by Erica James
‘I’m surprised you’re not staying here to put us under house arrest and act as our gaoler,’ Arthur had responded. ‘Or are you entrusting our stepmother to carry out that duty on your behalf?’
‘I’m trusting you to act like the responsible adults you are,’ Roddy had replied evenly. ‘And please don’t upset Romily. Do that and you shall have me to answer to.’
For mild-mannered Roddy Fitzwilliam, this had been a severe admonishment indeed, and Kit had every intention of doing what he’d been told. Unlike Arthur, who would relish going out of his way to upset Romily.
At the end of the driveway, Kit waited for a cart to pass by on the road, the horse plodding slowly in the languid warmth. The air was scented with honeysuckle scrambling through the hedgerow, birds were singing and bees humming, and away from his family – or more precisely his brother – Kit felt himself begin to relax and enjoy the loveliness of it.
The horse and cart having now passed, he turned right towards the centre of the village. He had intended to ask his sister if she wanted to accompany him, but she had been embroiled in a lengthy telephone conversation. From what he’d caught of it as he’d hovered momentarily outside the drawing room door, Hope had been trying to explain to the publisher for whom she was currently illustrating a children’s book that her circumstances had altered dramatically in the last week and she could only try to do her best to meet the deadline, which had been unexpectedly brought forward. Kit could tell from the strain in her voice that it was an awkward conversation and she was struggling to provide the reassurance her publisher was seeking.
Kit himself had had an equally awkward conversation with the bank he worked for when he’d explained that he wouldn’t be returning until late next week. He’d cited grief as his excuse, somehow seeing the lie as preferable to disclosing the terms of his father’s will, which cast the family in an embarrassingly poor light. In many ways he didn’t actually give a damn what the bank believed; he had few aspirations to be well thought of there in order to rise through its ranks.
He was keeping his fingers crossed that he and his brother and sister and cousin could stick it out for the week and therefore earn their inheritance. The money, like an answer to a prayer, would give him the financial freedom to walk away from the bank. The idea of living abroad appealed to him, somewhere warm and sunny, the south of France perhaps, or maybe inland in the hills of Provence. Or he could go further afield, to Mexico and Central America. It would be an adventure! Wherever he went, he’d live modestly, unencumbered by the tedious constraints of his life here in England; he’d be at liberty to be himself. Although if he were honest, he wasn’t entirely sure just who he really was; he had yet to discover that.
It was an admission that pained him, because it meant that his father had been right: he lacked the necessary drive and ambition to seize hold of life’s myriad opportunities and thereby make something of himself. He wasn’t like his sister, or Allegra, who had both known from a young age what they wanted to do. Hope had been adamant that she wanted to go to art school in London, while Allegra had been born with the gift of a great singing voice and had been determined to pursue a career that would, in Kit’s view, satisfy her craving for attention and the adulation only an adoring audience could provide.
As for Arthur, his talent had always been for domination and ensuring that he was the one in charge. It really wouldn’t surprise Kit if in due course his brother made the transition from the Civil Service to politician, and God help them all if that ever came to pass!
Meanwhile, Kit had meandered along in his hapless way, hoping that in the fullness of time he would stumble across a signpost leading him to his own future. He’d toyed with the idea of painting, but one artist in the family was quite enough, and anyway, objectively he wasn’t that good. Writing was a possibility – not poetry, he didn’t have the tortured soul for that, but the thought of crafting a novel tempted him. He’d made a couple of stabs at it, but each time he’d abandoned the idea after only a few pages, disgusted at the pathetic immaturity of his efforts.
Now even that particular avenue had been purloined by somebody else in the family. How could he dare to put pen to paper when his stepmother was such an acclaimed author? Although strictly speaking, did marriage for only a few weeks to his father really qualify her as family?
