Daisychain Summer

by Elizabeth Elgin

  ‘No.’ Julia stirred her cup noisily. ‘I want Andrew, you know I do. I can never forgive that he was taken from me.’

  ‘My dear – perhaps forgiveness comes hard to you,’ Helen whispered, though perhaps didn’t enter into it, really. Julia never trod the middle path. She loved with a burning intensity and hated with an equally frightening force. She was the most like Anne Lavinia of all the Suttons; direct, uncompromising and brutally honest. ‘But can’t you try to accept that Andrew is gone? I accepted, a long time ago, that I would never see your Pa again in this life, but you, Julia – oh, when will you stop fighting the world?’

  ‘Never! I want to love and be loved – really loved, do you understand, mother? And I wanted a clutter of children around me, but who am I to have them with?’ She set down her cup with a ferocity that set it rattling in its saucer, then, folding her arms tightly, she began to pace the room. ‘I wasn’t given your serenity. I can’t forget Andrew nor forgive his death – and cruelly, too, when I thought he’d survived that war.’ She turned, eyes wild, then seeing the distress in her mother’s eyes she hurried to where she sat, kneeling at her feet, laying her head on her lap as she had done as a child. ‘I’m sorry, dearest. Forgive me?’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ Helen soothed. ‘I understand, I truly do. But don’t you think it would help if you were to go to France, see his grave? Don’t you owe him that?’

  ‘No. I can’t.’ She said it softly, sadly, now her anger was spent. ‘I can’t look at all those graves, row on row of them, and every one a young life. I’ve seen pictures of those cemeteries and I was there in France, don’t forget. I saw more men die than I care to remember.

  ‘And I won’t read the cant on those gravestones. RIP, In Death Triumphant. The Supreme Sacrifice. Not one of those men wanted to die, mother, and I won’t look at a cold, stone slab with Andrew’s name on it, so never again ask me to?’

  ‘I’m sorry, child, I truly am, though I shall pray with all my heart that one day you may be able to accept what it isn’t in your power to change. And let’s count our blessings. Alice is home again – surely that is something to be glad about in this sad world?’

  ‘It is, mother.’ Alice, the sister who understood, was home. ‘And I will try, dearest. I truly will.’

  That night she searched with her fingers along the door ledge, then slipped the key into the lock.

  Nothing had changed. It could have been that same surgery picked up by a magic hand at die lodgings in Little Britain and gently, reverently placed in an upstairs room at Rowangarth.

  Julia needed no visit to any cemetery; this room was Andrew and set out as he had left it, ready for him to pull out his chair, pick up his stethoscope.

  From the narrow mantel above the black iron firegrate, his photograph smiled at her from a leather-bound frame. She had taken that picture to York when first she and Alice began their nursing training; carried it each day in the pocket of her uniform coat to Denniston House hospital; packed it in her trunk when she left for France.

  It had stood beside her bed in the green-curtained cubicle in Celverte and each night she whispered, ‘Goodnight, my love. God keep you,’ as she blew out her candle. And he had smiled back and whispered, ‘I love you, too.’

  Yet now she could not hear his voice as once she had been able to; could not, as she had done on lonely days, close her eyes and abandon herself to remembered conversations, laughter between them or whispered love words in the intimate dark. They had killed Andrew’s voice, too.

  She walked to the window, staring through the trees to the glow from the cottage at the edge of Brattocks Wood, smiling a goodnight. Then she drew the curtains together.

  ‘Alice is home, Andrew. They came today with Polly and Keth. There will be children, always, at Rowangarth, now. Things will get better for me, darling. Alice understands, you see.

  ‘Mother said I should visit your grave, but I can’t. This room is your memorial, your shrine …’

  A gravestone was a cold thing. Here, in this room, she could sit in his chair, touch things he had touched, pretend that if she wished it and willed it with all her strength, his hand would open the door.

  She looked once more around the room, then switched off the light.

  ‘Goodnight, my love,’ she whispered. ‘God keep you.’

  In the doorway she waited to hear him say, ‘I love you, too,’ hear it not with her ears but with her mind and her heart.

  But she heard only the ticking of the mantel clock.

  Alice closed the staircase door behind her. She was so tired she could sleep on her feet. But the curtains had been hung and she had had a moving around of furniture and her pots and pans were arranged on newly scrubbed shelves in the kitchen.

