Cast the First Stone: A stunning wartime story

by Angela Arney

  ‘Come into your new home, my dear,’ she said, holding out her hand. The sudden rush of warmth she felt for Liana startled her. Resignation had been the emotion uppermost in her mind at the prospect of a daughter-in-law, so the prickly beginnings of affection surprised her.

  *

  After the shock of her initial disappointment, it now seemed to Liana that she had truly arrived in paradise. Margaret showed her round some of the house while Donald and Dorothy Ramsay bullied Mrs Catermole into producing something reasonably edible for dinner that evening.

  ‘Plenty of time for you to look more closely later,’ said Margaret, dragging a speechless Liana after her through room after room and down countless corridors filled with paintings and statuary.

  Nicholas had told her that the family was poor, and Liana believed him; but in her mind she had equated a poor English aristocrat with a poor Neapolitan noble. In Naples, it was common enough to find nobility living in empty shells of what had once been beautiful palaces; in reality they possessed very little more, and often not even as much, as the average peasant. Why, even Eleanora’s castello before it had been looted possessed only a sparse amount of antique furniture and carpets, none of which had been of particularly good quality. Eleanora’s beautiful jewels, which Liana had brought with her to England, had been the exception. Now, her mind reeled, first in shock, then in pleasure and astonishment as Margaret casually pointed out the elegant French and English furniture, the seats upholstered in silk and tapestry, the chandeliers, gilded mirrors, fine paintings, Savonnerie and Aubusson carpets and rare Persian rugs. The catalogue of riches went on and on; and Nicholas had said they were poor!

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Liana, needing to pause for breath as Lady Margaret galloped on ahead towards a flight of stairs. ‘All these beautiful things are worth so much money. Why do you say you must sell the house?’

  Her mother-in-law halted. ‘All this’, she answered with an expressive wave of her arms, ‘is worth nothing as it is. It actually costs money to keep it, and that is one of the problems. We have no money in the bank, and the estate makes a loss. Every year I have to sell something to pay our debts. We cannot go on and on like that. Eventually Broadacres will be empty.’

  ‘No, you cannot,’ agreed Liana, beginning to understand the extent of the problem. She followed Margaret down a staircase to an empty wing of the house.

  Here the walls were scratched and shabby, and the floor bare of carpets. ‘This was used for some of the children evacuated from London at the beginning of the war to get them away from the bombs,’ Margaret explained, seeing Liana’s mystified expression.

  ‘Lucky children,’ said Liana, her mind going back to Naples. There the children had had no such refuge. They lived as best they could.

  ‘We had one hundred children in all,’ said Margaret wistfully. ‘It was a very happy time. Most had never been in the country before, and cows and horses were like zoo animals to them.’ She laughed at the memory. ‘Oh, they were so enthusiastic. I can see them now coming back from nature expeditions with their jam jars full of tiddlers – those are tiny fish from the river – and the Christmases! They were the best the house has ever known – so full of noise and excitement, hundreds of parcels wrapped up and put beneath the tree at the end of the East Gallery. An old man from the village, George Jones, used to be Father Christmas. What a sight that was! After breakfast on Christmas Day the door would open and there was the Christmas tree, all lit up with coloured lights and by the side George Jones in his fake white beard and red cape. As Father Christmas, he had a present for every child.’

  ‘It sounds lovely,’ said Liana, thinking of her own Christmases before the war – not lonely, but always quiet: just her and Eleanora, the marchese, Don Luigi, Miss Rose and her mother. After their deaths, and once the war had really started, Christmas had stopped meaning anything at all. She dragged her mind back to the present. ‘What happened to all the children?’

  ‘They went back to London when the bombing stopped, and for a while the army used these rooms as offices. But they moved out at the beginning of this year, and now it is empty as you can see.’

  ‘And the furniture and paintings?’

  ‘All stored upstairs,’ said Lady Margaret. Then she said abruptly, ‘Let’s try to find William.’

  William was reading in the Arcadian drawing room. He was sitting in a winged armchair by one of the many windows. ‘This is Liana, Nicholas’s wife,’ said his mother.

