Heathersleigh Homecoming

by Michael Phillips

  Immediately when the ceremony was concluded, many well-wishers made their way forward to shake hands and quietly express their sympathies. Jocelyn pulled back her veil, wiped her eyes, and did her best to make herself presentable to the public. With Charles gone, she knew duty required her to stand tall and proud in his place. She was far less conscious of her birthmark than she had probably ever been at a public gathering in her life.

  Lieutenant Langham greeted Amanda and shook hands with Timothy.

  “Lieutenant Langham,” said Amanda, “I would like you to meet my mother, Lady Jocelyn Rutherford—”

  “Lady Jocelyn,” nodded Langham, holding his naval hat in his left hand and shaking hers with his right, “I am extremely sorry.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

  “—and my sister Catharine,” Amanda went on, moving to Catharine.

  “My pleasure, Miss Rutherford,” he said, now shaking her hand.

  “Thank you,” replied Catharine. “I am happy to meet you, Lieutenant.”

  As the two spoke together briefly, Jocelyn noticed a man standing a few paces behind Lieutenant Langham in the background. He also wore the dress uniform of a naval officer, though with what appeared a large head bandage partially protruding beneath his hat. He appeared waiting for an opportunity to come forward and pay his respects. When Lieutenant Langham finally moved away, he came forward. Face and eyes were both red.

  “Mrs. Rutherford,” he said, clearly struggling to speak, “you do not know me, but I was acquainted with both your husband and your son. My name is Richard Forbes. Lieutenant Forbes to your son—I was his squadron leader.”

  He paused to take a deep breath, still not finding it easy to continue.

  “Your son,” he went on, “was the ablest and most dependable cadet in all my unit.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” smiled Jocelyn. “That is very kind of you.”

  “I am afraid I was occasionally a little hard on him at first. But he showed himself a man through it.”

  Again Forbes paused, this time more lengthily.

  “I only know what I have to tell you now,” he went on, “from others who saw it, because I was unconscious. I would have gone down with the ship . . . actually, I should have gone down. I was as good as dead. But apparently your son carried me from the torpedo room where I had fallen and injured my head—”

  He gestured briefly toward the bandage.

  “—he carried me on his shoulders up onto the deck and dumped me in one of the lifeboats. Your son saved my life, Mrs. Rutherford. I am sorrier than I can tell you for what happened. Both George and your husband were among the finest men I have ever known.”

  Amanda had been listening intently to the conversation. “Why didn’t George get in the lifeboat too?” she asked.

  “He turned and ran back to the middle of the ship,” replied Forbes. “Even though it was obvious we were sinking, and every other man was running frantically up the stairs for the deck, George ran toward the stairs and flew straight down. One of the men told me he heard him call out as he disappeared, ‘I’m going back for my father!’”

  At the words, Jocelyn burst into a sob. But almost as quickly she recovered herself.

  “I’m sorry, Lieutenant Forbes,” she said, trying to smile. “For a moment . . . it was like hearing George himself again. That is exactly what he would have done. Thank you so much for telling us.”

  Lieutenant Forbes nodded to each of the three, then turned and left them.

  By now Churchill himself had managed to work his way toward them from the front, where he and a few other dignitaries had been sitting.

  “Lady Jocelyn,” he intoned somberly, “let me again express my own deep personal condolences.”

  “Thank you very much, Mr. Churchill.”

  “Has your daughter told you that it is likely she will receive a commendation from the prime minister?” he asked, glancing toward Amanda.

  “No, actually,” replied Jocelyn, turning toward Amanda with surprise. “She hasn’t said a word of it.”

  “Well then, I shall let her tell you about it.”

  The First Lord of the Admiralty then greeted both Timothy and Amanda with handshakes and a few words. Amanda introduced him to Catharine.

  “I am afraid I have some unfortunate news for you,” said Churchill, turning and speaking once again to Amanda. “We sent a Coast Guard ship down from Whitby to Hawsker. But by the time they arrived it seems our friends had disappeared without a trace. All that was left was the dinghy and an old Irishman making back for the lighthouse. But they could get nothing out of him. We’re still trying to decide what to do with him. We don’t know whether he was part of it all or not. We’ve shut down the operation at the lighthouse, of course. But I’m afraid the fellow Halifax as well as Barclay and the others are still at large.”

