by Gloria Cook
‘The property’s changed hands many times in the fifty-odd years since the manor fell down.’ Alec stretched himself out even more, as if settling himself for a long cosy chat. ‘The current owner is a fellow I know. He intends to go off to live in India and has put the farm and Bracken House on the market.’
Emilia braved another outrageous suggestion by working up her first smile in over two weeks. ‘Couldn’t you buy it? You’d be Honor’s landlord. You wouldn’t see her homeless, I’m sure.’
‘It’s good to know you have a high opinion of me, Emilia. I don’t mind confiding in you that I’m in the process of buying the Tremore property. Of course I wouldn’t see any friend of yours without a roof over her head. The Burrowses may live there rent-free providing there’s a proper understanding they work for me in return. I’m thinking of installing Ben at the farm. It would give him something to build on, be his own boss, as it were, and with the farm situated on the other side of the village, it will be easier for you, Emilia, now it looks as if things will never improve between you.’
Putting a hand to her breast, Emilia sighed with relief over Honor’s more settled future, and while she found it in her heart to be glad for Ben, if he remained difficult, it would be good if he wasn’t so close. ‘Would you mind if I told Honor her biggest worry will soon be over?’
‘I’m afraid I must ask you to wait until the legalities are signed. Then you may tell her as soon as you like.’
‘Thank you, Alec, and thank you for confiding in me.’ She stood up to go but instead fixed her eyes on him, mesmerized by his soft grey gaze. It was as if she was seeing his hushed face for the first time, its extraordinary strength, and fineness and nobility. His mouth was wide and fully masculine, his jaw line firm, his eyes fascinating, with bright enticing depths. It was easy to understand why Lucy Pollard, a fickle, social-climber by reputation, had settled for him when she, apparently, could have ensnared a titled gentleman with much more wealth, land and prestige.
‘Stay Emilia, let’s talk some more.’
She hesitated. He smiled, slow, encouraging, and motioned that he would pour her another drink. She stayed.
Chapter Sixteen
Tristan was staring at the ceiling of the officer’s hospital in a quiet part of south London. The medical staff insisted the ceiling wasn’t grey, but it was how he saw it. Depression. That was what he had, apparently, the reason for him expecting everything to be grey, wanting everything to be grey. Grey was dreary, but it was safe somehow, non-committal. White meant purity and there was no purity any more. Black meant death, the silence of all silences. All other colours held no meaning for him. Grey was commonplace. Commonplace stopped him from going mad. Like the chap in the next bed had last night.
‘A visitor for you, Captain Harvey.’
Tristan felt no threat from the mediocre man, of average build, of no notable features, in an ordinary grey mackintosh. The nurse, thankfully, was an ordinary-looking sort with dull hair – he’d have hated it if she had glossy tresses and was wearing lipstick. She addressed the man in the sort of hushed efficient tones that indicated her priority was her patient’s welfare, for which Tristan was comforted. ‘Just ten minutes. The captain is to be kept quiet.’
‘You have news for me, Mr Smith?’ The man had a nice everyday name.
Mr Smith fetched himself a chair, placed it close to the bed and sat down. He employed his toneless voice. ‘How’s the ankle, Captain?’
‘Might be strong enough for me to walk without a limp eventually, so they say.’ Tristan’s brain fogged over. ‘Captain? When did that happen?’
‘You were promoted just before you arrived here. You’ve been through a lot, it’ll come back to you. Now to business.’ Mr Smith tapped the large brown envelope he had brought, then he shielded it with a small pale hand, as if it might be a matter of national importance. ‘The details are all down in here. You can read it later but I’ll give it to you straight, ’tis my way and usually best appreciated, I find. I’ve made extensive inquiries. Even went down to the West Country myself. Your wife and the gentleman in question boarded a midday train at Truro railway station on October sixth. They bought tickets for Bristol and that’s where they got off. They took lodgings near the docks the same day, left after a week without paying the rent. I’m afraid I could find no trace of them after that. ’Tis possible they’ve made their way overseas, despite the dangers. I’ve done the usual surveillance on the lady’s relatives and came up with nothing. Of the gentleman, I couldn’t find out anything about him. He’s obviously an expert at covering his tracks,’ Mr Smith concluded with a sunbeam smile, as if he had been clever and deserved congratulations.
