by Karen Powell
‘Careful.’ She reached for him but he stepped back, pulling himself up with the dignity of the very drunk. She sensed the attention of those standing nearby.
He spread his palms in mock dismay.
‘I’m awfully sorry Lennie couldn’t come,’ she said. ‘It simply didn’t occur to me when we were writing—’
‘Just as well. Wouldn’t have wanted this lot pawing at her.’
She tried for a neutral topic.
‘I’ve heard next to nothing about your Greek trip since you’ve been home.’
‘What’s to tell? Just different piles of rubble left by different people. Nothing that would interest you.’
‘I rather thought that was the point of Greece. Ancient history.’ She smiled. ‘Have you thanked your uncle? He organised all this when everything was still so . . . ’ She gestured to the room, to James still hot in the face from his speech. She ought to have asked Alexander first. She saw that now. But Angus dying had shaken everything up and even now she had to concentrate hard to work out how the pieces had fallen. Alexander would not have wanted to play host, she was almost sure of it, yet she realised that she had made an error of judgement.
‘Thanked him?’
‘These parties don’t just happen, though of course Fairweather did a great deal . . . ’ The look in his eye at the mention of Lennie’s father stopped her. She didn’t want that conversation right now. ‘Let’s go into dinner and do try to be cheerful. We have to carry on, Alexander. Somehow.’
‘We do?’ Behind the defiance, she saw uncertainty in his eyes. Give me your suffering, she wanted to say. I am capable of anything now.
‘Your father would have expected it. You know that.’
Laughter, spiritless.
‘Not sure he has an opinion on the matter, mother. Poor bastard’ll be spitting maggots right now.’
CHAPTER 11
Lennie, August 1955
Music drifted through the kitchen window as Lennie cleared away the dishes and her eye was inevitably drawn up to the Hall. It was a still and humid night, the afternoon breeze having sunk like a stone as the sun slid towards the ridge. She imagined the doors of the salon would be opened out onto the Great Lawn in order to let in the evening air. She went to the dresser and took out her sewing basket, remembering a sheet that needed re-hemming. It was dull work for a dull evening and she welcomed it, anything to stop her thinking of the cars that had been passing by the cottage since early evening, snapshots of lace and satin, of expectant faces.
‘That was the Terrington girls,’ her father said from the doorway, about to leave. ‘Their father’s a general, you know.’
Every Friday night after supper, Peter Fairweather polished his shoes to a mirror shine, combed back his hair, and walked along the river path to the village inn, the Black Swan, where he would drink three pints of beer spread out over a space of three hours, before returning home.
‘It goes down well with the chaps,’ he would say, thinking of a war hero he’d read about, whose habit of hunkering down with his men in all circumstances had made him popular. Such nods towards egalitarianism were in vain: Sir Angus had been welcome at the inn any time he chose to drop by, with his affable manner and easy humour, but the men who laboured around the Hall resented the intrusion of one who felt his marginal superiority so keenly. Her father’s presence made them uneasy, as if they were still being watched, judged, during the few hours of the day when they were not in thrall to the estate.
‘You won’t be missing anything, Len,’ said Thomas, wrists held out so that she could fasten the cuffs of his dress-shirt. He sounded weary, as if she had insisted otherwise. ‘The place’ll be full of the usual set, quite sure of their own importance and not an interesting thought between them. I won’t be staying for any longer than I have to.’ Thomas glanced down at the sewing basket which she’d set on the table in readiness. ‘At least persuade Father to buy a television set.’
His voice was gruff but it felt like an apology for something.
‘You’ll be home soon then?’
She was often alone in the cottage, but tonight there was some uneasiness inside her, wanting to come to the surface. She could feel it prickling beneath her skin.
Thomas shook his head.
‘Jamie Markham’s a poker night set up at his, so I’m heading over. Hopefully I’ll grab a lift home with Alexander, if I can persuade him to escape too. Otherwise I’ll be back in the morning.’ He looked at her. ‘I gather father’s still in the dark about you two. I must say I was surprised you didn’t speak up when he was blathering on about Annie Faversham. You’re going to have to get a bit of backbone about it at some point, you know.’ He drew together his dark brows. ‘It’ll send him into a panic, of course—one more thing to fret about. It is still going on, I presume . . . ?’ said Thomas.
Lennie’s instinct was for secrecy, not wanting to sully a thing so delicate by clumsy words or by exposing it to the commonplace. At the outset, she had liked the separateness of it all, but now she felt less sure of herself. ‘You’re my girl,’ Alexander said, and yet how quickly he had forgotten about wanting her by his side at tonight’s party, the Salon a whole world that barely knew of her existence. Everything had become complicated, turning back in upon itself like the pattern on the ring he’d bought her. She wished it was still springtime, when the cow parsley swayed in the hedgerows and everything was new.
‘Yes.’
Her brother had grown taller since Easter, she’d noticed, so much so that he must duck his head to prevent it grazing the door jamb when he entered the cottage. With his height and the explosion of dark curls inherited from their mother, it was hard to believe the two of them were related.
Thomas gave a sigh of exasperation. ‘Well, he really ought to have sorted a bloody invitation for you then. If nothing else, to shut father up.’
