Daisychain Summer

by Elizabeth Elgin

  ‘But cousins can marry – just what if it did?’

  ‘Then you’d pick up the phone, and tell me. That’s what I’m here for. So no more thoughts of going to bed and weeping. Anyway, I’d half expected the party to still be going on when I got here.’

  ‘So did I. Everything was going great, then it sort of fizzled out. Keth and Daisy left before midnight. Keth wanted to let in the new year at Keeper’s, he being dark. Then, when Catchpole had done his stuff here, mother and your Pa suddenly got tired. Then Tatiana fell asleep on the sofa so Anna rang for Karl to come over. He just picked Tatty up in his arms and put her in the back of the car. Amelia said then that they’d better all go, too – with your Pa getting drowsy, I mean.

  ‘Anna was sorry to break things up – she doesn’t get a lot of fun – but all at once everything went dead and I had to wait up for you on my own.’

  ‘And worried, and brooded? Julia MacMalcolm, what am I to do with you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m getting old, I suppose. It keeps hitting me, you see, that before long Drew will marry and leave me. Not that he’ll ever leave Rowangarth, but he’ll love someone else more than he loves me. I’ll be alone again. So what can you do with me – except marry me, of course.’

  The words came out without thought, without warning, yet she had known they were there, waiting to be spoken. Waiting, because all at once she needed someone to be with her, always; because she was weary of being alone and because, truth known, no one else but Nathan knew her so well – and would agree to her terms.

  ‘Marry you?’ His voice was little more than a whisper.

  ‘Either that, or refuse me and buy me a silken gown. That’s the way it goes. A lady can propose in leap year. The man accepts – or pays a forfeit – a silken gown.’

  ‘I see. And you’re joking, of course. Another whisky and you’ll do a striptease?’

  ‘No, Nathan.’ She was staring, now, into the fire, wondering why she had said it, yet unwilling to recant.

  ‘Julia – please look at me?’

  Slowly she turned, placing her glass on the hearth, kneeling back on her heels, looking up at him. ‘Why now? Tell me?’

  His eyes were dark with pleading; with unhappiness, too. And his mouth was set traplike, as though he were hurt by her teasing. Only she wasn’t teasing.

  ‘Why not now?’

  ‘Because this is no longer 1936. Your proposal is two hours late. Sorry about the silken gown …’

  ‘You don’t want to marry me? You’ve changed your mind?’

  ‘No. It’s you who have changed yours. I still want you, still love you, but I’ve realized I can’t marry you, Julia.’

  ‘Why?’ Her mouth had gone dry and she rose to her feet, then walked over to the decanter, pouring more whisky into her glass.

  ‘Put that down! You don’t need it.’ Gently he took the glass from her hand, placing it on a table. ‘I can’t marry another man’s wife, you see, and that’s what you still are. Andrew’s wife, not his widow. You’ll never accept that he’s dead and, until you do, there’d be no chance of any happiness for you and me.’

  ‘So that’s it, then.’ She gave a hopeless little shrug. She looked so bewildered, so vulnerable, that he wanted to gather her to him, to shelter her, care for her so the world should never hurt her again. But he didn’t touch her.

  ‘No. That isn’t it. I want you to go to Andrew’s grave, though. Only when you’ve been will you know what to do. And when you have, it will be me, asking you …’

  ‘Still on my terms, though. You’d have to give me time, Nathan. And I might never – well – love you. Not that way.’

  ‘Then that’s a risk I would have to take. But go to bed, now. You look all-in. And drink that whisky, if you must. At least it might help you to sleep.’ He tilted her chin with his forefinger, then laid his lips gently on hers. ‘I’m going home, now. Lock the door behind me. I’ll probably call in tomorrow – wish Aunt Helen and Drew a happy new year. Goodnight, Julia …’

  He thought about her on the drive back to the vicarage. Poor lonely, tormented Julia. He had almost capitulated, yet he knew he could never share her with a memory.

  ‘My dearest girl,’ he whispered into the darkness. ‘What on earth am I to do with you?’

  What indeed, but love her to the end of his days.

