by Julia Kelly
Bobby looked to his mother, who nodded. “Off you go. I’ll see you again before I leave.”
As soon as the boy was gone, Mrs. Symonds turned to Stella. “Now, Miss Adderton, there is the matter of the menu. We agreed upon it hours ago.”
“Yes, ma’am. Only there was an accident with the eggs and—”
“An accident? I shouldn’t have to remind you how precious food is these days, Miss Adderton. You should know that more than most.”
“It was my fault, Mrs. Symonds,” said Mrs. George. “I do apologize, and I’ve told Miss Adderton that I will replenish her stock from my own allowance.”
Stella’s eyes narrowed, wondering what the woman was up to.
“Your fault, Mrs. George?” asked Mrs. Symonds.
“Yes, I was moving things around and dropped two of the eggs. It will be nothing to replace them, I assure you,” she said.
“You were moving things around?” Mrs. Symonds asked, her tone dangerously even. If Mrs. George had been an ally, Stella might have warned her that this was when her employer was at her most dangerous. Ladies never raised their voices, but the bite of Mrs. Symonds’s glare could make a general cower.
Mrs. George at least had the good sense to fold her hands behind her back and look contrite. “Again, I apologize.”
“Mrs. George, I would remind you that you and the hospital that you work for are guests in this house. I expect my property to be treated with respect. That includes the contents of my kitchen. There is no cause for you or any of your cooks to handle any of the food for Highbury House. That is meant to feed me, my son, and our staff. Have I made myself clear?”
Mrs. George’s expression hardened like stone. “I understand you perfectly, Mrs. Symonds.”
“Good. And I expect the commandant will as well,” Mrs. Symonds said as she marched out of the room.
Behind Stella, Joan sucked in a breath. “Not an easy one, is she?”
“I would say she hardened after her husband died,” Stella started.
“But… ?”
“She’s been just like that ever since I arrived at Highbury House. Come on, we’ll take Bobby’s things up to my room.”
• DIANA •
Diana Symonds’s nails bit into her palms as she climbed the stairs from the basement kitchen to the ground-floor servants’ passage, let herself out of the hidden door in the paneling next to the grand stairs, and walked straight into her morning room. Keeping her chin lifted as the door shut behind her, she moved methodically from window to window, closing the rose-gold embroidered curtains. Only once the room was plunged into semidarkness did she drop onto the sofa and let her head fall into her hands.
She hated arbitrating squabbles between her cook and the staff of the convalescent hospital that had taken over her home. But then, very little of the dream Murray had promised matched the reality.
They’d only just finished redecorating Highbury House when Germany attacked Poland and Prime Minister Chamberlain declared war. Less than a month later, Murray had come home on the train from London and told her he’d volunteered as a doctor in the army. She’d held their son Robin and wept, but Murray had convinced her he was doubly obligated to serve—first as a doctor and second as a gentleman. Then he’d promised her that he would keep himself safe.
“What would be the use of living in a building site for three years if I can’t come back to enjoy the home I built with my beautiful wife?” he’d asked with a laugh before kissing her. And because life seemed to bend to Murray’s genial will, she’d believed him.
How naive she’d been.
Diana pushed her hair back off her face and stood. Just as diligently as before, she opened the curtains, stopping only to check her face in the mirror and straighten the fine plum cashmere cardigan that she’d learned to treasure since the government had issued clothing coupons. She’d learned all sorts of things since that awful day when two khaki-clad officers had driven into the courtyard to tell her Murray had been killed en route to a field hospital.
She let herself out of her morning room’s sanctuary and made for the entryway that joined the house’s two wings. Down the corridor, two nurses in white uniforms with red crosses emblazoned on the bosom stood with their heads close together, giggling. The moment they spotted her, however, they scurried away.
She ignored them. When the government declared it was requisitioning Highbury House mere weeks after Murray’s funeral, it had taken the Voluntary Aid Detachment mere weeks to occupy most of the main house and its outlying buildings, leaving only a small suite of rooms in the western wing for the family. Still deep in mourning, Diana had emerged one day to find that the home she’d lovingly restored had transformed into wards of neat rows of hospital beds, a surgical suite, and accommodation for nurses and doctors.
It had all happened without her because Murray’s sister, Cynthia, had traveled down from London to become the commandant of the new Highbury House Hospital. Still raw from the shock of her husband’s death, Diana had viewed Cynthia’s taking charge as a kindness. Soon, however, she saw what it really was: a way for Cynthia to force her way back into the childhood home that had passed to Murray upon their mother’s remarriage. Yet if her sister-in-law had hoped Diana would remain in her suite swathed in black crepe and sadness and never show her face in the hospital, she’d been sorely mistaken.
Diana strode through the ground floor, past the east drawing room, long gallery, and ballroom. Each had been made into a distinctive ward and was lined with two rows of white enameled beds.
At first Matron McPherson, who ran the medical side of the hospital, had tried to keep Diana out of the wards with a sharp “Mrs. Symonds!” every time Diana appeared.
Finally, Diana had had enough. “This is still my home, and I will go where I please,” she had argued in the middle of her ballroom, eight wounded men watching her from their beds with a degree of respect.
