Cast the First Stone: A stunning wartime story

by Angela Arney

  They had attended the christening of Meg and Bruno’s second-born, a daughter named Alice. It had been a happy afternoon. Most of the estate workers had gone to the church and attended the christening party afterwards, and Liana and Nicholas were now alone, relaxing with a sherry before dinner in the Grey Room.

  ‘I’m so glad for Meg,’ said Liana thoughtfully. ‘She and Bruno are so very happy together. Now they have a perfect family, a son and a daughter.’ She was thinking only of Meg, unaware of the bitter ironic comparison with themselves.

  Nicholas had already made that comparison. During the service in the church he could think of nothing else. ‘Yes,’ he said now, in a very low, quiet voice. He stood before the ornate marble fireplace looking down at Liana. ‘A son and a daughter.’

  Liana felt her stomach tighten suddenly into a hard knot of defiant guilt as the import of his words sunk in and she cursed her thoughtless remark. But the years had given her plenty of practice at suppressing guilt, and she quashed it now without remorse. Nothing had changed as far as she was concerned. Not even her love for Broadacres or her growing happiness as Nicholas’s wife could displace Raul. He was still the centre of her life, and she was fiercely determined to hang on to his precious memory at all costs. Damn the christening; it had set Nicholas’s mind back on to the old track of wanting more children. The subject needed to be changed. ‘Talking of daughters,’ she said brightly, ‘I’d better go and see if ours is ready for bed.’

  Draining the sherry glass, she set it down with an air of finality. Nicholas knew very well what it signalled. The conversation was at an end. Liana thought the christening had reminded him; little did she know of his constant longing. As she rose and moved to swish past him, he reached out and caught her wrist, pulling her towards him. ‘Liana.’ His voice was husky with emotion. ‘You must know how much I want a son. You do, don’t you?’

  Oh, God, why did he have to make it so hard? For a moment his plea unleashed a tide of guilt that threatened to overwhelm her, then her steely resolve hardened and the barrier was in place once more. Raul was the barrier, Raul and their daughter Eleanora. I have everything I want, she thought, grimly determined to keep it that way. Another child would only complicate things. ‘Babies don’t come off conveyor belts, Nicholas. We must wait.’

  But Nicholas was impatient. ‘Liana, darling, don’t you think we’ve waited long enough for another child? Please, for both our sakes, won’t you go and see a gynaecologist?’

  See a doctor! Liana hid the sudden onslaught of fear. He had never mentioned anything about seeing doctors before. This was more serious than she had thought. But no matter, she would never change her mind. How could she, when she could feel Raul’s presence sometimes so strongly that it was almost a physical thing. Why, oh why, couldn’t Nicholas be content to leave things the way they were? But, of course, he had no idea of the persistent shadow at her elbow, constantly anchoring her emotions to the past. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t know and could never be told. So she hid her disquiet as best she could and tried to smile as serenely as ever as she answered quietly, ‘There is plenty of time, darling. Don’t let’s be impatient.’

  ‘Impatient! Liana, it’s more than five years now since I returned from Europe. Five whole years. There must be something wrong. For my sake, please agree to go.’

  Her dark eyes clouded suddenly, and for the first time Nicholas became aware of her very real fear, although of course he completely misunderstood the reasons. Liana’s next words served to reinforce his misunderstanding. ‘I hate doctors,’ she said, her voice faltering with very real distress. ‘I’m afraid of them. I’ll never, never go willingly but if you insist . . .’ Liana let the words trail away into silence. It was partly the truth. She was afraid of doctors, all of them except Donald Ramsay. Nicholas would never know the reason for her fears, but Liana was counting on his finely tuned compassion and his consuming love for her. Surely he would never force her to go against her will?

  It was a calculated risk, but it worked. ‘Oh, Liana.’ Nicholas was immediately stricken with remorse. ‘Darling, you know I’ll never force you to do anything you don’t want. I love you too much.’

  He flung his arms around her and held her tight. The subject was dropped and Liana breathed easily once more. But although Nicholas remained silent he still hoped. He prayed, too, every Sunday in Longford’s Norman church. Sometimes Liana accompanied Lady Margaret, Eleanora and Nicholas to church but more often than not she found other, more pressing matters to attend to.

