The Last Secret of the Deverills

by Santa Montefiore

  He worked through the night, running his hands over the rubble in search of survivors, rescuing people from under piles of debris, stamping out flames, assisting firefighters and ambulance men. The smoke filled his chest and the flames scorched his skin but he didn’t stop. Not for a moment. He was on the ground being useful and he hadn’t felt useful since the Great War when he’d fought in the battlefields of France.

  Then he heard a high-pitched cry for help. A child screaming for his mother. It rose above the crackling sound, which was almost deafening, and was carried on the wind, which fanned the flames so that they grew even higher, like bright orange monsters, rising into the night. As Harry ran down the road he heard the whistling of a bomb above him. The crackling was silenced, the roar of flames stilled, only the whistling could be heard and then the quiet. The quiet, eerie sound of imminent death.

  Harry didn’t look up. He didn’t need to. He kept running but there was no way to avoid it. He thought of Boysie, his children, of Kitty and his father and he felt sorry, because he was just beginning to make sense of his life and now it was going to be over.

  The bomb fell in front of him and threw him ten feet into the air. But by the time he fell he was no longer in his body. He was standing beside it, looking down onto the broken man he had been. The broken man who had tried so valiantly to do good. Bloody war, he thought.

  Then he saw Adeline. She was beside him, shining in a light that did not pertain to this desperate night. She smiled at him and he smiled back. ‘So this is it,’ he said, still unable to believe that he was no longer alive. He felt alive. More alive than ever.

  ‘This is it, my darling. You’ve done your bit.’

  ‘So, what now?’ he asked, but before she could answer he saw a light that was brighter than any he had ever seen before. It was love, pulling him into its embrace.

  Adeline watched in astonishment. Surely, as heir to Castle Deverill, Harry should be locked in limbo like all the Deverill heirs before him. But no, he was being enveloped by the light, melting into infinity, and there, in the dazzling radiance, Adeline could just about make out the shadowy figures of Digby and Hazel, Rupert and George, Stoke and Augusta, welcoming him home. For a moment her heart expanded with an almost overwhelming desire to join them, as if the light was pulling at her too, as if she was already part of that light and longed to become whole, but she resisted. She had much to do before she would be ready to leave this dimension.

  So there was to be no limbo for Harry. There was only one reason why he might escape the curse, Adeline thought: he wasn’t a Deverill heir – which meant that he wasn’t a Deverill. Adeline reflected on Maud and remembered her affair with Eddie Rothmeade all those years ago. Adeline should have known. Harry wasn’t Bertie’s son, after all. He never had been. What a blessing to escape the dreadful limbo that was Hubert’s fate.

  Adeline watched Harry go. Then she looked down at his broken body and felt desperately sad for those still living who had loved him.

  Chapter 18

  Ballinakelly

  News of Harry’s death devastated his family. Kitty took to the hills on her horse, as she had always done when faced with great unhappiness, and galloped at high speed, crying at the injustice of the world. Bertie resisted the bottle and went to church instead, where he sat quietly in the pew, trying to remember what Adeline had taught him about death. Elspeth held her children close, thanking God that they weren’t old enough to fight in the war. In Kent, Maud took to her bed as Beatrice had done after Digby died, wailing that her son Harry’s death was God’s punishment for her sins, while Victoria was more pragmatic: ‘People die in war,’ she said phlegmatically. ‘It’s unlucky that a bomb got Harry but not at all surprising.’ She secretly wished it had got her boring husband Eric instead, but he was defending the coast with other old men in the Home Guard, and the closest he’d come to a bomb was hearing about them on the wireless.

  Boysie’s desolation was total. It was as if the bomb had destroyed his entire world, leaving a wilderness of isolation and misery. The worst thing was not being able to tell everyone how utterly distraught he was. He wanted to shout out his love and his terrible loss so that everyone would know what Harry had meant to him. He wanted to honour him in this way. But the existence of his wife and children prevented such imprudence. However much he wanted to acknowledge Harry he couldn’t bear to hurt them. So he hid his pain and mourned his one true love as if Harry had been nothing more than a dear friend.