His words seemed to acknowledge and negate something in the same instance. Lennie felt the situation had provided him with a useful yet minor point in some greater argument.
‘Anyone would think you and Alexander weren’t friends.’ she said.
It was a ridiculous thought, after all these years of the three of them growing up side by side, but something was out of kilter.
He frowned in the way he did when working through some philosophical problem.
‘That’s not what I’m talking about. Look Len, I know he’s lost his father but I just reckon Alexander’s been odd recently. All that stuff about Danny Masters, for instance. And yet they were thick as thieves as kids.’ Thomas hesitated, as though deciding whether to continue. ‘I don’t much like the way he behaves around girls.’
‘What do you mean?’ She tensed.
‘Oh, I don’t know, Len.’ Thomas said, as if aggravated by her failure to grasp by instinct what he meant. ‘He’s very charming when he wants to be but somehow people end up unhappy and he’s quite untouched by any of it. At college, I mean.’
Because he loves me!
She forgave her brother for his stupid cleverness; he was only trying to protect her. She had sometimes wondered about Thomas himself when it came to girls: there was never any mention of anyone at Cambridge. It was clearer now though: either he didn’t yet understand about love, or he was jealous of Alexander’s easy charm.
‘I should speak to him,’ Thomas said. ‘Make sure he’s serious.’
‘No, I don’t want that!’ The bulk of her brother suddenly seemed to fill the small room, leaving no space to breathe. ‘Tom, you must promise not to.’
Thomas had already moved on. ‘Well, it’d be a fine thing for Annie Faversham and the county lot if you were to end up marrying. They wouldn’t be quite so pleased with themselves then.’
He grinned at his own joke, while Lennie wondered if it was quite right to mock the local gentry when he planned to enjoy the hospitality at Markham House
that very evening. Thomas brushed down his jacket with a last irritated flick of the wrists. ‘Anyway, you don’t want to go making a fool of yourself, Len, that’s all.’
The light was beginning to fade. She would have to move to the armchair and switch on the lamp to continue her work. She went to the door, telling herself it was only to breathe the evening air. Light spilled from the entrance to the Hall until it was absorbed by the black-green shadows, while the house itself was almost in silhouette against a violent child’s scrawl of a sunset, the trees paper cut-outs strung across the ridge. Laughter from somewhere. She reached inside her collar but the ring was just cold metal patterned in a way she did not understand. I’ll take you there, Alexander had said, to places where the villagers would marvel at her pale hair, clutch at talismans to ward off the evil eye. A land of temples and vases and sails, and she could almost imagine herself there, bare rock, tense blue light and the sea echoing in hollow chambers beneath her feet. How real everything would feel with her beside him, he had said, yet tonight the world seemed to deny her existence. The rooms of Gatekeeper’s Cottage were quaint and beautifully appointed—Lady Richmond herself had overseen the refurbishment when Lennie’s parents had moved down from the Hall—but she had come to hate the way they closed in on her when she was alone.
The Favershams’ eldest has her eye on him, her father had said. It couldn’t be true. Or it was, but Alexander wouldn’t care about it. Besides, most of those girls weren’t that pretty if you took away the tulle and lipstick. Lennie had never been admired beneath glittering chandeliers, but she knew. The young men in the village stared now, even those who’d known her all her life, and there were crude words whispered between them that excited and repelled her all at the same time.
Girls like the Favershams possessed a confidence that came from knowing where they belonged and what they were for. Since she’d left school the previous summer, Lennie had felt less tethered to the world, just the empty space of each day to fill with domestic chores. Sometimes she felt as if she’d been cast adrift and might float away altogether. Often, she thought that everything would have been better had she been able to start the typing course last September. She hadn’t the least interest in secretarial work, but she’d liked the idea of travelling to York on the train each day. She would have worn her smartest clothes and, though she was only going to the college and not to an office, people would have thought her a woman of purpose, expected somewhere. Miss Price said the course would ‘open doors.’ Lennie had no notion of what might lie beyond those doors—anything was better than long, blank days at home in the cottage.
Joan Nicholson, who was taking the course, was going to look for a room to rent in York, or even Leeds. There were big offices in those cities where you could start at the bottom and make yourself useful and in time you would ‘progress.’ Progress had no shape in Lennie’s mind but she liked the sound of it, the way it stretched itself into the future.
‘It’s just a typing course,’ Thomas said, wondering at her excitement, but Lennie, imagining the possibilities, felt as if she’d just awoken after months of sleep, her body and mind alert in a startling way, feeling herself more capable before she’d even started.
Such new skills could be put to use up at the Hall, her father supposed. Lennie could help him with correspondence from time to time, releasing him from the task of writing everything longhand. That, at least, would be fitting and it was the best outcome he could hope for, though truthfully he would have preferred her not to work at all. Peter Fairweather was proud that his living provided for them, saw no need for his daughter to have to sit in some dreary typing pool from dawn till dusk. She was not a city girl like her mother had been, more than capable of seeing off any difficulties or unwanted attention to which a girl in such a situation might be exposed. Lennie was an innocent.
