‘Ah, here’s my little niece,’ Sebastian sneered as Briony appeared in the hallway to see what all the noise was.
One of his friends, a lanky chap with buck teeth and bulgy eyes, looked her up and down appreciatively as he ran his wet tongue across his thick lips.
‘I say, Seb old man,’ he said in a very la-di-dah voice. ‘Where have you been hiding this little treasure away?’
Briony squirmed with embarrassment, but before she could say anything Sebastian ordered, ‘Get down to the cellar, girl, and fetch up a few bottles of the old man’s best whisky. The chaps and I are going to have a few games of cards.’
‘Fetch them yourself,’ she snapped. ‘I’m on my way to bed.’
‘Ooh, you wouldn’t like a bit of company, would you, darling?’
Briony looked at the man scathingly then turned on her heel and strode away. But her heart was thumping. She didn’t like the look of this lot one little bit, and wondered why they weren’t in uniform. They’d probably pulled strings to be exempt from service. What would happen if the man was to follow her? Thankfully he didn’t, and once she was in bed she lay and fumed. If Sebastian thought she was going to cook breakfast for that lot and wait on them in the morning, he had another think coming!
Sebastian’s friends stayed for two days and for Briony it was a nightmare. Marcus, the man who had eyed her up on the night of his arrival, proved to be the biggest nuisance. He would wander into the kitchen at every opportunity, seat himself at the table and leer at her while she tried to ignore him and get her jobs done. With his sharp nose and buck teeth, Briony found him quite repulsive, but it didn’t stop him ogling her. She wondered why her grandmother didn’t just ask him and his cronies to leave. They had kept everyone awake with their shouting and swearing, and the card games had gone on until the early hours of the morning. But Marion Frasier seemed to be locked in a little world of her own now and hardly seemed to notice what was going on around her.
On the second morning when Briony went into the dining room to set the table for breakfast she found the whole room in a terrible state. She stared about in dismay. Empty bottles had been flung down to roll around the floor, and a glass that had been thrown at the fireplace had shattered into thousands of pieces that were now littered all over the carpet. But it was the smell that was the worst. Holding her nose, she walked towards the table then retched when she saw a pile of vomit on the floor. Whoever had done it had made no attempt whatsoever to clean it up and Briony didn’t intend to either.
She flew back to the kitchen and Mrs Dower and Howel who had just arrived looked at her in amazement.
‘Whatever has happened now?’ Mrs Dower asked as Briony sat down heavily.
‘It’s . . . it’s those pigs that Sebastian brought back with him,’ Briony said in a rare show of temper. ‘One of them has been sick all over the floor in the dining room and just left it – and the place is in a terrible state! I’ll tell you now, I’m not cleaning it up. Grandmother can do what she likes about it, but I won’t go back in there till it’s done!’
Howel immediately strode away to check it out for himself and when he came back he was furious.
‘She’s right, Ma,’ he addressed his mother. ‘It’s disgusting in there and I don’t blame Briony for making a stand. Let the filthy swine who did it clean it up himself.’
‘But how can we serve breakfast if we can’t go into the dining room?’ his mother asked.
Howel shrugged. ‘They’ll have to go without, won’t they? And if Mrs Frasier asks why, we’ll tell her to her face.’
Half an hour later, Marion Frasier walked into the kitchen and asked imperiously, ‘Why on earth haven’t you served breakfast yet, girl? I’ve been waiting for you to call me!’
‘We haven’t served breakfast because of the state the dining room is in,’ Mrs Dower answered. ‘If you’re hungry you’ll have to eat breakfast in here, but we won’t be serving Master Seb and his visitors till they’ve cleaned their mess up.’
Marion Frasier frowned, then, like Howel, she went to see for herself what all the fuss was about.
When she came back she said calmly, ‘I can understand your reluctance to go in there, Mrs Dower. The girl will have to clean it up.’
‘Oh no I won’t!’ Briony told her defiantly. ‘Let those that made the mess do it. And as I’ve told you before, my name is Briony, not girl!’
