by Dominic Luke
‘But, Roddy—’
‘We’ve been here before, Doro. Remember that commotion over Morocco a couple of years back? You asked me then if there’d be a war. I said no. I was right.’
Stirring her soup, Eliza wondered if it was her imagination or if there really was a note of disappointment in Roderick’s voice. She remembered his air of discontent on Rookery Hill last week. Was he thinking of Wellington and Nelson and General Gordon, his old martial heroes? Was he dreaming as he used to of following in their footsteps? But he never talked of them now and he’d long given up playing with his toy soldiers.
‘I shall reply to the Colonel directly after luncheon,’ Mama asserted. ‘I shall tell him on no account to cancel. Now. Who would like more soup? Ordish, if you would.’
‘I don’t want to go to the fête, I shan’t go to the fête, the fête is too boring for words! Something is bound to go wrong, it always does. It will rain or the vicar will lose the tombola tickets or the tea stall will fall apart.’
‘Why must you be so awkward, Elizabeth?’ said Mama as she adjusted her hat in the hallway. ‘I really don’t have time for this – not today. The vicar is expecting me. We have so much to organize for this afternoon.’
Eliza dug in her heels. She would not go to the fête, she absolutely refused. She would not go on the picnic tomorrow, either. She could think of nothing worse than spending the whole day in the company of Colonel Harding.
‘Very well, Elizabeth, I shall take you at your word. Don’t think you can change your mind later. It is time you learned to live with the consequences of your ill-conceived outbursts. Let this be a lesson to you.’
‘Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face!’ exclaimed Daisy in due course as she came belatedly to make Eliza’s bed. ‘Fancy not wanting to go to the fête! I wish I could go! But Bossy Bourne says it’s not my turn. It’s never my turn for nothing, if you ask me.’
Wild horses could not have dragged from Eliza the admission that there was now nothing she wanted more than to go to the fête. Apart from anything else, Dorothea was there: Dorothea, whose days at Clifton were numbered. Why lose any opportunity to be with her?
Daisy smoothed the counterpane and stepped back, hurriedly tucking strands of hair back inside her cap. ‘That’s your bed done, miss. And now I’d better get back downstairs before old Bossy Boots sends a search party.’
Alone in her room, Eliza hung out of the window gazing towards the village, of which only the top of the grey church tower was visible. What was happening there? Was that music she could hear? She leaned further out, listening, but there was nothing, not even birdsong, just the breeze amongst the trees.
She flung herself onto the bed that Daisy had just made. Why, why, why did she do this to herself? Why must she be so contrary? Daisy was quite correct: it was cutting off her nose to spite her face. Mentioning the picnic had been another mistake. Now she would miss that too. Mama, once her mind was made up, was implacable. Why, Eliza asked, could she never get it right with Mama?
She got up and went into the day room. There she saw on the heavy table Kolya’s book that she’d picked up off the grass three days ago. She felt guilty. She ought to have given it back by now. But she’d been too shy to face him since that afternoon in the gardens. Had he gone to the fête with the others or was he still suffering with his blisters? Like Dorothea, he too would soon be gone.
Why, then, waste time being shy?
She grabbed the book. She ran along the corridor and down the stairs before her resolve could crumble. Knocking on his door, she walked in without waiting for an answer.
It was one of the smaller guest rooms on the same side of the house as her bedroom, overlooking the cedar tree and the space of gravel. The curtains were half closed: it was like entering a grotto, dim and secluded. Kolya was sitting on the bed with his legs drawn up, writing in a notebook that was resting on his knees. His shirt had no collar and the top buttons were undone. He had no waistcoat on, no shoes or socks. His jacket was draped over a chair. His scuffed second-hand boots that didn’t quite fit lay on their sides on the floor. The bedside table was piled with books and sheaves of paper. Over by the wardrobe, his Gladstone bag was open a little, giving a glimpse of a jumble of clothes inside and yet more books. The sight of the books reminded her of her purpose.
‘Your book.’ She held it out to him. ‘You dropped it in the garden.’
He looked at her for a moment with those pale and hypnotic eyes. Then he smiled, putting his notebook aside, taking the book out of her hands. ‘Do you remember,’ he said, ‘you found my book once before, the first time I came to Clifton?’
More than two-and-a-half years ago. She had been a child then. She was too old now at nearly fifteen to be tongue-tied.
She forced herself to speak. ‘Do . . . do you still have blisters?’
‘They are starting to heal.’ He showed her. The blisters were red and raw on his slim, white, bony feet.
She wondered if it was perhaps unseemly to be looking at his naked feet: Mama would surely think so. She could see too inside his shirt: she could see the hollow of his throat and the ridge of his collarbone. Yet he seemed to think nothing of it, her being alone with him in his room when he was half-dressed. He did not care what was seemly or unseemly. He never put on airs. He always – as she put it to herself – wore the same face for everyone.