  The funeral was a quiet, sombre affair in the church of St Patrick in Ballinakelly. The January skies were a clear watery blue, the winter sun low and bright, the wind cold and salty as it blew inland in gusts from over the water. It was here in this church that Kitty had witnessed the funerals of many of her loved ones. She had said goodbye to her uncle Rupert, who had died in the Great War, and to her grandparents, Hubert and Adeline, whom she had loved so fiercely. She had recently bidden farewell to her great-aunt Hazel and while she had prayed she had squeezed her eyes shut and asked God to spare JP in this war. She hadn’t asked God to spare Harry, not that it would have made any difference for Harry’s destiny was to die on that night; however, she still regretted not mentioning her brother in her prayers. She felt she had let him down. But here she was at his funeral and it was too late for prayers, and regrets were pointless.

  Kitty had never expected to say goodbye to Harry so soon. He had been her ally and friend and now he was gone. Life had not been easy for him, she mused. She remembered discovering him in bed with Joseph the first footman when he was home on leave during the last war, and the time he had asked her for advice following Charlotte catching him kissing Boysie at Celia’s Summer Ball. He wasn’t made for marriage. He wasn’t made for convention. But society had insisted on him fitting in and he had done his duty and conformed. She wondered how much it had cost him to toe the line. She wondered whether he had ever been truly happy in a world that did not allow him to be himself.

  She couldn’t look at Charlotte and the children. It was too awful to witness their suffering. Those children had lost their father and Charlotte had lost her husband, although Kitty knew that she hadn’t really ever had him. His heart had always belonged to Boysie.

  Kitty looked at Boysie then, who was sitting across the aisle beside his wife Deirdre. His profile was fixed in a rigid frown, his mouth downturned and his lips quivering and she knew that Boysie had loved Harry very deeply. He looked old suddenly, she thought, even though he was only in his mid-forties. He sensed her watching him and turned to look at her. Their eyes met and Kitty was shocked by his pain, so blatantly exposed. She gave him a sympathetic smile but he was too distraught to respond. He dropped his gaze into the prayer sheet that trembled in his hands. Kitty turned her attention back to Reverend Maddox who had grown fat on happiness ever since his marriage to Mrs Goodwin the previous spring.

  After the service there was lunch at the Hunting Lodge. Maud and Bertie sat on the window seat and from the way Bertie was inclining his head and listening intently Kitty could tell that he was hoping Maud would come back to him. She wondered whether shared grief would unite them. Surely Arthur Arlington could not commiserate with Maud in the way that Bertie did.

  Kitty spoke briefly to her sister Victoria, the formidable Countess of Elmrod, but the years had grown up between them like a thick forest and Kitty didn’t have the energy to fight her way through it in search of the person she had once been, for she had never much liked that person to begin with. She talked to her twin cousins Leona and Vivien who told her that Celia was on her way back from South Africa without the children, who would remain in Johannesburg until the war was over. Kitty knew that news of Harry’s death would have cut her to the quick. But the twins were very keen to tell Kitty how rich Celia had become – and by extension, how rich they had become. ‘She’s made a fortune mining gold,’ said Leona proudly.

  ‘A fortune!’ repeated Vivien, and Kitty smiled for the first time since Harry’s death beca
use those snooty twins had always considered Celia a good-for-nothing.

  Grace Rowan-Hampton was accompanied, for a change, by her husband Ronald, who was ruddier and more portly than ever. He handed Laurel his own handkerchief with a pudgy hand and the remaining Shrub dabbed her damp eyes with a dainty snivel. Lord Hunt was very attentive, patting Laurel’s back sympathetically, and Kitty wondered why he didn’t marry her now that Hazel was no longer with them, but the old rogue clearly had no intention of doing anything so conventional.

  After a while Kitty found the smoky air in the drawing room stifling and wandered into the hall. She found Boysie sitting alone on the sofa there, staring into his glass of sherry. ‘Hello, Boysie,’ she said, sitting beside him.

  Boysie shook his head. ‘What was Harry doing in that part of town?’ he asked. ‘Why wasn’t he in a shelter? What was he thinking?’

  ‘I imagine he was trying to help,’ Kitty replied.

  ‘Fool,’ said Boysie bitterly. There was a lengthy silence as they both considered Harry’s foolishness.

