thought information was the key to liberty. Reporting the news was his passion though, not creating it. If anyone else suspected that this baby wasn’t Walter’s child—the gossip would never compete with the facts that Walter religiously collected, verified, and distributed for his subscribers. No one would bother to verify the child’s father and she would never tell. The villagers could talk and whisper all they wanted about her, but Walter’s reputation was as stellar as her aunt and uncle’s.

  She drained her warm tea, but didn’t taste it.

  Could she really influence Walter to leave Clevedon before the gossipmongers began milling her story?

  Walter had been only eleven when Hitler invaded Poland. As the war progressed, many British newspapermen became war correspondents or soldiers so by the time Walter was fourteen, he began filling in the gap, writing for a newspaper in Kent. After the war, he left for London to write for the Evening Standard until Harold Bishop hired him as the managing editor for the Clevedon Mercury.

  Her husband hadn’t liked living in a big city where he didn’t even know his neighbors, but he loved to write and thrived on every aspect of the newspaper business—collecting the stories, setting the type, even selling the advertising pages and weekly subscriptions. And once he moved to Clevedon, he continued to work as a correspondent, feeding occasional stories from Devonshire back to his old boss at the Standard.

  She couldn’t imagine Walter working in any profession that didn’t involve writing in some capacity. He was passionate about his stories and about raising their family here along the coast.

  When she heard her aunt’s heavy footsteps in the back hall, she stood to clear the teacups.

  How was she supposed to convince Walter to leave Clevedon without telling him the truth?

  JUNE 1954, CLEVEDON, ENGLAND

  The baby pressed against Maggie’s abdomen as she shelved the last novel in her tall stack of returns. Then she gently placed her hand over the elbow—or perhaps the foot—that bulged under her white blouse.

  It wouldn’t be long now before she’d be holding this child in her arms.

  Before he left for work this morning, Walter said they had 132 days until the baby arrived, but according to her calculations, baby would be here in 41 days. Or less.

  The number made her feel faint.

  It was still an hour before the library closed, but Mrs. Jenkins, the head librarian, said she could leave early. Somehow she must convince Walter that they had to move right away.

  Fog had settled over the village, and she slowly navigated the narrow alleys down the hill, toward the greengrocers to buy fresh produce for Walter’s favorite salad—a mixture of shredded cabbage, grated onion, and diced tomatoes.

  Her stomach roiled from the smells in the air. Seaweed. Gasoline. Greasy fish and chips.

  She hadn’t liked the taste of fish, any kind of fish, when she’d been relocated here during the war, and she’d never grown fond of the cod or bass from the channel. Still, she ate it several times a week like most of the people in town, even as she dreamt of beef pie and leg of lamb.

  Tonight there would be no fish on their dinner table and nothing would come out of a tin. Lamb chops were more expensive than fish or tinned food, but not so pricey that Walter would fret about her extravagance.

  When she stepped into the butcher shop, two women turned toward her. Instead of greeting her, however, one woman tipped toward the other like a teapot preparing to pour out. Maggie held her head up as she proceeded in the queue toward the counter, trying to pretend they weren’t whispering about her.

  It was becoming increasingly apparent that her pregnancy was much further along than her wedding date allowed. Fortunately, these women didn’t know about Elliot, and her husband didn’t seem to suspect anything was amiss. The baby was technically due in the middle of July, and she prayed the child would be late by a week or two.

  Heaven forbid he or she came early.

  She must convince Walter to leave this village before the baby was born so they could start over in a new place, far away from the whispers and gossip. Somehow she had to rescue their little family without explaining her reasons.

  Maggie tugged on the hem of her oversized blouse, pulling it over the elastic of her skirt as she waited for her meat. With the brown wrappings around her lamb in one hand, the bag of produce in the other, she brushed past her aunt’s friends and hurried back up the hill toward home.

  Quickly she shredded the cabbage on the chopping block and tossed it along with the onion and tomatoes in a blue Pyrex bowl. Then she slid the lamb chops, encrusted with fresh rosemary, into the oven.

  While the lamb baked, she brushed her hair in the washroom and pinned it back again. Then she zipped on a silk floral dress she’d purchased in Bristol and retrieved her grandmother’s rhinestone necklace, one of the few family heirlooms her mother packed for her, to clasp around her neck.

  At the foot of the bed was the antique trunk she’d brought from her childhood home in Balham more than a decade ago. Opening the trunk, she removed her wedding album along with her treasured copy of The Secret Garden and the tubes of watercolors her father had sent with her and her brother. Her father hoped she would spend time painting on the coast, but Maggie hadn’t inherited his talent or passion for art. Sometimes she wondered if Edmund would have become an artist.

