The Summer Before the War

by Helen Simonson

  “I do not expect to be invited,” he said curtly and begged her pardon for leaving early to look after his grieving cousin.

  Daniel had obtained leave and come to London, but having sent a note of condolence in which he begged to be called upon to do whatever service the family might need, he had received no communication, not at his father’s house, where he went each day to check the post, or at Hugh’s lodging. When he was not keeping busy at the offices of The Poetry Review, which had agreed to publish his David poem in honor of the young son of Lord North, Daniel lay for hours in a grieving stupor on the cot in Hugh’s dressing room and caused Hugh’s landlady to weep for “the poor young man” and his dead friend.

  On the evening before the funeral, Hugh came home from a day of field medicine training and drilling exercises to find Daniel sitting on the doorstep of his building, counting pigeons on an opposite rooftop.

  “I am shut out,” said Daniel, in response to Hugh’s greeting.

  Hugh sighed. After a long day, it was sometimes hard to be patient with Daniel, who was as fragile as a pierced and blown eggshell. “Isn’t the landlady home? Must you sit on the step like a vagrant?” he asked.

  “I went to Craigmore’s home, only to find I am barred,” said Daniel.

  “What did they say?” asked Hugh. With some concern for his uniform, Hugh squeezed in alongside his cousin, hitching his trousers at the knees and splaying his feet out from the low step. It was an undignified but, he hoped, supportive gesture.

  “I was refused entry by the footman, but I stood fast at the door of the gatehouse, even when they threatened to call the constable,” said Daniel. “Finally, Craigmore’s sister beckoned me from a side door in the long wall and came out into the street to talk to me.”

  “You thought her a bland miss, I seem to remember,” said Hugh.

  “Only she had the courage to face me,” said Daniel, “to let me know that I am blamed for Craigmore’s death.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” said Hugh.

  “They settled on the Flying Corps to get him away from my bad influence,” said Daniel. “He had refused all urging to join his father’s old regiment, but he could not resist the lure of flying, and his father offered him a commission to give me up.”

  “Preposterous!” said Hugh, knowing in his heart it was true. “Even so, you cannot be held responsible for what happened.”

  “A father’s loss, a mother’s grief,” said Daniel. “I am to be the sacrificial goat that is to carry all our sins into the desert.”

  “And the funeral?”

  “I am not wanted,” said Daniel. “Twenty-four college friends and professors will follow the coffin in cap and gown, but I am asked to stay away.”

  “It is cruel,” said Hugh.

  “She offered me a ticket for a balcony seat reserved for former tutors, retired retainers, and so on,” said Daniel. He did not look offended, but more astonished. “She risked the wrath of her parents and injury to her reputation, and apologized because it was all she could do for me.”

  “At least you can attend then,” said Hugh.

  “I refused, of course,” said Daniel.

  “Why?” asked Hugh. “At least you would be in the church!”

  “What’s a funeral but pageantry and sentimental hymns, and ladies fanning themselves through the prayers while comparing hats?” To Hugh’s relief, he stood up and rubbed a hand across his forehead as if to wake his brain. “I have made my eulogy in the form of a poem. I shall stand in the street in the rain and watch my friend pass one last time.”

  “How do you know it will rain?” asked Hugh, making a mental note to make sure he had two umbrellas at his lodging.

  “God would not be so cruel as to taunt us with sunshine,” said Daniel. “Grief begs for dark skies.”

  —

  It rained as Daniel wished, a chill, persistent rain that wilted ladies’ hats and lingered in wool coats to chill the watchers in the street and the funeral guests in the cold stone of the church. A large crowd gathered on the roadside to watch the cortège pass. Some came to salute the dead; old soldiers in their medals, and a few Chelsea pensioners in their scarlet coats. Many more, whipped into a frenzy of maudlin fascination by the illustrated papers, had come to point and exclaim over the parade of notables and to scan the carriages for any royal guests.

