The Lynmara Legacy

by Catherine Gaskin

  But Manstone brought the empty glasses into the bar alone, cadged some cigarettes from Fred, and the two set off to walk back to Fenton Field before closing time. They had sat silently on the bench all the time they had had their second drink.

  They had started down the avenue towards the house before Manstone spoke again. It was as if they had been silently conversing all the time, and he simply added the conclusion to the tale. ‘All the trusts that the Barrington estate had set up for Cynthia and David go on, but they’ve reverted for the use and upkeep of Lynmara. Barrington couldn’t see that far into the future. Well, who could guess it? No one thought of me surviving both of them, or of David having no children. Well, they thought of it, but it didn’t seem likely that it would happen. That distant cousin in Scotland is going to be the final recipient of all Barrington’s flair for making money. There aren’t any Barringtons for it to go to. Lynmara and the Ashleigh name was what Barrington wanted. The bargain did him no good, nor me, nor Cynthia. It didn’t even do David’s wife any good because he hadn’t inherited anything to leave to her. She gets a small annuity from the estate, and that’s all. I can’t even make over anything to her, because I don’t own anything outright. It’s the damnedest situation, and I deserve every moment of hell I’ve had from it …’

  She let him talk on, let him talk because she knew that he had to. When they reached the house, she brought a bottle of whisky from the store he had laid in, and took it to the wooden table under the big oak. The late twilight had finally come, the twilight of the longest day. She poured generous measures of drink into the two glasses. Across the lawn came the sound of the piano, stumbling, uncertain. ‘Listen, Rick’s trying to play some Chopin …’

  ‘What was that damn thing you played that night? ‒ the thing that Anna played?’ He hummed a few notes of it.

  ‘Für Elise,’ she said quietly. They were both plagued by memories and neither would forget.

  4

  Demands from the Boston Fentons for Nicole’s and the children’s return became more urgent. In July the Anglo-Soviet Mutual Assistance Treaty was signed. The American Navy took over the British base in Greenland, and therefore took over the task of escorting and protecting their own supplies of lend-lease material as far as this point. In August Roosevelt and Churchill met and signed the Atlantic Charter at Placentia Bay. This last move made Uncle Pete choleric with anger. ‘Blasted man will have us in a war whatever Congress does,’ he thundered in a letter to Nicole. ‘Now, listen, you get on home here, and quit this nonsense. We Fentons are a clannish lot, and we look after our own. You belong here, my girl. American, and a Fenton. Come home.’ More persuasive was the letter from Liz. ‘Nicole, don’t you think it’s time? The kids are getting older. Don’t you think they should grow up here, as Americans? We all know how Lloyd felt about England, but in the end, and right down to the end, he was still a Yankee ‒ a stubborn Yankee trying to shore up the place that we all came from. The kids ought to understand this, as well as just the English side of it. And I’ve been making enquiries. There’s a very fine school for the blind here in Boston. Why doesn’t Richard come over here? Being totally disabled, there should be ways around getting him a passage. But for God’s sake, Nicole, don’t leave it too long. If the States goes into this war, then that crossing of the Atlantic will be more dangerous than anything you’ve been through yet.’

  Nicole read portions of the letter to Margaret. ‘Do you want me to go? I’m a drag on you here. And it would be easier without the boys.’

  ‘Nicole, there are reasons why we fight. The freedom to do what we want is one of them. To have you here ‒ to have the joy of the children … If there’s no future, what are we fighting for? If there’s just going to be a rubber stamp which sends each and every one of us to some appointed place, to do some appointed task, then it’s all useless. Well, yes ‒ I know. You’re going to say Richard didn’t have a choice, or Ross, or Allan, or Gavin. Our men we give, for the time being. Not for ever. Unless they die, as Lloyd and David did.’ She spoke now as if David had been part of the family, and she had never met David. But she knew his father.

  ‘And Richard? What Liz says is sense. There could be training for him in Boston that he couldn’t get here until the war’s over. If he’s left without a challenge, to have to fight alone for that long, he may give up. Would he go, do you think, if it could be arranged?’

  ‘Hell, no,’ Richard said when she asked him. ‘What on earth would I do in Boston? If America’s coming into the war then I’d just be an Englishman cluttering up the scene. There are plenty of people in need of those services without a foreigner added to the number. What on earth would I do in Boston …?’ he repeated.

