Daisychain Summer

by Elizabeth Elgin

  She stood there, looking at the stone, wanting to touch it, fearing it might be cold and forbidding. She laid her camera and handbag on the ground, then placed the violets beneath his name.

  ‘Andrew?’ she whispered. ‘It’s Julia …’

  She reached out to touch the stone. It was not cold as she feared and she was able to gentle her fingertips across the letters of his name as once she had gentled them across his face, his body.

  The blackbird had stopped its singing and all around her was a hush, a gentle quietness as though those who lay there were at peace, almost.

  And then she heard his voice; the voice her heart had wanted to hear for so long. She heard it as clearly as the day on which he first said those words to her.

  ‘My dear, I hoped you would come …’

  ‘Andrew!’ She closed her eyes, pleading silently with him not to leave her or take away his love, and as she did so she heard his laugh, soft and throaty because he too remembered the first time she had set out to find him.

  The morning after their first meeting, it was, when he had been correct and professional in caring for her poor bruised face. And she was so sure he must be married but, after he left Aunt Sutton’s house, Alice had said he was not.

  ‘With two buttons missing on his shirt? Not a chance he’s married.’

  So next morning, without a chaperon, she set out alone, insisting that this was 1913 and the time would soon come when any young lady could walk anywhere she pleased, and alone!

  She had taken the motor bus to King Edward Street, then quickly found the street called Little Britain in which he lived. Number 53A was a mean lodging, above a stationer’s shop with the gates of St Bartholomew’s church close by, but she was in love and could only stand there and wonder how she would bear it if he did not answer her knock.

  And when his door opened and he stood smiling at her, she knew it was the same for him, too.

  ‘Miss Sutton.’ His voice was low, indulgent, and he laid gentle fingers to the bruising beneath her eye. ‘My dear,’ he had said. ‘I hoped you would come …’

  ‘Andrew – remember what a hussy I was, in those days? And you and I walked in Hyde Park – without Alice – and I brought you back to Montpelier Mews to tea and we ate cucumber sandwiches and cherry cake and wondered what mother or Aunt Sutton would say if they found us together, unchaperoned. And neither of us cared!’

  How long she knelt there she had no means of knowing. All she cared was that she had found him again, could recall the sound of his voice again, hear his laugh. And as she remembered glad things and sad things, she knew that no more would she feel Andrew’s lips gently on hers, nor the hard passion of a lover’s kiss. And never again would they lie in warm, intimate closeness nor reach heights of loving she had never known to exist.

  Andrew was gone. One November day a land mine had snuffed out his life like a raging wind blowing out a candle flame and no matter how she yearned for him or fumed against the bleakness of a life alone, nothing would ever change it.

  She looked at the watch on her wrist. Soon the taxi would come to the gates and she knew she must go. She was glad she had asked the driver to return or she might never have been able to walk away from this small space that was Andrew’s.

  She had knelt there for so long, telling him that Giles was dead and that Tom and Alice were married, and about Drew being hers.

  ‘Tom and Alice had Daisy and there’s a new young clutch of Suttons growing up, Andrew.

  ‘Elliot died,’ she whispered. ‘He married Anna from St Petersburg – Leningrad, it is now – and they had a daughter. Elliot was burned to death in his car; Aunt Clemmy is dead, too …

  ‘Cecilia is a nun in India, now, and we have sold the tea gardens at Shillong and there was a fire at Pendenys and Uncle Edward had the tower pulled down …

  ‘And Nathan has asked me to marry him.’ She got to her feet, her hand on his stone because her legs were cramped after so long kneeling, ‘and I don’t know what to say to him. Tell me, Andrew?’

  But she knew he never could, never would tell her. What had been between them had passed into time far away. She and Andrew had been young together; now she was middle-aged – Nathan, too.

  Andrew was once an army doctor and he lay with other soldiers. His gravestone said that he was thirty-one; he would always be thirty-one and she, Julia, must grow old without him into loneliness – or marry Nathan and share a different, comfortable love. Standing beside Andrew’s grave she was all at once wise and she knew he could read her thoughts because once he had been a part of them.