  38

  Julia filled the trug with roses and lilies for the vases in the house; poppies, too, though once cut they would soon drop their petals. Poppies she loved for all that; had come to associate them with her other life, when once she was young.

  Soon she was going back to that other life. On Thursday she would leave for France and a cemetery at Étaples. Six months ago she had promised Nathan she would and it could no longer be put off.

  There had been excuses and evasions; Drew leaving school and the need to settle him at the Estate Manager’s offices, in York. For only a few months, of course, so he might grasp the essentials of running an estate like Rowangarth. Just four days a week, travelling by train, back and forth, but it had taken up her time.

  There had been the Coronation, too, last month in May. Weeks of planning parties for the young, the old, for almost everyone. And services of thanksgiving at All Souls because at last we had a good king and a smiling queen. One who didn’t have two husbands still alive, said spinsters acidly; who because of the war had been denied the chance of one, even.

  Such an event the Coronation, and the newspapers full of pictures of the little princesses and London putting on its decorations, getting ready to celebrate.

  Amelia had come over by flying boat and stayed at Montpelier Mews, finding herself a prime position near Buckingham Palace to see the processions – the horses, of course. Then quickly back to Kentucky to tell her family and friends about it all and how the British were just about the best there was, when it came to putting on a parade – with horses, that was.

  Strange, Julia frowned, that one so fiercely American should be taken up with the crowning of a British king, and Amelia, in her turn, thought it equally strange that Julia had not availed herself of free accommodation in London when half the world seemed intent upon grabbing every room to be had there. But Julia was too busy. She had been elected to organize the celebrations in Holdenby and was too taken up to go anywhere. Especially to Étaples.

  Sharply, she turned her thoughts away from Thursday, recalling good things because now there were good things to think about. Unemployment had fallen – how pleased Andrew would have been about that even if, she thought soberly, it was only because so very much money was being spent on the defence of Britain. Defence, the government stressed, and she agreed with them, but only because she needed to. And at the Coronation Thanksgiving services in Holdenby church she had prayed not only for the new king and his queen but fiercely and imploringly for continued peace that her beloved Clan should never know the like of a conflict people now called the Great War.

  ‘Please, please,’ she had entreated, ‘not again?’ Not when she had yet to erase the last one from her mind, her heart.

  ‘When,’ asked Daisy who had been waiting at the bus stop, ‘are you giving that job up?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Keth linked her little finger with his own, needing to touch her, wanting to kiss her, knowing he must wait until they were out of the village. ‘I’ll keep it until just before I leave. I’ve got to give Mum all the money I can, you know that.’ And save as much as he could in case jobs for students weren’t easy to come by in America for there was unemployment there, too. Foreigners – and he would be a foreigner even though Mrs Amelia was sponsoring him – had little chance of getting work when so many Americans were without it.

  But with luck he would find something, and if he didn’t, he knew he could work for his keep at the Kentucky stables. It wouldn’t be an easy three years for all that, yet he accepted with gratitude the second chance he had been given. Nothing else really mattered.

  As they left the last cottage behi
nd them and turned into the lane that led to Rowangarth bothy, he took her in his arms.

  ‘When I’m away,’ he whispered, lips on hers, ‘you won’t forget me, find someone else?’

  ‘You keep asking that. Will you find someone else, Keth?’

  ‘You know I won’t!’

  ‘There’s your answer, then,’ she chided softly.

  ‘I’m lucky, Daisy. Mrs Amelia’s so generous. She didn’t have to do it, but I’ll pay her back, one day. Every penny.’

  ‘No, you won’t. Mrs Sutton wants to help you through college. It’s part of getting over almost losing Bas. It’s the way a woman reasons. Bas is alive and well and his hands are healed.’ Only slight scarring on his right one which didn’t matter at all, he’d said. ‘She doesn’t want you to pay her back. Don’t spoil it for her?

  ‘And don’t forget my money, Keth. It’ll be ours – yours and mine. We’ll be able to have a house and a telephone and a car. And I can buy things for Mam and Dada. Don’t spoil it for me, too?’

