by Karen Powell
Lennie pushed the hoe deep into the ground, so that it stood of its own accord, and then felt inside the collar of her dress for the ring: a silver band etched with an acanthus design.
‘It’s a traditional Greek pattern,’ Alexander said, a few days after he’d arrived home. From the continent, her father said, speaking carefully as though such a word—such a place and all its inhabitants—was not to be trusted. ‘Remarkably cheap,’ Alexander teased. ‘I bartered, of course.’ She had strung it on a chain that once belonged to her mother, her fingers seeking its cold surface whenever she was alone, feeling the way it had been worked, trying to read it. Like a picture she’d once seen of a girl, upright at a desk and dressed in Victorian clothing, all ringlets and unseeing eyes, and fingers moving across a Braille pattern. She liked the way the design turned back in upon itself, like a secret or a lie.
Alexander must not have noticed his mother approaching. Just as Lady Richmond drew close, he turned towards the house and a moment later there was the glint of glass as a door closed behind him.
Home. He was home at last and the ring around her neck proved that she was his again. Such a good girl, everyone said. Kind, loyal, gentle Lennie. She was a good girl and his, and tomorrow Danny Masters would be lying in the quiet earth.
CHAPTER 4
Danny
He loved her alright though he couldn’t say when it’d begun. They’d been kids together once, running wild in the woods and making up stories about the wounded soldiers who were taken up to Richmond Hall in ambulances, and he’d not paid her any attention, except to think Thomas Fairweather short-tempered with his little sister. He’d not cared much for Thomas back then, you never knew where you were with him, but Alexander had been a fine friend with his plays and his plans and his laughter.
Later it was that her noticed her, in the village schoolroom, high and echoey, after all the evacuees had gone home again, taking their accents and their Mickey Mouse gas masks with them and nobody all crammed in anymore. When Miss Price called ‘Helena! Helena Fairweather?’ Lennie would start, only then remembering who she was. Bridie Martin sat directly behind her and sometimes she would lean forward to make a braid of Lennie’s hair, hands made deft and strong from milking her father’s dairy cows each morning. The two girls must have been about ten years old then and not special friends as far as Danny could tell because Lennie never seemed to have friends in that way. He found himself drawn in by the sight of that pale fall of hair which seemed to shiver in Bridie’s hands with a strange life of its own. He was in awe of the casual way that Bridie gathered it up without even asking and Lennie allowing it to happen, not even turning to see. A small white statue, shining in the cold light of the schoolroom.
CHAPTER 5
Venetia, August 1955
Can’t see much point in opening to the public,’ he said.
‘Well, you won’t be able to stop Fairweather giving his tours, so we might as well charge for them. And the rose garden, definitely. We might think about a farm shop too.’
Venetia had asked James, her brother-in-law, up to the office. It was the morning of her birthday and the household was busy with preparations for the party, which was to be held on Saturday. Venetia had been struck by a sudden anxiety to get other things settled too. James had come directly from the market in Malton, bringing with him an awful bouquet: stiff, hot-coloured blooms of the kind she despised. Thanking him, Venetia had jammed them into a vase and put them out of the way on the mantelpiece, but still they were there, insistent at the edge of her vision.
Both of them remained standing, neither willing to sit in Angus’s old place behind the desk, or to take up his fountain pen which lay beside its wooden holder where he’d left it—like most things—almost put away. My husband is dead. It was hard to believe in the truth of that statement. The words might reach her lips, but they had no meaning.
‘The rose garden’s only worth seeing for a month or so in summer. And the farm looks after itself. Always has done.’
She felt the accusation. James had kept his side of the bargain. Why hadn’t his brother done the same? Now was the not the time to point out the disparity in the weight of their responsibilities. The biggest problem James had faced since the war was holding onto the labourers on the estate’s farm. So many of the men had come back to find they could not fit themselves back into their old lives. The brutal twist of war had severed their connection to the past.
But James knew about death duties well enough. Both he and Angus were long home from the war when their father, Laurence, or Sir Laurie as everyone called him, had died. The war years had seen the old man in his element, overseeing the transformation of the garden wing into a hospital, cheering up the wounded with tales of the Somme. The worst winter on record couldn’t finish him off, by then he spent most of his time in his own quarters, but Venetia remembered him rallying sufficiently to get himself trussed up in a greatcoat and galoshes, and careering down a snow slide that the children had built at the edge of the lawn like some tremendous snowplough, the children shrieking in terror and delight at the bottom. It was a news report about government plans for higher taxation that killed him. In a fit of rage he’d leapt up to turn off the television set and his great, bear-like heart had clapped to a halt. The thaw arrived in time to bury him three days later.
Things were so much worse now that her own husband was gone, thought Venetia: higher taxes and death duties on top of death duties. Did one have a duty to the dead? Surely it was enough to have fulfilled one’s duty while they lived.
‘But if it brings people here. We could build a nursery in the old barn and we might sell other things besides plants. The chickens produce more than we could ever need and not everyone keeps them these days.’
