Grace's Story

by Jennie Walters

  Eventually I helped her upstairs, to rest quietly by herself for a while. She’d put the letter in her pocket and at last I realised what it was: a note Alf had written to be sent only in the event of his death. Perhaps they’d sent the official telegram to his mother, if she was still down as next of kin.

  I was making Florrie comfortable on the bed when she suddenly grasped my hand. ‘At least we were married. No one can take my wedding day away from me. Alf knew I loved him, and I know he loved me - and I’ll always have his ring. That’s better than nothing, isn’t it?’

  Her words sent a pang into my heart, they were so brave and pathetic at one and the same time, but I managed not to cry and agreed that a wedding ring was more than many girls had to remember their sweethearts by. Then I went slowly downstairs, to tell my mother what had happened. What a deal of misery this war has brought into the world already! And who knows how much more there is to come …

  We go about our business very quietly and thoughtfully these days; Alf’s death has cast a deeper shadow over this sad house. Lady Vye’s told Florrie she can take a week’s holiday, but there’s nowhere for her to go. Swallowcliffe’s the only home she has. ‘Besides, I need to keep my mind occupied,’ she tells Dora and me. ‘At least work stops me thinking.’

  It’s been one shock after another since the news came of Lord Vye’s death. The only good thing to hold on to now is the fact that Tom’s sorted himself out. That’s largely down to Philip, in my opinion. Tom has spent hours helping him on the wards after that first ride together, and it seems to have given him back a sense of purpose. The next thing we know, it’s been arranged - with the help of Dr Hathaway and Colonel Vye - for my brother to be transferred from the artillery to the medical corps. He’s to be a stretcher-bearer in the same hospital as Philip.

  ‘I’m going to try and make a decent fist of this, Gracie,’ Tom tells me when we’re alone together for a moment. ‘So long as I don’t have to shoot at anybody, I think it will be all right. Besides, Philip will look out for me.’

  ‘Look out for each other, won’t you?’ I ask, the voice catching in my throat and that dreadful knot of worry back in my stomach.

  When will things ever be right again? I’ve been restless and uneasy all week, unable to settle to my work or sleep through the night without starting awake, worried to death about goodness knows what. It’s as though a layer of skin has been peeled away; all my feelings are too close to the surface, liable to bubble up without warning. Whatever’s the matter with me? Florrie’s tears may be catching but life has been worse than this before and I’ve got through it without wanting to weep at the drop of a hat. I can’t stop turning everything over in my mind: thinking, endlessly thinking. About Lord Vye and the man he’s turned out to be; about his brother, the Colonel, and the debt of gratitude we owe him (my father’s written a letter, although that’s hardly enough for saving a man’s life); about my mother, and the grievance she’s nursed against Rory Vye for all these years; about Philip Hathaway, too.

  One night, I wake up at dawn. It isn’t worth trying to go back to sleep, even if by magic I could, for we’ll have to be up in a couple of hours. So rather than lie there, tossing and turning in the stuffy room, I feel for a shawl and creep out to find a breath of air up on the roof. Light is stealing over the countryside, and with every passing minute the patchwork of fields and hedgerows is revealed more clearly as I stand there, leaning against a chimney stack. The bricks feel solid and warm at my back, even though the sun isn’t up yet, and I rub against them to scratch it, like Daffodil under the oak trees. How quiet and lovely the world looks! And yet the sight of it brings me no peace.

  For some reason I find myself thinking about my mother’s friend, Iris, and once a picture of her has floated into my head, there’s no room for anything else. Beautiful, doomed Iris, with hair yellow as butter, who died in the workhouse - along with her baby, no doubt. Did Colonel Vye know he’d fathered a child? He must have done; it would have been the only likely reason for Iris to have left the Hall so suddenly. And he did nothing for her? Just left her there to die, alone and abandoned? Maybe Ma has reason to hate him after all. If anyone treated a friend of mine like that - Florrie, or Daisy, or even Dora - I should find it hard to forgive them too.

  And yet …

  And yet, the story doesn’t ring true.