‘Bristol? I thought they’d have gone further than that, but I suppose they didn’t have much money. They must be somewhere, Mr Smith. You must know something more.’ Tristan sat up quickly and foolishly from the pillows, causing pains to shoot and stab at various parts of his body. The dreadful news in Ben’s redirected letter that Ursula had left him for this Bruce Ashley character, that she was pregnant, was harder to bear than the physical or mental consequences of the fighting. Surely fate owed him more knowledge of her whereabouts? She was his wife. He needed answers to all the whys. Part of him wanted to know if she was all right. ‘People don’t just vanish into thin air, especially a woman as striking as Mrs Harvey. Are you absolutely sure you’ve checked every possibility? What am I to tell my son when I see him?’
‘You have my word, sir.’ Mr Smith glanced sideways at the nurse, who was hurrying back. ‘I tried all forms of travel in and out of the city and all types of accommodation. I even ventured into the less savoury areas. Ladies are sometimes abandoned… and they have to make a living somehow.’
‘How dare you!’ In a rash movement that made his head spin revoltingly, Tristan snatched the envelope, buried himself down in the bed, curled up and hugged the envelope to his chest. Not that for Ursula, please, God. ‘You’ve been paid. Go now, please. I’ll think of something else.’
‘I’ve very sorry, sir. Goodbye. Good luck.’
‘I’ll punch the next bastard who wishes me that.’
The nurse pressed the backs of her fingers to his brow and read his pulse. ‘Now, now, Captain Harvey, you’ve got yourself into a fine state. I’ll put the screens around your bed. You are to have a long sleep.’
‘Are they grey?’
‘Is what grey?’
‘The screens?’
‘I suppose you could call them a shade of grey.’
‘I certainly could.’
Chapter Seventeen
‘Is it much further now? How old is Cousin Winifred’s girl? Do you think I’ll be able to play on the beach? Can we come again after today? Is that the Atlantic Ocean? We’re high up. How deep is the water? Daddy and I could come and stay here, couldn’t we? Tilda says sea air’s good for you. It will be good for Daddy when he’s con—con—convesling or something.’
Jonathan’s questions went on and on, and Alec, driving the trap into Watergate Bay, on the outskirts of Newquay, on the north coast, answered them with patience and a sense of fun.
Emilia sat in the back with Lottie, whom she had wrapped up in all her furs, pointing things out to her as they had passed through tiny winter-bleak hamlets and villages. Lottie nodded like a marionette, replying, ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ to everything.
Having journeyed only as far as Truro before, and the occasional trip, as a child, to the seaside at Perranporth, when she, Billy and her parents had walked the three and a half miles there and back, Emilia enjoyed every minute of the long, rough ride. In her own finer clothes, she allowed herself to feel a little grand, and rested and soothed. Her mother was attending to her dairy work at the farm and there was nothing for her to worry about.
After descending a long hill where they looked down on a long, wide expanse of golden sand and craggy rock with headlands in the distance, climbing again past the grand-looking Watergate Hotel, then travelling along a short tr
ack and a gravelled carriageway, the party arrived at Roskeme. A solitary house, imposing and well maintained, fifty feet up on the cliff, it was a fine example of classical Victoriana.
Emilia gazed out across the dark-blue waters, which stretched as far as the eye could see up coast and down. Gigantic waves were forming a long way out from the shore, rising in frothy white crests and charging the long strip of pale golden sand with thunderous gusto. She had never seen a more exhilarating sight.
There was a light touch on her hand. ‘We’ve arrived, Emilia. Would you like to get down?’
She returned Alec’s smile. ‘Oh, yes, of course. Isn’t the sea beautiful? It’s so much better than I remembered.’ It was strange to be helped to alight as if she were a lady, usually she would have jumped down, but it was good to feel cared for. ‘I’ll help with your gran.’