“I cannot have people traipsing through my wards,” Matron had shot back.
“Never mind that; it isn’t appropriate, Diana,” Cynthia had said in a rare moment of agreement with the matron. “The men aren’t used to female company.”
“They’re surrounded by women,” Diana said.
“Nurses,” Matron corrected her.
“You’re a woman,” Diana pointed out. “And so are you, Cynthia.”
“I am the commandant of this hospital,” said her sister-in-law, as though the term unsexed her.
“I will come and go freely in my own home,” Diana said firmly, refusing to be moved until both Matron and Cynthia relented. The world might be at war, but she would not be ordered about like an infantryman in her own house.
Now, as she walked into B Ward, Sister Wharton, the senior nurse on staff, looked up from observing a junior nurse administer a shot to Private Beaton, who was fast asleep.
“Mrs. Symonds,” Sister Wharton said with a nod.
Diana slowed. “Sister Wharton, how are your patients today?”
“Some are better than others. He’s asked me to thank you again for helping him write to his mother.” Sister Wharton nodded at Private Beaton.
The man’s right hand had been ripped to shreds by shrapnel. He hadn’t yet mastered using his left, and he didn’t want to alarm his mother by writing to her in a different hand. Diana had lugged Murray’s old typewriter to the ward and set it up on a little table by Private Beaton’s bedside. His dictation had been the first of three letters she’d typed that day.
“I hope his upcoming surgery is a success,” said Diana. “I was wondering if you knew where Miss Symonds might be.”
“I believe you’ll find her in her office,” said Sister Wharton.
Diana did not point out that Cynthia’s office should be called the billiards room. That was one battle she’d lost. Instead, she thanked Sister Wharton.
At the billiards room door, Diana drew in a deep breath before knocking, trying her best to ignore the bitter taste of having to knock on doors s
he owned.
“Yes?” came a thin voice from the other side.
Diana twisted the brass doorknob and stepped inside to be greeted by the back of Cynthia’s head. With blond hair that was beginning to streak with silver, it would have been easy to think that the woman who dressed in demure pastels and high lace collars might be soft and compassionate. Five minutes with Cynthia, however, and anyone would have been disabused of that notion. Cynthia was made of flint and dogma.
Cynthia swung around in Murray’s old desk chair, her sharp, birdlike features pinched with thinly veiled annoyance. “My darling sister-in-law, how good of you to stop by. Do you find yourself at a loss for things to do?”
“You know that I have more than enough work to keep this house running on a quarter of its staff, with or without forty-three patients, three doctors, six nurses, six general service members, a matron, a quartermaster, and yourself in residence.”
“So you often tell me.” Cynthia sighed. “What is the matter today?”
“We would have no need to speak every day if the staff and patients would give a care to this house and my family living in it,” said Diana, taking a seat before she’d been invited to.
“If this is about the flooding in the green bedroom—”
“That has been repaired. It was fortunate that Mr. Gilligan was able to turn off the water to the sink as quickly as he was, otherwise it would have seeped through the ceiling,” she said.
Cynthia’s lips thinned as she shuffled some papers on her desk. “Yes, well, that was an unfortunate accident.”
“It was entirely preventable,” Diana pushed.
“I spoke to the nurses on the second floor about minding that the patients aren’t throwing cricket balls inside, but you must understand that the men can become bored.”
“Perhaps you would extend that warning to the rest of the house. Mrs. Dibble found that the silk wallpaper in the blue bedroom has been damaged after someone bounced a rubber ball against it,” she said.
Cynthia hesitated but then frowned, picked up her pencil, and made a note in the little book she kept close at hand. “I will speak to Matron.”
Diana let out a breath. “Thank you.”
“Is that all?” asked the older woman.
“It is not. Earlier today one of your cooks broke several eggs belonging to the house. As you know, I am to have the vicar and a few other people to supper tonight.”
“Surely Father Bilson will understand if his custard is made with dried eggs.”
“I cannot serve Father Bilson a custard made from dried eggs,” said Diana.
“Why not? I’m sure that it’s nothing he hasn’t eaten at his own table.”
“That is not how things should be done.”
Cynthia made an exasperated noise, but again the pencil went up. “I will see to it that they are replaced. How many?”
“Two.” When Cynthia looked up at her, she pressed on. “But that is only a symptom of the real problem.”
“And that is?”
“This is not the first time that my cook has dealt with the damage or disappearance of rations since the hospital arrived at Highbury. The VAD explicitly promised that you would keep to your own rations and leave ours alone.”
“Ours? I’m a member of this family, too, lest you forget,” said Cynthia.
Lest she forget? How could she when Cynthia mentioned it so often? But it was Diana whom Murray had left the property and all of its contents to, not his sister.
“The hospital cooks are not to touch the family’s rations,” Diana said slowly. “That is food your nephew eats.” It is food you eat night after night because, while you want to rule over the nurses, you won’t eat with them.
“I will speak to Mrs. George,” Cynthia finally said.
“Thank you,” Diana said.