  ‘I’ll talk to Celia,’ Nicole said. ‘Perhaps she can persuade you that it might make sense. You’ll rot here for the rest of the war. You know that, don’t you, Richard? There’s a limit to what anyone can do for you until you have whole-time teaching. And I mean everything. Braille, a properly-trained seeing-eye dog, your music …’

  ‘No one’s going to part me from Nell,’ he said. ‘Forget that. And forget about talking to Celia. It’s none of her business.’

  ‘None of her business? She’s your wife!’

  ‘Not for long. We’ve agreed to all that. We’ll be divorced as soon as it can be decently arranged.’

  ‘What on earth for? Celia adores you.’

  ‘Celia used to adore me. Have you really paid much attention to her lately? She’s changed, hasn’t she, my little Celia?’

  ‘Changed … well, outwardly.’ Nicole shrugged. ‘Who wouldn’t? She’s learned a new sort of life. She’s got a job ‒’

  ‘Exactly!’ Richard snapped at her. ‘She’s got a new life, a new job, and she’s become a different person. We’ve switched roles, Celia and I. She used to be clinging and dependent. I suppose I liked her that way. I suppose I wanted to be sure that I’d always be the dominant one in the partnership. I wasn’t looking for any challenges from a wife. It never occurred to me that I could become dependent on a woman. It never occurred to me that Celia could change into someone who will want to run my life when the war’s over ‒ the one who will make the decisions because she’ll not only have the right to, but she’s learned how to make decisions. So efficient and decisive, my quiet little Celia has become. The truth is ‒ I can’t take it. I might be able to take it from another woman, someone I hadn’t been married to when I was top dog. What I’ve discovered, Nicole, is that I must have displayed a streak of the bully a mile wide to Celia. Somehow, I’m not able to ask her to forgive me, and to forget it. I can’t take favours from her. I’m going to have to ask for so many things as I fumble and grope my way through the rest of my life. And I find I just can’t ask them from Celia. It never was much of a marriage, when I look back on it. My fault. I just took her for granted. So … she won’t be losing much. She won’t have me tied around her neck just because she once used to love me.’

  ‘Are you sure, Rick …’ She hesitated, and fumbled for her words. ‘Are you sure you haven’t invented the difference between yourself and Celia, forced a break-up, because you want to free her from any sense of responsibility towards you? Any responsibility for you. Are you sure this is what she wants?’

  His unseeing eyes had been focused in the direction of her voice. Now he deliberately turned his head. ‘Why don’t you mind your own bloody business?’

  She remembered how he had looked as she left him there in the sitting-room, the lines of his face spare and lean, his profile beautiful against the window, and his hands clenched in a kind of frenzy of uselessness, on his knees.

  5

  She found the item one day when she was reading The Times to Richard. It was small, tucked away at the bottom of the page, something a court reporter might have picked up during routine work. She was silent for a long time after she had scanned it, so long that Richard became impatient. ‘What’s the matter? Dried up?’

  ‘No ‒ it’s …
Well, I don’t understand it. This bit here. It just says “Police last night arrested and detained a man who was about to board the Holyhead-Dun Laoghaire night boat for Ireland. He is Brendan de Courcey, son of the well-known owner and horse trainer of Clonkilty, Kildare. He appeared before a magistrate this morning, was charged, and held on remand without bail. The court was held in camera, for reasons of security, the police said. Reporting restrictions were not lifted. Police describe the charge as ‘extremely serious’.” That’s all. That’s all it says. My God, what can he have done? ‒ or what’s he supposed to have done? I wonder does he need a lawyer?’

  ‘Leave it alone, Nicole,’ Richard said quickly. ‘Look, he has parents, a wife, other friends. He’ll have his lawyer.’ From his tone she knew he didn’t want to talk any more about Brendan de Courcey, and she remembered it was Richard who had given her the strange item of news about Brendan, his old involvement with a few rowdy IRA sympathizers. Of course it couldn’t be anything of that kind, she told herself, but the thought nagged. Before the end of the day she had worried enough to try to get through to Charles in Whitehall ‒ always her best source of information.

  Charles sounded cautious when she spoke to him. ‘Really, Nicole, I just don’t know. I wonder why you think I can instantly get information about anything. There are plenty of things I’m not allowed to know …’

  ‘You’ll try, though, won’t you?’