  The camera still lay with her handbag and she picked it up and hung it on her arm. No photographs of a name chiselled out of stone nor of a cemetery where so many lay. No reminders of death. She must say goodbye, now, and never come back. Andrew was with his friends, his comrades. In a hundred years from now, he would still be young, still a part of that first, passionate life. From first to last they had shared so few nights that they could be counted on the fingers of her hands.

  ‘I have to go, now. I won’t ever forget our love. Goodbye, my darling.’

  She laid her fingertips to her lips; just once more she gentled his name, then smiling softly she walked away.

  At an archway where roses climbed she turned, but he was gone from her, lost already in a sea of stones.

  An awful sadness took her and she wanted to run back to him but in that instant the blackbird began to sing again and all at once it was singing in the far linden tree and Rowangarth was calling her back.

  ‘Goodbye, Doctor MacMalcolm,’ she whispered; then she turned and straightening her shoulder, tilting her chin, walked with Sutton pride to where the taxi waited.

  Tomorrow, at this time, she would be in London at the little white house in Montpelier Mews. Their love had started there and tomorrow it would end there. She would tell Sparrow about the cemetery at Étaples and about all the flowers and the birdsong; tell her that it was well kept and cared for with respect and that soldiers who died together one November day now lay together in safe, sad closeness.

  What she would not tell Sparrow when she returned, was that Nathan might ask her again to marry him and if he did …

  39

  Julia had been home for some days before Nathan phoned. His call was brief.

  ‘Hullo! You’re back, then. How was it?’

  ‘I’ve been back almost a week, Nathan.’ She tried not to sound piqued. ‘As for how it was – well, I didn’t go on an outing to Blackpool, you know.’

  ‘I do know.’ There was no reproof in his voice. ‘I was giving you a little time, that’s all.’

  ‘Time?’ He mustn’t ask her. Not yet. ‘What do you mean – time?’

  ‘Time to settle down, sort of. I figured you were bound to be upset. Look – do you want to tell me how it was – get it off your chest, I mean? Parsons are good listeners.’

  ‘Nothing – well – personal, Nathan?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing personal. Will you be at Eucharist, tomorrow?’

  ‘No!’ Her reply uncompromising. She didn’t want to take Communion. She didn’t know why except that perhaps she was still angry with God about those rows and rows of graves. ‘Mother and Drew will be there, though.’

  ‘Then come to Evensong – stay to supper at the vicarage? I’d like to know how it went.’

  ‘All right. Thanks …’

  Her doubts must have shown in her voice because he said, ‘Julia – it’s me, Nathan. Supper and a chat over a glass of wine. I’m not going to ask you to marry me!’

  ‘You’re not.’ She said it flatly and he couldn’t be sure whether she was relieved or disappointed.

  ‘Positively not. Just you and me, like it used to be, before –’ Before he’d blundered in and spoiled whatever chance he might have had. ‘What I’m trying to say is I’d like to see you – no strings attached.’

  ‘Then I’d like that, too.’

  She replaced the receiver, frowning, w
ondering if she’d expected him to ask her and if she was disappointed or glad that he would not. She made a face at Julia in the mirror. Neither, really. Just glad that perhaps he wasn’t going to hustle her so soon after, give her time to sort out the muddle inside her, to accept that she was no longer Andrew’s wife, but his widow. When she could say, ‘My husband was killed in the war,’ without screaming inside her; then she would know she had finally let him go.

  She smiled sadly. Dear Nathan. He deserved better than second best.

  Sunday was Keth’s only day off and Daisy resented spending even an hour of it in church. Being apart from Keth when she was storing up memories against the time he would leave her, she resented bitterly. She wanted Keth to go to America; wanted him to do well because that was what he wanted. Rich people, he said, had nothing to worry about; poor people like himself had to get there the hard way and a good degree, to his way of thinking, was the only way.

  He still resented failing his scholarship, but because he was Keth and too honest for his own good, he was always ready to admit that he alone had failed it; was angry with himself for being so stupid.