Cynthia glanced down at her notebook. “Before you go, I wanted to talk to you about the night nursery. Is it really necessary for Robin to sleep there?”
“Where is he supposed to sleep if not in the night nursery?” The hospital had already requisitioned the day nursery for four patient beds.
Cynthia looked up. “Well, he could sleep with you.”
“No,” said Diana.
“Or you could send him out to school,” Cynthia said.
“He’s not yet five.”
“I took the liberty of writing to Mr. Keen at Charleton Preparatory School, and he said that, given the extraordinary circumstances we are living under, he is prepared to take boys as young as seven.”
“He’s only four.”
Cynthia waved her hand. “A small matter of making arrangements. With Robin away at Charleton, he would be well prepared for Winchester just like his father—”
“I am not sending Robin away to school,” said Diana.
“Diana, be reasonable,” her sister-in-law said.
“I am.”
“If this is about his ailment—”
“His asthma,” she corrected. “No, it is not.”
“He has always been a sickly boy.”
“He is not sickly any longer,” said Diana. “He is healthy and in little danger so long as he keeps his inhaler with him.”
“He’s so thin,” said Cynthia.
“Please feel free to take the matter up to the Ministry of Food who issues his ration book.”
“Robin is a Symonds, Diana. Symonds boys have been going to Winchester for decades.”
“Robin is my son, and I will decide what to do about his education. He stays at home,” she said.
“Is that really wise, considering? All of these men coming and going from the hospital, and some of them can be quite rough. And then there is the issue of space. I have a third of my staff living in cold attic bedrooms, a third in barely habitable cottages, and a third down the road in the village. The Royal Army Medical Corps wrote last week that we’re to expect more men by midmonth, and the surgeon is demanding that we find him another room for a surgical suite because the old storeroom is too poorly lit. If Robin were to go, we could have the night nursery, too.”
“No,” she bit out.
“We all must make sacri—”
“You will not tell me about sacrifices,” Diana said fiercely. “You will not dare.”
Her sister-in-law folded her hands one over the other. “I understand that you are still mourning my brother’s death.”
Diana pushed herself up out of the chair. “Please remind Mrs. George that she and her cooks are to stay out of Miss Adderton’s way.”
Diana was halfway to the door when Cynthia called out, “I thought you should know, we have a chaplain in Ward C. I thought that you might like to meet Father Devlin.” Cynthia hesitated. “Perhaps you could speak to him about Murray.”
A long pause stretched between them as Diana clenched her fists. Finally, she said, “Cynthia, my request to stay out of my rations extends to matters of my personal life as well.”
For once, Cynthia was silent as Diana shut the billiards room door behind her.
* * *
Still seething, Diana made her way to the mudroom off the kitchen—too small a space for the convalescent home to commandeer—and pulled on Murray’s old waxed jacket and a well-worn pair of leather loafers. She wrapped her hair up in an old scarf that she kept on a hook by the door and gathered up her trug and secateurs.
She threw open the side door to the kitchen garden and crunched across the gravel to the gate. It wasn’t raining, but she could smell it in the air. It was her favorite time to be in the garden, with the urgency of impending weather hurrying her along.
She was not a great gardener by any means. But then, none of the women in Murray’s family had been. Murray’s grandfather, Arthur Melcourt, had brought in a woman named Venetia Smith to do the design. Even decades later, the effect was breathtaking any month of the year, and Diana was determined to be an excellent caretaker of the grounds. However, after four and a half years at war, she was beginning to admit that bare
competence was more realistic.
When Murray was alive, six gardeners on staff were led by a head gardener named John Hillock. After the declaration of war, though, half of the young men had enlisted, with the others called up one by one. Then Mr. Hillock, who had worked on Venetia Smith’s designs under the direction of his father, had died of a heart attack while dividing bleeding hearts in the lovers’ garden. Now two men who were too old to fight came up from the village every other day to tend to what they could, calling on a pair of young boys to do any heavy lifting they couldn’t manage. The garden had taken on a loose, shaggy quality, with faded blooms that desperately needed deadheading. Even the yew had become more wild shrub than wall as it waited for a much-needed trimming.
Still, Diana loved the garden because it was fully her own. For a time, Murray had taken an interest in the redecoration of the house, but he’d left the grounds to her, saying it was a good hobby for a lady. Now, when everything became too much, she could hide in the garden rooms and pretend that her home wasn’t overrun, her husband wasn’t dead, and life wasn’t slipping through her fingers.
That afternoon, she made for the water garden. She liked its cool calm, even in the depths of winter. She should clean the pond out before the spring, but that task was for another day when she wasn’t expecting company. A war wasn’t an excuse to let standards slip, and if she became dirty, she would have to endure a cold bath before her guests arrived.
She set about pruning the late-flowering clematis, cutting the long vines back to a healthy bud and pulling away the old growth from the plant. The pieces went into her trug, destined for the great compost heaps near the greenhouses at the bottom of the property.
After ten minutes, an uneven shuffling came from the other side of the garden wall. She straightened just as a large man in a uniform walking with the help of a pair of crutches rounded a gap in the brick wall.
“Mrs. Symonds, I presume?” he asked through huffs and puffs.