The Golden Chain
Margaret James
Copyright © 2011 Margaret James
First published in hardback as The Long Way Home by Robert Hale in 2006
Published 2011 by Choc Lit Limited
Penrose House, Crawley Drive, Camberley, Surrey GU15 2AB
www.choclitpublishing.com
The right of Margaret James to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying. In the UK such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, W1P 9HE
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-906931-54-4
This story is for dear Min, ever the best of friends.
Contents
Title page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
About the Author
More Choc Lit
Introducing the Choc Lit Club
Acknowledgements
A big thank you to everyone at Choc Lit for all their hard work on this novel.
Prologue
March 1926
It wasn’t so much a nightmare as a mystifying dream.
Whenever Daisy Denham had the dream, she woke up tangled in her bedclothes and soaked with perspiration. Of course, this wasn’t unusual in India, especially when the summer was coming, the temperature on the plains was rising, and it was time to go up to the hills.
‘What’s the matter, sweetheart?’ asked her mother, after Daisy had woken up at three o’clock one morning, shouting to somebody in her dream to stop, to wait, to come back – please! The ayah had gone running in a panic to rouse Mrs Major Denham.
‘I had that dream again.’ Daisy sipped slowly from a glass of juice. ‘I saw the lady, the one I always see.’
‘You saw her face?
‘No, Mum, it was blurred. It’s always blurred. I know she’s young, and has black hair like you. But she isn’t you. I’m sure I’ve met her once in real life. But I don’t know where.’
‘What did she say to you?’
‘Nothing, she never speaks. She just stands there, looking at me. Then she goes away. Mum, she worries me.’
‘She’s just a dream.’ Rose stroked Daisy’s long, fair hair back from her sticky forehead. ‘I dream about all sorts of things,’ she added. ‘I see people I know I’ve never met and go to places I know I’ve never been.’
She picked up Daisy’s empty glass and smoothed the linen sheets. ‘Try to go back to sleep now, dear,’ she said. ‘You’re going to have a busy day tomorrow. Or I should say today.’
‘Did you finish my dress?’
‘Yes, and it looks perfect. The style and colour are just right for you. Dad’s bearer has polished up your shoes, and I’ve had all your ribbons starched and ironed. You’re going to be the star of Mrs Colonel Norton’s little show.’
‘What about my dad, do you think he’ll come?’
‘He says he hopes to get away. But he’s got a lot to do right now, as well as getting all the transport organised for when the mothers and children go up to the hills.’
‘I wish he could come with us.’
‘I do, too. But when he has some leave, I’m sure he’ll join us for a couple of weeks. Come along, my darling, settle down. Ayah, stay with missy baba until she goes to sleep.’
So the ayah squatted by the bed, crooning softly in soothing Hindustani. The lady with black hair had vanished. As her ayah sang a lullaby, Daisy felt herself falling asleep.
Rose went back to her bedroom, where she found her husband was awake.
‘So Daisy had that dream again,’ said Alex.
‘Yes, she did.’
‘We ought to tell her, don’t you think?’
‘What would be the point? Alex, she’s only ten years old. She’s such a happy child. She has a good life here with us. Why should we rake up all that stuff again?’
Chapter One
March 1931
The show had clearly been a huge success, for now the village audience rose as one. They clapped and whistled and stamped their feet. As Daisy took her final bow with all the other performers, she scanned the rows of faces. But she couldn’t find the person she had hoped would come.
The clapping finally died away. The other singers and dancers skipped and scurried off the stage. Daisy followed them to the dressing rooms, where the happy buzz of conversation raised her spirits, just a little.
She came out of the makeshift green room to find Alex Denham waiting with her hat and coat and gloves. ‘You were excellent, darling,’ said her father. ‘Your song and dance act was the best thing in the show.’
‘Do you think so, Dad?’ said Daisy, looking all around for someone else.
They pushed their way into the crowded lobby of Charton village hall, where Alex nodded to acquaintances and was told by everyone his daughter was a star. But Daisy couldn’t see the person whose opinion mattered most. ‘Where’s Mum?’ she asked.
‘She couldn’t make it, sweetheart.’ Alex shrugged apologetically. ‘She had one of her headaches, and had to go and lie down.’
Daisy’s shoulders slumped. Why was her mother being like this? Why had she changed? When the Denham family had left India the previous year and come to live near Charton, a honey-coloured, stone-built village on the Dorset coast, the previously sociable, gregarious Rose Denham had made no effort to fit in.
A few months after they’d arrived, Daisy had been asked if she would like to be in a concert which the schoolmistress Miss Sefton was organising at the village hall. Rose had not forbidden it, but she hadn’t shown any interest, either.