Strange that she cared about those creatures. Alexander had been terrified of the hens as a small boy, running from their red devil’s eyes. But during Angus’s last days they had taken her from a room, darkened, death sealed in, out into the blustery days of a too early spring. And she had looked forward to that walk to the pen each morning—nibs of green pushing relentlessly through the cold earth in the fields—waiting for the rush of clucking at her approach. Creatures depending on her to be alive. Life needing to go on.
If only she understood more. But Angus had gathered all their financial troubles to himself, and she was aware now, more than ever, of her shocking ignorance, her failure to address her lack of knowledge over the years. She would have to learn, though she was in the middle of her life and learning was for the young. If there had been a daughter she would have made sure that she was schooled, just like a boy. An education gave one armour and weapons against the world, the confidence to take a stand. To earn a living. Without it, a girl was always just that, no matter how old she grew, entirely dependent on others, vulnerable.
‘We’ll have to sell another piece of land.’ She rose from the desk and crossed to the window, looked towards the woods. On the far side of the trees, where the village lay, was a semi-circle of land, like a bite mark. From where Venetia stood, it was just possible to see the rows of neat, new roofs that filled the space.
‘The village has enough houses, I would have thought,’ said James. ‘It’s not as though we had proper bombing.’
Once had been enough to leave its mark on little Starome. The villagers had thought themselves safe, tucked away beneath the lip of the North York Moors, well away from the coast, or any kind of industry, and the Canadian airbase a good few miles distant. That was until young Francis Pearson, a delivery boy, earned himself a special place in history by drinking six pints in Pickering one night and then driving home with his van lights on, leading a German bomber, bound for Middlesbrough, all the way to the little row of cottages that made up Starome High Street.
Maisie Pearson, Francis’ eighty-seven-year-old grandmother, died of a heart attack when the bomb dropped, and the thatched roofs of the cottages gene
rously shared the flames amongst themselves until one side of the High Street was ablaze, with only the unthatched schoolhouse remaining intact. The High Street had been rebuilt for the most part, the inn even rethatched, but people seemed to need more space after the war, bigger gardens too, and the new houses, built where the trees had been, formed a crescent behind the High Street and had been filled with young families.
Venetia could understand James’ reluctance to add more. She had ridden every one of the bridle paths that threaded through the trees, had heard the crump of snow falling from boughs each winter and been caught in the carousel of leaves in autumn when the whole wood seemed to snap into life after the languid days of summer. And James was a farmer; everything was measured in land. But the woods belonged to everybody—the land on that side of the river had always been seen as common ground by the villagers. It was where their children learned to climb trees and build dens and the older boys took their girls when the time came, and neither Angus nor his father had ever shown an inclination to prove it otherwise until money became short
‘People always need houses, James,’ she said.
I sound like Marina, she thought, and she had to steady herself against the window pane.
That name from nowhere. Eyes, amphibious, watchful.
She waited for the old threat, twisting in the pit of her stomach.
But no. Marina was long gone, and she, Venetia, remained. Richmond Hall remained. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, she remembered. That was what Freddie, her eldest brother once told her, trying to lift her from the mire of her own ignorance. Energy just was. Her birthday party would take place, as always, and in the woods the ground would still spring beneath one’s feet, years upon years of leaf fall, forever breaking down and renewing.
‘Alexander ought to be here.’ James frowned. ‘These are his problems too now.’
‘We’ve discussed that, I thought.’ She started again, less brusquely. ‘He’s terribly young.’
‘There were plenty younger during the war.’
Had he absorbed this northern bluntness over time? She did not remember James speaking in that way when they had first met, among the cool, palmate foliage of a conservatory, both of them catching breath from the crush of a country ballroom. She wondered when that boy with the dark, uncertain eyes, the sweet manner, had become this hard, fully grown, saturnine man. Too many years of working the land with sparse company, she thought. Or all those months in the deserts of North Africa where the light was too harsh for subtleties.
Well, she hated that kind of talk. As if young people now were to blame for the timing of their births. Venetia was just glad it was over, thinking of the ploughed-up lawn where the army vehicles had come, bringing all those poor, wounded boys to the makeshift hospital. She had helped the nurses all she could, learning as she went, and then filled the house with flowers after they had gone, ignoring the extravagance, driving that smell from the house. Imagine it’s your own husband, one of the nurses had advised her in the early days, a strategy that was meant to make the most appalling tasks bearable, but Venetia did not hold with imagining. Besides, Angus had been very much alive, somewhere in the Arctic, where the waves froze as they crashed over the deck of his destroyer and the men grew shaggy beards for warmth.
‘And once college finishes, he might be called up at any time, you know that. I don’t imagine they’ll do away with National Service before then.’
‘Well, let’s just hope he doesn’t go mooching around the globe all over again. Especially if you reckon he and Lennie are courting.’ James said. ‘Everyone wanders off these days instead of staying where they belong.’
‘He’s just lost his father. What on earth do you expect?’
