The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

by Jennifer Ryan

  “He had a peculiar exchange with Mr. Slater, as if they know each other, and not necessarily in a nice way. It makes me wonder if he’s doing something illegal, like the black market.”

  “Oh dear,” she began, looking down. “I meant to tell you earlier, but I wasn’t sure how to put it. I was up with Rose the other night, and I saw him leaving his house at two in the morning. He strode off over the square. Heaven knows what he was doing.”

  “Are you sure?” I couldn’t believe it was true. “When did he come back?”

  “I didn’t see him come back, although I was up until three.” She rearranged Rose in her arms. “Venetia, he seems to be always popping out, and now Colonel Mallard is awkward around him. It does seem to indicate that he’s up to no good.”

  “But everyone else in the village adores him. He put up the tables for the jumble sale last week—Mrs. Quail was in a complete state before he came. And he’s also been helping the Sewing Ladies transport their balaclavas to Litchfield in his car. And you know how he helped Silvie home after she came off her horse by Bullsend Brook. She thinks he’s wonderful.”

  “But what was he was doing by Bullsend Brook in the middle of the afternoon? It simply doesn’t add up,” Hattie said.

  “Maybe he’s just dabbling in the black market a little, saving himself a bit of money?”

  “That would be fine, but he seems positively rolling in money, with the motorcar, the fine clothes, all the presents he gives you.”

  “Maybe he’s selling his paintings?” I tried. “Mrs. B. has always been keen to get her hands on his works of art.”

  “Are any of them gone?”

  “No.” I shrugged, feeling the fight drain out of me. “He hasn’t sold so much as a sketch to Mrs. B., avoids her if he can. And all his paintings are still in his portfolio.” Except the one that David Tilling stole, I thought, and Lord knows where that is. “It doesn’t bode well, does it?”

  “No, I’m sorry, Venetia,” Hattie said.

  I sat feeling rather sorry for myself for a while, then pulled myself together. “Well, there’s nothing else for it then. I’ll have to follow him.”

  “Oh, Venetia! It might be dangerous. Why don’t you see if you can find out other evidence before you do that?” Hattie asked.

  We discussed it at length, and she persuaded me to ask some more questions, give it one last try. I promised I would, but it seems so hopeless. When I’m with him everything seems perfect and I feel such an idiot for even doubting him, but then when we’re apart, and all these strange things come up, I can’t help but wonder. Who is he?

  I must be boring you senseless, dear Angie, so I’ll leave you there and write again soon with any more news. I know you think I should move on to my next victim, but Alastair is truly the man for me. Even though I’m not exactly sure what kind of man he is. I’ll write again as soon as there’s news.

  Much love,

  Venetia

  Saturday, 13th July, 1940

  Today I took the bus to Parnham to give Berkeley’s ring to Carrington. I’ve been putting it off for weeks, and honestly wish I hadn’t been so quick to promise I’d do it. I didn’t even know who Carrington would be, or indeed which Carrington should there happen to be more than one. But I knew I had to go, now that the Nazis have started bombing the ports. Dover was smashed last week, buildings in piles on the ground and people dead. It won’t be long before they’re upon us and we’ll be prisoners in our own country, not allowed to travel and forced to work incredibly long hours. I try not to think of it, as it scares me to death.

  On the bus, I thought it all through. I’ve never known any homosexuals, apart from Berkeley, of course. I suppose I’ve always thought it’s a phase or something, some adolescent crush gone on too long. Harold used to say there was something wrong with them, and I wondered what kind of a man I was going to meet. How he would react. I hoped he wasn’t dangerous, as you can never tell, especially if there really was something wrong inside. What ridiculous situations this wretched war has put us in! What was I thinking agreeing to it?

  I changed buses at Litchfield, heading out to Parnham, and found myself seated next to an extremely talkative lady who was clearly the village gossip. This was a terrific stroke of luck, if vaguely annoying, and I asked if she knew where I could find Carrington.

  “Why, didn’t you know? He lives in Parnham House. Viscount Carrington, if you please,” she joked, putting on a posh accent.