  ‘I know how much you loved him, Boysie,’ said Kitty quietly. ‘Harry and I shared many secrets and that was one of them. I know how much he loved you.’

  Boysie turned to her, his eyes shining with tears. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  His face reddened and he plunged his gaze back into his glass. ‘I don’t know how I’ll go on,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how to live now that Harry’s gone.’

  Kitty put her hand on his and gave it a gentle squeeze. ‘You will because you have to. When you have no choice you somehow push yourself forward.’

  He swallowed hard. ‘I’m grateful for your understanding, Kitty.’

  She smiled sympathetically. ‘It helped Harry to know that he could talk to me and share his feelings. I dare say Celia was privy to your friendship too.’

  ‘Celia,’ he groaned. ‘Where is she when I need her, eh? Mining for gold! Really, that’s no occupation for a girl who always liked her nails beautifully manicured!’ He chuckled joylessly.

  ‘She’s on her way back,’ Kitty told him.

  Boysie stared at her, astonished. ‘She’s coming back?’

  ‘Her ghastly sisters just told me.’

  ‘Why didn’t she tell me herself?’

  ‘She’s a woman of mystery these days. Perhaps she wants to surprise you, or maybe she was just in a dreadful hurry to get home.’

  ‘She must know how helpless I am without Harry,’ he said and Kitty thought that he did look particularly helpless.

  ‘Then she’s returning to rescue you,’ she replied. ‘After all, she rescued herself after Archie’s suicide, didn’t she? Celia’s a dab hand at survival.’

  ‘Like all you Deverills. Tell me, Kitty. How do you do it?’

  Kitty sighed, reflecting on the many times in her life when she had had to push herself off the floor, dust herself down and carry on. ‘I don’t know, Boysie. Because there’s something inside us that refuses to break.’

  ‘The Deverill spirit,’ said Boysie. ‘That’s what Digby called it.’

  ‘Yes, that’s it. The Deverill spirit.’

  He gave a wan smile. ‘Can I have some of it, please?’

  Kitty laughed and rested her head on his shoulder. ‘You have your own spirit, Boysie. It’s in there somewhere. You just have to find it.’

  Losing Harry made Kitty nostalgic for the past, grateful for the present but anxious about the future, for she was more aware than ever that life was woefully short and precarious. Consequently, her wish to live it fully and for herself grew more intense. She rode out as usual but took to stopping on the top of a hill that gave her a clear view of the solitary cove below where the sea rolled onto a white horseshoe beach and Jack’s house stood in isolation, nestled among bushes and short trees. She would remain there, watching the building in the hope of glimpsing the man she couldn’t stop loving. She knew she shouldn’t, she was well aware of what she’d lose if she gave into her heart, but she had loved him for so long she didn’t know how to feel otherwise. And she suspected that, deep down in the secret caverns of his heart, beneath the resentment and the anger, he loved her too; because he always had.

  Sometimes Kitty saw the small figure of Emer, Jack’s wife, strolling up the beach with her children and she wished that it were she in Emer’s place and that those children were their children. From her distant spot she watched them playing with the dog, running in the wind, laughing as they chased seagulls and mimicked them with their arms outstretched. Kitty suffered at the sight of Jack’s family for surely Emer had stolen the life that should have been hers. She begrudged Emer her happiness and her good fortune. Why, when Fate had obstructed Kitty at every turn, had it assisted Emer? What had she done to deserve Jack when Kitty had loved him all her life? But when she saw Jack she had to turn her horse round and canter away because the sight of him with his wife caused her too much anguish.

  Then, one evening in early spring up on the hill, Kitty turned her horse to find Jack there, on his. He had ridden up behind her and was looking at her with a serious expression on his face. Kitty’s cheeks stung with shame at having been caught spying, but she was so surprised to see him that she couldn’t think of an excuse as to why she was there. Therefore she said nothing.

  Jack looked uncomfortable and Kitty sensed that he didn’t know what to say either. ‘I’m sorry about Harry,’ he said at length. ‘He was a good man.’

  Kitty was relieved he wasn’t going to tell her off for snooping. ‘Thank you,’ she replied.