She wondered if she was perhaps in love with him. Certainly she liked him better than almost anyone. But if it had been love, wouldn’t she have known it? Wouldn’t it have taken hold of her, wouldn’t she have felt it inside – wouldn’t it have hurt more?
What did hurt was the thought of him leaving, of never seeing him again. He had said that Roderick wouldn’t invite him to Clifton any more. If he went back to Russia he’d surely be lost to her forever.
Must he go?
Yes, he said, he had to go back sooner or later. He liked England immensely but Russia was home and he missed his family. ‘But when I go, is not the end of our friendship, Leeza. I may return. And you will come and visit me.’
‘Me? Go to Russia?’ She looked at him in disbelief.
‘Of course! Why not? I shall be waiting for you!’ He picked up his notebook, turned the pages, wrote with his pencil, tore out the leaf. Handing it to her, he said, ‘My address in Petersburg so you will be able to find me.’
He smiled at her then turned away, getting up off the bed and crossing to the window. He pulled back the curtains and looked out at the bright but overcast afternoon. The room was now flooded with light.
She went to join him. She tried to explain that she would never go to Russia: she wasn’t brave enough, she hardly dared leave Clifton, she was afraid of a world without God. There was so much she didn’t know, so much she hadn’t done; she had no idea where Russia was, she had no idea about love, she had never even been kissed.
He listened, watching her with his grey eyes. Then, when she came to a breathless stop, instead of speaking he leaned down and kissed her.
It was brief, it was gentle, his lips on hers: unexpected, indescribable, like nothing she’d ever imagined. Her heart was thumping. The blood roared in her ears.
‘There,’ he said softly. ‘Now you have been kissed.’ He tucked a strand of her fair hair behind her ear. ‘You remind me a little of my sister. I have sister, Annushka. She is quiet girl, shy girl, but she also has passionate heart, she also is beautiful.’
‘But I’m not – I’m not—’
‘You are beautiful, Leeza. Did you not know? You are brave, too. All you need is to have faith in yourself.’ A change was coming, he said. The world would soon be different. For women in particular it would be a new dawn. At long last women’s lives would start to be their own.
Leaving him sometime later, Eliza skipped up the stairs on her way back to the nursery. She was brave, she was beautiful, she’d been kissed. A change was coming, her life would be her own: Kolya had said so.
The day room was deserted,
the windows open. The metal bars were like stark black lines inked across the grey sky. The lush green countryside basked in a breathless Sunday hush. Gazing out, Eliza was beset by sudden doubts. Roderick said that Kolya talked hogwash. What if Roderick was right?
She had the piece of paper still, Kolya’s address in his spidery hand, his name in bold letters N. P. ANTIPOV. But Russia seemed impossibly remote; change seemed so improbable. Brave as she was and beautiful (beautiful?), it would take more than words to alter her course. She needed someone or something, a helping hand, the way Johnnie Cheeseman had helped her over the sandstone wall.
She pressed her face against the bars, staring at the vague horizon. Without warning, it started to rain. Rain poured out of the sky. It fell with a soft sound like a long and heartfelt sigh.
Bang!
Eliza jerked awake to a sound like a gunshot. Befuddled by sleep, for a second she could not think where she was. She looked all around. She was lying on piles of cushions on the terrace, the remains of afternoon tea spread around her. How long had she been sleeping?
Bang! The sound came again: not a gun but the French windows blowing in the breeze. The curtains billowed out, twisting and flapping as if they were alive. The sky was streaked with cloud. The sun, round and yellow, was dipping down behind far-off Hambury Hill.
Eliza lay back. She rubbed sleep from her eyes. It was Bank Holiday Monday, the day of the picnic: it had been a day as long as years.
It had begun early. There’d been a rush to get ready. Mama, Roderick and Dorothea had set out, Kolya too, his blisters better. Jeff Smith had driven them. They’d headed for the crossroads at Welby where they were to meet the contingents from Newbolt and Brockmorton before proceeding in convoy to the far-flung Eidur Stones. They were a party of twelve, not counting Colonel Harding’s little grandson, but including in the number Mrs Somersby with her son and daughter: Mrs Somersby could never be left out of anyone’s calculations.
Eliza had watched them go with a deep regret but had shunned all idea of begging Mama to change her mind: she had not demeaned herself. (Rosa too had been left behind but she had stayed in her room all day so it had been as if she wasn’t there.)
After eating breakfast alone, Eliza had wandered listlessly from room to room until, taking a book off a shelf in the library, she had lain on the floor and read it from cover to cover. True, she had skipped the boring bits but she had read the first words and the last and felt justified in saying that she had completed Nicholas Nickleby.
It had been lunchtime by then. She had eaten lunch against the rules in the kitchen. Cook had made a fuss of her, had been in holiday mood because Mrs Bourne was out on an errand.
‘I shall sit and rest my legs for five minutes, my love. What a difference it makes, not having Old Misery-guts breathing down my neck!’
‘We call her the Dreadnought.’
‘The Dreadnought. I shall remember that. It’s just the name for her.’