  The yellow press had continued to fill their pages with photographic arrays: Craigmore as a child, Craigmore in a rowing blue with an oar over the shoulder, a misty panorama of his family’s estate. A newly commissioned photograph showed his sister and his fiancée, weeping around an elaborate fountain in flowing black crepe and drooping feathers, the one holding a Bible and the other a sword in its scabbard. Even The Times had published the funeral program this morning, and featured an excerpt from a eulogizing poem. To Hugh’s slow-dawning astonishment, as he read lines that seemed strangely familiar, the excerpt was from Daniel’s “Ode to the ‘David of Florence,’ ” reprinted from The Poetry Review.

  In a street near the church, Hugh and Daniel took up a position in a doorway where they could see the procession from an elevated step and keep off some of the rain. Daniel, who had expressed no elation at being in The Times, and who had objected to Hugh running out to buy extra copies, was shivering in his wool coat, with the collar turned up, a copy of The Poetry Review stuffed in one pocket. He insisted on being bareheaded, and his hair was already plastered to his face. Hugh thought this a ritualistic affectation liable to bring on bronchitis or worse.

  The sound of bagpipes and drums signaled the coming of the glass-sided hearse, drawn by four black horses. Their feet were muffled in canvas bags, and they wore heavy purple plumes and large black blinkers to shield their eyes from their somber task. Two footmen rode on the back step and six outriders to either side. The oak coffin, much set with bronze ornaments and heavy bronze rails, was topped with a flag of the family crest and a blanket of red roses.

  As the coffin passed, Hugh gripped Daniel’s elbow but said nothing. His cousin only shivered and followed the hearse with his eyes, reaching out a hand as it passed down the street. He stared after it for a long time, as if he could see the hearse now turning in to the street in front of the church, now see the long procession of clergy and acolytes with their swinging thuribles of incense and shining brass crucifix, now see Craigmore’s coffin placed, with gentle finality, at the foot of the altar.

  “We should get out of this rain,” said Hugh. The carriages had long passed and the street was empty now.

  “Give me a moment,” said Daniel. Waiting for a lone omnibus to pass, he walked into the road to retrieve a single purple ostrich feather fallen from one of the horses. It was muddy and bedraggled, but he shook it briefly and pressed it inside his jacket, to dry against his shirtfront. Then he allowed Hugh to take his arm and together they walked home in the rain.

  It was a long three days before Agatha Kent made a loud and public arrival at the cottage at teatime, bearing an assortment of foods for the invalid and a gift for Mrs. Turber.

  “It is so hard to have influenza in the house, Mrs. Turber,” she said, on the doorstep, where the neighbors might hear her. She presented the landlady with a large, beribboned box of dainty marzipan confections. “My husband sent these especially for you from London.” Mrs. Turber could only open her mouth silently, like a carp, for surely in accepting the box, she must in all politeness swallow the grand lie with which it was offered.

  “Dr. Lawton says she is doing much better,” said Beatrice as Agatha swept in at the door. “She usually sleeps in the afternoon, but I can go and wake her?”

  “Lady Emily says they all miss Celeste’s piano playing at the hospital, but of course she is to concentrate on getting better,” said Agatha, still pursuing Mrs. Turber’s complete domination. “Don’t disturb the patient on my account,” she added. “I just need a word with Miss Nash on one or two matters.”

  Shutting the parlor door on Mrs. Turber, Agatha move
d to the window and stood, slowly stripping off her driving gloves. Her broad driving hat, with its thick veil, was cast aside on the window seat. She seemed gloomy.

  “I began to doubt you would come,” said Beatrice. “I’m sorry, but so many ladies would wash their hands of the matter, and then I didn’t hear from you…”

  “I hope I never pretended to be somehow above the other ladies of this town,” said Agatha. “That would be the height of hubris on my part.” She settled on the window seat and tossed the gloves aside onto the hat. “I fear I am as small-minded as the next woman. The trick is to know it,” she added.

  “I am also shocked,” Beatrice admitted slowly. For the last few days she had found it hard to stay in the cottage with Celeste. The long hours in her room scribbling, with little faith and fewer ideas; her desire to breakfast and be off to school so early that the groundskeeper had to let her in at the side door—excuses so that she would not have to smell Celeste’s fresh-soaped skin, or look at her body blooming under her dressing gown, or watch her face lit by the dying embers of the fire and witness the loneliness of her melancholy. She had shrunk from Celeste as if her misfortune was sin burned on her flesh. Agatha was silent and picked at a loose thread on her gloves. “But in my heart I know it is my duty as a woman to fight my own weakness and stand against injustice,” added Beatrice.

