Susan Speers

by My Cousin Jeremy

  “I release you, Clarry, from any and all promises to me, from the hope of our future together. Marry Dickon Scard if you will. My quarrel with him is nothing compared to the fight for England’s survival. Dickon’s a good man, he’s one of us. His family held Hethering land once, they hold the best bit now.”

  “You want me to marry Dickon?” Tears ran down my face.

  “Have children, have ten children, name a girl Belle like your poppet.”

  The door handle turned. “Now, Sir, there’s not a minute to spare.”

  “Jemmy,” I clutched his hands. “You chose Belle over the folly. Choose our children over this madness.”

  “Help Arthur, if you can.” His boots were on in an instant, he had practice with hasty exits. He kissed me hard, just once, then pulled my clutching hands off him, holding them in a painful grip.

  “I will love you forever, Clarry, from heaven or hell.”

  He was gone. I never saw the man who took him from me. I wouldn’t see the men who killed him. I was once bereft again. It seemed the entire world opposed my need to love this one man. My father, Jemmy’s wife, his child, the War Office, the German Empire. Helpless and defeated, I sat on the sinking mattress and stared at the door.

  *

  Much later, I fumbled my shoes onto numb feet and pinned my hat in place. I folded Jemmy’s handkerchief, ragged, but clean, its wisps of my embroidery clinging despite the army’s rough laundry. I stumbled down uneven stairs, too upset to avoid holes worn in the filthy runner.

  A soldier passed me, the boy from the tap room.

  “Are you all right, Miss?” He peered at my tearstained face. “Is it bad news? Is your sweetheart dead?”

  “He will be,” I said.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I don’t like to remember the days after my return from Watford. I sent visitors away. I held myself apart from all emotion. I sat for hours at the piano, my fingers still.

  Henry brought me oceans of tea. Cook broke into her hoarded supplies to make special meals. She baked my favorite biscuits, but I couldn’t swallow past the lump in my throat.

  Every day I wrote the date in my account ledger. I knew Dickon’s precious leave was slipping through my fingers, but I didn’t send a message to his sister.

  I sat in the rose garden one evening, the sun as loathe to leave the sky as I to return to Hethering’s empty husk. I heard a crunch of gravel on the foot path, but didn’t turn until Dickon sat down beside me.

  I didn’t know I’d be bathed in happiness as pink and warm as the clouds in front of me. His dear face, his ruddy cheeks, his clear eyes called me back to the living. He’d had a week of country air and good food. I was wrong to compare him with Jeremy’s grey-faced wraith, but Dickon’s vitality gave me hope that life went on.

  “I had to come,” he said as if we were in the middle of a drawing room conversation. “Dora said no, but I love you, Clarry. I need to see you. Even this brief encounter will give me hope over there.”

  “Hope?” It wasn’t a word people used that year.

  “Hope that one day, life as we knew it will continue. Hope you’ll be there with me.”

  Jemmy gave me up with his last hope. Dickon carried me with him. Perhaps it was unfair to think that, perhaps Jemmy had knowledge Dickon was spared. Still, I clasped Dickon’s warm brown hand to anchor me in this world. It wasn’t the other way round as he thought.

  “Has something changed?” He looked at my face, then tilted my chin with a gentle finger, more hope dawning in his puzzled eyes.

  I leaned against his hand. “I’ll marry you, Dickon, if you’ll have me.”

  “If I’ll have you?” His voice was incredulous and tender and amused all at once. “Of course I’ll have you, Clarry. I want you every day. I need you every day.”

  “Well, then.” I lifted my face, hoping his kiss would wake my frozen heart.

  He didn’t kiss me. “What about Jeremy? I have to know.”

  “He wants me to marry.” It was true.

  “Hard to believe.” Dickon was kind, but he wasn’t foolish.

  “He gave me his blessing.” Under sentence of death.

  “To marry me?”

  “The war changed him.” It will murder him.