  “Oh, I didn’t know,” I said, not finding it the least bit funny. That’s all I needed. A viscount! “Is he a young man?”

  “No, but there’s two sons. The eldest is away with the RAF, bit of an upper-class snob. Then there’s the younger one, leg wounded in France, at home recuperating. He’s a nice lad. Doesn’t seem to get on with the Viscount, though.”

  “The Viscount is his father, right?”

  “Yes,” she sniffed. “Very proud and traditional. Doesn’t like the way the boy hangs about. If you ask me, he can’t stand the sight of him.” She pursed her lips, nodding in a most disparaging manner. “We hear things from the servants, you know.”

  Before long, the bus dropped me off in the village, and I only had the walk to the great house to collect myself. My meetings with aristocracy have been few and far between, and even though they don’t have the authority they once did, they still send a wave of panic through me. If only I had been Mrs. B. with her so-called royal connections and indefatigable self-confidence—although I very much doubt Mrs. B. would have agreed to this undertaking, especially since it involves something both unsavory and illegal. Heaven help poor Carrington, as she would have him marched off to Parnham Police Station within the hour.

  I was also incredibly nervous that my task was neither pleasant nor straightforward. Which son was I supposed to tell? What if the Viscount was the only one there and insisted on knowing my errand? What was I to say?

  After a long walk through the mansion parkland, the main house came into sight, a sprawling Regency façade, a double staircase separating and converging up to the massive front door. I shuddered as I approached, knowing that I was being observed as a shadow disappeared from behind a ground-floor window, my pull on the bell anticipated, my purpose already considered.

  Holding the door ajar and waiting for my swift departure, the antiquated butler informed me promptly and pompously that the Viscount was not at home.

  “I’ve come to see his son,” I said quickly, snaking around him into the hall. I hadn’t come this far to be palmed off.

  “I shall inquire within,” he said snootily, and showed me into a chilly drawing room.

  The interior was grand and austere but empty-looking and rather dismal. The faded colors—sage green, dove blue—had become gray with age, and I knew for a certainty that if I saw a duster lying around I wouldn’t have been able to help myself. The smell of wax polish and antique mothballs added to the starchy gloom. I felt completely alien and distinctly uncomfortable.

  The door presently opened and a young man entered. Thank goodness, I knew straightaway that he was the one. Still slim from youth, he was medium height and rather dark in complexion and looks, walking in with a self-conscious deliberation, steady, slow, ponderous. One of his legs was obviously wounded, his trouser leg bulking with bandages as he limped forward, and when he looked up at me, his eyes avoided mine, glancing out of the great terrace window, and then at the fireplace. He seemed so vulnerable. There was some deep discomfort in him, an estrangement from everything surrounding him.

  “Hello.” I smiled warmly, suddenly conscious that my mission was about to bring me closer to this man than most of the people he knew. “I’m Mrs. Margaret Tilling from Chilbury.”

  “Do take a seat,” he said in a very upper-class voice. He didn’t return my smile, which I thought was both painfully understandable yet incredibly rude. Although how was he to know my horrific errand? I perched on the edge of a taut beige brocade settee.

  He limped over to
the couch opposite and gently picked up a cushion before sitting down, measuring every movement as to the effect on his leg. He sighed and looked out the window again, over the folds of hills to the bittersweet blue of the sea, Nazi-occupied France only twenty miles across the water, snarling on the horizon like an evil inevitability.

  “What brings you to these parts, Mrs. Tilling?” he said, as if reading from an etiquette manual, exasperated by the need to deal with me.

  “I have a message from Berkeley.”

  His eyes darted straight to mine, his eye contact at once total and gripped. His bottom lip fell open slightly, taking in what I had said. A cascade of thoughts must have flooded his brain.

  “What message?” he breathed.

  “I was the nurse looking after him at Dover. He made me promise to give you this.” I opened my hand and held out the ring.

