A Gathering Storm

by Rachel Hore

  ‘Why don’t you show Rafe round?’ said Mrs Wincanton, laying down her basket. ‘I’ll let Cook know about tea.’ She disappeared through the baize door to the kitchens.

  Rafe was still staring at Angie, but Ed touched his arm. ‘Come and see the games room,’ he said, and they drifted off with Peter trailing unhappily behind.

  ‘Well, that’s the last we’ll see of them for a bit,’ Angie declared, making a moue at Beatrice. ‘Let’s go out and find the girls. Hetty’s got a beastly dead blackbird and they’re having a funeral. It’s horribly ghoulish.’ Beatrice followed her, her spirits sinking. They passed Angie’s sketchbook lying open on the grass, half a dozen crayons spilled carelessly about. Down by the belt of trees, three small figures were crouched over something on the ground like midget witches from Macbeth.

  As they approached, Hetty straightened and called out, ‘Do you think a poem would be all right, Ange? We’ve never been to a funeral. We don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Beatrice has, haven’t you, Bea?’ Angie said. Beatrice, remembering the awful day when James Sturton was buried, said quietly, ‘I’m sure a poem would suit. Or a favourite hymn.’

  It was after they’d finished scattering petals on the mound to Hetty’s jolly rendering of All Things Bright and Beautiful’ that they saw the boys coming towards them across the grass. How alike they all were with their cowlicks of hair and their schoolboy swaggers, hands in pockets.

  ‘We’re going to the beach, if you lot want to come,’ Ed called. ‘Mother’s put back tea and we’re lending Rafe some togs.’

  ‘Do you mind, you girls?’ Rafe asked Beatrice and Angie, shading his eyes against the sun. His gaze fell on the little mound and for a moment his expression hardened. Then he looked at Beatrice and smiled. She smiled back, feeling a little happier.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll swim, Rafe, but I’ll come down with you all,’ she said.

  Whilst the others raced upstairs to change she stayed to watch Mrs Wincanton arrange roses in the drawing room, collecting up the leaves for her on a sheet of newspaper. Finally they lifted the vase onto the great carved mantelpiece, where the flowers’ reflection in the mirror doubled their magnificence. Mrs Wincanton lit a cigarette and stood back to admire her work.

  ‘It’s so clever of you to have found Rafe,’ Mrs Wincanton said. ‘He’s a very suitable young man. Ed needs someone of his own age here. I’m afraid he’s getting a little bored with coming every holiday.’ She balanced her cigarette on the mantelpiece in order to adjust an errant bloom. ‘So sad,’ she said. ‘You’re all growing up so fast.’

  ‘They do seem to get on well,’ Beatrice said, a little wistfully. She remembered, too, how beguilingly Angie had looked at Rafe, and how Rafe had responded.

  Mrs Wincanton started gathering up the newspaper with the discarded leaves inside. ‘Look after the little girls going down the steps,’ she called as everyone assembled on the terrace. ‘Oh, thank you, Bea.’ She took her cigarette from Beatrice.

  ‘It was singeing the mantelpiece,’ Beatrice said, and went to join them.

  On the beach, Rafe was the perfect guest, solicitous with everyone in turn. He swam with the boys, helped bury the little girls in sand, moulding them mermaid tails and maidenly bumps for breasts, which made them giggle so the sand fell off. He hunted in rockpools with Beatrice. Only with Angie did he act unnaturally. Angie didn’t seem to mind his stammering attempts at conversation, but looked at him with luminous eyes. She laughed at the sandy mermaids then sat in the shade to sketch them.

  Rafe and Beatrice walked back to St Florian together in the cool of early evening. He spoke eagerly of the visit.

  ‘Ed’s planning to go up to Oxford, too,’ he said. ‘Saint John’s, though. I expect I’ll look him out. Balliol’s only round the corner. A good chap, Ed – the brother’s not bad. And the little girls are pretty sporting.’

  ‘I’m glad you like them all,’ she said. ‘I think they liked you.’

  ‘And Angie’s . . . well.’ He whistled and her spirits fell. Worse was to come. When they reached the gate of The Rowans, he said, ‘I can’t see you tomorrow, Beatrice. I’m afraid my aunt’s taking me back to school early. We’re to stay with some cousins on the way.’