  “Women will always bear the shame of Eve, it seems,” said Agatha. “It was the same in my youth, and I fear it will be the same long after we are gone.” She stared out of the window for a long moment as if seeing down the years. “War only makes it worse,” she added. “A soldier dies, and a girl who considered herself promised is left with shattered dreams and a child. This time, the Vicar tells me, he is twisting every rule to get young couples married off in the space between orders and embarkation.”

  “What are we to do?” asked Beatrice.

  “I have just come from Amberleigh de Witte’s house,” said Agatha. “I went to her to seek sanctuary for our poor refugee. A few months of rest after her ‘influenza’ and the child placed with an accommodating farmer’s wife—sometimes such arrangements are made locally.”

  “I knew you had not forsaken us,” said Beatrice. “Miss de Witte is the perfect solution. She does not go about in society, and Celeste already knows her cottage. Why did I not think of her?”

  “It does us no good,” said Agatha. “Amberleigh declines to help.”

  “But why?” asked Beatrice. “Surely she knows what it is to be shunned?”

  “Exactly,” said Agatha. “Miss de Witte told me quite cogently what I could do with my request for her help. As she pointed out, with several mortifying examples, I have made no effort to open my doors to her.”

  “You have not?” asked Beatrice.

  “Miss Nash, I hope I am a sensible woman, but I am not a revolutionary,” she said. “Their marriage cannot stand scrutiny, and Miss de Witte must bear the stigma of it. I may not invite her to tea.”

  “I thought they preferred their solitude,” said Beatrice. “They have each other.”

  “Few marriages can survive such solitude,” said Agatha. “The woman will pine for company and she will surely push her husband from her arms by a surfeit of domestic attention.”

  “They have their work, their writing,” said Beatrice. “Surely it sustains them?”

  “Have you met many writers, Miss Nash?” asked Agatha. “I find them to be the greediest for social attention. I fear Mr. Tillingham may never publish again, given that he is always gallivanting and so rarely confined to his desk.”

  “Will you decline to ask Celeste to tea?” asked Beatrice, hearing Abigail’s footsteps and the rattle of the tea tray in the hall. Agatha did not reply immediately but waited in silence for Abigail to place the large tray and set out the cups.

  “Thank you, Abigail. That will be all,” Beatrice said. “I can pour for us.” When the maid was gone, she waited for an answer.

  “You cannot know how much compassion I feel for Celeste,” said Agatha. “But while I might continue to ask her to tea as a charitable act, I would not ask her if other guests were expected, and I could never invite her to dinner.” Beatrice’s hand shook as she poured the tea, and some of the Earl Grey slopped into the saucer. “I tell you a truth so unflattering to me because we should understand our limits, my dear.”

  “What should we do?” asked Beatrice.

  “I have also written to my late sister’s midwife in Gloucestershire,” said Agatha. “She was always a woman of great discretion. But if all fails, we must look to preserve your reputation.”

  “I don’t care about me,” said Beatrice.

  “It is also unflattering not to be truthful,” said Agatha. “We are all social creatures, my dear. I do not think you wish to lose your home or your position, do you?”

  Beatrice shook her head. “But I had thought you more progressive, Mrs. Kent,” she said stiffly. “Celeste is after all an innocent in the matter.”

  “You think me unenlightened, but now it is you who are being blind,” said Agatha, interrupting. “There is a reason they call it a fate worse than death. Should such rumor spread, then even if there were no child, I fear no man would consider her for a wife or even a mistress, and no women would receive her.” She drank her tea and gathered her gloves. “I believe this particular taint will endure long after your suffragettes have achieved every dream of emancipation, my dear.”

  “It is horrible,” said Beatrice, but she flushed at the truth of Agatha’s words.

  “You must be wary of contagion,” said Agatha. “Sometime soon Celeste’s condition will become obvious, and then she cannot stay here with you.”