  Carrington spluttered a cough, although I think he was covering a cry. He didn’t rush to look at the ring; he must have already known the object: seen it, touched it, held it. He sat for a while, then came over and took it, tucking it away in an inside pocket. Then he walked over to the terrace window, looking over the manicured gardens and hills, the parallel lines of classical statues and symmetrical garrisons of topiary bushes.

  “It’s mine, you know,” he said quietly, “the ring.” He turned to me. “I gave it to him, four years ago. We were at boarding school together.” He became self-conscious and examined his hands. “What did he say?”

  “He told me to tell you he loved you.” I shuddered silently. “He was so terribly weak.” My words faded out, and the brutal memory of Berkeley came back to me, the hopeless fear in his eyes, his young form turning limp and lifeless.

  I looked at Carrington. His eyes seemed broken as he struggled to regain his countenance. He looked out the window, away onto the horizon, tears welling uncontrollably. A few dreadful minutes passed. I suddenly wondered if I’d been wrong. Perhaps he didn’t already know that his friend had died. Had I unconsciously broken the worst news he could ever want to hear?

  “I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I thought you knew. I thought, well, I didn’t know what to think.”

  “I did know,” he mumbled, clearing his throat. “His mother telephoned. She knew we were friends, although she never knew—” He cut off, frowning inscrutably. “I don’t mind if you hand me in, you know,” he said, a stern pride controlling his tears. “You can do your worst. I don’t care. I have nothing left to hide.” He looked pensively at the drifting clouds and added in a rather dreamy way, “I have nothing left at all.”

  “I’m not going to hand you in,” I said as gently as I could. “I made a promise to him.” I paused, thinking this was all far stranger than I had imagined.

  He came and sat back down on the sofa opposite me. “Tell me what happened.”

  “He kept talking about you—how you’d be lost without each other, that he was the lucky one for dying first—and then he rolled over, his breath slowing until it finally slowed”—my words were fizzling out—“to a stop.”

  I know it didn’t happen exactly like that, but this is surely what Berkeley would have wanted me to say. I remember when Harold died, yearning for him to speak my name, or give me a message. But he didn’t, and the best that I can do is to find some kind of peace by giving this gift to someone else.

  Carrington put his head down and wept into his large hands. I sat watching for a while, feeling like I was intruding, wondering if I should leave. Then I looked out onto the horizon myself and realized that loss is the same wherever you go: overwhelming, inexorable, deafening. How resilient human beings are that we can learn slowly to carry on when we are left all alone, left to fill the void as best we can.

  Or disappear into it.

  I went over and sat next to him and, after a minute or two, I put my arm around him and he turned and wept silently into my shoulder. I wondered if I was the only person who knew, the only shoulder he had.

  The sound of a distant door opening and heavy footsteps in the hall announced the return of the Viscount, and Carrington stood quickly and limped over to the window, promptly composing himself, wiping his face with a handkerchief.

  “That’s my father,” he said without looking around. “He wouldn’t understand.”

  “No, I imagine he wouldn’t.”

  “Thank you for coming,” he added slowly, and I took this to be my cue to leave. He clearly didn’t want his father inquiring after my purpose for calling.

  As I stood and straightened myself, he turned and said, “Really, thank you, Mrs., er—”

  “Mrs. Tilling.”

  He smiled, and I caught a glimpse of a different man, a different world, a handsome youth who might have enjoyed life had he not been wrenched into the center of a bloody war.

  “Mrs. Tilling,” he said. “May I visit you sometime? I mean, if I survive this beastly war.”

  I shrugged. “Of course you can. I live in Chilbury, Ivy House.” He smiled again, genuine connection in his eyes, and I knew that I would see him again, hopefully on a better day, under happier circumstances. “Things will get easier, you know.”

  He opened the door for me, and we went into the magnificent hallway. A dual staircase rolled up on both sides and came together in a type of royal balcony overlooking the expanse of parquet flooring. A clock ticked interminably, and I just wanted to get out, launch myself away from this oppressive place and into the fresh and wild outdoors.

  The butler was waiting for us, his gaze meeting my eye. Then he turned and gave a rather circumspect grimace to young Carrington.