  Amanda shuddered at the thought.

  “I wouldn’t worry if I were you. I’m sure they made no landfall in England. There must have been a U-boat out there waiting for them. But under the circumstances, if you know what I mean, I felt you needed to be informed.”

  “Yes . . . yes, thank you for telling me.”

  As Churchill paid his final respects to Jocelyn and then ambled away to speak to some of the other bereaved families, Catharine whispered to her mother and sister, “Uh-oh, don’t look now . . . brace yourselves!”

  Shuffling toward them, somewhat nervously it seemed, were three figures attired in black from head to toe, a plump teary-eyed woman in billowy dress of ambiguous cut, flanked by two three-piece-suited businessmen of somber countenance. Seeing that they had been noticed, Martha Rutherford now flowed toward them in a gush of tears and chiffon and the smell of lilac and outstretched fleshy arms. She went straight to Jocelyn and surrounded her in an undulating embrace, while the two men of her entourage approached more stiffly behind her, then took up stoic positions at attention.

  “Jocelyn . . . Jocelyn, my dear,” said Martha in something like a tearful wail, “I am so sorry! You poor dear—what you must have been through. Oh, and Catharine . . . Amanda,” she added, hugging each of them in turn. She gave Amanda an extra squeeze, then stepped back with a sad, and, Amanda thought, lonely smile. “It is so good to see you again, Amanda.”

  “And you, Cousin Martha,” Amanda replied.

  “I’ve missed you, dear.”

  “I know . . . I am sorry,” began Amanda. “I left the country, as you know, with Mrs. Thorndike, and then—”

  “No need to explain, my dear,” said Martha kindly. “I understand that things have been difficult for you. We shall catch up together again one day.”

  “Yes . . . yes, I would like that, Cousin Martha.”

  “You shall all come into London and be my guests . . . when you’re ready, of course,” she added, glancing a bit nervously toward Jocelyn and Catharine, with whom she did not feel quite so intimate yet. Suddenly it dawned on her that perhaps she had overstepped propriety and been too forward with Jocelyn.

  “Thank you, Martha,” smiled Jocelyn. “That is most gracious of you. We shall, I promise.”

  At first opportunity, Gifford oiled forward and proceeded to greet the members of his late first cousin’s family, cordially but with formality, mumbling a few somber condolences but obviously feeling awkward under the circumstances of the setting.

  Geoffrey, meanwhile, had been standing expressionless behind his parents. At first sight of him, Amanda thought she detected a strange light in his face, as if he was trying to catch her eyes. Her first impulse was to look away, thinking he must still be harboring the kind of affections for her that had so repulsed her before. As she observed him, however, the more she realized the odd expression signified something else. She could not put her finger on what exactly. But there could be no doubt that his demeanor was much improved.

  He now shuffled toward them as his father stepped back.

  “Cousin Jocelyn,” he said, “I really am sorry. I don’t know what else to
say.”

  “Thank you, Geoffrey. You are very kind.”

  He nodded with a nervous smile toward both Catharine and Amanda.

  “Hello, Amanda . . . Catharine.”

  “Hello, Geoffrey,” returned Amanda. Without further comment, he now slipped in close beside her, saying nothing but apparently listening with interest to the continuing conversation between their two mothers.

  “I appreciate all you did for Amanda when she was in the city . . .” Amanda heard her mother say. She was too distracted, however, by Geoffrey’s proximity to pay much attention.

  Suddenly close at her side almost in the folds of her dress itself, she felt her cousin take her hand. Blood rushed to her head and for a moment, Amanda’s old anger flared to the surface. She turned her face quickly toward him, though remained conscious of not making a scene.

  “Geoffrey, what are you—” she exclaimed in a loud whisper.

  His grip clamped tightly around her hand, almost crushing it into silence. Still he stared straight ahead, purposefully refusing to look in her direction. Amanda’s eyes continued to stare at him in outrage.