  ‘Daisy’s asleep. Just think, Tom, Reuben coming to Sunday dinner.’

  ‘You’re happy, aren’t you, lass?’

  ‘So happy, that if I let myself I’d be afraid. But I’ll just set the kettle to boil, then pop out, for a breath of air.’

  ‘Aye.’ He knew where she was going, that tired as she was she would not sleep until she had told it to the rooks.

  ‘I’ll be all right, love. Just a walk to the end of the wood. It’s light enough.’

  Tonight, the moon was full and high and silver. She would be safe, in Brattocks. There was no one, now, she need fear; no poachers, for there was no game to take, and no man to harm her. Elliot Sutton was gone, and his evil with him. Now, Drew truly belonged to Giles.

  ‘I might walk back by way of the bothy,’ Alice murmured, reaching for her shawl. ‘If Polly is showing a light, I’ll call in. Won’t be long, love.’

  At the gate she closed her eyes, drawing on her memories, saying a goodbye to Windrush. Keeper’s and Willow End would be silent, now, their unlit windows like sleeping eyes. But the same moon that lighted her way would shine, too, on the beeches and oaks and the deer in the forest, sleeping close. And on Morgan and Beth.

  She gazed at that moon and the puff of silvered cloud beneath it. She was so happy she had to hold herself tightly, just to contain the ache of love inside her.

  Nothing moved, save a hunting owl far to her left where the railway line ran alongside the wood for a short distance. Even the rooks had settled for the night, their lazy cawing stilled, though they would know already that she was home.

  She let go a small sigh of contentment, gazing through a gap in the trees across to Rowangarth, dark against the sky, and the one light that shone palely yellow against the moonlight. Miss Clitherow, like as not, was still awake or Tilda, perhaps, reading one of her love books.

  She shifted her gaze to the bothy. There were no lights. Polly was a-bed, and Keth. They would be all right. Rowangarth would be good to them. She smiled tremulously, then lifted her eyes to the sky.

  ‘Thank you, Lord, with all my heart for prayers answered. And in this sad world, in all the sorrow and partings, I know I am lucky and so blessed. And I am grateful.’

  She hugged her shawl around her. Now, she would tell it to the rooks.

  ‘So this is your England – the country you would all die for?’ Anna Sutton glanced around her, twirling the slender stem of her parasol, uncomfortable in the early August heat.

  ‘Sorry?’ Julia opened her eyes. It had been pleasant with the sun on her face, to listen to the far sounds of harvesting from the field at the end of the lime walk. ‘This precious stone set in the silver sea, you mean? Don’t know about dying, though I’d fight like a wild cat to keep this small part of it.’

  ‘You love Rowangarth, don’t you?’ Anna moved her fan languidly, gracefully. ‘The children love it, too. “Where shall we play today?” and the answer is always Rowangarth. You like children, don’t you?’

  ‘They’re always welcome. I call them the Clan – especially when Albert’s two are over here. I suppose,’ she shrugged, ‘they are the children Andrew and I never had. It’s nice to see Tatiana enjoying herself – without her nanny,’ she added, obliquely.r />
  ‘There is no need for Nanny, when I am here,’ Anna smiled, ‘though the child begged to be allowed to come alone.’

  ‘You should let her do it more often. She would come to no harm. Bas and Keth are very sensible – quite grown-up, too.’

  ‘Yes. I must learn to loosen the ties. But Tatiana is all I have, you see; all I’m ever likely to have, though I started four babies …’

  ‘Don’t, Anna? You’re happy enough now, aren’t you?’

  ‘I am more secure than most who had to leave Russia. What I have is better than being an aristocratic pauper. Denniston House is in trust for Tatiana and is mine to live in for as long as I want to. I have an allowance from Pendenys and Tatiana’s education will be taken care of. I don’t complain, though –’

  She stopped abruptly, pink-cheeked, thinking about Natasha, which lately she often did. And about Natasha’s child and where it was. And if it had been a son.

  ‘Though?’ Julia broke into her thoughts.

  ‘Though the happiness I had hoped for was just – how do you say it – a daydream.’

  ‘You loved Elliot? Yours wasn’t an arranged marriage, then?’

  ‘It was arranged – or more a manoeuvring on the part of Elliot’s mother. But I loved him. He excited me. I thought we would be happy yet I was soon to know differently. I was to be the provider of an heir, you see, and when our son died what was left of our marriage died with him.