Her voice was sharper than she’d intended and James looked away. He was pale today and Venetia wondered if his leg was bothering him: that more tangible wound where white-hot shrapnel had seared sinew and bone. She must try to be kinder.
‘We must let him work things out for himself,’ she said, more gently.
‘Yes. Sorry, my love.’
Love.
The word had been sitting in his mouth like a quiet stone. Years. It had taken his brother’s death for him to dare speak it. Venetia had no taste for endearments and they certainly did not suit James. She could only guess what it meant to him to give voice to his feelings in such a way. How ridiculous that a man could wait half a lifetime to speak. The words no longer fitted him. She glanced down to the accounts books opened on the desk. ‘What else is there?’
CHAPTER 6
Danny, June 1953
All week they’d been working, the older girls stitching headbands out of elastic covered with cotton and cutting eye masks from black card, with custard-yellow cardboard beaks stapled on. Yesterday, Miss Price mixed a tub of black dye, dipping old sheets into it and swooshing them around with the end of an old broom handle. The sheets were rinsed in a separate tub and draped out in the sun to dry. Miss Price took up her shears and cut each sheet into smaller squares with a hole at the centre, and then she popped a square over the heads of the littlest pupils. It was then the job of Bridie Martin, who was good with her hands, to cut the sheet again, this time into the shape of ragged wings. Up and down the schoolroom the little ones ran, flapping their arms and practising their best caws, while outside the older boys helped Jim Madgwick, Miss Price’s fiancé, to stretch thick white canvas over the metal framework he’d built on the back of his truck, fixing it down at the bottom edges through loopholes that he’d punched through the fabric. The boys then strung Union Jack bunting all around the perimeter of the truck, which was more usually used for taking mangelwurzels to the livestock.
Now everything was ready. The truck stood outside the schoolhouse with the canvas rolled up on one side, and Miss Price and several of the older girls were passing up oval plates covered with tea towels, a stack of tablecloths, a basket of rattling crockery, a teapot and, last of all, an enormous kettle.
‘Right towards the front please, Jim. So they don’t get squashed. Has everyone their flags? Remember, we can’t go back once we’ve set off!’
The small children were helped up and then the rest of the class clambered up and jostled for position. Miss Price counted heads, and put Mary Stockton in charge of the girls, Jackie Bracegirdle in charge of the boys, and climbed into the front seat of the truck, alongside Jim. The smell of petrol filled the fresh morning air as the engine started and they were on their way, waving to mothers and younger siblings who stood on doorsteps to see them off.
Lennie was in charge of little Dennis Dewsnap, who could be relied upon to turn bilious at the least motion, even on his Dad’s tractor. The truck entered a tunnel of trees woven together over the lane and Danny, seated on the opposite side from Lennie—sick bag ready on her lap—turned his face up to the cool green leaves, the splintering light, and wondered if he would have a chance to talk to her today.
Not that long ago it was easy enough to speak to a girl without drawing attention to himself. Only last year, girls of his own age had been straightforward creatures—hopscotch and skipping at break times, chants rising and falling with the thwump of the rope: high, low, Dol-ly Pepper, white ankle-socks flying through the air. But now they turned fifteen and had given up on playing and they stood around in huddles, shoulders slumped or pushed too far back, angry or friendly, eyes sliding towards the patch of field where the boys had played football or wrestled until their shirts hung open and their faces turned red, the mud baked to a crust, cracking open. How deep did the cracks go, Danny used to wonder, you might disappear down one until you reached the centre of the earth which was on the map on the classroom wall, a great orange yolk made of lava, boiling and pulsing, like the molten glass up at the glazier’s where his uncle worked.
So girls were no longer to be counted on and he did not know where Lennie belonged in this new mystery, only that he was a
ware of her all the time, could feel her presence even when she wasn’t in direct sight, a kind of heat spreading over his skin. There was nothing he could do about it, he had decided that some time ago, and yet there was a strange, jangled-up feeling about today, all of them crammed together like this in the back of the truck, the small ones frantically flapping their flags in one another’s faces, the boys trying to get a rude song going, as if something out of the ordinary might be possible.
He’d have to be careful and not just for his own sake. Everyone knew that Lennie didn’t quite belong to the village and that sort of thing mattered now that the evacuees were long gone and there were no POWs to throw stones at on the way home from school. The other girls were nice enough to her most of the time, but they could change their minds, especially the popular ones like Bridie and her gang, and there was no reason you could see or anything you could do about it. Even a lad could tell that. He watched Lennie even more closely on those days, for signs of sadness or anger, but she took the cold-shouldering for as long as it lasted and went her own way, wandering amongst the trees where the woods edged the playing field. Once he had thought she was crying, but when he came closer, she was singing to herself in the low and lovely voice he could always hear among the others when they were made to sing in class. Now, it wasn’t just the girls he had to worry about. Lennie had something that made you look at her these days, whether you wanted to or not—but it was a strange kind of beauty she had, uncomfortable in a way that meant you could be mean about it if you had a mind to be.