*
A month later William returned from Berkshire in his new motor car. Tied on the back were three old military chests that he had removed simply because he had had the right to them.
It had been an unpleasant interview with his father’s cousin but he had, he felt, conducted himself with the dignity expected of the heir to the baronetcy. Removing the boxes served well to demonstrate to the woman that he had power over her.
“Have these taken to the attic,” he instructed when he returned to The Lodge.
“It’s all locked up, sir, and has been since… Well since…”
“Since my accident.” William finished the sentence for the footman. “Well break the door down. Put these boxes up there then seal the whole damned lot up again. I have no idea what they contain and I have no wish to know.”
*
In June 1918, while William was working through some papers that were required for the purchase of a small villa in Shanklin on the Isle of Wight for the dowager Lady Lacey, his brother was engaged in a terrible battle retreating from the town of Chambrecy. As they halted near a hill called Bligny Henry Lacey, along with the fewer than three hundred of his men who remained, were enveloped in a cloud of gas.
*
“He cannot live here. Let him stay in that home or whatever it is. Blind! And worse!” William told his mother when, in January 1919, they were told that Henry was fit enough to leave the convalescent home where he had been recovering from his injuries. “We can’t look after a blind invalid here.”
“He is your brother.”
“But he can’t do anything for himself!”
“No, of course he can’t. But we will do what we can for him.” Lady Catherine was angry. “At least I shall. I shall pay for him to stay on at the home. A donation should make them change their minds.”
“Not one penny more than it need be.”
“You should go to Monmouth. I’m sure you can try to be of some use there.”
“And why should I need to be ‘of some use’?”
“Ever since the news of that inheritance and the blasted title—”
“I haven’t heard you complain about being Lady Lacey,” her son interrupted.
Catherine ignored her son. “Ever since the news of that inheritance and the blasted title you have been completely insufferable. I have needed your assistance with many things and you have been in London or out cavorting with some ne’er-do-well. Have you any idea what trouble we are in? No? Well you should be. The bank is failing, the miners are striking, the war effort is winding down and demand is falling. It is highly likely we will lose everything and all you can do is act as though your father is already dead. You will go to Wales and you will sort things out.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then all will be lost.”
“So?”
William had never had any love of the Welsh businesses, as he called them. He had no understanding of them and since he had felt his fortune was secure he had done what he could to run the businesses down. He was to inherit a baronetcy, he was an aristocrat, his fortune would be in his investments and in land, not in trade. He was well aware what an association with trade did to a man’s prospects in society.
He was not unhappy as one by one, the businesses were closed and properties sold. The Estate Duty demand had yet to be paid and it was not a good time to be selling as many old families had lost their young men and had the same taxes to meet. The bank in Monmouth failed, causing many families to lose what little they had in savings and many businesses to lose their capital. The cutbacks in pit maintenance led to a massive cave-in at their largest mine, causing it to close, with the loss of many jobs. Even the farms made losses as agricultural prices fell.
By the beginning of the summer of 1919 the Lacey fortune was diminished but it was still substantial and William had done as he had wished, he had largely extricated the family from the stigma of trade.
*
While on one of his last trips to the Welsh businesses William was approached in the street by a woman he did not know.
“Are you Mr William Lacey?”
“And you are?”
“I am Rose Oliver Lacey.”
“Lacey?”
“I have the certificate here.” Rose fumbled in her bag and drew out a brown envelope. “I am legally married to Henry Oliver Llewellyn Lacey.”
William knew she was not bluffing.
“And?” He expected her to ask for money.
“I want to know if he is well? He went to war, I know that. Did he come back? Is he alive?”
“You want his pension?”
“I want nothing. I just need to know why he hasn’t come home.”
William looked at the woman, then down at the young girl holding onto her hand, then back to the woman and he lied.
“He died. In France. There is nothing for you.”
As she watched him walk away she wondered why he had lied. She would have felt it if Harry had died. She put her hand to the pendant that he had given her the day he left, and which she always wore.
“He is not dead!” she shouted the man who was her brother-in-law. “He is not dead!”
She stayed staring down the hill until William had disappeared from view.
“He is not dead, you bastard,” she whispered as tears of frustration and anger, not of sorrow, flowed.
*
Nine months later, in the September of 1919, both Sir Bernard and Lady Catherine died of the influenza.
The Estate Duties due on the death of Bertie had not been cleared before another calculation was made and an even larger sum added to the debt. Sir William’s judgement was poor and the advice he was given was worse and by the end of 1920, the Lacey, Swann and de Burgh legacies had all but disappeared.
Sir William blamed everyone but himself. The bankers should have advised him that investment in high-risk stocks could lose him everything, the agents who sold his properties should have obtained better prices, but most of all the government was to blame. His change in circumstance was all the fault of Lloyd George and his vendetta against those with money and land.
