The Dead Summer

by Helen Moorhouse

  Will stood quietly at the door, watching her. He smiled when she looked up and she took in his face – his dark brown eyes, tousled hair, kind expression. Martha smiled back and they looked at each other for a moment or two before Will extended a hand to her and indicated that she should follow him.

  Martha pushed herself up off the sofa, took a look at Ruby who remained asleep and reached out for Will’s hand. He clasped it gently but firmly, stroking it with his thumb as they walked to the kitchen where Gabriel was pouring boiling water into three cups. Martha sank onto one of the kitchen chairs and Will squeezed her hand before letting it fall and crossing to the worktop where she saw his laptop was booting up.

  Gabriel passed him and plonked a steaming cup of tea in front of Martha. She smiled her thanks, too exhausted to speak, and stared at the mug – a brown pottery mug with a ceramic sheep forming the handle. What an ordinary thing, she thought. And to follow what they had just done with a cup of tea at five o’clock on a summer’s morning. It was surreal.

  “Gabriel, I want your opinion on this,” said Will, pointing to the laptop screen.

  Martha could make out Ruby’s room on the screen and in the centre herself and Gabriel holding hands. She picked up her tea and walked out to the conservatory – whatever it was, she didn’t want to see it. For her, this was all over, her part played, the dead at rest. What was Will’s word? Closure – that was it. She had closure.

  Martha sank down onto her wicker chair and drank in the sight of the brightening garden. Dew sparkled on the grass and a lazy bee hovered around the lavender. She had closure, she thought. Except she didn’t, did she? She couldn’t kid herself that this was the end and that she was now free to walk away. What had gone on here? What was real and what wasn’t? When had this happened? How had Henry ended up bricked into a fireplace?

  Martha shuddered. How had the small little thing she was sure she had felt hiding behind her half an hour beforehand spent his last moments? Had he been gasping for air in that soot-filled atmosphere, bricked up in a tiny space – the fireplace in her own room had just enough room for a single log in the grate, and the chimneys were narrow and tight. Had he suffocated? Had he died of hunger and thirst? Of fear? Who had put him there – that woman? Who had done the actual brickwork, for heaven’s sake? What had the spirit meant when she had said that someone wouldn’t come if he didn’t shut up?

  Her mind raced. She remembered when she hadn’t cared – when her sole focus had been getting away, which she still wanted to do. It had been easier then, not knowing, choosing not to know. But now she had to know. She couldn’t pack her car and go back to begin again in London without getting to the bottom of all this. There was someone she had to speak to.

  Chapter 31

  Eyrie Farm,

  Shipton Abbey,

  Norfolk,

  England

  February 1st, 1957

  Dear Caroline,

  Oh, what joy is in my heart as I write on this fine spring day. There is sunshine and snowdrops and at last a little warmth in that sun and I am a different girl from the one who wrote to you this day last year from the depths of misery.

  That misery is lifted from my shoulders, Caroline. What a year it has been, a complete turnaround in my fortunes and only good to come, please God, as we gather pace into 1957 and as I come of age today.

  I shall start with Marion – it is scarcely to be believed but her love affair with Albie continues to flourish and last month he finally proposed marriage to her and gave her the most beautiful ring I have ever seen – a single milky perfect pearl rising up out of a nest of no less than ten round cut diamonds on a platinum band. He had it made especially for her in London and presented it to her on New Year’s Day, going down on one knee and asking her to be his bride. She has been too elated to be cruel to myself and Henry and is soon to move to live at the house that she and Albie will share once married. She will live there with Albie’s grandmother until the wedding, would you believe! She leaves us in two glorious months to move to Bickford, her fortune made, and her secret here in Eyrie Farm intact. I don’t care. She will no longer be my responsibility but that of Albie Forbes and that makes my heart cheer with the weight that’s lifted from it.