But after a time Cook had sighed and hauled herself out of her chair. She had to make a start on dinner. There was no rest for the wicked. Now, where had Elsie got to, that sad excuse for a kitchen maid?
Eliza had resumed her listless wandering. There’d been no sign of Pandora or of Whisky in the stable yard. Jeff Smith, of course, had gone out with the motor but Billy Turner was missing too. He’d taken a day’s leave. He’d gone to Northampton with Harry Keech from the village. ‘You’d think it was the ends of the earth to hear them go on,’ Daisy had sniffed. ‘What’s a great lummock like our Billy want with a place like Northampton, any road?’
Eliza had fed sugar to the horses. Roderick’s Conquest had gobbled greedily, his lips rough against her palm.
Back in the house, Eliza had stood in the hallway. All had seemed silent and sleepy. Except, when you came to listen, the house was never entirely quiet. The tick-tock of the grandfather clock measured the long slow minutes. Muted voices floated up from the basement. There had been a faint chink of cutlery as Basford laid the table in the dining room. The unending routine of the house, reassuring and yet somehow stifling too. In order to escape it – to do something different – Eliza had carried out armfuls of cushions onto the terrace. She had taken afternoon tea in the sunshine. She had fallen asleep.
Bang! The French windows blew in the breeze. The last rim of the sun slipped below the horizon. The picnickers would be on their way home by now. An air of expectancy was growing. How soon before they arrived?
Eliza got to her feet. Indoors it was already gloomy. She made her way to the breakfast room. The window was open. Deep shadows had gathered beneath the flat-sweeping boughs of the cedar tree. The space of gravel was empty, waiting.
How far were the Eidur Stones? Five miles, ten miles, twenty? Eliza drifted round the room. She circled the satinwood table. She counted the japanned chairs. She ran her hand along the polished surface of the sideboard. She could hear next door Basford bringing in the cushions, closing the French windows, turning on the lights. A yellow glow seeped under the connecting door.
On the table next to the Kiangsi vase, where Mrs Bourne would have been most displeased to find it, was the newspaper. No doubt it had been cast aside during that morning’s rush, had lain forgotten all day. Eliza took it to the window where there was still just enough daylight to read by. The pages rustled as she turned them.
FIVE NATIONS AT WAR
FIGHTING ON THREE FRONTIERS
GERMAN DECLARATION TO RUSSIA
INVASION OF FRANCE
BRITISH NAVAL RESERVES MOBILIZED
The series of headlines leapt out at her. She tilted the page, straining her eyes to read the smaller print: The great catastrophe has come upon Europe …
‘The great catastrophe. …’ A shiver went up her spine as she repeated the ominous words. But at that moment she heard a faint sound through the open window. It was them, it had to be them: Mama and Roderick and Dorothea and Kolya were back at last.
Eliza abandoned the newspaper, went running to the hallway where the electric lights were on. Opening the front door, she stepped out into the twilight. She stood listening.
It was not the sound of the motor. It was altogether a quieter, more solitary sound: running footsteps getting ever nearer.
A lone figure emerged from between the evergreens at the head of the drive. Booted feet crunched on the gravel. The figure came to a halt in the pool of light at the bottom of the steps.
‘Billy Turner.’
He took his cap off, held it in both hands. He was out of breath from running. ‘Have you seen our Daisy, Miss Eliza? I wanted to tell her – to tell her—’
‘Tell her what?’
‘I’m just back from Northampton, miss. You should hear what people are saying.’ He gulped air, his chest heaving. His clean shirt showed up white in the V of his waistcoat. As he looked up at her, his eyes glinted in the light spilling from the hall. ‘If the Germans don’t back down, then England will fight: that’s what they’re saying. It means war, miss: war! And we shall be in it!’
She had never seen him so animated. Her heart stirred within her. She had the strangest illusion that she’d been waiting all this time not for the return of the picnickers but for Billy Turner, this husky lad done up in his Sunday best looking suddenly so young and so eager, bursting with momentous news.
The August dusk was deepening, veiling the world in shadow. But to Eliza it seemed there was a different veil and it was dissolving, as if she was beginning to see her way clear at last. But what was it that lay in store for her?
She was tingling all over. She was afraid but she didn’t let it daunt her. She was brave, she was beautiful, she had faith: she had faith in herself. Whatever was coming, she was ready. She would meet it head-on. And – oh! – she couldn’t wait for it to begin!
By the same author
Aunt Letitia
Snake in the Grass
Autumn Softly Fell
Nothing Undone Remained
© Do
minic Luke
First published in Great Britain 2015
ISBN 978 0 7198 1849 3 (epub)
ISBN 978 0 7198 1850 9 mobi)
ISBN 978 0 7198 1851 6 (pdf)
ISBN 978 1 910208 23 6 (print)
Robert Hale Limited
Clerkenwell House
Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.halebooks.com
The right of Dominic Luke to be identified as
author of this work has been asserted by him
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988