  William did not move to greet them. ‘Bring her here,’ he said.

  Obediently Margaret led Liana across to the chair. Liana saw a tall blond man, very like Nicholas – like and yet unlike. His grey eyes were not as clear, his mouth had bitter lines etched deeply either side and although the curve of his lips was the same, it was not gentle.

  ‘You are tall for an Italian,’ he observed, watching her through narrowed eyes.

  ‘Not all Italians are short.’ Liana was suddenly wary. There was an innate hostility about him. He made her feel uneasy; she wondered why.

  ‘Well, at least you don’t look like a peasant, thank God.’ His eyes returned to the book on his lap.

  ‘William!’ Margaret made a small, apologetic gesture for her son’s rudeness.

  ‘That is because I am not.’ Although her voice was bland, a tiny flicker of fear caused her to tremble. It was almost as if he knew something. But he could not. There was no need to feel disturbed.

  ‘So I’ve been told.’ The coldness in his voice disquieted her far more than the actual words. He had already made up his mind. He did not like her.

  ‘Don’t worry about William,’ Margaret tried to reassure her as they left the room. ‘He’s not himself at the moment. He’s still terribly bitter and moody about his injury.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Liana slowly, hoping she had been wrong in her assumption. Perhaps that was the reason for his coldness; it was because he was deeply unhappy. ‘It must be very difficult for him.’

  ‘It is. We leave him to himself. Don’t worry if you don’t see him for days on end. He often doesn’t want to talk to anyone.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Liana, wishing she did.

  Chapter Eleven

  Dinner was served in the Grey Room, an enormous room on the western side of the house with windows catching the last rays of the evening light. The long table, set out formally with exquisite china and cutlery, all gleaming with a brilliant lustre, impressed and slightly overawed Liana. None the less she suddenly felt hungry. Donald Ramsay courteously pulled out a chair for her and she sat down looking about her still amazed at the grandeur of the house. She could see that the room looked even larger than it actually was because of the positioning of the ornately carved mirrors on the walls.

  ‘Why is this called the Grey Room?’ Liana asked. She could not understand it; there did not seem to be any grey at all. The whole room glowed with colours, all reflected in the mirrors.

  William joined them, and Liana noted with relieved surprise that now his attitude seemed benign, the hostility apparently gone. The resemblance to Nicholas was much more marked now, especially when he smiled. She smiled back, but was still a little wary. He was not quite like Nicholas. His face lacked the spontaneous openness of Nicholas. There was a certain shuttered atmosphere about William, as if he had deliberately closed the doors on his true self. She watched him cautiously as he spoke. He seemed curiously apart from everyone else in the room, even though he appeared to be at ease and joined in the conversation.

  ‘You may well ask. Why indeed?’ he said pleasantly, seating himself beside Liana. ‘I’ll tell you. It is because what little you can see of the walls between the mirrors is covered with grey silk tapestry.’

  ‘The mirrors are said to have come from the Palace of Versailles,’ added Margaret, a nervous smile hovering about her lips. Thank God William had decided to be friendly after all.

  ‘And the Savonnerie carpet was woven on a design by P J Perot in seven
teen forty-five,’ said William.

  ‘Let the poor girl relax,’ said Donald Ramsay, ‘and stop giving her a history lesson.’ He, too, was pleased to see that William was making an effort to be sociable.

  Everyone laughed, and Liana, who was still apprehensive, could see the assembled company relaxing. It seemed they were all pleased that William had decided to be friendly.

  A sour-faced woman brought in an enormous soup tureen and sullenly dumped it with a loud thud in the middle of the table.

  ‘Thank you, Edith,’ said Margaret with a nervous stutter. ‘I’ll ring when we’re ready for the next course.’ The woman departed without a backward glance, shutting the door noisily behind her.

  The soup was brown and thin and tasted like hot water, and the bread, which was greyish in colour, was dry and tasteless. Liana began to lose her appetite, but she tried to drink a little soup and forced some of the unpalatable bread down her throat. When Margaret rang the bell, Liana hoped the next course would be better. On the long sea voyage to England when she had not been feeling sick she had enjoyed the food on board ship, but it was an American ship; maybe English food was different.