  The next instant Geoffrey’s fingers began fidgeting oddly. Then she felt something else against the skin of her palm, something hard and metallic. Still Geoffrey made no sound, nor so much as hinted by his expression that he was aware of anything out of the ordinary.

  Just as suddenly as he had taken it, he now released Amanda’s hand and calmly moved away. Amanda clutched her own fingers around whatever it was he had just secretly given her. Geoffrey walked across the ground, taking his place again in the vicinity of his father.

  The moment she could do so without calling attention to the fact, Amanda hurried a quick peek down beside her and opened her hand.

  The keys! The very same keys he had taken from the tower of Heathersleigh Hall!

  But why such stealth just to give them back?

  Amanda glanced up again. One look at Cousin Gifford’s face told her clearly enough. He obviously was not party to what Geoffrey had just done.

  “If there is anything we can do,” Cousin Martha was saying.

  “Thank you, Martha,” returned Jocelyn. “That is very kind.”

  But Amanda was hardly listening. Geoffrey was staring straight toward her.

  She nodded her acknowledgment of the transaction with an imperceptible tilt of the head, though with bewildered expression. Geoffrey returned the nod so slightly that only she saw it, then followed it with the hint of a smile.

  It was a smile, Amanda thought—perhaps the first such expression she had ever seen on his face—that seemed to contain no motive or guile. Maybe he too had changed in the year since she had seen him, she thought. Their eyes held each other’s in a strange and rare moment of shared understanding. It reminded her of the drive they had taken together, which had been almost pleasant. Slowly Amanda returned his smile, then nodded slightly again.

  Gradually the tide of well-wishers ebbed and flowed, and soon Geoffrey and his father were engaged in conversation with someone else.

  “He gives me the creeps,” whispered Catharine at Amanda’s side while Martha and Jocelyn continued to talk.

  “Who?” said Amanda.

  “Cousin Geoffrey, who else?”

  “He’s not so bad,” mused Amanda, whom the encounter had made curiously pensive.

  “I hope they’re not waiting for an invitation to come back to Heathersleigh,” whispered Catharine again, this time directly into Amanda’s ear. “I can see Mother thinking about it already.”

  The hint of a smile creased Amanda’s lips.

  “That’s exactly what they’re waiting for,” Catharine went on softly. “Look at Cousin Gifford—can’t you tell, glancing back over at Mother and Martha every so often. He’s just waiting for a chance to snoop around without Daddy there.”

  “That’s terrible, Catharine,” whispered Amanda, though she could not help being amused. “You’re so cynical.”

  “Don’t do it, Mother,” whispered Catharine, coaching her mum from afar.

  “Catharine, stop it!” whispered Amanda in return. “You’re going to make me start laughing. Besides, they’ll hear you.”

  “But I can see her weakening. Look how she and Cousin Martha are chatting away. I can see it in Martha’s face. She can almost taste Sarah’s tea cakes.—M—o—t—h—e—r !” whispered Catharine in a loud exhale.

  A brief snicker escaped Amanda’s lips. She tried to recover herself, throwing Catharine a look of silent command, to which Catharine replied with an equally silent, What did I do?

  “Oh-oh, here comes Geoffrey again. Run, Amanda.”

  “Catharine!” laughed Amanda, unable to help herself. “You are going to get us all in trouble. Look, he’s just going over to talk to someone else.”

  Geoffrey was indeed sauntering away from the small family reunion. Amanda did not speak to him again that day.

  As Martha eventually moved away in the direction of husband and son, Jocelyn’s younger sister, Edlyn, and her husband, Hugh, approached. Feeling it their duty to attend, they came forward with an understandable awkwardness, for the interview was bound to be a difficult one.

  Jocelyn’s heart both sank and roused itself in indignation as she saw them approach. After the cruel letter Hugh had written about Charles, how could any word of sympathy about his death now carry much meaning?

  As the Wildecott-Brownes approached she managed to catch Timothy’s eye in silent plea. He knew her meaning in an instant and was at her side the next.

  “Edlyn, hello,” said Jocelyn as graciously as she was able. “How good of you to make the effort to come all this way.”