  ‘But it’s me who should provide for you. Can’t you see that, Daisy? Soon, you’ll be able to have anything that takes your fancy and I want to buy you things with money I’ve earned myself.’

  ‘And like I’ve said before, if Mr Hillier’s money is going to make trouble between us, I shall give it back to Windrush and tell them the miners can have it. And I’ll tell you something else! There aren’t two people happier than Mam and Dada, and do you know the most precious thing Mam has? It’s a buttercup, pressed in her Bible. She’s got an engagement ring and a gold locket and real pearl earrings from Aunt Julia, but the buttercup is what she loves best.’

  ‘So what are you trying to say?’ He shook his head because the way women thought, sometimes, defied all reason.

  ‘I’m trying to tell you that I’d rather have a flower from you, my stubborn darling, than anything else at all. Just give me a daisychain and it’ll be more precious than possessions. And kiss me, please, and promise never to love anyone else.’

  ‘I love you.’ Gently he cupped her face in his hands, laying his mouth on hers. ‘Only you, ever. It’s the way it’s always been, ever since I can remember. You shall have your daisychain, sweetheart,’ he smiled indulgently, ‘if that’s what you want.’

  ‘It’s all I want,’ she smiled, suddenly very sure of their love, ‘and for us to be married, one day. Nothing else is important, Keth. I’ll wait for you for as long as it takes. A daisychain might be a foolish, fragile thing, but it will hold us together.’

  And he said he supposed it would, and kissed her again.

  Julia gazed through the window of her Calais hotel room, trying to think that in this country, only last week, the man who had once been King of England at last married the woman he had given up his throne for. Julia hoped they would be happy, even though not one member of the royal family had been there, which was very sad, really.

  She thought, too, of Rowangarth and the gentle June evening in which, perhaps, her mother and Drew were walking now, wondering where she, Julia, was and how she was – and sending her their love. But to think sanely and sensibly of anything when long-ago memories crowded into her mind to torment her was impossible.

  Had the Gare du Nord changed in twenty years? She had thought to go on to Paris, later, but the mood had left her. No khaki uniforms at that railway station, now; no old lady selling violets and, at the main entrance, no young nurse waiting for the husband she had not seen for two years.

  She swallowed hard on the choke of tears in her throat. Would Andrew be near her when she found him at Étaples or did the wraith of a young doctor still wait at a Paris railway station for the girl he loved, to smile tenderly, tell her to take off her ridiculous uniform hat? Would that nurse hear him say it if she listened with her heart?

  ‘You haven’t had your hair cut, Julia?’

  ‘No. I just pin it up tightly.’

  ‘Never have it cut …’

  Two long-ago hours together at the Gare du Nord, holding hands, sitting closely at one of the tables outside, making plans for the future. They were in love and dared to tilt at Fate, then, because Andrew had been promoted to major and was to be moved from the front line to a hospital at Cotterets. He’d be safer, there; might even be given leave. Yet though now she listened with her heart, still she could not bring back his voice, not even here in Calais, so near to where he lay.

  She took off her shoes and lay on the bed, calling back a day twenty years ago when she and Alice, Ruth Love and Sister Carbrooke were on their way to Celverte. The day had been almost unbearably hot and their stiffly-starched collars and thick woollen stockings were cruelly uncomfortable.

  That afternoon, on the train, they ate sandwiches spread with margarine and filled with fish paste and the French family who shared their compartment wished them luck.

  ‘Merci, madame.’ Julia had smiled brilliantly back because every second, every metallic clack of the wheels took her nearer to Andrew. The heat, the stockings that made her legs itch, the collar that rubbed her neck until it was sore mattered nothing when soon, perhaps around the next corner, even, she might see her love walking towards her. Life was good that day and golden with hope, yet tonight, a middle-aged, loveless woman had come reluctantly to say goodbye to a memory.

  She reached for her cigarettes, lighting one, inhaling deeply. She wished now that she had hired a car. She had intended driving herself from Calais to Étaples but her mother had begged her not to. Cars still worried her and to think of her daughter driving on the wrong side of the road filled her with dread. So, Julia sighed, she would take a taxi there because that was what she had promised to do, and ask the driver to return for her later.