  Philip’s told me something about Colonel Vye which I know to be the case. ‘He’s always been keen on fair play,’ that’s what he said, and I realise in an instant the Colonel would never behave in such a way, even as a young man. How could I ever have thought so? He isn’t the type to seduce a girl and abandon her without a backward glance. Somebody else in the family was, though. Daisy’s voice cuts through the clamour in my head, ringing out clear as a bell. ‘He was on the prowl - looking for some simple girl whose head would be turned by a few sweet words in a cut-glass accent.’

  The truth is staring me in the face. Now I know who fathered Iris’s baby, and it isn’t Rory Vye.

  It’s hard to concentrate on my work in the morning (can it really be only yesterday?) and Da has to scold me a couple of times for carelessness. Luckily we both have the afternoon off, since Ma has arranged a treat for us to say goodbye to Tom, who’s going back to France first thing today. She’s made a picnic and we take a train down to the coast at dinnertime: the whole family, apart from Ivy. Lady Vye says Swallowcliffe will have to manage without the Stanburys for one afternoon, which is very decent of her.

  It’s lovely down by the sea. A bit nippy, with the sun hiding all morning and a breeze whipping up the water into frothy waves, but fresh and salty clean. There are some soldiers marching along the beach on exercises, but when they’re out of sight, you can almost forget about the war. Of course we’re sad because of Tom going off again, but he’s so much better than he was that we’re thankful for small mercies and trying to hope for the best. At least he won’t have to carry a rifle. We find a sheltered spot and spread out our picnic: sandwiches, pork pies, crunchy red radishes from the garden, lemonade and ginger beer. Afterwards, Da and Tom play cards and Hannah drops off to sleep on the rug; the Vyes’ baby is wakeful and she’s disturbed most nights.

  I want to get Ma on her own, so I take her off for a walk along the shingle, arm in arm. Every so often we can hear a dull thud and eventually we realise what it is: the sound of the guns in France, floating across the Channel. ‘Poor souls,’ Ma says, biting her lip. It’s strange to hear noises from this other world, so very different from our own and yet not so far away.

  Yet as you might imagine, for once I have other things on my mind than the war. There’s no easy way of bringing up the topic so I just come out with it, fair and square. ‘Ma, you know your friend Iris, who ended up in the workhouse?’ She looks rather taken aback, but I plough on. ‘Well, did she tell you that Colonel Vye was her baby’s father?’

  After a second or two, she gives me an answer. ‘Not in so many words. It was clear enough, though, for anyone with an eye to see. If you’d watched him with her, Grace, you’d have known. He was such a flirt and she fell for it - hook, line and sinker.’ She pauses, gazing out over the water. ‘Iris told me she was involved with a gentleman. Who else could it have been? I saw him waiting for her in the boathouse one night.’

  ‘Did you see his face? Are you absolutely certain it was him?’

  ‘Yes, I am. Positive,’ she replies (although just for a second, is there the briefest flash of doubt in her eyes?). ‘Look, I can understand why you don’t want to accept what that man did after the way he’s helped Tom. Perhaps he is a better person now, but I’ll bet it’s only because he feels guilty - and so he should. He was the one who did for Iris, I’d stake my life on it.’

  There’s nothing I can say to that, not having any definite proof, so I hold my tongue for the time being. I’m determined not to let the matter rest, though; it’s as if I’ve made a pact with Iris to find out the truth. Why, I can’t say. I feel she wants me to, th
at’s all - which is ridiculous since we’ve never met and she must have died ten years before I was born, but there you are.

  I think about the tricky matter of proof for the rest of that afternoon on the beach, and the walk back to the railway station, and the clackety-clack train journey to Edenvale, and the hansom cab ride back to Swallowcliffe since we’re all tired and in the mood to treat ourselves. We have mutton chops for supper, and after that I forget about Iris for once because it’s time to say goodbye to Tom; I have to be back at the Hall by ten and he’s leaving early the next morning. Another dreadful, sad farewell - they don’t get any easier with practice. I can’t help wondering how Mrs Hathaway must be feeling, what with her husband and Philip both going off this time.