  She has me driven mad with the talk of her wedding. Who would have thought it but the Forbes family is Catholic so there is no need of conversion, and as the parish priest in Bickford is a friend of the family (I fear he may be one of the family) they are sorting the paperwork for her so there is no need for a letter of release from Clontarf Parish and therefore no chance of her secret being discovered – the secret that her father is still alive, that is, not the secret of her son who has never been recognised by any church, much less officially baptised. Again, I care not, because she is lost in a swirl of magazines that she has ordered especially and books of flowers, trying to plan their marriage for this summer.

  The humour in the house has improved all around. Henry is even managing more little words although when he speaks it sounds funny as he can’t pronounce his letter ‘r’. And the little rogue insists on calling me Mammy and Marion by her Christian name, except he cannot pronounce it properly so it sounds like ‘Mannion’. It sounds very sweet but I try to stop him saying it because there is no guarantee that she won’t fly into a rage and it makes her very angry altogether that he doesn’t call her ‘Mammy’, despite the fact that she has spent his short life denying his existence and now aims to enter into a marriage where her husband-to-be has no knowledge of him. When she moves to Bickford I fear that will be it – Henry will be cut out of her life forever because this secret is such that she must never tell. She will never appoint me officially his guardian but to all intents and purposes he is my boy now and I will love him and protect him double what Marion could ever have done. As long as I am alive, Henry will never want for love or care.

  He still takes my breath away, Caroline, with his dark brown hair that has lost all his baby curls. I have started to cut it using a pudding bowl as a guide and he looks quite the little man with his big toothy smile. He is still small and thin but that is merely his build – maybe he takes after his father, whoever that scourge may be. He runs around the garden at great speed – he loves to run! I say he will be an athlete when he grows up and then he pelts back across the garden at me and throws his arms around my legs and almost knocks me over and my heart floods with love for him again.

  The only sad note in the whole thing is that there is still no word from Daddy, nor from Uncle Thomas, so I have no idea how he is bearing up. I continue to write to him, although not as often as I used to. It is so disheartening to write so often and not hear anything in return.

  Things are even looking up here at Eyrie Farm. Mr Mountford is still happy to have us here as his tenants. Well, I say tenants but we pay no rent and I am sure that my father doesn’t. I should really talk to him to formalise the arrangements for when Marion moves out but I keep putting it off. Mr Mountford is not my greatest friend since the business of Robert before. On the other hand, he is currently having an extension built for us at the back – a small room downstairs to be used for whatever we wish – a sewing room, or study or another bedroom. And atop that will be a small indoor bathroom – oh, the luxury of it all! All sorts of improvements are being carried out and every day some of Mr Mountford’s lads come to the house and work through until teatime. Oh, the life that’s around the place with the workmen here! Last year, Albie gave Marion a gift of a transistor radio and miracle of miracles, she lets me share it, so there is always music playing – hits by Elvis Presley, Dean Martin, The Platters. The young men here are always polite and, although Henry has to be hidden upstairs, he too hears the music and dances by wiggling his little bottom around and shuffling his feet. I spend much of my day upstairs with him because it is not fair to lock him away by himself all the day but he seems content, the poor child who has never yet played with another child his own age and has been outside Eyrie Farm only
twice and both those times had to be smuggled away in Robert’s car.

  Marion loves to flirt with the workmen. She feels there is no harm in sitting outside on their piles of bricks, swinging her legs and flashing them smiles. She knows they daren’t respond because she flaunts her engagement ring so and makes no secret of telling them that she is to be Mrs Forbes before the year is out. If Albie saw her though I’m sure he’d be none too pleased, for he is a serious chap underneath it all and is very possessive of his Maid Marion as he calls her.

  Of course Marion likes nothing better than to play with the boys when they are here and before Christmas, when they had just started, nothing would do her but to challenge one of them that she could build a section of wall faster than he could. Of course the boy, Terry, scoffed at her and said what nonsense she was talking, that women couldn’t build walls, so she let him go first, allocated him a section to build and timed him before stepping up herself.