  “Well,” he exhaled, his brow creased. “I didn’t guess he’d ever change his opinion of me, but if it gives me hope of loving you, Clarry, I’ll believe it. I’ll take my chance, and thank him for it.”

  He took a knot of pink silk from his pocket. Inside was a gold filigree circle studded with amethysts and seed pearls.

  “I bought it in Paris,” he said, “because I couldn’t forget you and I couldn’t give up hope.”

  The ring wasn’t a perfect fit, but I would manage. He kissed my forehead, he kissed the corner of my mouth and then we shared our betrothal kiss as the sun slipped below the horizon and darkness fell.

  *****

  We drove through the soft dark night to tell Dora and her husband, Ash. She woke her children to share our celebration and an impromptu feast of cider and shandy, and bread spread with butter and strawberry jam.

  They blinked and yawned in their nightgowns and nightshirts, the baby drowsy in her big sister’s arms. All had Dickon’s ruddy cheeks, most had his crooked smile.

  “They’re so sweet.” I helped Dora divide the bread among the children as fast as I could. Despite the late hour, the children ate with good appetite and I joined them in feasting on the simple treat.

  “You’ll want your own bairn soon?” Dora asked.

  “As many as you if they’re as handsome,” I said, but I thought of Jeremy’s charge ‘have ten children’. My face must have sobered, because a little silence fell that Dora hastened to end.

  “Come see us any time,” she said. “Don’t wait on Dickon’s next leave.”

  “I will,” I said. “I’ll need your help planning a wedding.”

  “You won’t wait ‘til it’s done?” She meant the war, the ogre in our lives.

  “No,” Dickon said. “We’ll be man and wife without its blessing.” Now we had Jeremy’s benison, Dickon would wait on no other.

  Dickon stopped his auto up the lane from Hethering’s gates. “I don’t want to bring your butler’s wrath down on my head.” He put his arm around my shoulders. “I should have come sooner.”

  “No, I said, “You chose right.”

  “In the day and in the lady.” He leaned over and kissed me with great feeling. I closed my eyes. I wanted to please him, I wanted to feel as he did, I wanted to stop thinking.

  “Clarry,” he murmured, and his passion became mine, but he stopped kissing me and sat up. He wound down his window and breathed deep the cool night air.

  “No babies ‘till we’re wed,” he said. “I want everything done right.”

  Dora and I brought him to the train station the next morning. She stood back while we said farewell.

  “I’ll write you every day,” I promised. “You answer as often as you can.”

  “I’ll put in for leave tomorrow,” he said. “I don’t care what they think, I’ll be after’em ‘til it’s mine.”

  He ran up the platform to hug his sister, then back to me, to clasp my hands and search my face. “I mean it, Clarry, do you? Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” I called as he jumped aboard the moving train and caught his kit bag from the porter. I was sure. After all, I’d given my word.

  The ring fell from my finger, but I found it and held it high as I waved and the train took him away.

  “Poor man,” said Dora, coming to take my arm as the train disappeared from view. “Poor lass. It’ll be a long time before he gets another leave.”

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

  “Ah, men do and women wait,” she said. “It’s not a fair world.”

  “It’s not fair,” I agreed. I lived alone in Hethering’s beauty while Dickon and Jeremy risked their lives in hell.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven


  Dora had the right of it. Dickon got no more leave. As the weeks and then months passed, I began to believe he was made an example for asking so soon and so often. I begged him to stop and wait his turn. I didn’t want him passed over for a much needed rest when the proper time came.

  I kept my promise. I wrote to him every day. We made plans for our life together. We dreamed about where we’d live. We made jokes about kitchen curtains and garden beds. These fanciful details let me see how our life would be.

  Until the war ended, I would find us a suitable cottage in the village. My butler’s feelings made Hethering impossible. Willow’s cottage was impossible. I couldn’t begin my marriage in a bed I’d shared with Jeremy. I wrote Dickon it was ‘too small’. If he thought I was snobbish, so be it.

  As for my house in Cornwall, it was too far away. Thérèse and I exchanged regular letters, but I stopped mentioning my return. She congratulated me on my engagement to Dickon with perfect propriety, but I sensed warmth and approval in her crabbed handwriting.