Since the family had come back to England, Rose had turned into a different person. While the Denhams lived in India, she had been involved in everything. The social life of the cantonment had revolved round Mrs Major Denham. She had organised all kinds of shows and fêtes and parties. She’d encouraged Daisy to join in amateur dramatics, let her perform in all the variety shows in the cantonment theatre, sent her to have dancing lessons, singing lessons, made her costumes. But not any more.
‘Where are the brats?’ asked Daisy.
‘In
the car,’ said Alex. ‘They enjoyed themselves. They were telling everybody you’re their grown-up sister, and they clapped and cheered like anything. Do you want to stay for a while and chat, or have a glass of cordial and a bun?’
‘No, Dad, let’s go home.’
So Daisy and Alex said goodnight to a red-faced and happy Laura Sefton, who had masterminded the event, and looked relieved that it had gone so well. Now the cottage hospital would be that much closer to getting its new ward.
Alex and Daisy walked across the cinder patch to where he had parked the battered Riley he’d been left in Henry Denham’s will. The brats were in the back, kicking and punching one other, but broke off when their father and sister got into the car.
‘Look, it’s Greta Garbo,’ sniggered Stephen, grinning like a monkey.
‘You were so embarrassing, Daze.’ Robert, the bigger and stronger twin, grabbed her round the neck and made her choke. ‘When you croaked that song about picking lilac, I was nearly sick.’
‘Yeah, me too,’ said Stephen, Robert’s faithful echo. ‘When you sat on that tree stump and sang about the moon in June, you looked like you were going to lay an egg.’
‘Your eyes were bulging, like someone on the lav. A lady said you needed Beecham’s Pills.’
‘Hark the herald angels sing, Beecham’s Pills are just the thing!’ sang Stephen, in a high falsetto.
‘You danced like Mr Hobson’s donkey, and – ’
‘Daisy, take no notice,’ interrupted Alex, turning round to glare at the two boys. ‘Belt up, you little blighters, or I’ll thrash the pair of you.’
Although their father had never laid a violent hand upon them, the twins heard the authority in his voice. They belted up at once.
‘I know it’s difficult, but we must give it time,’ said Alex, as he drove home to Melbury House. They’d come back to England the previous October, after Alex had been injured in an anti-British riot, and obliged to leave the army. ‘Dorset’s so very different from Delhi, after all.’
‘Damn right it is – no money, freezing cold, no servants, living in a ruin,’ whispered Robert, confident he was on his father’s deaf side, so Alex wouldn’t hear him, even if Daisy did.
‘We’ll be fine, you’ll see,’ continued Alex. ‘I know this winter’s been a challenge. We’ve all had coughs and colds. But the spring and summer are wonderful in England. You chaps can learn to swim. We’ll go for picnics on the beach. I’ll find some ponies for you, and then you can go riding.’
‘It sounds lovely, Dad,’ said Daisy loyally, even though she didn’t much like riding, and though she hated England and everything about it.
The damp and dismal countryside was ugly and depressing. The glass-green sea looked freezing. She didn’t want to dip a toe in it, much less learn to swim. The beach was covered with sharp shingle or big pebbles, not with golden sand. The constant cold poked freezing fingers through her clothes into her very bones, and she’d given up all hope of being warm again.
Every time she walked into the village on an errand for her mother, the locals said hello. But then they gawped and goggled so much you would have thought she had three eyes. Whenever she went into the village shop, the woman behind the counter was very friendly and polite. But the other customers stared and muttered. Then they grinned like idiots if she turned round suddenly and caught them gawking, like a lot of fools.
They parked in front of Melbury House, which Alex had inherited from his guardian Henry Denham along with the old Riley. In its dilapidated state, the house was probably worth about as much as the rusty motor. Or maybe even less.
‘You two can get the coal in,’ Alex told the twins, as he parked the Riley. ‘Make the fire up in your mother’s bedroom, wash your hands, then go and fetch the supper trays Mrs Hobson will have left for us, and bring them to the drawing room. There’ll be a good blaze there. Off you go, then – at the double.’
‘God, we’re nothing but child slaves,’ groaned Stephen, but he went with his brother to the stables where the coal was kept, leaving Alex and Daisy on the steps of the old house.
‘You were very good, you know,’ said Alex.
‘You’re just saying that.’
‘I mean it.’ Alex smiled encouragingly. ‘You’re very talented. Your mother and I have always thought so. You mustn’t take any notice of the brats. They’re only ten years old. They say the sort of beastly things that boys of their age do. I should know. I used to be like them, many years ago.’
‘I can’t believe you were as foul as those two,’ muttered Daisy.
‘Oh, I was much fouler!’ Alex grinned and shook his head. ‘I was a sullen, sulking horror. If you don’t believe me, ask your mother.’
‘Why didn’t she come?’ asked Daisy.