  ‘I couldn’t have endured, after that, for Elliot to have touched me. I didn’t shed a tear, when he died,’ she said with quiet candour. ‘I am sorry for his mother, though. She loved him. She is a changed woman, now.

  ‘She made an effort, though, when Albert and Amelia came – sent for the hairdresser and had her hair trimmed and waved. She even drank less, but only for a while. Amelia is worried about her.’

  ‘Amelia is a good woman. She’s happy in her marriage and shows concern for those of us who are – well – less fortunate,’ Julia sighed. ‘But even Amelia won’t be able to do anything about Aunt Clemmy who is determined to be unhappy.’

  ‘I realize that. Perhaps it is why I am so protective of Tatiana. Perhaps I fear the evil will touch her, too. The children don’t like going to see Elliot’s mother. Only Kitty can stand up to her. When Tatiana visits, the poor child is glared at as though it is she who should have been in that car, and not her father.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ Julia said. ‘When Andrew was killed, you see, I would look at some of the men who came back from France and wonder why it hadn’t been one of them. But I hope it didn’t show on my face.’

  ‘So here we are, then – you who cannot love again, and I who will not, exchanging confidences like schoolgirls.’

  ‘It helps, sometimes,’ Julia smiled. ‘And I do hope you’ll let Tatiana come to play, more often. She’s one of the new generation of Suttons, though heaven only knows what lies ahead for any of them.’

  ‘Ahead?’ Alarm showed in Anna’s eyes.

  ‘Sorry. I’m not anticipating gloom and doom – just wondering what it will be like for them when they fall in love, and wondering who they will marry.’

  ‘Tatiana will marry for love, of that I am determined. No one will arrange her life for her. She shall choose freely.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Anna. Marriages aren’t arranged these days – well, hardly ever. Mine wasn’t. My parents said I might marry where I chose, and I did, though I shall heave a sigh of relief if Drew marries happily. He’s very close to Daisy, though it’s in a brotherly way. I’d like it if he married someone like her.’

  ‘Julia!’ Anna laughed. ‘No arranged marriages, we said, yet here we are –’

  ‘Arranging them,’ Julia supplied, ‘and the children hardly out of the nursery! And Anna – it’s good to hear you laugh.’

  ‘It is good to laugh. Perhaps I can visit you more often? Oh it is bearable now that Amelia is here, but when they go back to Kentucky, I shall miss her. And you don’t think me aloof?’

  ‘Of course not. Who said you were?’

  ‘Elliot’s mother. I think she was talking to the maid who was cleaning her room – or maybe she was just grumbling to no one in particular. She does that, now. She wanted to know who I thought I was. “Aloof creature! Doesn’t she realize that Russian countesses are two a penny?’ So I slipped away, without them hearing.’

  ‘That’s Aunt Clemmy running true to form. Take no notice. Just be especially kind to Uncle Edward, poor soul. And say you’ll stay to tea? The Clan is to have bread and jam and curranty cake – do share it with us?’

  The children lay in the long grass of the wild garden, glad of the sheltering shadows thrown by Brattocks Wood. The sun shone from an almost cloudless August sky and butterflies fluttered amongst meadowsweet, tiny wild purple orchids and rosy willow herbs.

  Kitty Sutton made a flapping motion with her hand, shooing away the bee that bumbled amongst the clover. No one spoke. This was a special day; one to be stored in a memory corner and remembered in the cold of November.

  ‘I wish the poppies weren’t there,’ Daisy broke the silence. ‘They remind me of France.’

  ‘You’ve never been to France,’ Bas said without lifting his head.

  ‘My Mam’s seen them! She was there!’

  ‘I don’t think, Daiz, there were any poppies growing when Lady and mother were away at the war,’ Drew reasoned. ‘The poppies grew afterwards, all over No Man’s Land, grandmother said, as if they knew it had to be covered up.’

  ‘Who cares?’ Bas yawned. ‘It’s over, now.’

  ‘I care.’ For the first time, Keth spoke. ‘My father was wounded there and a lot of men were killed. You can’t not care about all those men.’

  ‘Guess I do.’ Bas pulled at a piece of grass, then chewed on the soft white end. ‘Anyway, there won’t be any more wars. Mom said so, so why talk about it?’