Her grandmother looked astounded. ‘How dare you speak to me like that!’ she screeched in a most unladylike manner. ‘While you are here you will earn your keep, and if I tell you to do something, you will do it! My son is quite entitled to have visitors if he so wishes. After all, this house will be his one day when anything happens to me.’
‘That’s as maybe.’ Briony faced her, hands on hips. ‘And I am more than willing to do my fair share of work about the place, as I have already proved. But I will not – repeat NOT – clean that mess up!’
It was then that Sebastian stumbled into the kitchen looking bleary-eyed and unshaven. ‘What’s all the shouting about? And why is breakfast so blasted late?’ He had clearly tumbled into bed in his clothes, still stinking of drink, and Briony looked at him with contempt.
‘The breakfast is cooked and in the oven,’ she told him. ‘If you want some, help yourself, because I won’t be setting foot in that dining room again until that vile mess you and your so-called friends made is cleaned up – and that’s an end to it.’
‘Mother?’ He looked towards Marion appealingly and she began to wring her hands.
‘I’m afraid that the g— she has made her mind up,’ she answered apologetically. ‘Perhaps you and your friends could set to and tidy it up a little, darling?’
He was so appalled that his mouth gaped open but Briony wasn’t going to hang about to find out what he decided to do.
‘Come on,’ she said, addressing Mrs Dower and Howel. ‘I’m sure that there are lots of jobs that need doing over at the farm. I’ll come back here later when the place is fit to be seen again. Oh, and while we’re at it’ she stabbed her finger at Sebastian now ‘. . . you can tell that dreadful friend of yours, Marcus, to keep his hands to himself in future. I’m sick to death of him trying to grope me every time he comes within arm’s distance.’ And with that she stalked out, leaving Mrs Dower and Howel to follow.
They had gone some distance when suddenly Howel began to laugh. ‘Did you see the look on Master Seb’s face when you laid into him? Why, he was so shocked you could have knocked him down with a feather. He’s simply not used to not getting his own way.’
So far, Briony’s temper had carried her along but now her footsteps slowed and she glanced at Howel. His shoulders were shaking with mirth and his laughter was so infectious that the anger died away and for the first time since losing her mother she started to giggle. In no time at all, Mrs Dower was laughing too, and when they finally entered the farmyard Caden Dower took off his cap and scratched his old head, wondering what had got into them all. Something had tickled them, that was a fact!
Briony ventured back to the house mid-afternoon to find empty soup dishes and plates piled in the sink. Her grandmother had obviously warmed up the soup that was left over from the day before for their lunch.
It wouldn’t hurt them to have to fend for themselves for once, Briony thought before walking through to the dining room. The disgusting mess on the floor was gone although it still ponged a bit, and someone had swept the broken glass up and disposed of the empty bottles. She felt a little thrill of satisfaction. One point to me, she thought smugly as she made her way back to the kitchen. Being away from The Heights for a time had allowed her to put things in perspective, and although she knew that she would never fully get over the loss of her parents, she was feeling a little more optimistic now. Sarah was on the mend, and she had suddenly realised that they wouldn’t be stuck here for ever after all. Once the war was over, she and Ernie would be married and she knew that he would have no objections to Sarah and Alfie livi
ng with them. Mabel would no doubt have returned to her family in London by then. It was something to hang on to.
She stuck to her word, and that evening Mrs Dower served dinner to the guests in the dining room. Briony was adamant that she wouldn’t set foot in the room again until they had gone. They could starve for all she cared.
When Sebastian’s guests finally left, Briony let out a huge sigh of relief. Good riddance, she thought as she saw the car they had arrived in pull away. Now that they had gone she had no objections to getting back into her normal routine. She decided to start by giving the dining room and the library a good clean. She tackled the dining room first and then went into the library to start in there. It was as she was wiping down one of the oxblood-leather wing chairs that stood to either side of the fireplace that she saw a small book lying on the floor at the side of it. It looked like some sort of a diary and she flipped it open, thinking that one of Sebastian’s friends must have dropped it. As her eyes skimmed the first page, she frowned. There were rows of figures with dates at the side of them relating to funerals that Sebastian had undertaken. Further on were dates and names with sums of money written beside them. She recognised some of the names of the deceased from the ledger that her grandmother had asked her to look at, but there were far more names in this book than there had been in the other ledger. Stuffing it into the pocket of her apron, she decided that she would pass it on to her grandmother. It was really none of her business at the end of the day.