‘I told you, love, she had a headache.’
‘Yes, but Dad – ’
‘Come on, let’s go in and see if she feels better.’
They found Rose lying on the threadbare sofa in the shabby drawing room. The fire had burned itself almost to ashes, and shadows from the oil lamps danced and flickered around the walls and ceiling, so all the cracks and stains weren’t quite as noticeable as they were in daytime.
Alex drew the rotting velvet curtains, sending them rattling along the tarnished metal poles.
‘Alex?’ Rose opened her eyes ‘Daisy, you’re back already? How did it go?’
‘She was wonderful. They clapped and cheered like maniacs. You would have been so proud.’ Alex sat down on the sofa and took Rose’s hands. ‘Goodness, Rose, you’re freezing! Why didn’t you pull those blankets over you?’
‘I fell asleep.’ Rose smiled at Daisy. ‘Sit down, my darling, tell me all about it, and don’t miss out a thing.’
As she sat next to her mother, inhaling her familiar scent of jasmine, orange blossom and whatever Rose put on her hair, Daisy began to feel a little better.
She was at home and, even if today home was a crumbling ruin, not a British army major’s splendid married quarters, she was with her parents, the people who loved her best.
Maybe her dad was right. Maybe they should give it time. Maybe England wouldn’t be so horrible, after all.
If it didn’t improve, however, maybe they would let her go back to India on her own? Maybe she could go and stay with Mrs Colonel Norton and her daughter Celia?
She could travel by herself, or with a chaperone. After all, in autumn she would be sixteen – grown up, if not in law, then certainly in every way that mattered.
She was getting taller and she looked more like a woman every day.
As he slouched against the wall of Mrs Fraser’s little dressing room, his hands pushed deep into his trouser pockets – a stance he knew his mother hated – Ewan Fraser scowled.
‘Why do I have to come to Dorset?’ he demanded, his green eyes mutinous slits, his usually generous mouth a stubborn line.
‘I can’t leave you in Scotland on your own all spring and summer,’ replied his mother, tartly.
‘I shan’t be on my own,’ retorted Ewan. ‘Mr Morrison and his wife are here. I could live in their cottage, and they’d keep an eye on me.’
‘Darling, that would not be suitable.’
‘Why not?’ asked Ewan. ‘I stayed there all that time you were away with Dad, when he was in hospital and you lived in Edinburgh so you could visit him, and when you had to go to see the lawyers. You don’t need to worry about me.’
‘Sir Michael has invited you.’ Agnes Fraser looked beseechingly at her tall, broad-shouldered handsome son. ‘Ewan, the Eastons are your father’s cousins. They’re rich, they’re influential. You know you have no one else to help you make your way. Oxford will be so expensive. After you leave Oxford, you’ll need contacts, friends – supporters who will get you started on a career in law, or something in the pro
fessions. Sir Michael has an awful lot of very important friends.’
‘I’m going to be an actor,’ muttered Ewan. ‘So I don’t need the help of cousins from Dorset. Anyway, you don’t like Lady Easton. You’ve always said she’s common. When my father was alive, you’d never have even talked to anybody who had been divorced, let alone gone to stay with Lady Easton, and have the woman tell you what to do.’
‘Well, it’s different now,’ said Agnes. ‘Your father didn’t leave us enough money. What happened on Wall Street a year or two ago made things even worse. This place costs a fortune to maintain, and we have to live.’
‘I still don’t see why we should have to go and grovel to the likes of them,’ objected Ewan. ‘Why do you want me to go to Oxford, anyway? Why can’t I leave school and get a job?’
‘A minute ago, you told me you were going to be an actor.’
‘Yes, I did, and acting is a job.’
‘Oh, Ewan!’ Agnes got up and put her arms round Ewan’s waist. She hugged him tightly, laying her neat, dark head against his chest. ‘You’re so young and inexperienced. You don’t know this wicked, wicked world.’
Ewan knew that in a moment she would start to cry. Then he would have no option but to agree to go to Dorset. So he might as well give in right now.
‘I don’t have to spend the whole time fishing, do I?’ he demanded, determined to salvage something.
‘I’m sure Sir Michael would be very pleased if you would go with him and help him cast. When people don’t have children of their own, they like to have the young around the place, and he’s so fond of you.’
Agnes looked up at Ewan, brown eyes bright with unshed tears. He hoped she wouldn’t actually turn the taps on, because when that happened he never knew what to do. ‘I knew you’d see the sense of going,’ she said.
Ewan shrugged out of her embrace and slouched out of the room.
A few days later, after Agnes Fraser had agreed with Ewan’s school he could be absent for the summer because of urgent family business down in Dorset, he and his mother left Glen Grant for the long journey south.
The Golden Chain Page 1