  ‘Toad in the hole,’ said Edith Catermole re-entering the room and plonking a large oval dish down in the centre of the table. ‘It’s the best I could do at such short notice. There is a war on, you know, and I didn’t know everyone was staying for dinner.’ She glowered pointedly at the Ramsays, who equally pointedly ignored her.

  ‘Toad in the hole?’ said Liana in a horrified voice. She could hardly believe her ears.

  ‘Sausages in batter, my dear,’ said Dorothy Ramsay, stifling a smile at Liana’s expression. ‘Not real toads.’

  ‘And runner beans and potatoes,’ added Mrs Catermole, slamming two more dishes on the table with ill grace. ‘The stewed rhubarb and jelly for dessert is on the sideboard. Will that be all?’ It was not so much a question she asked Lady Margaret, more of a challenge.

  ‘Oh, yes, thank you, Edith. Everything looks very nice,’ said Margaret, more nervous than ever. Liana noticed the nervousness and wondered why. Surely her mother-in-law was not afraid of her own servant?

  The entire meal was awful. The only decent thing was the bottle of red wine Donald Ramsay produced from his doctor’s bag when Mrs Catermole had gone.

  ‘Down to my last five bottles of good claret,’ he said, uncorking it carefully. ‘We’ll have to drink Dorothy’s dandelion wine when they’ve all gone.’

  ‘Makes even Edith’s toad in the hole taste quite pleasant,’ said William, wrinkling his nose appreciatively as he took a sip.

  But not even the good wine changed Liana’s opinion. She wondered how the English could be so cheerful about such dreadful food, but as no-one, other than William, made any comment, she assumed they liked it.

  Food apart, Liana enjoyed her first evening. There was no mistaking the genuine pleasure they all derived from welcoming her to Broadacres, and that appeared to include William. Later it was William who took her up to her bedroom, the room she would eventually share with Nicholas when he returned to England.

  ‘You will have a beautiful view in the morning,’ he said, drawing the heavy damask curtains across the wide windows. ‘Right down to the lake and the Palladian bridge.’ Then he politely excused himself and left her.

  Liana explored curiously. The bedroom was huge. White walls, hung with prints depicting hunting scenes, rose to a sculpted cornice, and painted cherubs sprawled across the ceiling. Either side of the room were doors set in elaborately scrolled and gilded columns. Each door, Liana discovered, led into another two rooms – a dressing room with armchairs, a couch, dressing table and enormous wooden wardrobes; then another door leading into a bathroom. One bathroom was tiled in blue, the other in jade green. Liana could hardly believe such luxury. She and Nicholas each had their own dressing room and bathroom. The dressing room with the blue bathroom obviously belonged to Nicholas because the wardrobe was full of his clothes. She knew they were his; they smelt of him. Sticking her head in the wardrobe she closed her eyes and sniffed, and for a moment felt close to him. But the lure of her very own bathroom was too strong to stay there long. Filling the green enamel bath with warm water, she carefully unwrapped the tablet of soap lying in the porcelain soap dish. To her delight the soap was green too. Everything matched; even the towels in the cupboard by the washbasin were green.

  Little did she know, as she lay in the warm water luxuriously soaping herself, of the struggle which had taken place in preparing the bathroom for her.

  ‘A terrible waste,’ Edith Catermole had objected.

  But for once Lady Margaret had insisted, and the brand new, but pre-war, towels and delicately perfumed soap were extricated from the store cupboard and laid out in readiness for Liana.

  After her bath, warm and relaxed, she was ready for bed. But before sliding in between the crisp white sheets, she turned out the lights, and, crossing the room, drew back the curtains and opened the window. The night air was chilly now, and very, very, still.

  The lake was invisible in the darkness, but a thick mist glowed a ghostly grey through the darkness, showing where it lay. The smell of rich, damp earth mingled with perfumes of many flowers, and there was a faint smell of farm animals. It was very different from Italy. She was used to the dry, tangy perfume of wild thyme and rosemary, and in autumn the sweet smell of olives. She drew in a deep, appreciative breath. This was quite different, much more rich and varied, and she loved it.