  ‘Oh.’ She’d already daydreamed about their last day together, of all they might say to one another, and now it was spoiled.

  He gently fumbled for her hand. ‘Beatrice,’ he said, ‘if I write to you, will you write back? I don’t get many letters, you see.’

  ‘Of course I will.’ Happiness radiated through her.

  ‘This summer, it’s been awful – with poor Sturton, I mean – but in other ways it’s been the best I remember. You can’t believe how dreary it was with my grandfather. Not his fault, poor old man, he did his best, but I don’t think I could face another game of chess ever again.’

  She nodded, unable to speak for emotion. He was going away. But he’d come back to her, she was sure of that.

  ‘I’ll see you at Christmas, I expect.’ He squeezed her hand once more. ‘Goodbye, Bea,’ he said. He gave her a sudden clumsy hug and was gone.

  The autumn of 1937 was measured out by the postman’s visits. Beatrice kept a look-out for him from her window, and when she saw him wheeling his bicycle up the steep lane she would make the most ridiculous bargains with fate – if he reached the gate in the next ten seconds then there’d be a letter. But did it count if he hadn’t touched the gate before the time was up, but stopped outside to rummage in his bag? She’d ponder this fine point as she rushed downstairs.

  ‘You’re very interested in the mail these days,’ Hugh Marlow would say. ‘Oh, there does seem to be something here for you . . . postmark Winchester.’ He’d tease her by holding the letter high, trying to get her to jump for it. She’d turn away scowling. ‘Here, catch,’ he’d say, and throw it in the air.

  ‘Hugh, don’t be unkind,’ Delphine admonished, but Beatrice would simply take the letter, snatch up her schoolbag and slip out of the door, hardly muttering goodbye. How she ever managed to reach Carlyon on a letter day without falling over the cliff on the way, was a wonder, so deep would she be in Rafe’s scrawled pages.

  He was an amusing, if irregular correspondent, the letters full of dramatic accounts of rugby matches and practical jokes, but sometimes there were serious, even tender comments, too.

  Sturton is much missed, one early letter said. He was our best prop forward by a mile and he made us laugh and didn’t mind being the butt. No one can believe he’s gone. Some days I hate myself for I still think I’m to blame.

  After the arrival of a precious letter, Bea had to force herself not to immediately post a reply. She felt she shouldn’t seem too eager. Angie’s tuition had its uses. ‘You should always make boys wait, Mummy says.’ Angie was showing by example. She’d had several passionate letters from the young man she’d met in Scotland, and these she read out to Beatrice, rolling her eyes and clutching her chest mockingly. Beatrice laughed despite herself, but she disapproved of Angie taking ages to scrawl a couple of lines of reply or sometimes sending nothing at all.

  ‘You’re so cruel. Someone should tell him you don’t care,’ Beatrice said. She vowed never to read Rafe’s out to Angie.

  The Scottish boy’s letters grew plaintive, then ceased.

  Chapter 9

  Cornwall, April 2011

  ‘At the beginning of 1938,’ Mrs Ashton told Lucy, as they finished the lunch Mrs P. had prepared for them, ‘the news was full of Hitler’s calumnies, but in this house most of the conversation was about my future. Two things finally put my parents off choosing the same route for me as Angelina. One was the uncertainty of the situation in Europe. Many girls went abroad anyway, but my parents were a fearful sort. Even in peaceful times they would have worried. Adolf Hitler provided a useful excuse.

  ‘The second concerned a visit from our governess, Miss Simpkins. She felt passionately that my schooling should continue beyond the summer. I was extrem
ely able, she told them, and it would be a waste to give up now. My parents discussed the various options endlessly above my head. As ever, the main obstacle to any ambition was lack of funds. Finally, my father agreed once more to swallow his pride and write to his father on the matter.

  ‘To his amazement, my grandfather replied with a generous offer. They would pay the fees for me to attend a reputable boarding school for girls near their home in Gloucestershire. It would mean spending my exeat weekends with them, but they were happy to receive me, and I would go home for the long holidays. And so it was settled. There was the small matter of an entrance test, of course, but somehow, with Miss Simpkins’s help, I muddled my way through that and was offered a place to start the following September, just before I turned sixteen.’