  I don’t sleep much better through the night, but at least an idea comes to me in the wakeful early hours of this morning. There’s one person who’s been at the Hall with my mother for donkey’s years and probably knew Iris too: Mrs Jeakes. Maybe she can tell me something useful? So I fairly race around the stables to get ahead of my chores and then slip away to the kitchen at eleven or so, when Da’s taking Mrs Hathaway out in the dog-cart. I change into a skirt and wash my hands, but it’s only halfway there that it occurs to me to wonder how I’ll bring the subject up - or any subject at all, for that matter. There’s no reason whatsoever for me to be in the kitchen.

  Eventually I hit on the idea of running an errand and take a detour to the walled garden, where I spot one of the village lads dawdling about in the soft fruit cage.

  ‘Cook’s been shouting for these raspberries a good hour,’ I say, snatching the basket out of his hands. ‘If I don’t take them straight away, you’ll be in a whole heap of trouble.’

  Mrs Jeakes isn’t overjoyed at the sight of the raspberries. ‘Put them on the table,’ she says with a jerk of her head. ‘Though why that daft gardener should be bothering us with dribs and drabs of fruit at odd times of the day is beyond me. Well, off you go. What are you fidgeting about for?’

  ‘Ma’am, I’m trying to find something out,’ I say in a rush. ‘My mother’s told me about a great friend she had years ago here at the Hall, who died sadly, and I was wondering where she was buried. Her name was Iris Baker. You didn’t know her, did you, or know her family by any chance?’

  Mrs Jeakes looks at me as though I’m mad. ‘I’ll say one thing for you, Miss Stanbury, you keep us all on our toes. There’s no telling what tomfoolery you’ll come up with next. Why should I know where this Iris was buried if your mother doesn’t and they were such good friends? Back to the stables with you, and try to think about something useful for a change.’

  ‘Please, Mrs Jeakes, I do so want to find out!’

  ‘And I do so want to get on with my work. Now out of my sight this minute before I set you to skinning eels!’

  I’ve almost reached the door before she calls out, ‘Iris Baker worked in the still room and left in a hurry for the usual reason, I suppose. That’s about all I know. Oh, and there’s her recipe for rose-petal jam in the black book.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am.’ That’s better than nothing; at least I have a faint trail to follow. And if there’s any trace of Iris Baker left in the still room after all these years, you can trust Bess to have sniffed it out. I decide to ask for a look at the black book first: a thick volume which lives in the still-room dresser, its leather binding cracked and pages splattered with ancient fruit stains.

  ‘I want to make the rose-petal jam for my mother,’ I tell Bess, looking over my shoulder to make sure Ma’s nowhere near about (for the still room is next door to the housekeeper’s parlour). ‘It’s a surprise, so don’t say anything, will you?’

  ‘I can find that one for you,’ she says, licking a finger and thumb before flicking over the pages. I want to tell her to take more care: she’s handling a precious relic. ‘Here we are. I knew it was somewhere near the beginning.’ Bess cracks the book’s spine open to make the pages lie flat before passing it to me. ‘Make sure you use the dark-red petals with a strong scent, and ask Mr McKinley first or he’ll have your guts for garters. Don’t come running to me for help, either, when it all goes wrong. I’ve heard about your efforts at marmalade from Dora.’

  I let Bess run on and smooth my fingers over the paper, staring at Iris’s faded handwriting as though it will bring her alive. She has an elegant copperplate script, very regular and even, beautifully laid out in the centre of the page. Proof the recipe’s hers comes in the shape of two small initials, ‘IB’, written at the end of it; the bottom loop of the ‘B’ curved around the ‘I’ so that the two letters twine together in a shape of their own.

  ‘You don’t have to learn the thing by heart,’ Bess says quizzically. ‘Sit down here and copy it out.’ She rummages for a pencil stub in a drawer, then slaps it down on the table with a strip of paper. ‘Now I must run, there’s a million and one things to do before dinner. You might have hours to moon over a recipe but not all of us are so lucky.’

  ‘Wait, Bess. Before you go, just tell me - do you know anything about Iris Baker? She was the still-room maid here … oh, it must have been twenty-five years ago.’ That was when Ma first came to the Hall, wasn’t it? ‘She wrote out this recipe for rose-petal jam.’