  She stubbed out the cigarette. She hadn’t really wanted it, had only lit it because it would help ease the ache of an empty stomach. She really ought to eat something. If she did not, her insides would protest all night and she would lie awake, dreading the morning to come and almost certainly weeping.

  She swung her legs to the floor, then walked to the dressing table to comb her hair. She gazed into the mirror, wanting to see a young nurse eager for love, seeing instead a woman whose life centred on a young man and an old house; a woman almost too old to bear children. Twenty years had passed so quickly she had not noticed it. She had thrown those years away the night of the telegram; flung them furiously into the night because all around her were the sounds of joy and happiness that the war had ended.

  Was she then to throw away the next twenty years? Did she want to? Did she have the right, when Andrew and those who lay with him had not been given that choice?

  She picked up her handbag and room key and made for the dining-room. She wasn’t hungry but she would go through the motions of eating and perhaps a bottle of red wine, if she drank it all, would make her sleep.

  She wished Nathan were here to help and comfort her, but she must go alone to Andrew’s grave. It was not right that another man, however good and kind and gentle, should be with her.

  Tomorrow, she would go to Étaples, tell Andrew she was sorry she had not come before this and, if she could find the strength, say goodbye to him.

  The taxi driver set her down at the cemetery gates and she stood bewildered, trying to take in the vastness of it, how far ahead and to each side of her it reached.

  A gardener walked towards her pushing a wheelbarrow and she showed him the piece of paper on which she had written the location of the grave she sought, asking him in which direction it lay.

  He told her gently, speaking slowly because although she spoke his language better than most who came here from England he was trying, she knew, to be kind.

  Smiling, she thanked him. Outside the hotel had been a flower-seller and she bought a bunch of violets. Andrew had given her a posy of violets that afternoon in Paris. He would be glad she remembered the violets.

  She walked slowly, reluctantly, to the section of the cemetery in which he lay, cold in spite of the warmth of the sun bec
ause it was awful to see such a stretch of gravestones, each one a life. Some woman’s husband, father, brother, sweetheart, son. How was she to find Andrew amongst so many?

  Her camera case hung on her arm. She wanted to take photographs of the place, of his grave, but panic sliced through her as she feared she might not even find it.

  Row eight. At least she had found that, but there must be many row eights, here. She stood, looking down the meticulous straightness of the stones, realizing that at least someone cared. The grass was short cut, shrubs flowered and, at intervals, small clumps of trees – trees only a few years old – grew bravely to gentle the starkness.

  Somewhere, a bird sang. It sounded like the blackbird that sang each summer evening on the farthest linden tree, at Rowangarth, and it gave back the courage she thought had failed her, because she knew she would find him. She had only feared she might not because even now, so near to him, she doubted she could stand so close without breaking down and crying out her torment and anger and grief to the skies.

  Private James Jennings, Army Medical Corps, she read on a stone. Private William Smith, Army Medical Corps and beside him, Driver John Cunliffe of the Army Service Corps – names she had never forgotten. They had been killed with Andrew on a day when the war had only a week to run. Killed because of an aching tooth. At least they were still together.

  Andrew’s gravestone would be the same as all the rest, but that was as it should be because there were no officers or privates in heaven – if there was a heaven, that was. If there was a God, she thought bitterly, because if God was all that clever, then why had He let all this happen?

  She ranged her eyes around, taking in the sea of stones and they came to rest on Andrew’s.

  Major Andrew MacMalcolm – RAMC 31.8.1887–5.11.1918

  Above his name was carved the insignia of the Medical Corps, but that was all. They had written to ask her, when at last the Army was able to tell her to which War Graves Cemetery he had been taken, what she would wish to be placed on his stone. And she had written brusquely back that only his name and rank and the dates of his birth and death should be chiselled there. She wanted no message between them for other people to read. They had loved with passion and delight, whispering words special only to them. There was nothing, she decided at the time, that could be placed on his memorial but the stark, simple facts of his existence. All else belonged to them alone and to the ten nights they spent together; fleeting, precious, wonderful nights.