  The two sisters hugged without touching.

  “We’re very sorry, Jocelyn dear.”

  “Thank you.—Hugh,” she said, nodding to her brother-in-law at Edlyn’s side.

  “Our sympathies, Jocelyn,” he said.

  Stiff handshakes passed between aunt and uncle and the youngest Rutherford daughter, who was less inclined even than her mother to extend forgiveness. Amanda, however, who knew nothing of the letter and had seen neither aunt nor uncle since the dinner at their home some two years earlier, greeted both warmly.

  “Timothy,” said Jocelyn, turning to her side, “I would like you to meet my sister and her husband—Hugh and Edlyn Wildecott-Browne. Hugh and Edlyn, may I present Rev. Timothy Diggorsfeld.”

  Handshakes followed.

  “Hugh, you may remember,” Jocelyn went on to Timothy, “wrote me that very interesting letter two years ago—the one that Charles and I shared with you, and asked you to help us understand.”

  “What letter was this, Hugh?” said Edlyn, glancing toward her husband.

  A series of nervous throat-clearings and a slight reddening of neck and cheeks accompanied the religious solicitor’s attempt to explain the communication whose content he had never divulged to his wife.

  “Yes, a very interesting letter indeed,” said Timothy, moving purposefully in Hugh’s direction. “It was a letter, if I may say, that I found very difficult to understand as well. I think it is time you and I had a serious talk, Mr. Wildecott-Browne.”

  Timothy led the man off across the grounds in such a way as to leave Hugh very little alternative but to accompany him. What passed between them neither man ever revealed to another soul. But its result was another letter to Jocelyn some months later, this time of very different tone, expressing contrite apology for what he had done earlier and for so completely misunderstanding the facts of the situation. By that time he and Timothy had begun meeting once a month for lunch.

  Before the year was out, Mr. Wildecott-Browne had resigned his church deaconship so that he and his wife might become regular attendees of services at New Hope Chapel on Bloomsbury Way.

  115

  Healing and Looking Forward

  The party of travelers arrived back at Heathersleigh Hall about five that afternoon. To Catharine’s relief, the return trip was made wit
hout accompanying relatives from London.

  “Catharine, you were positively terrible!” said Amanda on the train. “You almost made me laugh in front of Geoffrey.”

  “What was this, girls?” asked Jocelyn.

  “Nothing, Mother,” Catharine said. “I was just afraid you were going to invite our dear London relatives back to the Hall.”

  “Actually, I wondered if I ought to,” Jocelyn replied. “But I simply didn’t have the heart to face guests . . . not now, not after the service. I wanted to be alone with my family. I hope they were not offended.”

  “If I know Cousin Gifford,” said Catharine, “he was very offended, and is probably stewing about it right now.”

  “They’re really not all so bad,” said Amanda, though she could not help laughing a little to hear Catharine carry on. She never realized how funny her sister could be. “They were very kind to me in London, in their own way. Of course Geoffrey proposed to me, and that was beyond the bounds.”

  “Geoffrey proposed to you!” exclaimed Catharine. “Cousin Geoffrey . . . that slimy weasel!”

  Now even Jocelyn and Timothy could not help laughing.

  “He had a horrid big diamond ring and everything. I’ll admit, I wasn’t particularly gracious in my response,” said Amanda.

  Suddenly she paused, and a sad smile of irony passed across her face.

  “Although,” she went on after a moment, “who knows how different my life might be if I had accepted? Even marriage to Geoffrey would have been better than the fix I got myself into in Vienna. And he did slip me these when his father wasn’t looking.”

  She held up the brass ring with two keys dangling from it.

  “What—you mean he gave them to you today?” Catharine said. “When?”

  “When we were talking after the ceremony.”

  “What are they?” asked Jocelyn, puzzled.

  “The keys from up in the old tower,” Amanda replied. “I didn’t know he had them until he showed them to me—it was probably three years ago. He took them from here—that time they were visiting at Heathersleigh, remember, when he and I went up to the tower when the rest of you were talking downstairs. I’m afraid I was rather mean to him, and I guess he thought he would get even by taking the keys.”