  He sighed. ‘I’ll try.’

  He appeared unexpectedly at Fenton Field that next weekend. ‘Just got twenty-four hours off. Thought it would be nice to sleep away from London for the night …’ The house in Elgin Square was empty, and now bomb-damaged. Charles used a service club as his living quarters; Adams lived in the basement of Elgin Square, which was habitable, and had a job with the Ministry of Food. Iris’s estate had been settled, and apart from a few legacies to her favourite charities, her fortune had gone to Charles. He found himself, unwillingly, a rich man. ‘A bit late in life,’ he had said to Nicole. ‘There isn’t much to do with it now.’ So Fenton Field had become for him, as it had for John Manstone, a place of refuge. These two lonely men spent their spare hours haunting the almost empty shelves of London’s shops for any item available without ration coupons. Strange presents turned up at Fenton Field. John Manstone made a hobby of charity bazaars; Nicole suspected that he often paid outrageous sums for second-hand items which might be of use. Charles had combed Elgin Square for anything serviceable, blankets, bedding, even Iris’s clothes. Margaret rather unwillingly wore a fur coat that had belonged to Iris. ‘I don’t see how I can say “no” to something that keeps me so warm …’ she murmured.

  Charles, at first, was evasive when Nicole asked him if he had had any news about Brendan de Courcey. ‘It’s hard to get the exact truth,’ he said. ‘I’d almost rather not speculate. We may all know a good deal about it quite soon. They can’t keep something like that out of the papers for ever, not if the man goes on trial.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Her tone was sharp with anxiety.

  ‘Well, precisely what he took we may never know, or how he got it. But I have word from what we call “a usually reliable source” that he was carrying microfilmed plans with him back to Ireland. He even had a suitcase with a false bottom ‒ the whole incriminating thing.’

  ‘Brendan? ‒ why? What were the plans of …?’

  Charles cleared his throat. ‘It’s something so hush-hush that even if I knew the details, which I don’t, I wouldn’t be telling them to you ‒ or anyone else. I could get only the vaguest notion of what it was. Some further development of radar ‒ I think they’re calling it centimetric radar or some such thing which will fit in smaller warships, and eventually, they hope, in planes. The only way to fight the submarines in the Atlantic. And if we don’t beat the submarines, we could easily lose the war. The Germans aren’t nearly as advanced in radar as we are, and that’s what saved us last year in the Battle of Britain. Now it’s the Atlantic. If the Germans knew as much as we do, they’d be making their own modifications. Preparing themselves … As I gather, it’s an absolutely vital piece of intelligence. And some very advanced plans were found in Brendan de Courcey’s baggage. We will probably never know exactly what those plans were ‒ for security reasons.’

  ‘But why would Brendan do a thing like that?’

  ‘Ask me why a man ever turns traitor ‒ who knows what goes on in their twisted minds?’

  ‘But why? You think he was going to give the plans ‒ or sell them ‒ to the Germans? Brendan’s Irish ‒ and Ireland’s neutral.’

  ‘But not all Irishmen are neutral. Some of them have very long memories, and some just plain hate the English. All the hundreds of years when Britain ruled in Ireland ‒ all that bloody Partition business, and the Home Rule row. Oh, they’re neutral, but some are stupid enough to think that a German victory would see their country free of Britain, and united again. They delude themselves, of course. Hitler would treat them exactly as he’s treated every other country that becomes a nuisance. Don’t forget, Nicole, that invasion, if it comes, could just as easily come through the conquest of Ireland, as it could be launched from France. They could come in the back door there …’

  She shivered. ‘But since he’s Irish, what will they do to him? Suppose he’s found guilty …’

  ‘Unfortunately, if he’s found guilty, they’ll do more than lock him up. You see, there’s that technicality of the Irish choosing their citizenship. They had the chance, when the treaties were signed, to opt for English or Irish citizenship. Brendan de Courcey remained English. He carried an English passport. And if he is convicted of spying against His Majesty’s Government, then he’ll be guilty of treason.’

  ‘Treason …’ She whispered the word fearfully.

  ‘The penalty for treason, Nicole, is hanging.’