  When I told my butler, Henry, about my plans, he said nothing. He looked, quite suddenly, old. He knew I posted a letter to Jeremy every Monday. He knew I never received a reply.

  Amalia Pickety found a treasure, a little stone house bequeathed to a London businessman. He was happy to rent it for a pittance and the promise that Dickon and I would refurbish and look after it. I could live there and walk to Hethering every day to manage estate affairs.

  Our harvest was bountiful and autumn faded into winter. I spent Christmas Eve with the Picketys and Christmas day with Dora and her family. I was a frequent visitor to this happy home. Their bright, active children gave me all the images and expressions I needed to complete illustrations for my latest book. My publisher was pleased.

  “You needn’t have brought us gifts.” Dora ignored the tribute her children had piled around my chair.

  “I love to do it. I love to see their faces light up.” I shifted the “baby”, almost two years old, from one shoulder to another, with little care for the damp patch of drool on my crimson blouse. Dora was pregnant, the new baby would arrive with the lambs next spring.

  “I had a much loved doll,” I said.

  “I heard Master Jeremy rescued her from a pond and got himself sent away for his pains,” Dora said. “How could that be?”

  “Well, there was a set of valuable maps,” I began to tell Dora and all the children the story of the fifth folly, about Belle’s mishap and Jeremy’s heroics.

  The children listened with shining eyes. “Tell it again, Miss,” May begged me. She was Dora’s eldest daughter, a serious girl, almost twelve years old.

  I did, and in the telling realized two things. This was a story my publishers might like. But, more important, Dora gave me a chance to think of Jeremy, to speak about him, to say his name out loud.

  She was a kind woman and a true friend to give me this precious Christmas gift.

  *****

  Early in the morning, early in spring, I waited at the railway station for the London train. Few passengers stepped onto the platform, none of them were Dickon. Then, at the very end of the train, I saw him jump down and I waved.

  He looked amazing. Tall and strong, a little too thin for my liking, but I would soon fatten him up. He came toward me, faster and faster until he was running. I defied propriety to throw my arms around him, he picked me up and whirled me around.

  Before my feet were on the ground, he began kissing me until my senses swam and I began to laugh, helpless from the wonder of it all. Dickon was home, safe and sound. In a matter of days I would be Mrs. Scard.

  He left off kissing so I could get my breath, but held me firm against him, refusing to let me go.

  “Did you get the special license?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes, and a fine wedding band, too.” He patted his breast pocket. “Are you ready to marry me?”

  “Everything is arranged.”

  “Can we be wed today?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes.” In a matter of hours we would be husband and wife. My nerves began a fine hum only I could hear. “The sooner, the better.”

  Dora waited to drive us home. When she heard our plan her smile beamed. “Wedding in the Vicar’s study, supper at our farm, and your wedding trip?”

  “Willow’s cottage,” Dickon said, helping me up on the hard, high seat of Dora’s truck.

  “What?” My heart lurched. I couldn’t do that.

  “I know you think it’s too cramped for married life, Clarry, but it’s perfect for our honeymoon. We won’t waste time in travel. Think of the memories.”

  Think indeed. “I want us to begin in neutral ground, not Marchmont or Scard land,” I protested.

  “Willow’s cottage is where Marchmont and Scard made friends,” Dickon said. “Don’t you want her blessing on us?”

  I couldn’t answer him. The truth of the matter was too wounding.

  “Why not, Clarry?” His voice grew harder, as if he sensed the truth, but had not yet admitted it to himself. In the strong morning sunlight I saw new shadows under his eyes. Worse, I saw them in his eyes.

  “Of course I want Willow’s blessing. I’m confused, fanciful. It’s my wedding day, Dickon.”

  Dora saw my distress. “If it’s a matter of making the cottage fit for a newlyweds, I’ll be happy to do for you.”

  “No, no. I’ll just run over after lunch to be sure all’s in order.” Dora was heavy with child. That was my excuse if questioned.