  Carefully she took out her newest treasures—pieces of crystal she and Walter had received as wedding presents, protected by pages and pages of her husband’s newspaper. She unwrapped the crystal and two silver candlesticks, then set them on the white-cloaked dining table. She arranged the candlesticks alongside a small silver bowl filled with mint jelly and a basket with sliced whole-meal bread from the bakery. After placing white, tapered candles into the candlesticks, she lit them and stepped back to admire her handiwork.

  Satisfied, she blew them out. Once she heard Walter at the door, she’d quickly relight the candles.

  When the timer chimed, she removed the lamb chops and turned off the oven, placing the pan on her stovetop and covering it with foil. She’d learned a lot about housekeeping in the past decade, and now she was determined to learn how to be the best wife to Walter. And a doting mother to their children.

  If only she could avoid the whispers from her aunt’s friends.

  Baby kicked her side again, this time much stronger. Bending over, she steadied herself on the counter.

  “I’m here,” she said to comfort her child, wishing she knew what to call him or her.

  She and Walter had been discussing names for their baby—and she did
think of the child as theirs now—for three months. If it was a boy, they’d name him Walter. If it was a girl, they weren’t certain what to name her.

  She’d suggested Eliza or Caroline for a girl’s name, but Walter liked Margaret or Priscilla. Maggie told him she didn’t like either name. If the baby was female, she prayed their daughter would be nothing like her or her aunt.

  As she sat on the davenport, Maggie eyed the clock. Strange. Walter was already a half hour late. Usually he phoned if he didn’t leave the office by six, but she hadn’t said anything about their special dinner tonight, hadn’t wanted him to suspect that she had ulterior motives.

  She picked up the telephone and rang the Clevedon Mercury office, but no one answered. After replacing the receiver, she propped her pumps up on the coffee table, listening to the front windows rattle from the wind. Even though it was summer, the breeze from the bay cooled their town in the evenings. They had no need for the air-conditioning she’d read about in the magazines.

  She kicked off her shoes and reached for the afghan that hung over the arm of the davenport to pull over her dress. The newspaper didn’t go to press until Friday. She never would have made this special dinner on a Thursday night, but she thought Wednesday would be safe.

  Her mind began rehearsing again what she would say to Walter. How she would coyly suggest, not demand, they leave without playing on his love for her. She was doing this because she cared for him and their baby.

  Tired, she began to drift asleep and didn’t awaken until the front door banged open. She inched herself up, her lower back aching as she slowly remembered that she’d been waiting for her husband.

  The streetlamp colored their sitting room with a hazy, orange glow, and she watched Walter hurry across the room, trying to catch his breath even as he spoke. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

  She pressed her pinned curls back into place. “What happened?”

  “A trawler hit the rocks near Battery Point and tipped over.” In his voice, she could hear the mix of sadness at the tragedy along with an underpinning satisfaction, the restrained enthusiasm, over covering a real news story. “I had to interview the survivors.”

  “How awful,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “Two fishermen died.” He shook his head as he collapsed onto the davenport beside her. “They were trapped inside the hull.”

  She rubbed her arms, shuddering at the thought of families who had lost men they loved tonight. “I wish you’d telephoned.”

  “I ran out of the office so fast . . .” He reached for her hand. “I didn’t realize I’d be gone so long.”

  He leaned closer to her. “Will you forgive me?”

  The way he said it was so sweet, the way she’d once imagined Elliot would ask for her forgiveness when he returned.

  She smiled at him. “Of course, I will.”

  He lifted his head, and his eyes widened when he saw the crystal and candlesticks in the street lantern light. “You made us a special dinner.”

  She shrugged. “They’re only lamb chops—”

  “I’m famished,” he said as he stood up and switched on the lamp. She was hungry as well.

  “It will be cold.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” He helped her stand, and even though it was almost eleven, she relit the candles and peeled back the foil. Then he held out her chair.

  “How was your day?” he asked as he served the meat.

  She thought about the endless books she’d checked out for children on their summer holiday. And the stacks she’d had to reshelve. And the conversation with Walter that she’d rehearsed over and over in her mind.

  It was hardly as riveting as reporting a shipwreck on the coast, but still it was her story.

  “Mrs. Bishop keeps coming by to see if we have John Steinbeck’s new novel. I’ve told her repeatedly that it doesn’t release until next month but she thinks I’m being impertinent.”

  Walter laughed. “That’s what happens when you’ve met the Queen of England.”

  “Queen Elizabeth wasn’t a queen when Mrs. Bishop met her!”

  “Don’t remind her of that,” he said before he took a bite of his salad. Mrs. Bishop was married to Harold Bishop, the man who owned the Clevedon Mercury. Mr. Bishop spent much of his time away from home.

  “It doesn’t matter what I say.” Maggie sighed. “The woman doesn’t like me.”

  He tilted his head. “How could anyone not like you?”