In early 1921 it seemed to him that his misfortune was compounded when he had a call from the convalescent home. It was closing and, since Henry was as well as he was ever going to be, he would have to return to The Lodge.
There was nowhere else for him to go.
“Michael Wickens will help,” Sir William’s secretary said as they discussed what was to be done.
“Michael Wickens?”
“He’s just come back from France. He’s fit and well and will, I feel sure, look after Major Lacey.”
“And why would he do that?”
“The Wickens family have served the families of The Lodge and of Oakridge Court for over a hundred years. Now Oakridge is shut up he has nowhere to go.”
“And how do you know this?”
“I see him, on occasion, in a public house.”
“You gossip in a public house about my private affairs?”
“I do not gossip, Sir William, I simply mentioned that Major Lacey was to return to The Lodge and that I didn’t feel able to assist you.”
“You said nothing about my leaving?”
“I do not gossip about your private affairs Sir William.”
As soon as Michael Wickens was installed Sir William left for London to find a rich American heiress in search of a title.
*
It took two years but in the spring of 1923 Eva, the only child of a meat-packing magnate from Chicago, Illinois, became Lady Eva Lacey.
Eva was quite open about her motives for marrying Sir William. When asked why she had married him she would answer candidly. “Oh yes, he wanted my money and I wanted his title. It is really quite simple. There was such a shortage of eligible men after the war and it seemed the sensible course of action. It’s worked out quite well on the whole.”
Sir William was equally honest. “She was young, pre
tty enough, rich and ambitious. I was lucky enough to have a title and although I was no Duke or Earl she decided I would be good enough.”
The marriage worked out well for both William and Eva as they agreed on most things to do with their household arrangements. Eva was an excellent organiser and William found he enjoyed hosting the parties, both the private ones and also the more ostentatious ones to raise money for injured servicemen, at their house situated in a fashionable street in Mayfair. His life was well run and there was, thanks to the generosity of her father, never any shortage of money.
*
“What are you going to do about Henry now?” Eva asked at breakfast one morning after they had been married long enough for her husband to be reading his morning paper rather than conversing with his wife, who spent the time reading her mail.
“Henry?” William looked up from his paper.
“Your brother Henry.”
“Why do we have to do anything about Henry?”
“Michael Wickens is leaving. He has an offer in Northumberland, as a gamekeeper. It is what he trained for before the war.”
“You must organise someone else, another ex-serviceman? Or there must be a home somewhere, like the ones you raise money for? He would be with similarly disabled men.”
“He’s younger than you, isn’t he William?”
“Two years. He’ll be thirty-one now.”
“If only there was some way he could be encouraged to be active and interested in life again. It’s so sad to think of such a young man wasting away.”
“I’ve often wondered if it wouldn’t have been better for him if he had died out there, as so many did. Then we could remember him as the man he was.” William was aware of his hypocrisy but he had always tried to present himself to his wife as a caring brother. It was one of the softer parts of his character that had attracted Eva to him. “As it is we’ll have to pay for the house and his companion or we’ll have to pay for his care in a home. Whatever we do with him he will be a drain on our finances.”
“It’s a shame he never married, and then he would be his wife’s responsibility not ours.”
William remembered a brief meeting towards the end of the war when he had been in Monmouthshire with many other things on his mind. There had been a young woman and a child.
“I think he may have been married,” he said thoughtfully, recalling the slim figure in the clinging cotton apron.
“You think?”
“I think he may have had a wife.”
“Don’t you know?”
“Yes. I remember now. He was married.”
Eva had learned quickly that there were many things about William and his past that she would never know and she took it in her stride that he had forgotten that his brother had been married. There were so many reasons to excuse him; the war had caused so much confusion and the worries about money, along with the loss of his parents and his family fortune, must have been very difficult for him.
“We must find her,” she said firmly.
*
A month later Rose Lacey answered the door to a man in grey uniform standing, his cap tucked under his arm, almost to attention.
“Yes?”
“Mrs Lacey?”
No one had ever called her that. She was Rose or Rosie or, very occasionally, Mrs Oliver. ‘Mrs Lacey’ sounded very strange and she took a moment to collect herself.
“Yes. My name is Rose Lacey.”
“Could you step outside please, there is a lady in the car who would very much like to meet you.” The chauffeur could not bring himself to call this woman in a terraced house ‘Madam’, as he knew he should have done.
Lady Eva Lacey sat upright in the back seat of a large black car and watched her sister-in-law walk tentatively across the narrow street. The drab cotton dress hung shapelessly around a slim body. Eva saw the poverty but she also saw the pride in the way Rose held her head. She could understand that Rose would have been attractive years before.
The chauffeur held the door open and Rose stepped up into the car. Lady Eva could not help noticing the beautiful pendant that hung around her neck, it was not an item of jewellery she would have expected to see in this working-class area.
The woman’s voice was soft as she asked the questions that were to change Rose’s life.