None of it mattered in the end—the day before enrolment she came down with scarlet fever and Joan disappeared into a new life without her. It took Lennie longer to recover than expected, some kind of fatigue setting in afterwards which Dr. Harrison thought viral, and by the time Christmas came and went and they saw in 1955, her father decided against the plan, thinking her too weak to travel on a train full of strangers. With spring approaching, Lennie wandered restlessly through the woods in the long hours after her chores were done, wondering if she might pluck up the courage to ask Lady Richmond for support, but Sir Angus was ill by then and soon that was taking up everyone’s time. Sir Angus had passed away at Easter. In the midst of that another door opened. The empty days were delightful to her then, full of Alexander’s voice, the touch of his arm against hers as they walked by the river.
It was pointless to think any more about that time. Thomas had made her see the obvious: she could never compete with those girls who travelled to London to buy their clothes each season, not now or in the future, and everyone would despise her for thinking otherwise. A different tune on the breeze, a lighter tempo. Lennie came away from the door with a choke of despair in her young throat. Her father was right—Alexander would marry the hateful girl with the vulgar red mouth who had seemed to be laughing right at her from the window of the Favershams’ car as it had passed through the gate earlier that evening.
Another car passed by, the occupants oblivious to her existence. None of it mattered but she would put on her cornflower frock anyway in case, by some chance, Alexander tired of the party and came looking for her. It wouldn’t do for him to find her looking dowdy and crushed by his absence. Leaving the lamp unlit, Lennie put away her mending and climbed the narrow wooden stairs that bisected the cottage. At the head of the stairs, where the boards creaked once, and then again, she paused for a moment. Just there, on the threshold of the little room that had been hers since childhood, Lennie changed her mind.
CHAPTER 12
Danny, June 1954
Everything was different now that school was coming to an end.
It was a spring day that felt more like summer and the whole class was fidgety—something to do with being alive and young when other folk weren’t. A breeze came in through the high windows of the schoolroom and played with the edges of exercise books, the pile of paintings from the lower school that Miss Price had stacked upon her desk, while outside, bees fumbled against the glass, all heavy with pollen, and young birds shrieked from their nests, raw mouths turned to a sky that was cloudless and high and made you restless in your skin. The scratch of chalk on blackboard seemed drier and more pointless than ever to those of them who were almost ready to escape the classroom. All that morning Jackie Bracegirdle and Mary Stockton had whispered in the back row, passing notes back and forth. The two of them were courting and then some if the rumours were right, though neither of them would admit the other stuff. But you could tell, and they’d been seen going off to the woods together and coming back with that look about them. Jackie was almost six foot tall and barrel-chested now, just like his brothers and his father, and looked a sight, all limbs exploding from behind his child-sized desk. Mary had heavy breasts and pink skin and everyone said she was pretty, but Danny always thought her more animal than girl, all healthful and burgeoning, like the sows on her father’s farm. Last week, Miss Price had caned Jack for carrying on in class with Mary and the class had said how Miss Price had enjoyed it, Jack towering over her as she brought down the cane upon his great hand with such force that she was breathless and all flushed around the neck by the time she’d finished.
This was the last ever term of school for Danny. He’d already been the eldest in the school when he persuaded his baffled mam to let him carry on another year, instead of leaving at fifteen as you could. That was just because Lennie was staying on too. The lads all were keen to be out the door, to the fields or the forge or the baker’s yard, anywhere there was proper work, man’s work, instead of soft book learning that was no use to them. And anyone could see it was time, with their hands too big to hold a pencil properly, knees hi
tting desks and legs and arms sprawled. Before they knew it, they’d be called up for their National Service, and though they complained about it, that proved that they were almost men. By the end of each day the schoolroom was thick with the smell of them, all crammed in.
Most of the girls were to stay in the village, though a couple of them were off to the Rowntrees factory in York, where you could work inside all day long and still earn a decent wage, while Joan Nicholson, the cleverest girl in the class, was to train as a shorthand typist and then try for work at a bank or a law firm. Lennie seemed to have no plans at all. She just shook her head on the one occasion anyone enquired, though Danny did overhear her telling Joan that her father didn’t like the idea of her working outside of the house.
Danny was to be apprenticed to the sawmill, just like his Dad had been. His mam had fixed it with the new foreman without even asking, and there wasn’t any point in arguing when it was as good a way to earn a living as any, but he dreaded the day when school would finish because that would be that. Lennie would be expected to do something up at the Hall, where her old man worked for the family, and he’d not see her after that, not properly and, being the oldest boy in the year, he would likely get his call-up before anyone else and then he’d be away for months at a time.
A poem, Miss Price had said to the upper year. Anything at all, and everyone had groaned because poetry was daft and for girls and anyone would feel stupid, having to stand up and read something out in front of the whole class. Danny had been away from school the day the homework was set, helping with the lambing on his cousin’s farm in Hartsby, so had escaped the task itself. It was bad enough though, watching his classmates file up one by one to stumble through some limerick or other, trying to get their words finished before they’d even started them, and Mary Stockton turning scarlet as she began: ‘My love is like a red, red rose,’ and everyone looking at Jack and smirking.