  ‘Never heard of her,’ Bess snaps. ‘Now don’t take an age, and shut the door after you.’

  Just my luck, I think when she’s left, to corner Bess at the one moment she’s too busy to talk and ask her about the one person at Swallowcliffe she doesn’t know. I leaf through the book, holding it up to my face to smell the paper. Where are you, Iris? Why are you so hard to find? I take hold of the front and back covers and shake them. A tiny scrap of something dark flutters down from between the pages: it turns out to be a pressed violet, but anyone could have put the flower there, not necessarily her. Then my fingers detect something unusual. The coloured endpapers stuck to the book’s back cover bulge a little. They are thicker than those at the front, unevenly thicker. Something is lying between them and the black leather binding.

  My fingers trembling, I try to pry the endpaper loose. It doesn’t come. I don’t want to tear it so I look around for a knife or anything else that’s sharp. Nothing. One of my hair pins will have to do. I make a tiny hole, work the pin under the paper and seesaw it back and forth. And then at last I can peel the paper away, to reveal the corner of a photograph. With a little more careful work, I manage to pull it out … and know immediately that I’m looking at Iris. She’s standing in the still room, before the dresser in front of me now, exactly as I pictured her. She has thick fair hair escaping beneath her cap, dazzling skin that shines out of the picture as though it’s lit up from inside, and she’s smiling so happily it brings tears to my eyes. There’s a date on the back of the photograph: ‘March 1890’ - written, I’m sure, by Iris herself.

  Now I have her.

  I have him, too. There’s a second photograph slipped behind the endpaper. It shows Iris wearing what looks like a silk ballgown with white kid gloves up the elbow, and there’s a message in another hand on the back. ‘My love for ever, dearest. EV’.

  EV. Edward Vye. Or as Daisy says, ‘His Precious Lordship’.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here in the stables. The photographs are safely in an envelope, tucked away on the shelf among last year’s feed receipts where no one will ever find them. They’re too upsetting to look at any more. It’s one thing to come up with a theory, no matter how strongly you might believe it, and another to hold the evidence right there in your hand. My thoughts run around in a circle, and this is where they keep ending up: Ma is wrong. She’s hated Rory Vye and worshipped his brother for years, all because of a stupid mistake. And if she’s wrong about one thing, she can be wrong about another.

  You see, there’s something I haven’t told anyone. It hurts to admit how much I care for Philip Hathaway. Looking back, I probably fell in love with him that moment I opened my eyes in the wood and saw him sitting against the tree, wat
ching me. He’s honest and clever and kind, and the worst of it is, he might have loved me once, too. I’ve thrown all that away, because I listened to my mother and wasn’t brave enough to stand up for myself. Now it’s too late. He’s gone to France and he probably won’t come back; I shall never be able to tell him how I feel. That’s really why Florrie’s words had such an effect on me the other day. ‘Alf knew I loved him, and I know he loved me.’ She seized her chance of happiness with both hands, while I’ve let mine slip through my fingers.

  I shall go mad if I sit here much longer, so I get up and fetch brushes from the harness-room. It’s better to be busy, and I suddenly yearn to be with the horses. Daffodil could do with grooming and that will comfort me; she’s so calm and wise somehow. I find myself talking to her as I work. She nuzzles me occasionally with her soft nose as though she’s trying to cheer me up, so I start telling her how I feel about Philip, since I can’t talk to anyone else. I tell her everything, even thoughts I can’t remember having had before - how handsome he is, and how brave, and the way my heart pounded when he held me that time in the stable yard, and how much I hate Lydia Lovell - and she nods her head up and down occasionally as though she understands. ‘Oh, Daffodil,’ I sigh, laying my head against her neck, ‘what am I going to do with myself now he’s gone?

  Then I hear it. The tiniest noise, as though a mouse has scurried across the floor. It makes me whirl around with my heart in my mouth and my cheeks flaming red. Has someone been eavesdropping?

  He’s standing there. Philip himself. How can he be?

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I stammer. ‘Why aren’t you on the way to France?’

  How much has he heard? I can’t bear to imagine, I only want to die, for the ground to open and swallow me up, because I can tell from the way he’s smiling that he must have been listening to me for some time.