“Mrs Lacey, you must allow me to introduce myself. I am Lady Lacey. I am married to Sir William Lacey, your husband’s elder brother.”
Rose said nothing. There didn’t seem to be anything to say until she knew why this woman was here in her fine clothes and her Rolls Royce car. She nodded briefly, to show that she was listening.
“When did you last see your husband?”
Rose’s hand went, as it always did when she thought of Harry, to the pendant around her neck. It was an automatic response not lost on Eva.
“Harry? He left in June 1914 to go to the war and he never came back.”
“He didn’t come back because he couldn’t.”
“He’s dead? I saw Mr Lacey, your husband that is, I saw him and he said Harry was dead but I didn’t believe him then and I still don’t.”
“You were right. My husband was mistaken.”
“Mistaken?”
“He was under a misapprehension. It is true that Henry was missing and he was presumed dead, but he was not.” Eva felt the small white lie to protect her husband would be forgiven.
“He’s alive? Why hasn’t he come back to me? And to Rowan?”
“Rowan?”
“Our daughter. Rowan. She’s eleven now. But if he was alive why hasn’t he come back to us?” Eva thought she detected some panic in Rose’s voice. She tried to imagine what she would be feeling if she were in Rose’s shoes but there were just too many differences in their lives for her to bridge the gap between them.
“He would have done but he did not want to be a burden.” Eva’s tone both reassured and frightened Rose.
“Burden? He’s injured?”
“He is blind, my dear.”
“Blind?”
“And he has many other problems. He has lost much of his memory and he needs help at times with his breathing. The gas did more than just make its victims lose their sight.”
“Gas?” Rose had seen men return to their homes in the valleys after they had been gassed. The men she had known had been shadows of themselves, dependent, wary, resentful. But this was Harry. She wanted to be with him, whatever the problems would be.
“Where is he?”
“He’s been at his family home on the Isle of Wight since he returned.”
“Who’s with him? Who’s looking after him? His mother?”
“His mother is dead, as is his father.”
“Then who? You?”
Eva saw that Rose was agitated and sought to calm her.
“My dear.” She realised that made her sound condescending or so much older than Rose, but they were very much the same age. “Rose, may I call you that? Rose, you must think carefully before you do anything hasty. What would life be for you and for your daughter? You would be leaving your family, your childhood friends, the places you both love and are familiar with, for a life that would not be your own.” She spoke from the heart, because that is what she had had to do when she had accepted Sir William.
“But he is my husband. I love him. I will go to him.”
“You’re sure? You don’t want to discuss it with your family?”
“There is no need. He is my husband and I love him. Rowan and I will look after him.”
“Then say your goodbyes, collect your things and we will go.”
*
That evening the Rolls Royce turned into the drive of The Lodge.
“Harry?” Rose asked tentatively as she walked into the kitchen. “Harry? It’s Rosie.” She looked about her, trying to take in the vastness of the rooms and the house.
“Rosie?”
She would never have recognised the man who turned towards her had she not kno
wn it was her Harry. It was nine years since he had left her yet he seemed twenty years older. His eyes were open but it was clear he could see nothing. He held out his hand towards her.
“Rosie?” he repeated.
“Yes, Harry, it’s me.”
His head slumped down on his chest and sobs racked through his body. Rose walked over and crouched down beside his chair and put her hand on his arm. “Yes, Harry, we’re here to take care of you.”
Eva, holding Rowan back at the door, knew her instinct had been right as she watched as Henry reached up his hand and felt for his wife’s. Then he reached upwards, towards her neck. “Yes Harry, I’m wearing your pendant. I always have.” Then he reached down to her left hand and felt along the fingers. “Yes Harry, my wedding ring, I’ve never taken it off.”
“Rowan?”
“She’s here. Rowan, come over here and say hello to your father.”
Eva took no notice of the tears that ran down her cheeks as Rowan walked over and knelt down next to her damaged father and he put his hand on her head, stroking her hair.
Eva had hoped, in the two years of her marriage, that she would have conceived. More than her social life and her title she longed for a daughter, and she knew William longed for a son to carry on the Lacey name. Yet nothing had happened. She determined to persevere; she was still young.
As she watched the reunited family she told herself that, one day, it would happen for her.
After the initial minutes of emotion Eva sat at the table in the impressive kitchen window with Michael Wickens, Henry, Rose and Rowan, making decisions that would affect the future of all of them.
It took a little less than an hour to make the arrangements. Michael would stay on for a month to show Rose the best ways to look after her husband; a tutor would be hired for Rowan so she could catch up with studies and then she would attend the local school and Henry, Rose and Rowan would stay at The Lodge for as long as any of them lived. Eva would ensure that her lawyers drew up everything in such a manner that William could not change what she had decided. There are, she thought wryly, advantages to holding the purse strings.
A Set of Lies Page 31