  She didn’t know how she’d managed to fool such an intelligent man about her character. “She thinks I’m intentionally keeping her from the books she wants to read. Like I’m the book Gestapo or something.”

  Walter wiped his face with his napkin. “She doesn’t like me much either.”

  “What could you have done—”

  “She thinks I’m covering up the most important news in Clevedon.”

  She tilted her head. “And what news would that be?”

  “I have no idea, and frankly I don’t think she does either.”

  She sighed again. “Apparently the two of us are conspiring against her happiness.”

  “That’s us, Maggie,” he said with another laugh. “Two grand conspirators.”

  She cringed at his words.

  Aunt Priscilla had said it was the predisposition of any woman to redirect the conversation to say what she needed to say. If she didn’t ask Walter about moving now, it might be too late.

  She reached for her napkin and dabbed it on her lips. “I’m tired of working at the library.”

  “I meant to tell you—” He glanced back up from his meal. “Anthony Morton says they have been looking for someone to let two rooms in their house.”

  She picked up her fork to stir the strands of cabbage in her bowl. “We can’t live with the Mortons. Baby will be up at night crying the first weeks and I would feel so bad . . .”

  “They’ll understand. They have two grown children.”

  Maggie looked over at the exhaustion in her husband’s red-rimmed eyes, at his disheveled blond hair, at the smudges on his thin spectacles. The timing might be terrible, but she had to make him understand the dire state of their future here.

  “What if—” she began, twirling her fork casually even as she tried to calm the racing in her heart. “Oh, it’s an impossible idea.”

  Even though his eyes were heavy with fatigue, he leaned forward and smiled at her. “But I like your ideas.”

  “What if—” she started again and then took a deep breath. “What if we moved?”

  His smile collapsed into confusion. “But you said you didn’t want to live with the Mortons.”

  “I mean—” She put down her fork. “What if we moved away?”

  He searched her face intently as if he thought she might be teasing him. “You want to leave Clevedon?”

  “I—” she faltered before slowly nodding her head. “Perhaps you could find a more secure position at another newspaper—”

  “My position is secure.”

  She continued, refusing to be daunted now. “A place where you can earn a higher income.”

  He flinched. “I will never earn as much money as your uncle.”

  “I don’t expect you to,” she said, trying to collect her thoughts even as her words rushed out. “I just thought it might be a good idea for our little family to start over someplace new.”

  “Start over—” His lips pressed together for a moment before he spoke again. “Why would we want to start over?”

  Goose bumps bristled across her arms as her mind raced to devise a more compelling argument.

  “I thought you liked it here,” he said.

  She clenched her fork. This was going all wrong. “Not particularly.”

  “Why not?” he probed.

  Her gaze turned toward the dark window. “I don’t like the cold air on the coast, I suppose, or the smell of fish, or the way everyone butts into everyone else’s business.”

  He tossed his napk
in onto the table. “You should have told me that before we married.”

  “Everything happened so fast, Walter. My head was spinning.”

  “I just assumed—”

  “You assumed a lot of things,” she blurted, and then covered her mouth, horrified.

  He clutched the edge of the table. “What else did I assume?”

  Answers to his question pelted her mind like rapid gunfire, but this time she controlled her tongue.

  “I didn’t say that right,” she said, sniffling. “I’m all a mess right now.”

  He slowly released his grip on the table. “We’re both exhausted.”

  This time she softened her voice, tilting her head slightly again, blinking back her tears. She hadn’t asked much of him since their wedding, but she thought he really did love her enough to give her whatever she wanted. All she wanted now was for him to consider a move, at least until she could come up with a more pressing reason for them to leave. “Will you think about it?” she asked.

  “I run the local newspaper,” he said as if he were fastened to the business by wooden stocks.

  “Someone else can manage the paper, just as well as you.”

  He looked insulted at first, but it turned rapidly into frustration. “I’m sorry, love—” he hesitated again, conflicted, and she hoped he still might change his mind. “But we can’t leave.”

  She crossed her arms, tears flooding her cheeks. Walter couldn’t tell her what she would and would not do, like he was her father instead of her husband.

  “Thank you for the meal.” He stood and picked up both plates before pushing in the chair. “I have to finish writing this story tonight.”

  She listened to the water running from the faucet in the kitchen. Usually he washed their dishes and she dried, but tonight she didn’t move from her chair.

  Her aunt said if Walter loved her enough, he would leave Clevedon. Walter might say he loved her, but he didn’t really, at least not more than his newspaper.

  She never should have listened to her aunt.

  In the hours before dawn, as she lay in bed next to Walter, she could hear the deep breathing of his sleep. This riff between them tonight was invisible, nothing like the aftermath of a trawler crashing into the rocks, but she’d felt a tear separating her from her husband.