Rounding the trap, she became aware of the wind tugging at her hat, and her hair – more carefully arranged in a twist today, and she became aware of half a dozen females, including a small girl, in attendance at the front door. It was easy to pick out Alec’s widowed cousin, Mrs Winifred Stockley, from a family group in a photograph at Ford Farm.
Winifred Stockley was about Alec’s age. She wore black from neck to lower-calf without gloom and had a swan-like grace. There were two nondescript middle-aged servants and the other lady, an advanced version of Winifred Stockley, and sister to Lottie, though with no resemblance, was introduced as Great-Aunt Clarissa. The girl, the same age as Jonathan, was as fair as her mother, and as Emilia was to learn, every bit as precocious. The children were whisked away to the nursery.
‘Alec, Grandma, how lovely you could come.’ Winifred Stockley sparkled with charm. Emilia liked her immediately. ‘And you must be Miss Emilia Rowse. Alec told me all about you at a luncheon in Truro recently. He says you will be keen to explore the cliffs. You must feel free to wander as you will until dinner tonight. I will attend to Grandma.’
Emilia was denied the unpacking of hers and Lottie’s overnight bags, and found herself in the drawing room, the grandest room she had ever been in, and packed close with furniture in rich woods, many beneath fringed, embroidered covers, and masses of pictures and ornamentation in the typical Victorian manner. Rather than take in the lavishments, she looked out of the window at the sea, and listened, as did the great-aunt, while Alec and Winifred caught up on family news. The lone man in the room, taking part in a ceremony of drinking tea and eating plain biscuits, Alec was unimposing and gracious.
‘So it’s at least another three weeks until Tris will be able to travel home?’ Winifred was saying. ‘Such a shame you haven’t been able to go up yet. I hate to think of him being all alone. How Jonny’s grown since the last photograph Tris sent me of him. Has either received any word from Ursula?’
‘No, none at all.’ With satisfaction, Alec glanced at Emilia – she was reading Tristan’s letters to him now. ‘But she might have sent poor Tris something out there, of course, and it hasn’t been redirected yet.’
‘It’s all so sad. And there’s been sadness for you too, Miss Rowse, or may I call you Emilia? Do accept my condolences on the tragic loss of your brother.’
Feeling the whole room had its eye on her, Emilia was forced to cleared her throat. ‘Thank you, Mrs Stockley. Please accept mine in the case of your husband.’
‘Your brother and Major Stockley weren’t far from each other on the Ypres Salient, you know we have a special source of empathy. It seems every family in the land has been bereaved by this terrible war. Do take off for a stroll any time you care to, Emilia,’ Winifred ended kindly. ‘Jonny and Vera Rose will be down on the beach with the maid by now, but don’t feel you have to join them.’
‘Thank you, yes, I’d like to take a stroll.’
‘Be careful not to get lost, my dear.’ Alec escorted her to the door. ‘You’ll need to borrow a pair of boots from the cloakroom.’
There were less than half a dozen properties in the bay and apart from the children, squealing excitedly while running about on the beach with the maid, no one else about. After waving to them she wandered along the narrow cliff path, spongy grass on one side, breathtaking perilous drops on the other. She inhaled the tangy air, so full of salty flavour, and so different to what she was used to every day. She didn’t find it difficult to empty her mind of all things disagreeable.
From the exposed parts where she was buffeted by the force of the elements, the path occasionally took short turns into sheltered hollows. After about a mile, in one of these little sanctuaries, she took a small piece of her own work, as intricate as lace, out of her coat pocket. A heart shape, a symbol of love, fashioned in corn. This was to have been her birthday gift to Ben. How could it have been that she had not celebrated the occasion with him? She had mulled over and over every loving word and act they had shared, and every bitter reproach. Before they had fallen in love she had expected them to remain friends for life. It was still a shock to realize how quickly her feelings for him had changed, how Ben’s misfortune had changed him. Her mother had deliberated that their youthfulness was to blame.