  ‘You can pray for me, darling,’ she said to Nicholas. ‘If there is a God, I’m sure he will listen to you if you put in a good word on my behalf.’

  ‘I wish you could believe.’

  It never failed to distress Nicholas when he heard the hard edge to Liana’s voice whenever God was mentioned. He just could not bring himself to accept that she was as cynical as she sounded. She was compassionate and caring – he had seen that so many times in the way she dealt with the people who worked for her. But where God was concerned she was stubborn, never admitting that the existence of a being greater than themselves might even be remotely possible.

  ‘I have good reason not to believe,’ was the only explanation he ever got, and with that he had to be content. He remembered his mother’s advice that some things were best left unsaid and wondered if he had a hope of ever understanding her.

  *

  Nicholas began to take an interest in the accounts and after dinner he and Liana would often sit in the library office sifting through facts and figures. Eleanora would come down with them and have her bed-time story before Meg or Dolly put her to bed.

  ‘I want this one,’ she would announce, climbing up on Nicholas’s knee. It was always the same storybook.

  ‘A different story tonight,’ said Nicholas one evening, raising his eyebrows in amusement at Liana. ‘Well, it will make a change from Rumpelstiltskin!’ He read the title, ‘The Lord who lost his crown.’

  ‘Daddy, are you a lord?’

  ‘Yes, darling. Who told you?’ Eleanora had always been brought up with Meg’s son Rolf, and played with the village children who came to the farm. Neither Liana nor Nicholas wanted her to grow up different from other children, divorced from the realities of life.

  ‘Meg. But she said you never go to London with the other lords. Why not? Is it because you’ve lost your crown?’

  Nicholas laughed. ‘No, it isn’t. I’m not interested in going to London with the other lords. I’d rather stay here with you. Now do you want this story or not?’

  ‘I do,’ said Eleanora positively.

  ‘Perhaps you ought to,’ said Liana when Eleanora had disappeared off to bed. ‘Take your seat in the House of Lords,’ she added, seeing Nicholas’s puzzled expression.

  ‘Whatever for? Anyway I thought you disapproved of the Lords, I always thought you had Socialist tendencies.’

  ‘Not when they’re going to lose the next election,’ said Liana practically. ‘And there’s sure to be one before the end of nineteen fifty-one. The war will see to that.’

  Nicholas sighed in agreement. ‘Yes, this bloody Korean war! If the experts are right, it’s going to bankrupt the country.’

  ‘But not us,’ said Liana with determination. ‘However, it will bring down the Government, and you’d better join the winning side. You can make agriculture your special political subject.’

  ‘Darling, I’ll never make a politician. You should know that.’

  Liana pushed back her chair and came round to Nicholas’s side of the desk. ‘You will, Nicholas,’ she said persuasively, smiling one of her most enchanting smiles. ‘You can do anything if you put your mind to it.’

  Liana’s blandishments won the day. In January 1951 Nicholas took his seat in the House of Lords, albeit somewhat reluctantly.

  ‘You don’t have to say a lot,’ Liana told him. ‘Just being there will be enough.’

  And Nicholas had to admit it was. With his arr
ival in the Lords came the all-important social invitations which Liana knew they needed. It was vital to broaden their circle of contacts if they were to expand in the way she had planned.

  *

  ‘I’d like to know how they got tickets to the Lord’s Taverners’ Ball.’ Put out and grumpy, Clara Maltravers thrust the front-page photograph of the Daily Express under Margaret’s nose.

  ‘The Earl and Countess of Wessex merrymaking at the Lord’s Taverners’ Ball,’ read Margaret obligingly, ‘in the company of their Royal Highnesses the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret and the Duke of Edinburgh.’ Clara sniffed disapprovingly. ‘Doesn’t Liana look lovely?’ said Margaret. ‘And that jewellery of hers always comes out so well in photographs.’

  ‘There were only twelve hundred tickets,’ said Clara, determined not to be sidetracked.