As Mrs Frasier was leaving the dining room that evening, Briony suddenly remembered the book. Taking it from her pocket, she handed it to her saying, ‘I found this in the library this morning. I think you or Sebastian must have dropped it. It was on the floor at the side of one of the chairs.’ Thankfully her uncle was dining out tonight, and Briony felt that things were returning to some sort of normality. At least she wouldn’t have to lock her bedroom door this evening, now that his nasty cronies were gone.
Her grandmother took it from her without a word then began to glance through it. Briony moved swiftly away. The woman didn’t smell very nice at all and was still in the clothes that she had been wearing for days – but Briony didn’t feel it was her place to say anything.
Howel was reading to the children and Mrs Dower was washing up when she returned to the kitchen. Her heart filled with a warm glow of gratitude as she looked at them. These two kind people had ensured that one or the other of them had been with her constantly since her mother’s funeral, and she wondered how she would have got through this terrible time without them. Even so, she knew that they had neglected their own jobs to be there and so now she suggested, ‘Why don’t you two get off now? I can finish up here.’
‘Are you sure?’ Howel asked. ‘I mean I don’t mind staying if Ma wants to get off home.’
‘I’ll be fine now that the visitors have gone,’ Briony assured him. ‘But thank you both so much for all you’ve done for me.’ She nodded towards Alfie, who was already dropping off in the chair. ‘I reckon I might have an early night once I’ve tidied up and got these two off to bed.’
Her grandmother had allowed Alfie to sleep back in his own room next to Briony since his mother’s death, because he had taken to crying for her in the night.
‘I’ll just carry this little chap up for you before I go then, shall I?’ Howel offered. He swung the child up into his arms and upstairs he laid him in the bed then stood aside as Briony tucked the blankets up under his chin. Alfie’s eyes were already closing and she smiled at Howel over her shoulder.
‘It’s lovely to have him back in this part of the house with us,’ she whispered, and side by side they tiptoed from the room, closing the door softly behind them. It was dark on the landing, and as they made their way towards the staircase Briony stumbled. Howel’s arms quickly went around her to steady her. She could feel his heart beating and as she looked up into his eyes in the dim light, a strange little tingle went through her. Feeling guilty, she instantly pulled away from him. What was she thinking of? She and Ernie had an understanding, and just because she was feeling lonely she was letting her imagination run away with her. Howel didn’t want her. Of course he didn’t, and she loved Ernie.
As soon as they got back downstairs, Howel mumbled, ‘Goodnight,’ and left with his mother, leaving Briony to finish her chores.
Once she was done, she joined Mabel at the side of the fire to read her a little bedtime story and much to her surprise, Mabel scrambled onto her lap and snuggled up to her.
‘I like Howel, do you?’ the little girl asked sleepily when the story was finished.
‘Well, er . . . yes, of course I do. He’s very nice,’ Briony said, going pink.
‘He ain’t like the men what did bad things to me back at me mum’s.’
Briony’s stomach flipped over but she didn’t say a word.
‘When they did bad things to me they used to give me mum money,’ Mabel went on in her own matter-of-fact way. ‘Some o’ the men used ter go into Mum’s room, an’ some of ’em would come into mine. When they pushed their things in me it really ’urt an’ I used to scream for her to come an’ ’elp me – but she never did.’ She frowned as the memories flooded back and Briony felt as if her heart were breaking. Poor little mite! She had had suspicions that the little girl had been interfered with after listening to some of her rantings during the nightmares, and now Mabel was confirming it. But it was even worse than she had feared; those men had been stealing the child’s innocence and doing unspeakable things to her.
‘Well, no one will do bad things to you while you’re here with me,’ she promised, stroking Mabel’s sweet-smelling hair. ‘They’d have to get past me first!’
‘But yer won’t be able to stop ’em from doin’ it again when I ’ave to go back ’ome will yer? Couldn’t I just stay ’ere wiv you?’