  She worked grimly on the hoeing in the vegetable garden on what had been the south lawn. Her back was to the orchard as she worked, and some disturbing sense made her keep glancing over her shoulder towards it. She could see the tree under which they had all sat that day when England had been new to her, a dream world opening up, with war only a vague threat posed by troublesome, pessimistic people like Gavin. That was the tree where Lloyd had dropped down beside her and told her that he meant to stay in England. The place seemed peopled with ghosts of past times, times when there still had been laughter. She thought of them all, the ghosts of that one summer. The faces and names came up, as if by a roll-call. Gerry dead, Brendan perhaps a traitor, Ross a hardbitten veteran of two campaigns. Gavin lost in his research station and talking of being sent to the United States to cooperate on some project of advanced physics. Allan immured in his prisoner-of-war camp, suffering hunger and cold, and some leg injury that would not heal. Richard, shuffling around in his world of half-images in grey and white. David, beautiful, golden David, was dead. Lloyd, her only love, was dead, and his unborn child was lost.

  She turned her back determinedly on the orchard with its too-vivid memories. But inexorably, as she wielded the hoe in the rhythm she had learned, the lines beat into her brain, lines learned long ago at school and which had never, before now, had reality for her:

  The many men so beautiful,

  And they all dead did lie …

  6

  It was a dismal autumn. The sinkings in the Atlantic continued, the Germans advanced steadily into Russia. The coloured pins on Andrew’s map extended farther and farther into that vast space. Leningrad’s land communications with the rest of Russia were severed, and in October the Germans broke through in the Crimea and attacked Moscow. The British began the fearful Murmansk run to bring supplies to Russia by a sea route which seemed to Nicole to take them virtually over the top of the world.

  ‘I don’t see why,’ she said, ‘we’ve got to send supplies to Russia when we’ve got hardly any ourselves. And we’ve brought them across the Atlantic.’

  ‘The Russians have manpower, and while Hitler’s engaged on
his Eastern Front, he’s not likely to try an invasion of Britain,’ John Manstone pointed out. ‘We rarely do things for quite altruistic motives in war. I suppose we figure that it’s better for the Russians to die than us. There are more of them.’

  She looked at the confusion of the maps on the wall. The old maps of the Channel ports seemed to belong to another age. The maps of the Western Desert, and their unforgettable names like Tobruk and Benghazi. The maps of Greece and Yugoslavia. The maps of Indo-China, and something they called the Burma Road. ‘How long can they stay out?’ she said. ‘How long can America stay out?’ She saw from the maps the tide of war running wild all over the world. ‘They can’t stay out for ever.’

  ‘It took a long time, last time,’ John said. ‘And we were nearly beaten before they came.’ He turned away from the maps and looked at her directly. They were alone in the kitchen.

  ‘Why don’t you go back, Nicole? Why do you stay on here?’

  ‘Because I’m afraid to go back,’ she answered. It was suddenly simple to tell him the truth. She was not emotionally tied up with this quiet man, this strange and lonely man who had been able to tell her of his own guilt and shame, who had shared with her the sorrow of the death of his son. She could talk with him as she could with none of the Fentons, nor with Charles, because she did not need, with him, to keep up the façade of courage. It was odd how much they knew about each other, things in the past that no one else knew.

  ‘I’m afraid that if I go back, I’ll finally break. You know, I keep pretending that Lloyd isn’t really dead. I’m still waiting for him to come on leave. We had such short times here together, that it isn’t hard to kid myself a little that it isn’t quite over. If I go back to Boston, I’ll end all that. I’ll have to admit finally that he’s gone. While I stay on here, I drift … I live from day to day. I do what chores I can, help where I can, and I let the future take care of itself. To go back to Boston is too much of a decision for me. What’s for me there? You ask ‒ what’s for me here? Well, I don’t know. I don’t want to know … I just let the days pile up, and one day I might have the courage to make myself believe that Lloyd is dead, and I have to do something about the future. The decisions now are small ones. I take one step at a time. I’m like an invalid learning to walk again. No one expects much of me. They’re used to me here. They understand the way things are. If I go back to Boston, I’ll have to be the brave little widow. I don’t think I can play the role ‒ not yet. If they were at war themselves, they’d all be so busy that maybe I’d be able to slip back in without anyone making any fuss. But here ‒ well the life here is like an old shoe, and I fit it.’