She was certainly a cut above most of the women with whom the old man had got himself involved. Kit had to admit he rather liked her. There were worse stepmothers with whom he could have been landed. One in particular came to mind. She had been an actress, or so she claimed, and while Kit would never lay claim to being the slightest bit clever, she had been embarrassingly dim, with only one topic of conversation at her disposal: that of herself and the trouble she was experiencing in finding the perfect hat for Ascot that year. Kit had almost felt sorry for her; until, that was, she had singled out Hope for some tips on how to make more of her appearance.
They had been in the drawing room, drinking cocktails, waiting for Jack and Roddy to finish discussing some contract or other in the study, when their guest had slipped her arm through Hope’s in what she probably thought was a gesture of friendly intimacy, but which Kit knew Hope would dislike intensely. ‘There’s no excuse for any woman these days not to make herself more attractive,’ she had declared, adding, ‘Take it from me, Hope, if you were to dye your hair blonde like mine, and use some lipstick, you’d look a lot less dowdy.’ The frozen expression on his sister’s face had been enough to make Kit join in with Arthur, who had been systemically firing off derisive salvos at the dreadful woman. They’d kept it up right through dinner, until their father exploded and all hell broke loose. He’d refused to accept that their rudeness was justified, and maybe he was right, but he’d also refused to accept that the simpering actress had insulted Hope. ‘You always have to find fault with anything I do,’ he’d shouted at them. ‘You’ve never once approved of anyone I’ve introduced you to!’
With the memory of his father’s angry voice ringing in his ears, Kit slowed his step as he heard another, much sweeter sound – the jangly song of a corn bunting. He looked around him for the bird and spotted it perched on a fence post a few yards ahead of him. His knowledge of birds, as well as flora and fauna, was down to his sister.
As a child, Hope had forever been dragging him off with her on nature trails, traversing meadows and riverbanks, armed with sketch pads, butterfly nets, and jam jars to fill with tadpoles to take back to the pond at Island House. Even at so young an age, Hope had had a tendency to be a bit of a schoolmarm and would insist on teaching him the names of whatever they saw and heard. Some days, when all he’d wanted to do was lie on his back and stare up at the clouds in the sky, imagining they could transport him to anywhere in the world, he would get annoyed with her and sulk.
At the bottom of the lane, he paused at the T-junction for a couple of cars and a bus to rumble past before crossing over onto the main street of the village. It occurred to him as he waited that he was still as big a dreamer as he’d been when staring up at the clouds as a child. It was a trait his father had doubtless viewed as a weakness; after all, men like Jack Devereux knew exactly what they wanted in life. Their vision was perfectly clear, whereas Kit’s had always been a bit blurred.
He was just entering the market square when he spotted a familiar face amongst the shoppers, a face he hadn’t seen in a long time. It was Evelyn Flowerday. Dressed in a pretty polka-dot dress, she was walking alongside two elderly women whom Kit also recognised – Miss Gant and Miss Treadmill. The former was decked out in lace and frills and a straw hat decorated with flowers, shiny red cherries and all manner of ribbons, while the latter wore sturdy corduroy breeches and a plaid shirt. Waddling behind the two women were their pet geese, each sporting a neckerchief. It was so long since Kit had seen the old ladies and their devoted birds – assuming they were the same ones and not younger replacements – he’d forgotten how per
fectly normal the sight of them was in Melstead St Mary.
The last time he’d seen Evelyn had been three years ago at the village fete, when they had both been briefly home during the summer vacation. Back then Evelyn had been up at Oxford, reading mathematics at Lady Margaret Hall while he had been at Brasenose, but despite knowing one another since childhood, their paths had seldom crossed during term time, mostly because Evelyn had been such a studious undergraduate, rarely leaving her college or the library.
But their paths had crossed that particular August Bank Holiday weekend, when Kit had made a rare visit to Island House. Within hours of him being home, he and Jack had argued over something wholly irrational – probably Kit’s poor academic results that term – and he had escaped to Clover Field to enjoy a glass of ale in the warm sunshine at the annual fete. He’d come across Evelyn inside the refreshment tent, where she had been tending to her mother, a sour and monstrous hypochondriac who treated her daughter as nothing more than an unpaid slave. Emboldened by alcohol, Kit had asked Evelyn if she would accompany him to the village dance that evening. He’d always liked her, having often played with her and her brother Edmund, during the school holidays, although as the years went by, he had begun to suspect that she found him rather lightweight in the intellectual department. To his surprise, she’d agreed, much to her mother’s displeasure.