  ‘I’ve been wanting to tell you but . . .’ He turned his gaze to the beach. It had been nearly four months since Harry had been killed and it had taken Jack all that time to engineer a way of meeting her.

  ‘I understand,’ Kitty interjected, looking down at the solitary house in the bay. ‘Ride with me?’ she asked suddenly, desperate to get him away from Emer and into the old familiar places he had once shared with her. She grinned at him in the challenging way she used to and one corner of his mouth curled into a small smile, as if he was weary of being furious with her; as if he couldn’t be furious with her any longer.

  They set off together, but not the way Kitty had come. She felt that old frisson of excitement which had always been present in the days when they had met in secret. When they had made love in his cottage or kissed up at the Fairy Ring. There had always been the danger of being discovered and that danger was here now, quivering in the air between them. Without saying a word they cantered over the hills, side by side, and the wind seemed to snatch their awkwardness and toss it away. In its place there slipped the old familiar sense of delight.

  They drew their horses to a halt at the top of a cliff and dismounted. The sun was a blood orange that turned the sky pink and the sea below it a deep indigo. The waves lapped sleepily onto the sand as the tide slowly retreated and a pair of gulls squabbled over a small crustacean before flying off towards the cliffs. Besides the rhythmic sound of the sea and their horses’ gentle breathing the evening was quiet and still.

  The beauty of the moment caught in their chests as they stood together, gazing out over the ocean as they had done so many times in their youth, before Fate had stolen their dreams. They saw their pasts in the great horizon and their loss in the flimsy wisps of cloud that were darkening now as the sun sank lower, and all their longing and disappointment flooded their hearts with an aching tenderness. Kitty’s throat tightened as the words she so longed to say swelled with emotion. She glanced at Jack’s profile. It was hard and inscrutable. She wondered whether he was thinking of Emer as she had once thought of Robert. But she wasn’t thinking of Robert now.

  Jack turned to look at her and his eyes were full of sorrow. His face was dark with the sun behind him but she could make out his pain in the downturn of his mouth. They stared at each other, knowing the next few moments would be decisive. Kitty felt the pressure build until it was almost unbearable. She wanted to tell him of her regret and
her craving and of the endless hours she had stood on the hilltop gazing onto his home, hoping for a glimpse of him. Most ardently she wanted to brush away his sadness with her lips.

  She took a step towards him. She barely dared breathe. After everything they had been through would he walk away from her now? But the beauty had penetrated deep into those hidden caverns of his heart where his love had never altered. He pulled her against him and kissed her.

  Celia Mayberry arrived in a London she did not recognize. She had left for South Africa in the summer of 1932, when the glittering era of the ‘Bright Young Things’ who’d partied through the 1920s with a decadence that now made her blush was swiftly disappearing into the gloom of the Great Depression. London had changed then, but nothing in comparison to the change now. Windows were darkened, streets were virtually empty, buildings lay in ruins, a thick grey dust seemed to cover the streets and the smog hung heavy and damp in a lingering winter even though winter should have already made way for spring. There were no children playing in the parks and everyone walked briskly, with purpose. She noticed that the ticket collectors on the buses were women and when she chatted to the lady in the newsagent she was told that women had taken over many of the men’s jobs, seeing as the men had gone off to fight. The woman also told her with great excitement of the bombings night after night and the escapades she’d had in her air-raid shelter. She also commented with a wink on the handsome men in Army uniforms.

  Celia was very relieved when she found that Deverill House was still standing even though there were only a couple of old retainers left to look after it along with the cook and a couple of maids. Everyone else had gone to join the war effort, her sister Leona told her, and everyone who could get out of London had.

  Besides Leona, who had briefly come to London not to see Celia but to have her hair done, Boysie was Celia’s first real visitor. It had been almost ten years since they had lunched at Claridge’s with Harry and said farewell. Celia hadn’t intended to stay away so long and the monthly letters she had written in the early years had dwindled to one or two annually. Now Boysie stepped into the hall where Beatrice Deverill had once hosted her infamous Tuesday-evening Salons and feasted his eyes on his old friend with delight. Celia noticed how much he had aged and she was moved by the sorrowful downturn of his mouth, which had once been pouting and petulant. Boysie smiled with happiness to see her but behind his joy his grief was raw and smarting.