  At first of course she made mistakes and made sure to drop some bricks and get some mortar on herself so all the boys laughed. They had gathered in a circle to watch her make a fool of herself, they thought. But don’t you remember, Caroline, that when Marion was small, Daddy used to take her sometimes to his jobs and he showed her how to build a wall with the bricks and the mortar and to make sure it was even with a spirit level and all the tricks of the trade. Daddy’s little shadow, Mammy used to call her. And how to everyone’s surprise, young Marion became very good at building. Mammy used to give out to Daddy, saying what sort of a skill was that to teach a little girl but he used to laugh at her and take Marion off with him all over the place.

  Well, she certainly hasn’t lost her skill because she beat Terry hands down by a full five minutes in building her section of the wall on the new room. The boys weren’t so smart after that I can tell you, and how Marion and I laughed, the first time in years that we have shared something as sisters. It seems silly of me after all that we have been through, after all that she has done to me and to little Henry, but that day gave me a memory to cherish with my big sister, like no other from before.

  And now to the best news of all, my oldest friend. You must keep this a secret, but Marion is not the only one in the family with an engagement ring and a promise of marriage. I have my own, hidden in a box in my room, not with ten diamonds in it but a simple gold band with a single diamond in the centre, given to me by my own darling Robert.

  Yes, he is back, Caroline. A chance meeting last summer was the happiest of my life. I was cycling back from Shipton Abbey, dropping some clothes I had repaired to Mrs Collins to return them to their owners and collect my fee for me, when of all things I had a puncture. I carry a repair kit everywhere with me but, would you believe, when I looked it was gone, most likely thanks to Madame Marion who had been off on one of her marathon cycles the day before. I fairly cursed her there on the road from the village. It’s a short enough walk, Caroline, but the day was a hot one and I had to wheel the bike with the punctured wheel alongside me after being up at the crack of dawn to finish the sewing. I thought I’d never get home when around the bend came a motor car. I stood in the ditch and kept my head down, waiting for it to pass, but it didn’t. It stopped beside me and, when I looked up to see why, who was standing in front of me but Robert!

  I thought I would flee into the field when confronted with him! My knees felt as though they would buckle, my heart started to race and I felt such a blush come to my cheeks. All the stuff that you read in romances is true, Caroline. I felt as though a great wave had hit me and knocked me for six. “Robert,” was all I could say. And the darndest thing was that the same look was in his eyes as was in mine. “Lily,” he said and he bent to look at my puncture. I thought I would die, to have him so close to me and not to be able to touch him. He talked as he fixed my tyre, told me that he was home for the summer from university where he was studying English and History but that he was unhappy there and longed to be back here in Shipton, near the estuary and near to me. I couldn’t believe it. Could he really still have feelings for me?

  Yes, he had, Caroline. Like me, like the feelings that I had buried away, Robert was still as in love with me as he had been the day our secret love was revealed to his father. He brought me back to Eyrie Farm that day and we could scarcely take our eyes off each other. We met in secret a few times before the end of the summer and then he went back to university in October and we have written ever since. Such happiness I have never known. It is like the love I had for him before has grown tenfold with our separation and he the same. He proposed formally to me at Christmas time, when he was home for his holidays, and we snatched some time alone together at the farm when Marion was with Albie. He gave me my beautiful solitaire ring and promised that as soon as today, my twenty-first birthday should arrive, soon after would come another ring of plain gold and we should be husband and wife.

  Of course it was difficult for me when Marion made her big announcement and flounced off to her fancy engagement party and me not invited. But I had a party of my own here at Eyrie Farm! Myself and Henry danced to ‘Secret Love’, a song I haven’t been able to bear to hear since Robert and I were separated at first. Now our love is secret again, but not for much longer because he has promised me that he has a plan in place for us to be together, and Henry too, before the year is out. I have no idea what that plan is but I can scarcely keep myself from grinning with glee every time I think of it.