The evening had gone wrong from the start. They’d been dancing for no more than a few minutes when Kit, thinking he was demonstrating sympathy for the position in which she found herself, made the mistake of criticising her mother and suggesting Evelyn shouldn’t indulge the annoying woman. To his horror, she had taken it as a personal slight, as though he were disparaging her.
‘Don’t think for one moment you have the right to judge me,’ she’d thrown back at him. ‘Not when you can’t stand up to your brother or father!’
He’d been stung by her comment. ‘If you think so poorly of me, why did you accept my invitation for this evening?’ he’d replied.
‘Because I’d hoped you might have changed; that Oxford had taught you to grow up.’
Her condemnation could not have been greater, and had caused him to behave far from well. He’d abandoned her at the dance and stomped home to Island House in a thoroughly bad mood. When he returned to Oxford, he left a note of apology in her college pigeonhole, but he never heard back from her.
Now here she was. The coward in him wondered if he could pretend he hadn’t seen her – why put himself in the firing line of yet more of her disapproval? But before he could take evasive action, Miss Gant spotted him and raised her gloved hand. Miss Treadmill and Evelyn then duly turned to look. With nothing else for it, he went over to say hello. What could be the worst that could happen?
‘We were so sorry to hear about your father,’ said Miss Gant in her breathy voice. ‘So sad to have lost him when he was still so full of life.’
Miss Treadmill nodded and joined in with her deeper staccato voice. ‘Forgive us for not showing our faces at the funeral yesterday. Couldn’t be helped. We had unexpected visitors. Tiresome really. But there you go.’
‘It was good of you to consider attending,’ Kit said, before risking a glance at Evelyn. Finding a friendly enough face looking at him, he said, ‘It’s good to see you again, Evelyn. How are you?’
She smiled. ‘I’m well, thank you.’
‘And Edmund?’
‘He’s very well too. He’s a doctor in London now.’
‘Evelyn’s such a dear girl,’ Miss Gant cooed. ‘Since her return to the fold, she’s been helping me with the children in the Sunday school. Oh, they absolutely love her!’
‘You’ve moved back, then?’ said Kit. The last he’d heard of her, she’d left the village.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘My mother needed me.’
Was it his imagination, or did she raise her chin in a gesture of defiance? ‘Please give her my regards,’ he said politely as one of the geese began to peck at his trousers, nipping his calf muscles with its sharp beak.
‘I will,’ Evelyn said.
‘Cecil, stop that at once!’ ordered Miss Treadmill, taking her boot to the goose and nudging it away from Kit’s leg. ‘Better get on. Lots to do. We’ll leave you young folk to catch up. Toodle-pip!’
In a flurry of hand-waving and goodbyes, the two elderly women left Kit alone with Evelyn. Shuffling the letters in his hands, he sought for something to say, something that wouldn’t cause offence. ‘So,’ he tried, ‘when did you move back to the village?’
‘In January. My mother had a heart attack and now requires a lot of care.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Don’t be,’ she said matter-of-factly. Then: ‘Actually, it’s me who should apologise to you. I’ve meant to do so for ages but never got around to it.’
‘What on earth do you need to apologise for?’
‘Because I was very rude to you when we last met, and afterwards I didn’t have the decency to reply to your letter.’
‘Oh, that,’ he said airily. ‘Don’t give it another thought. I was my usual clumsy, idiotic self that evening at the dance. I should never have said what I did.’ Feeling on safer ground now, and noting the tea room behind them, he said, ‘I don’t suppose you’d care for a cup of coffee, would you?’