  “I fear Celeste is exhausted with despair,” said Beatrice. “We must take pity on her.”

  “Bettina Fothergill will smell pity a mile away and will take delight in burying all of us,” said Agatha. “Please, understand that cultivating a convincing level of disinterest is the only way to help.”

  —

  Beatrice did her best to carry on as usual, but some rumor, perhaps whispered first by Mrs. Turber, exerted an influence as slow and subtle as a change in the barometer before an oncoming bank of rain clouds. Mrs. Turber’s friends continued to come for tea. But where they once came to catch an eager glimpse of beauty, they now seemed more inclined to stare, chewing sandwiches in silence and whispering to Mrs. Turber in the passage afterwards. The Belgians in the garden studio seemed to amuse their own children a little more, leaving Celeste to her silent embroidery; while her father borrowed thicker and thicker books from Mr. Tillingham’s library and read by himself in the window.

  At school Miss Devon and Miss Clauvert were noticeably cool towards Beatrice. Whenever she came to take her regular cup of tea in the staff room, they seemed to pull their chairs closer together in a corner and turn their shoulders against her. But Beatrice put this down to Miss Clauvert’s recent discovery of Beatrice writing a letter to Mr. Dimbly before lessons began. As she was informed by a severe Miss Devon, after the weeping Miss Clauvert had to go home with a headache, Mr. Dimbly had asked Miss Clauvert to write to him and this had been taken as a promise of some kind, against which Beatrice’s letter had the appearance of flagrant interloping. Beatrice had little use for such silliness and was glad to be left alone to her morning tea.

  Even Eleanor Wheaton had ceased to drop by unannounced or send invitations, but the absence of Eleanor’s cheerful excess and generosity, while it contributed to the air of melancholy in the small cottage, did not raise an alarm. Beatrice’s failure to notice was perhaps willfully blind.

  It was the ladies of the Relief Committee who finally gave shape and sound to the intensity of excited feeling collected under the huddled roofs of Rye. At an emergency lunchtime meeting, Mrs. Fothergill suggested that Beatrice be excused from the discussions.

  “I’m sorry,” said Beatrice. “What is to be discussed to which I am not allowed to be privy?”

  “A delicate matte
r, my dear,” said Lady Emily. “We think only of your sensibilities and of your position.”

  “I have made it clear that I think this is not the place to discuss such a matter at all,” said Agatha Kent, feigning to be distracted with searching for a handkerchief in one of her pockets.

  “And you may make such a note in the minutes, dear Agatha,” said Mrs. Fothergill. “But it is my opinion that we have a responsibility to those who donate to the cause and a moral obligation to supervise our guests.”

  “I assure you I am not the most sensitive woman in this room,” said Beatrice. “You need have no fear of shocking me.”

  “As a guardian of young minds, you should perhaps be more protective of your reputation,” said Mrs. Fothergill.

  “I think this concerns her directly,” said Agatha, ceasing to fiddle about her person and looking Bettina Fothergill in the eye. “If you are bent on bringing the matter forward, Bettina, let the girl know what she is facing.” Beatrice detected a strain under her neutral tone, and her heart constricted.

  “I have no objection to her staying,” said Lady Emily. “We may need her cooperation.”

  “I would like to remind everyone that what we discuss here is to be kept strictly confidential,” said Agatha, glaring at Bettina Fothergill. “Let’s for goodness’ sake get it over with before Mr. Tillingham comes in.”

  Mrs. Fothergill, given the floor, seemed suddenly hard-pressed to begin. She gave several little coughs and worked her lips as if practicing different opening phrases.

  “It is completely regrettable, of course, that the girl has suffered an outrage,” she said. “Mrs. Turber is the most Christian and charitable of ladies, and she is in tears at the impossible nature of the situation.”

  “Mrs. Turber has an unfortunate taste for gossip and all the compassion of a coal scuttle,” said Agatha Kent. “I find it hard to imagine her weeping.”

  “It is hardly gossip, dear Agatha,” said Mrs. Fothergill. “Mrs. Turber assures me she would have confirmed nothing had that de Witte woman not already mentioned it to me.”