  Now, because of being worse than stupid, he was being given another chance, because stupid he had been, going into that blazing tower without thought. And brave and wonderful too, she blushed with pride.

  ‘I’m going to early church tomorrow, Mam – get it over with. Keth and I are going out on the bikes all day. I don’t suppose I could have sandwiches to take with me?’

  ‘What do you mean – get it over with?’ Tom lowered his evening paper. ‘Church on Sunday is a must, and so is Sunday dinner. Your Mam spends a lot of time cooking it an’ you’ll have the manners to be at home to eat it!’

  ‘But Dada …’ She walked to his chair, leaning over the back of it and he knew her eyes would be wide with pleading and that soon she would run her fingers through his hair, or maybe kiss him. He knew all her wiles.

  ‘But nothing, Daisy Dwerryhouse. Church with your Mam and me tomorrow, and if you can’t bear to be parted from Keth he can come to Sunday dinner – is that all right?’ he smiled in Alice’s direction.

  ‘Course it is. Keth doesn’t have to be asked but Tom – couldn’t she – just this once? They’ve been planning this outing all week.’

  ‘Oh, all right …’ Tom shook the paper so it crackled, then retreated, defeated, behind it. No use trying to be master in your own house when the womenfolk ganged up on you. ‘But only this once, Miss. Sundays are kept proper, at Keeper’s. And mind you call on your Uncle Reuben afore you leave.’

  ‘That was good of you, love,’ Alice smiled when Daisy had left. ‘They have so little time left together. The Kentucky Suttons will be here, soon, then there’ll only be four weeks before Keth goes back with them. Don’t say you’ve forgotten what saying goodbye is like – for three years, an’ all.’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten, but I was going off to fight. Keth isn’t. He’ll be coming back. You and me, bonny lass, didn’t know if –’

  ‘If we’d ever see each other again. I know. But that doesn’t make it any easier for Daisy and Keth.’

  ‘Aye, but three years’ll give her time to make up her mind if it’s Keth she wants. She’s a bairn, still.’

  ‘She’s seventeen, Tom – the same age as I was when I met you.’

  ‘Seventeen …’ He folded his paper, dropping it to the floor at his side, smiling, loving her every bit as much as the afternoon, more than twenty years ago, he had met her in Brattocks Wood. Her, and that daft dog, Morgan. And now Morgan lay with Beth beneath the beech trees at the side of Beck Lane, a long way away, a long time away. ‘Old Morgan needed a bit of licking into shape, if I remember rightly.’

  ‘So he did. You bellowed at me something awful – said he’d frighten the hen pheasants off the nests.’

  ‘I remember. But our Daisy – seventeen.’ He pulled his fingers through his hair in the old, familiar gesture. ‘I hope you’ve had a talk to the lass about – well – things.’

  ‘I have. Things, as you call them, don’t change. Daisy and me understand each other. You’ve just got to bring them up right, then hope for the best. Mother Natures’s a cunning old lady.’

  ‘And Keth’s a decent lad, isn’t he?’ Tom clearly sought comfort.

  ‘He’s the one Daisy wants, decent or not. But I trust him. I’ve always trusted Daisy to him, Tom. He took her to school, remember, and watched over her like he was her big brother.’

  ‘But he isn’t her brother, now!’

  ‘He isn’t. They’ll be wed, those two, mark my words. And Keth’ll think on about Daisy – you know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘He’d better!’ Tom jerked. ‘By the heck, but he’d better!’

  Julia stood at the church gates, waiting until Nathan had locked away the altar silver and checked the vestry. Nathan was overworked, she frowned, especially now when there was no need for him to work at all. Since Elliot’s death there was no denying that one day Nathan would inherit Pendenys Place and much, much more besides.

  ‘Sorry to keep you.’ Smiling, Nathan took her arm. ‘Did you drive over?’

  ‘No. It’s too lovely a night.’

  ‘So shall we go back through the churchyard or by way of the village and in through the orchard gate?’