  ‘Daisy started it,’ Tatiana muttered, her eyes all at once filling with tears. That War must not be talked about, Mama said, because That War had robbed them of everything they had, almost. Grandmother Petrovska was very poor, because of That War.

  ‘She didn’t so!’ Kitty hastened to Daisy’s defence. ‘It was Bas, arguing about it! And for goodness sake, Tatty, don’t boo-hoo, or your Mom won’t let you out with us again.’

  There had been a lot of persuading and pleading that Tatiana might be allowed to play without her nanny being there. She and Bas had promised, hand on heart, to take good care of her.

  ‘I’m not boo-hooing.’ Tatiana’s lower lip jutted. ‘I was thinking about the Bolsheviks and it made my eyes water. Lenin is wickeder than the Kaiser, Grandmother Petrovska says.’

  ‘Mm. Guess I wouldn’t like some hick to take over our place,’ Bas conceded. ‘Would you like it, Drew, if someone had you thrown out of Rowangarth?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t.’ He loved Rowangarth and it was better than ever, now that Daisy and Keth lived close by. ‘But I don’t want to talk about sad things, today. We are all of us together; all the Sutton clan – well, that’s what Mother calls us.’

  ‘Is the Clan coming today?’ he’d heard his mother ask. ‘Better warn Cook, if they are.’

  ‘I think,’ Kitty said, ‘that we six should always stick together, even though Bas and me only get to visit twice a year.’

  Kitty would come more often were England not so far away, Bas brooded, though he disliked Pendenys Place, the more so since one day it might be his; if Uncle Nathan didn’t get his skates on, he’d heard Pa say, and get himself a son. He was almost as good as Kitty, now, when it came to hearing things.

  ‘Nothing can hurt us,’ Kitty urged, ‘if we stick up for each other. We should take an oath.’

  ‘Like a secret society?’ The thought pleased Drew. ‘Shall we all be in it – the Sutton Six?’

  ‘And meet secretly, and tell each other things,’ Kitty said eagerly.

  ‘What things?’ Bas scowled.

  ‘What the grown-ups say, for one
thing.’

  ‘Listening at keyholes?’ Daisy breathed, wide-eyed.

  ‘Not keyholes! My sister hides in closets and under beds. She’s good at it. She ought to be a spy,’ Bas said with relish. ‘But we can’t call ourselves the Sutton Six. Only four of us are Suttons. Daisy and Keth don’t count.’

  ‘Daisy does!’ Pink-cheeked, Drew jumped to his feet. ‘Daisy’s mother was once called Sutton and Daisy’s half my sister, so she’s got to be in it.’

  ‘Sorry, Keth. Guess it looks like you’re the odd one out.’ Bas raised an eyebrow, glad about it, really. Keth Purvis was too serious, treated them all like a bunch of kids. There had been too much fuss made about that scholarship and him passing it and getting to the High School for nothing. And Daisy stuck up for him all the time. If Keth said that black was white, Daisy would agree with him. What was more, Keth took it for granted that she would. It made Bas kind of mad, because he liked Daisy Dwerryhouse. Every time they came over she seemed prettier and more fun to hang about with. Keth should mind his own business.

  ‘Think I care? I’ve better things to do than play kids’ silly games. But I do qualify, in a roundabout way.’ Keth rose to his feet, brushing grass seeds from his shirt. ‘You see, Bas, you and Kitty aren’t pure Sutton – not like Drew is. You’ve got some Pendennis in you.’

  ‘So what? Mary Anne Pendennis was a character. We should be proud to have a fishwife as a great-grandmother – democratic, Mom said.’

  ‘Well, for one thing,’ Keth said softly, ‘she was your great-great-grandmother and I’ll tell you something else. She was my great-great-aunt. She was my great-great-grandfather’s sister. My mother was a Pendennis before she married my dad, so what do you make of that, Bas Sutton?’

  ‘Say – is that so? You wouldn’t be kidding?’ This was interesting.

  ‘Why should I be? It doesn’t matter at all who you are or what or who you came from. It’s where you end up that matters and I shall end up good!’ Like Mr Hillier, he would be, and people would say, ‘That’s Mr Keth Purvis, a self-made man. Won a scholarship to Creesby Grammar, then went to Cambridge – or maybe it would be Oxford.’ It would depend. But when he was rich he would marry Daisy – if he loved her as much as he loved her now. And he probably would.