  ‘I expect Nicholas got them because he’s become active in politics now,’ said Margaret comfortably. ‘He’s very highly thought of, you know.’

  ‘Humph!’ Clara still felt aggrieved The fact that she had recently suffered a severe heart attack and could not have attended the ball anyway was immaterial. She changed the subject. ‘Is it true you have entered young Eleanora for the Festival of Britain Gymkhana at Taplow?’

  Margaret seized on the less contentious subject with alacrity. ‘Yes. Why don’t you come down with me now to the paddock? I promised Eleanora we’d practise this afternoon when school finishes. I expect Rolf will be with her.’

  ‘You shouldn’t let that child go to the village school and spend all her time playing with the servant’s children.’

  ‘Oh, Clara, don’t be such a snob!’ Margaret was exasperated but soon forgot Clara’s irritating ways once they arrived at the paddock and found Eleanora already waiting. ‘You call Goldie and saddle him up,’ she told Eleanora.

  At six and a half years, Eleanora was tall for her age and had all the natural grace of her mother.

  ‘Goldie, here. Good boy.’ She swung herself over the paddock gate and fished a lemon-drop out of her jodhpur pocket. ‘He just loves lemon-drops,’ she told Clara.

  Margaret fiddled with the latch on the paddock gate, grumbling that it seemed more difficult to open with each passing day.

  ‘Pity you can’t jump over the gate like you used to,’ observed Clara.

  Margaret pulled a face. ‘I don’t mind getting old but I do mind getting decrepit. We’re a pair of old crocks now, Clara, you with your dicky heart and me with my damned arthritis.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say I was an old crock!’ snapped Clara. Margaret hid a smile. True to form Clara was not ready to be considered old yet.

  ‘Hey, Grandma! Watch me jump.’ Eleanora swung herself up on to Goldie’s bare back.

  ‘You can’t. You mustn’t, not without a saddle.’

  But Eleanora was not listening. Bending forward she whispered in the pony’s ear and set off at a brisk canter. Margaret closed her eyes as the pair approached the jump. Please, God, don’t let her fall. Then she opened them again in time to see Eleanora and Goldie sail effortlessly over the poles.

  ‘Why, you look as if you have been doing it for ages,’ she gasped.

  ‘I have,’ said Eleanora airily. ‘Rolf and I have been jumping bare-back for two weeks now. I didn’t ask you because I knew you would say no.’

  ‘Like her mother,’ observed Clara. ‘A determined young woman.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Margaret nearly bursting with pride.

  *

  The Conservatives won the general election of October 1951 and Liana was pleased. The Hamilton-Howards now had half a dozen businesses as well as interests in numerous smaller subsidiary concerns, and she knew Nicholas’s being in the House of Lords gave them added access to the City. Diversify as much as possible – that was now her policy. So when the international commodity market re-opened in December 1951, Liana proposed that they invest heavily in equity shares.

  Nicholas protested, not because he was worried about losing money – there was not much chance of that. Liana was shrewd enough to have thoroughly investigated all the possibilities first – but because he thought it unnecessary.

  ‘For heaven’s sake Liana, do you really have to start on something else? Already we are what most people would term very comfortable. Thanks to you, we have no money worries. Surely you can take life easy and relax a little now? Do we need to watch the share prices every day? We are rich enough.’

  ‘One can never be rich enough,’ came the tart answer. ‘Anyway, you needn’t watch the market, I’ll do it. I shall enjoy the challenge.’

  And Nicholas knew she would. Liana thrived on the precarious excitement of treading a dangerous, yet carefully measured financial path. An inner fire drove her on; she enjoyed getting the better of situations, of mastering those awkward individuals she encountered. But Nicholas would have been surprised if he had known that, quite apart from her constant dread of having too much time to think, the very real fear of poverty still lingered with her.

  Sometimes when she had made a spectacular deal, Liana would sit up late at night in her office, still situated in the library in the Lower Cloisters, and contentedly add up the figures. They were rich, rich, rich! The words floated in her head, giving her a sense of intrinsic wellbeing. She had achieved everything she had planned and in a miraculously short space of time.