  Lucy asked: ‘Didn’t you mind that you weren’t going to Paris and London?’

  ‘You might be surprised, but no. I wanted to see those places, but in the end, I didn’t think I’d be good at being finished and then all the fuss, people staring at me and whispering about my looks and my background, how much money my father had, that sort of thing. I knew I’d be found wanting on all of these fronts. And part of my mind was now always on Rafe. I liked to think of him studying at Oxford, and me being a few miles away at school, studying too. I tried not to think of his tales of bullying and petty cruelty, and thought that was probably just boys for you. It might seem hopelessly unrealistic to a modern girl like you, but I really believed that we were meant for one another and that we’d be together one day. When he was ready I would be there waiting for him. I just knew, Lucy. I loved him so much it hurt.’

  Lucy smiled. ‘I’ve never felt that way about anybody,’ she said. ‘Boys came and went when I was in my teens. None ever made me think, This is the guy I’ll be with for ever.’

  ‘Quite. But I’d had such a protected childhood. I existed in a cocoon, wrapped in daydreams. It’s dangerous to be too much alone with an imagination.

  ‘The last summer term of tuition at Carlyon was a queer one. Miss Simpkins, whilst doing her duty by little Hetty, turned most of her attentions to me, to prepare me for school. Angie drifted through our lessons, making little effort. She was bored with the schoolroom, bored with being treated as a child. Anyone could see that. She talked endlessly about September. The school she’d be going to in Paris, the other girls who might be there. Who might chaperone them on the journey. And there was great excitement when a letter arrived from Lady Hamilton offering to present Angie at court in the 1939 season.

  ‘She clearly hated lessons, hated being stuck in the country. She longed for city life and excitement, to live in her father’s big white house in London and go to parties every night. There was an anxiety about her longing that was unsettling; it was as though whatever she was given she would always still want the moon. I think her father had done that to her, with his absences and the confusing way he’d treat her when he was there, flirting with her, but taking little notice of her as a person. Thoughts of London were all bound up with him and the glamorous life she thought she’d been excluded from by her parents’ rocky marriage.

  ‘Of course, none of this ended up quite as planned. Germany invaded Austria in March 1938, and there was much uncertainty about whether Angie should go to Paris at all. In the end she went, but when Hitler annexed the Sudetenland and Mr Chamberlain returned from Munich at the end of September brandishing a piece of paper that everyone knew was worth more than the promise written on it, her family rather wished she hadn’t.’

  Beatrice was quiet for a moment and Lucy prompted, And you went to school.’

  ‘Not right away, no,’ Beatrice replied sadly. ‘But that was nothing to do with Hitler. During the summer holidays, I was volunteered by my mother to help with a children’s party at the tennis club. Several weeks later I woke with a fever and a terrible headache. By the end of the day I could hardly move, everything ached all over. The doctor was summoned and now it was my turn to be transferred to hospital. I’d caught polio, you see, from some child at the party.’

  ‘Polio? But that’s serious, isn’t it?’

  ‘Your generation doesn’t know about polio, thank God, the fear the word engendered.’

  ‘I know we’re immunized against it. The vaccine used to be given on sugar lumps.’

  ‘But not until after the war. Polio has been eradicated from large parts of the world now, but back then it was a terror.’

  ‘It’s a virus, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Along with diphtheria and TB and a host of other nasties, it was a potentially fatal illness. I remember my mother’s obsession with hygiene throughout my childhood. I wasn’t to drink from the same cup as other children, I must wash my hands before meals, I mustn’t take food that someone else had touched. Polio could be a devastating disease. If it got into the central nervous system it could paralyze or worse. I was lucky, since the version I got was relatively mild. But even after two weeks in hospital I was in bed for three months at home and very weak for some time after that.’

  ‘I suppose you were kept in isolation.’

  ‘That’s right. Rafe used to write me letters and send me little presents, but all the summer holidays he was forbidden from seeing me. When the worst was over, we’d have conversations, he standing in the front garden, me at my bedroom window, but even this tired me.’