  Much more rich. The phrase stayed in her mind when she finally settled down to sleep. Much more rich; that was what she intended to make Nicholas and herself. Idly, she wondered why William had not done something to try to reverse the family fortunes. He enjoyed living at Broadacres, that much was obvious, but he did not seem interested in how things were organized. Nicholas had been more involved than William, even before the war, she knew that. But he had told her that whatever their farm manager did, the estate never seemed to do more than just break even. They desperately needed a new tractor, but there was not the ready cash available. Nicholas loved the country, even though, by his own admission, he was not a particularly efficient farmer. William was different. From his conversation at supper Liana learned that apart from fishing he was not interested in the estate and farm, and spent the rest of his spare time reading. That was good; it cut out potential complications. The future looked good for whatever changes she decided were needed; and common sense told her there had to be some way to make this fertile land viable.

  *

  August 1944 was a warm, golden month. William was right about the view, and the early morning mists drifting across the waters of the lake on to the velvet green of the lawns surrounding the house never failed to entrance Liana when she looked out from her bedroom window. But by breakfast-time each day the mist had disappeared, snatched up and torn to shreds by the golden rays of the sun. She spent every waking moment outside, methodically walking the estate, the farm and the woodlands. Her keen eyes missed nothing, for she knew that if she were to achieve her goal of restoring the house and making Nicholas the richest earl in England, then she had to know everything there was to know about the estate. It did not take long for Liana to conclude that the estate in itself would not be enough to amass any great fortune and that other avenues for making money would eventually have to be explored. But for the time being, Liana decided to concentrate on the most obvious thing: the estate.

  It took a week to learn to find her way around the enormous house and its vast lands. She could see at once that the opportunities were limitless, and time and time again she marvelled at the casual way Nicholas had spoken of his home. He loved it, but the actual fact that he owned the house and all the lands around it seemed more of a burden to him than anything else. Liana thought he was incredible. How could he think of this enchanted, beautiful place as a burden? She was walking beside a cornfield, shimmering rich, ripe and golden in the mellow sunlight, an occasional flash of red
where a poppy thrust its impudent head up amongst the ears of corn. Suddenly she threw back her head, and laughed out loud in sheer exultation.

  Everything she had dreamed and hoped for had come true after all. She had been right to marry Nicholas, for she had succeeded in escaping the profanity of war. Not once since arriving at Broadacres had she yearned for Italy. The pain of loving Raul was still there, of course, always waiting to surface the moment she let the mental barriers relax, but miraculously even that, even that was not as painful now. The beauty of Broadacres had a healing property. Some of the rawness seemed to have gone. Maybe in time she would forget everything. The revolutionary thought halted her in her tracks. Maybe, maybe in time I will even learn to love Nicholas as a wife should love her husband. Goodness knows, Nicholas deserves it. He plucked me from hell and transplanted me to this wonderful place.

  She climbed over a stile which led to the grassy chalk uplands. The land rose either side of the valley, and the softly rounded slopes were covered with sheep. They looked naked, still bare from having their fleeces shorn; but the weather was warm and they were not bothered. In perfect unison they marched slowly forward, munching away at the short, sweet-smelling turf. Liana pulled herself up and over the stile.

  A shaft of sunlight caught the opal of her engagement ring, momentarily blinding her with flashes of milky flame: the all-seeing eye; the past; the baby; Raul, RAUL! It had the effect of dissipating her euphoric mood in an instant, and she remembered Margaret had asked her to be sure to be in the house this morning when Donald Ramsay called. He wanted to examine her, to check on her pregnancy.

  She turned on herself bitterly; she should have known it was impossible to escape. The longing for her homeland might have been replaced by a real love for England and the Itchen Valley but she was foolish to think that Raul could ever be denied, could ever be replaced by Nicholas. Part of Raul was wriggling impatiently inside her now, anxious to be born; and, once born, the child would be an even more tangible reminder. A moment ago she had been happy, now her heart ached. There was no escaping the past – a sombre thought, but one with which she had to live.