They took the last available table and ordered coffee and a toasted teacake each. ‘What were you doing before coming home to care for your mother?’ asked Kit, after the waitress had brought them their order.
‘I was teaching.’
‘Really?’
‘Don’t look so surprised. I was actually rather good at it. What did you expect me to do? Marry and have children?’
He smiled. ‘Nothing would surprise me with you, Evelyn. Where were you teaching?’
‘At St Agatha’s in Kent; a prestigious boarding school for girls. I taught mathematics.’
Treading warily, Kit said, ‘Do you miss it?’
She stirred her coffee slowly. ‘Terribly. I miss the girls and the other teachers; they were a good crowd. And I’m well aware what you’re thinking: that I’ve sacrificed a fine career for a rancorous woman who does nothing but complain and make my life hell.’
‘I wouldn’t presume to think anything of the kind.’
She smiled. ‘Well it’s exactly what I think, so I wouldn’t blame you for seeing it that way. It was why I was so rude to you that night of the dance; you said exactly what I was thinking and I hated myself for it. But life has a habit of changing, so who knows what the future holds? Probably war at the rate things are going in Germany. Will you go and fight?’
‘Of course, try and stop me!’ His response, he realised straight away, was ludicrously glib and said in the hope that she would be impressed, or at least think well of him. ‘I’ll join the RAF, if they’ll have me,’ he said more seriously.
She took a sip of her coffee, regarded him over the cup with a sure and level gaze. ‘So you’ll become a dashing pilot in a smart blue uniform. How very you.’
‘And now you’re teasing me, I do believe.’
‘Only a little.’ She lowered her cup into its saucer and sighed. ‘I wish I could do something half so useful if war is declared. As it is, I’ll be stuck here. Although, and much against my mother’s wishes, I have agreed to take in an evacuee if called upon to do so.’
‘Well, that would be doing something eminently useful and practical.’
She shook her head and tutted. ‘Don’t patronise me, Kit. Anything but that.’
‘I didn’t mean it that way.’ He took a bite of his teacake, and when he’d finished chewing on it, he said, ‘I’m glad I bumped into you.’
‘I’m glad too. I saw you at the funeral and thought how well you looked.’
‘You were there? I didn’t see you.’
‘I sat at the back and didn
’t linger when it was over. I wanted to say hello to you, but I didn’t think the moment was right. How long are you going to be staying at Island House?’
‘A week. Along with my brother and sister, and Allegra.’
She nodded thoughtfully. ‘The gossip machine has been rife with talk. I heard Hope surprised you all by arriving home with a baby, a German baby no less.’
‘A German baby whose father is Jewish,’ he said, keen to make things clear. ‘The child is her niece.’
‘I imagined it was something of the sort. The parents did the right thing; I’ve heard terrible stories of what Jews are being subjected to in Nazi Germany. Couldn’t the parents escape as well?’
Kit told her what Hope had shared with him about Dieter’s sister and brother-in-law.
Evelyn nodded again. ‘I suppose, like so many, they’re clinging desperately to the hope that the danger they’re in will pass. So what do you think of your glamorous stepmother?’ she asked in a sudden change of subject.
He shrugged, caught off guard. ‘She’s nice.’
‘Nice? Is that all you can say about her? Goodness, the whole village is agog about Romily Temple, or Mrs Devereux-Temple as she is now. She’s quite the brightest thing to hit us here in a very long time. The men all secretly worship her and the women view her with the utmost suspicion. They’ll be hanging on to their husbands like mad now that your father’s gone.’
Kit was shocked. ‘That’s an outrageous thing to say!’
‘I may be exaggerating a little, but you have to admit she is highly unusual. I’ve met her several times in the village; she was charming, and I might say utterly in love with your father, and he with her. Have you read any of her books?’
‘Sadly not, I’m afraid.’
‘Then I recommend you do. They’re excellent. I came across an interesting interview with her in which she said she was fascinated by the “eternal why” of human behaviour. She’s of the opinion that crime intrigues people more than love does.’