  ‘So no school.’

  ‘Not until after Christmas. Instead I stayed in this house and frankly I was glad to. It was a long, slow recovery, but recover I did.’

  Looking at Beatrice’s straight-backed figure, Lucy could well imagine that determination had been a major factor in that.

  Beatrice picked up the battered photo album they’d been looking at earlier and turned the pages. When she got to the very last page she stared at it awhile, before passing the album to Lucy. The picture was of herself. She was posing with her back to the camera, looking over her shoulder, so one could see the trail of the long dress and the little gauze train.

  ‘You look really beautiful,’ Lucy breathed.

  ‘Don’t I?’ Beatrice said, with a touching trace of pride. ‘That was taken at Carlyon Manor at Christmas 1938. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow, but what was set in motion at that party proved far more devastating than any illness in my life.’

  After leaving The Rowans, Lucy walked up the cliff path and took the turning for the beach. Twice a day, she thought, the tide washed everything away as though it had never been, but it was still easy, standing in the dunes, to imagine all the events that Beatrice had described. How the sea, today tranquil, could turn to fury in a moment, and take a cruel revenge on two unwary boys presuming to ride it in a fragile craft.

  The tide was rising now, so she could not pass to the other cove and look for the secret steps. Instead she chose to cross the other headland, as Beatrice had often done, in the direction of the town. She paused at the highest point to see St Florian laid out before her, its buildings a colony of limpets clinging to the hillside. Down in the harbour the tide was rousing the boats from their sleep in the sand.

  She set off downhill, eventually finding a steep flight of mossy steps between two houses. Young Beatrice must have walked down here, too. The passage emerged above the quay, and across the little harbour, she saw the man she’d seen in the hotel bar last night standing on Early Bird, getting her ready for sea. He straightened and looked right over at her, and waved. She walked across, her hair streaming in the wind.

  ‘Hello, again,’ he called up to her, as she drew near. He had a clear, low voice with a slight lilt.

  ‘Hi, I love your boat.’

  ‘She isn’t mine, but thank you.’ He was threading a rope through an eyelet in a sail. ‘I thought I’d get out while the tide was right,’ he said. He secured the rope and stepped up onto the quay to meet her. ‘I’m Anthony,’ he said as he shook her hand with a firm grip. ‘We keep nearly meeting, don’t we? Do you live here?’

  ‘I’m Lucy. No, I’m staying for
a few days. Are you at the Mermaid, too?’

  ‘I was just eating there. They do good comfort food.’ He studied her for a moment then said, ‘This might sound a bit forward, but would you like to come out in the boat with me?’

  ‘Me? Now?’

  ‘Why not? I’ve got some spare kit.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t sail. You wouldn’t want a novice, would you?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘You can swim, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes, though I hope I wouldn’t need to. Really, though?’ The idea was growing on her.

  He looked her up and down, as though gauging her size, then stepped down into the boat and opened a locker. He brought out a pile of oilskin tops and trousers. She looked at them in dismay and said, ‘Will I need all those?’

  ‘It’s very blustery out there.’

  ‘I won’t fall in,’ she replied.

  ‘Fine,’ he said in a mild tone, but his expression was set, ‘though take it from me, you’ll be glad of them in this wind. You can use the cabin to change in.’

  ‘I’ll change at the hotel,’ she said, just to be stubborn.

  ‘As you like.’ His eyes were merry now.

  She took the armful of clothing and walked away, aware that he was amused by her. Quite why she was doing this, she didn’t know. Her wretched impulsive nature again. Her mother had warned her about not getting in strangers’ cars, but did boats count, too?

  She was ready in ten minutes and returned to Anthony feeling self-conscious. ‘I look like a penguin,’ she told him, splaying her feet, and he laughed. Her sleeves were too long and she had to roll up the legs of the trousers above her canvas shoes. He couldn’t resist a grin, but seeing this made her chin go up.

  ‘Here, you’ll need this,’ he said, as he passed her a buoyancy aid. It looked like a padded waistcoat.

  ‘Is this right?’ she said, pulling it on.

  ‘Zip it up and the belt goes . . .’ he said, standing close to make an adjustment, ‘like this.’