  Please be happy for me, Caroline. I know that this will involve deceit but my life has been so filled with it, surrounded by it, for so long, that I fear I shall never be able to escape it. Once Robert and Henry and I are together, however, then the love we have will make up for the deceit and maybe some day we will be able to be honest and truthful and we won’t be judged like we are now, or like I would be back in Ireland.

  Pray to God and to your Saint Agnes, Patron Saint of Couples, that by the time I write to you on my twenty-second birthday all will be well.

  Your friend,

  Lily

  Chapter 32

  Mary Stockwell was surprised to see the silver Audi parked in the community-centre car park – even more surprised to see the small figure sitting on the wall outside the door of Lullabies.

  “Martha!” she exclaimed. “Are you okay? I didn’t know whether to call you – whether Ruby was coming back or not . . .”

  Martha was holding Ruby in her arms. It was only eight o’clock in the morning but the little girl was bare-limbed in a summer T-shirt. Martha herself was dressed in jeans and a light top, a cardigan discarded in the car. The heat had hit her like a brick wall when she had opened the front door to leave the house. It was sticky and oppressive, yet there was no sun breaking through the slate-grey cloud. It was clear that a storm was approaching.

  She had left Will and Gabriel starting to roll up the yards of cable around the house, removing the cameras from every room. They were hot and exhausted but Will wanted the house cleared before they went back to the B&B for a few hours’ rest.

  Martha knew she should sleep herself, should leave Ruby with Mary and have a good four or five hours’ rest – but she couldn’t. She couldn’t think of anything but finding out exactly what had happened at Eyrie Farm.

  Mary held her arms out to take Ruby but Martha kept a firm grip. “I need to talk to you, Mary,” she said. “And I need honest replies – not like before.”

  Mary looked puzzled, and hurt at Martha’s refusal to hand over Ruby. “What have I done, Martha?” she asked, a genuine note of upset in her voice.

  “What do you really know about Eyrie Farm, Mary? The truth – not the local folklore, the tales about monks to throw me off the scent. What do you know that you’re not telling me?”

  Mary sat down on the wall beside Martha. “Is that why you’ve been missing these last few days? Why those men have been around? Has something happened?”

  Martha nodded, staring at Mary’s face for signs. “Yes, Mary. Something
has happened.”

  The older woman’s face registered shock. “Is it true?” she asked in a whisper.

  “I don’t know, Mary. Is what true? What is there to be true? Everyone’s been fobbing me off since I got here when I’ve asked about that house and I don’t know what’s true and what’s not. That’s why I need honesty this time, Mary. I swear that whatever you tell me won’t shock me or scare me any more than I’ve already been shocked and scared.”

  Mary looked at Martha with a worried face and then looked down. She sighed. “Come inside,” she said. “It’s too hot to sit out here, and besides which, the others will be here soon.”

  Martha followed Mary inside the crèche, glad to step into the coolness of the room. She settled Ruby on the infants’ mat with some toys while Mary opened the blinds and windows, turned on the small fans in opposite corners of the room and set about making two cups of coffee. After a few moments she thought better of it and instead took two bottles of water from the small fridge and handed one to Martha.

  They sat and Martha looked at Mary challengingly.

  Mary sighed. “I know I probably haven’t been entirely honest with you,” she said. “But it was for your own good, I thought. Maybe I was wrong.”

  “Maybe you were,” said Martha, her voice hard at the admission of dishonesty. She had lived through too many lies in her marriage to tolerate them from people who were supposed to be her friends.

  “I don’t know for sure what the history of the place is – there are so many rumours that it was connected to the monastery, of bits being added on and taken off, of all the land surrounding making up the farm and it all being lost through gambling. The first proper fact that I ever knew was that there was a family living there – a couple and two small children – and the father gambled away the land bit by bit. They were left with nothing and then Charles Mountford – Rob’s grandfather – stepped in and bought the place for a pittance. The farmer took the money and he and his family fled his debts. They were very unhappy by all accounts.”