  ‘The orchard.’ Julia did not want to see gravestones tonight and besides, she liked to walk through the village. ‘I’m not very hungry, Nathan, so don’t expect –’

  ‘Me neither. What I most want is your company. I’ve been thinking about you a lot since you got back, wondering how things went.’

  ‘You’d only to pick up the phone,’ she said peevishly, then regretted it at once. ‘Sorry! France was a bit traumatic, for all that, but I’ll tell you about it when we get to your place – if you want to listen, that is.’

  ‘You know I do. I’d like to have been with you for old time’s sake, but it wouldn’t have been right.’

  ‘No.’ They walked in silence, past the ornamental village pump placed there by her Grandfather Sutton almost a hundred years ago, past the almshouses where Reuben and Old Catchpole lived; where doubtless Miss Clitherow would end her days.

  Over to her left lay Home Farm and beyond Brattocks Wood, its cupola and weathercock visible above the tree-tops, was Rowangarth stable block. And all around her, all she could see from left to right would one day belong to Drew. The public house, the tiny shop, three farms, three almshouses and, to be exact, thirty-two cottages. Even the vicarage belonged to Rowangarth.

  Young Drew, the villagers called him, but at his coming-of-age, two and a bit years from now, he would be known by common consent as Sir Andrew. Alice had borne a rape child, and the line had been saved. Andrew Robert Giles Sutton – the son she and Andrew had never made together. At the cemetery at Étaples she had doubted the existence of God yet there was something beyond their seeing and knowing and touching, or why had Drew been conceived that night and why, when Giles died, had Tom come back from the dead to marry Alice?

  ‘Penny for them?’ Nathan lifted the latch of the orchard gate, pushing it open, holding it for her.

  ‘I was thinking about – oh, just about everybody. Drew, Miss Clitherow, even …’

  ‘In short – none of my business!’

  ‘No – truly!’ She felt her cheeks redden. ‘I was probably, though I didn’t know it, thinking how lucky I am to be walking home on such a night as this. Really lucky.’

  ‘One of the benefits of being in a state of grace,’ he grinned.

  ‘No, Nathan. Nothing to do with having just been to church. I’m off God. There wasn’t much sign of Him at Étaples – all those young lives …’

  ‘Yes, love. I was in that war, too.’

  ‘So you were. I’m feeling a bit Bolshie tonight, I suppose.’

  ‘Be my guest.’ Nathan lifted the large cobble beside the back doorstep, taking the key hidden beneath it, opening the door. ‘It’s pot luck, tonight.’ His cook and housem
aid always had Sunday afternoon and evening off.

  Cake in blue tin. She read the pencilled note left beside the tray, then peeped beneath the damp tea towel and the layer of greaseproof paper to where daintily-cut sandwiches lay garnished with parsley. ‘Bet it’s walnut cake. Your cook spoils you.’

  ‘She’s an absolute love.’ He took Julia’s jacket, hanging it on a brass peg. ‘But come into the sitting room, and have a drink. Preaching is thirsty work. What did you think of my sermon, by the way?’

  ‘Since the gist of it was about counting blessings, I take it that it was aimed at me.’

  ‘Not a bit of it. When I wrote it I hadn’t the faintest idea you’d be at Evensong. But did it ring any bells?’

  ‘Not really.’ She pulled off her shoes, settling herself on the floor, leaning her back against a leather fireside chair. On a side table stood an uncorked bottle of red wine; beside it, two glasses. He filled one, passing it to her, then poured his own, sitting in the chair on which she leaned. She was grateful he had not chosen the chair opposite. She needed, tonight, to be close to someone.

  ‘Sure you’re comfortable? A cushion, perhaps?’

  ‘I like sitting on the floor. I’m fine.’ More than he knew. Here, if he asked her again to marry him, she would not have to meet his eyes head on; could gaze instead at the empty chair opposite.

  ‘So you got there, Julia …?’

  ‘Yes. No problem at all. I’d thought, afterwards, to go on to Paris for a couple of nights, then I thought, “What the heck?” I wanted to get back to Rowangarth, you see.’