  She had made money not only for the Hamilton-Howard family but for herself too. She was a rich woman in her own right. Unbeknown to Nicholas, she had taken out a loan using the jewellery she had brought from Italy as security to finance the expansion of Elver Forge Industries, a gamble which had paid off handsomely – the loan had long been repaid. The log-burning stoves were being exported now in large numbers to the continent, and she had plans to set up a factory in the United States. The vastness of the American market fascinated her. When I get a slice of that, she thought, then I will start to be wealthy. But she could never explain that to Nicholas, never confess that sometimes she thought just the act of making money had become the hub of her existence. Spending it hardly seemed important but making it was. How could Nicholas, who had never known true poverty, ever understand?

  That was a basic difference between them which time and circumstance could never change. He had never been so desperately hungry that even weeds seemed like delicacies. The nearest he had ever come to being poor was having to sell one of his paintings in order to keep up the lifestyle to which he had always been accustomed. No, he had no idea of the degradation of true poverty whereas Liana could remember it all too vividly – the humiliation of selling her body in order to eke out a wretched existence. She would never forget that.

  Prostitution, Raul and Eleanora – those three memories were there, implacable, physical, inexorably entwined about her, chaining her to the past. Bitter memories but mournfully sweet, too; memories she fought to keep at bay, working until she thought she was too exhausted to think of them, only to find they refused to flee. They were lodged in her brain, stuck fast, always demanding recognition. Exhaustion was never too great, sleep never too deep to completely deaden the past.

  But money, Liana found, was a barrier of sorts and a comfort. One could never be too rich. With her account books and bank statements in the peace of the Lower Cloisters, she did find a form of contentment.

  *

  Clara Maltravers died suddenly in January 1952, and her house and land came on to the market. Much to Margaret’s surprise, her daughter Anne wrote to say that she and her husband, Richard Chapman, were flying over from New Zealand with a view to buying it. With them would come their son Peter, who was eleven years old.

  ‘How did they know about it?’ She was delighted at the prospect. Peter was a grandson she had never thought to see. ‘I’ll have to buy another pony. Maybe, though, I should get a gelding. How many hands do you think? How tall is Peter?’

  Nicholas grinned. ‘They know because I wrote and told them; and I don’t know how tall Peter is.’ He was glad his mother wa
s pleased.

  Liana smiled at Margaret’s typical response. A grandson visiting – buy another horse. ‘Perhaps you should wait,’ she cautioned. ‘Maybe Anne and her husband won’t buy the farm or maybe Peter will be like me, and not be a horse-lover.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ Margaret snorted indignantly at the very idea. ‘He’s bound to live on a horse. All the Hamilton-Howards do. Look at Eleanora.’

  ‘Of course he will like horses,’ echoed Eleanora, mischievously mimicking her grandmother’s voice. Then she switched to an uncanny impersonation of her mother’s measured tones. ‘And if he does not, he shall be banished from Broadacres for not following in the family footsteps.’

  Nicholas laughed. ‘You are far too cheeky, young lady, and I don’t know where on earth you get your acting ability from. That’s certainly not in the family.’ He turned to his mother. ‘Go on, buy a gelding that should suit him. He’s sure to ride.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose loving horses is a family trait.’ Liana said what was expected of her but as usual she felt herself go cold at the mere mention of family likenesses. Why did it still happen? There was no reason now to feel the same breathless guilt. Everyone attributed Eleanora’s characteristics to the Hamilton-Howard family genes. No-one had ever suspected.

  ‘I expect that’s why you are different, Mummy,’ said Eleanora, unconsciously compounding the lie. ‘You’re not really one of us.’

  Liana winced. God, if only she knew! ‘Perhaps,’ she said.

  Margaret, ever quick to sense the dormant sadness in Liana but always misunderstanding the reasons, took her arm. ‘My dear girl, I wouldn’t have you any other way and neither would Nicholas. It doesn’t matter a jot that you don’t like riding. You have so many talents we haven’t. For a start you’re much more intelligent. Eleanora is lucky to have such a mother.’