  “I informed the Viscount that you had a visitor, and he requested to meet her,” he said pompously. “If you would be so kind as to wait here, madam, I will fetch him directly.” He bowed again and strode off into the passage.

  I felt a thud in my stomach. I was going to meet the Viscount whether I liked it or not. Carrington had gone rather pale. “I expect he just wants to see if you’re a young lady. Some romantic hopeful, if you know what I mean,” he said, attempting a smile.

  “Yes,” I said wearily, hoping but not expecting him to be right.

  He wasn’t. The Viscount stormed into the hall bellowing, “What’s all this then?” He was a large man, in all senses of the word, with a full head of graying hair curling around his burgundy necktie. He looked both immaculate and furious, stalking up to me and declaring rudely, “Who, may I ask, are you? And what do you want with my son?”

  “I’m Mrs. Margaret Tilling,” I said in the best voice I could muster, praying that something clever would come out of my mouth. “I was a nurse at Dover, and I had a message from a friend of your son’s.” I paused, while he looked at me expecting more. “He never made it.”

  “If it was that swine Berkeley, he’s better off dead.” He snarled at Carrington, who looked through him with practiced calm. “Poisoning my son with these notions—”

  “He is dead.” I heard my own voice pipe up strong and audible through the vast hall. “He died that night at Dover, from a wound fighting off the Nazis at Dunkirk. He was a brave soldier, and deserves to be remembered as such.”

  “He deserves to be remembered as nothing but a degenerate. He should have been hanged.”

  “And yet it was all right that he gave his life—his life!—for this country? Why can’t you take off your blinkered glasses and see what is in front of your eyes? The man was nothing but a boy, trying to fight, trying to stay alive, helping you and your country survive for another day.”

  Carrington’s look of complete alarm brought me back to earth with a bump. I was never going to convince this tyrant of anything. I just needed to get out and stop making it worse for Carrington. We all knew that as soon as the door was closed behind me, that poor young man would be chastised and denigrated until his life was hardly worth living either.

  “I think you should leave now,” the Viscount said dismissively. “I don’t know who you are, but I heartily suggest that you learn
some manners, my good woman.”

  I took a brief look at Carrington—pensive, measured, silent—and then strode for the door.

  The butler was now holding it open for me, and I sailed straight out and walked down the majestic stone staircase to the driveway, exemplary lawns metered out on either side, beyond which the wild, rolling hills and forests were packed with their own teeming hierarchies, playing out their own chains of command.

  As I marched down the drive with a swing in my stride, I took a deep breath of the syrupy sweetness of summer, suffused with bees and birds, and I thought to myself how beautiful this world can be. How lucky we are to be here, to be part of it, for however long we have.

  I took the bus back to Chilbury, uneasy about the way that I had left things with the Viscount. The malevolence and pride of these people is ruthless, clinging to their advantage in the face of our total annihilation. Human nature defeats me sometimes, how greed and spite can lurk so divisively around the utmost courage and sacrifice.

  A sense of responsibility—or was it guilt?—hung over me, that I was in some way at fault because of cowering to all these pompous men all these years, when I should have had the bravery to reclaim my own mind. That if we women had done this years ago, before the last war, before this one, we’d be in a very different world.

  And what about Carrington? That poor, devastated young man! Meeting him, and Berkeley even just briefly, makes me wonder why everyone makes such a fuss about homosexuality. Surely it’s not so terribly wrong? And isn’t love between two people better than hatred, in this world of violence and mourning? There seemed to me a fragile kindness in their love that survived through this poisonous war. Even though one of them hadn’t.

  By the time I reached Chilbury, just as the sun was stretching long shadows over the shop and the square, I was feeling quite fraught. I decided to visit the church to see if that would settle me. I end up in the church more and more these days, waiting for the silence to seep inside. As I slipped through the overgrown graveyard, the mellow evening air rich with wild lavender and hawthorn, I found myself pausing by the ornate old grave of a young hero, a weathered statue of a sleeping lion resting over the top, its fat paws coveting the valuable body laid inside.