‘We’ll see.’ It was all Briony could think of to say. She couldn’t give the child false promises. The future was uncertain for all of them, so they would just have to wait and see.
‘I love you,’ Mabel said suddenly and the words were so unexpected that tears sprang to Briony’s eyes.
‘I love you too,’ she said, and in that moment she realised that she meant it. Somehow, in the time she had been with her, the little girl had wormed her way into her heart, and it would be devastating to lose her. But would she have any say in the matter if her mother sent for her when, or rather if, the war was ever over? Briony tried to put it from her mind. It was a long way away and she had enough to worry about right now as it was.
Just as she was making for the stairs, she heard Sebastian stumble into the hallway and from the noise he was making it sounded like he was drunk again.
‘I want a word with you,’ she heard her grandmother say, and clutching her hot-water bottle she stopped to listen.
‘An’ I wanna little word with you, Mother dear.’
Briony shivered at the menace in his slurred words.
‘This book – how can you explain it?’ Marion demanded. ‘There are far more funerals written in here than there are in the ledger that the girl brought back from the funeral parlour – so where has all the money gone from the ones that you haven’t accounted for in there?’
‘Ah . . .’ She heard him pause. ‘Well, the thing is – the ones in this book are the ones I expected to do, but the people took their business elsewhere.’
‘Then why have you written a list of expenses at the side of each entry?’
Again there was a silence until Sebastian stuttered, ‘Th . . . they’re the prices I was going to charge them if they had used us. But I can’t help it if they chose to go elsewhere, can I?’
‘Hmm!’ His mother clearly didn’t believe him, and Briony didn’t blame her. Sebastian was lying through his teeth. But then he was good at that.
‘But now, Mother, I need to speak to you about another little matter,’ Sebastian hurried on, his voice thick with drink. ‘The thing is, you see . . . Well, my friends and
I had a few games of cards while they were staying here and I lost several times to Marcus. The problem is, he’s after me to pay up now – so if you could see your way clear to giving me a little advance . . .’
Briony didn’t wait to hear any more but hurried up the stairs. Sebastian was her grandmother’s problem, not hers. And thank God for that, she thought to herself. She really couldn’t stand the man!
Chapter Thirty-Four
As they raced towards Christmas the sharp pain in Briony’s heart at the loss of her mother became a dull ache. It never really went away but she kept herself busy and for most of the time it was bearable now. She had been hoping that Sarah would be home in time to spend Christmas with them, but sadly Dr Restarick had told her that, although the little girl was making progress, she was still some way away from being released. However, Mrs Brindley had forwarded some money to Briony from the sale of the pieces of furniture she had managed to sell, and the girl had been able to buy a pretty doll with blue glass eyes and curly blonde hair, which the doctor had promised he would get to Sarah in time for her to open the parcel on Christmas Day. Howel had found two in a shop in Truro when he had gone there for supplies for the animals and Briony knew that her little sister would love it. The other one was for Mabel. Briony had also bought presents for Alfie as well as the Dowers, and for the last two weeks she had been busy with Mrs Dower making Christmas cakes and puddings with their dwindling stock of dried fruit.
She worried constantly about Ernie. Ruth and Mrs Brindley had heard nothing from him, they told her in their letters, and every day she kept her eye open for the postman, hoping for a letter. Liverpool, London and Sheffield had suffered heavy bombings for weeks now, and whenever she felt down, Briony gave a thought to all the people who had lost their homes. At least she and the children still had somewhere to live, for now at least.
Mrs Frasier was also giving her cause for concern. The woman had taken to wandering off, and knowing how dangerous the cliffs could be, Briony did her best to keep an eye on her. She rarely washed any more and constantly talked to her husband as if he were in the room with her, which sent shivers up Briony’s spine. It seemed that Sebastian was taking full advantage of her confused state and Briony often heard him wheedling yet more money out of her. She wondered what would happen when the money finally dried up. He seemed to spend most of his time in a drunken stupor now and poor Mr Page was forced to handle the funeral business all by himself.
Soldier's Daughter, The Page 30