Whatever the reason, her life, her future with Ben was over. She threw the corn heart-shape as far as she could and watched it spin, its lightness borne on the wind, until it hit granite many, many feet below.
She moved on from the hollow. She would not stay and brood and pander to regrets. She had this gift of a little precious time to herself, after almost three years of continuous drudgery. Yet that wasn’t how she saw her life at Ford Farm. There was something satisfying in being part of the cycle of nature and creation, of birth and rebirth. In one of the rector’s harvest sermons he had mentioned that working the land was more a spiritual activity than toil. It was true for her, it did feed her spirit. She didn’t want to do anything else nor could she imagine being anywhere else. And it had to be Ford Farm, the same fields and valleys and moors and streams where she had roamed as a child. Had it been Ben she had always wanted or only him as the reason to stay there? Strange, she had felt she had loved him so much, but now her heart resented him for never wanting to stay for ever at the farm.
She had caught him unawares in the den yesterday and he had bawled at her to get out, hastily covering up what had looked like documents he was signing. No matter. Her place at the farm was secure. Alec said so.
Her next thought about Alec was so mercenary, so unlike anything she had ever imagined herself capable of, she gagged on the sea air. Her father had worked at the farm all his working life, but her only guaranteed permanent connection there could be with Alec. She scolded herself for being covetous, even if it had only been for an instant, of having the same shameful thoughts as Florence Burrows for Honor, to seek to tie herself to a man for her own ends.
She stared out to sea, and it was as if she was looking into her own soul. She bowed her head in shame, for Billy no longer had body or breath, or a mind in which to make plans or cherish hopes. The waters went on and on, seemingly for ever, a never-ending unknown world. Was Billy in such a place? Lost and alone? Billy, who had sacrificed his goodness to die in pride and honour. Was she lacking those same admirable regards?
Oh, God, I don’t know. I didn’t mean to think of something so wicked.
She retraced her steps at a run, only slowing down when reason came drifting back. ‘We’re only human,’ Billy used to say.
No, not used to. He was saying it now. She had heard his voice as plainly as she could hear the ocean. He was here, with her. She had heard stories of dead soldiers leading their wounded comrades to safety in subsequent battles, or keeping them company through long, pain-filled hours until rescue came. The part of them that was left on earth until their final duty was done.
‘Billy?’
He was there, feet away on the cliff path. Billy, as he always had been, ordinary and kind, not a scrap of mud on his uniform, a reddish mark in the middle of his brow indicating his fatal wound. ‘We give what we can, Em. Don’t ask more of yourse
lf.’
He was only there a moment but it seemed an age. The sense of peace he had brought stayed with her. Now she could go back and get on with her life. ‘Thank you, Billy. I’m not confused any more.’
She would never speak of this tiny pocket of eternity she had shared with Billy, it was personal and precious and theirs alone.
Soon she was looking down on the unmistakable figure of Alec. The children had gone. He was alone on the shore. Completely still. Where did he go in his thoughts? Was she included in them at this very moment? Did she want to be? Really want to be?
With slow careful steps she approached him, hoping he’d remain unaware of her so she could study him in his contemplation. As expected, his eyes were closed, the long dark lashes resting above his high-set cheekbones. Such a powerful face, and dignified and splendid. His mouth sensuous and gentle, his hair ruffled by the wind. She could stay here all day and not tire of looking at him.
Then he was looking at her, with the softly formed smile he always gave her. He stretched his arms as if waking up. ‘I could dream for ever in a place like this.’
‘Is that what you were doing, dreaming?’
‘It’s something I’ve had to do, to enable me to go on. Have you been relaxing, Emilia?’
‘Mostly. Then I thought about Billy, imagining him lost in a vast space somewhere and I panicked, but I know he’s all right, that I’ll see him again one day. You used to come here every summer as a child, didn’t you? You must have had such fun with your cousin. I’m pleased you’ve had some happy times, Alec.’