  The furrows in Dickon’s forehead smoothed and new lines bracketing his mouth relaxed.

  “There we are,” he said. “My wedding day. I’ve waited long enough.”

  Dora left me at Hethering’s gate. I spoke to Henry about my plans for the day and told him I would return in a week’s time.

  He nodded once. “Best wishes, Miss.”

  “Thank you, Henry.” I knew how much those three simple words cost him.

  *

  I tried very hard not to think, not to remember, as I dusted and swept Willow’s tiny home. I removed the elaborately embroidered coverlet from her bed and put a quilt made from thousands of little green squares in its place. I wanted to rearrange the furniture, but couldn’t budge her white painted iron bedstead.

  In the kitchen I cradled Willow’s Japanese teapot in my hands as though it held heat from my last visit. Jem had reached past me to the nightstand to pour tea into its two matching cups.

  “Be careful, darling,” he’d warned. “Hot tea on naked flesh doesn’t bear thinking of.”

  The cottage door banged open and the teapot crashed to the stone floor.

  Dora carried an enormous basket of provisions over her arm. “Oh, my.” She set it down and hurried to my side.

  “Is it bad luck?” I felt a little faint.

  “It’s nerves, that’s all, and who can blame you with all this rush.” She swept up the broken bits and tied them in a tea towel. “Ash can mend this.”

  She couldn’t know it would always be broken for me.

  “Is there another teapot?”

  I searched the cupboards and brought down a dun colored glazed vessel with a little ceramic mouse perched on its lid.

  “Willow kept this for us, for Dickon and me.” Suddenly things came right and I smiled in relief.

  “Good then. No more nerves, now.” Dora put bread and jam and cheese in the pantry, milk, eggs and butter in the larder. She put her hand to her forehead. “How could I forget the tea?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I — I keep some here,” I said.

  I saw the flicker of a question in her eyes, but she put her half formed thought aside.

  “Hurry home now,” she said. “in a few brief hours you’ll be Dickon’s bride.”

  After Dora left, I had one last thing to do before I put on my bride clothes. I went slowly through the twisted bracken, not yet cleared after winter’s retreat. I found the fifth folly littered with twigs and leaves. I cleared a place and sat, looking out over
Hethering and mourning Jeremy.

  He wasn’t dead, at least I didn’t think so. There’d been no official notice, only a numbing silence. No secret message in Greek, no spun glass Eiffel Tower, no warmth in my breast to tell me he still walked on this earth.

  Hethering’s heartbreaking beauty glowed in its awakening. I thought of Easter and rebirth. Was my marriage to Dickon a renewal of life in the face of death? If so, must I believe there was a death? It was certain our marriage would succeed only if I left Jeremy behind.

  I wasn’t sure I could do that. In the end I decided to behave as if I had, and let one small, secret part of my heart believe Jeremy would return one day. He would pick up the reins of his marriage to Caroline and I would be loyal to Dickon. We would meet on occasion in this halcyon future and I would know he lived on just as surely as he saw me. That was the bargain I made with fate.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Mr. Pickety married us in his study at sunset. I’d walked across the fields to the vicarage alone, my cream silk dress swathed in my best velvet cloak. Henry placed it over my shoulders in Hethering’s great hall, with the staff assembled to wish me well. Cook wiped tears from her eyes and promised to tell Nurse how well I looked on my wedding day.

  Amalia met me at the vicarage door and gave me a small posy of flowers to carry. Dora and Ash Cooper were witnesses. I trembled with nerves until I found Dickon’s happy smile and kind eyes to steady me. We said our vows in firm voices and I only wept at the final blessing. I had Amalia’s loan of a pale blue handkerchief to dab my eyes.

  Dickon had hired a car to drive us to his sister’s farm for our wedding supper and then on to our honeymoon. Amalia’s toddler showered our ankles with a handful of rice as we left.

  Dickon pulled off the road and kissed me thoroughly. “There,” he said. “I’ve just kissed Mrs. Scard. I’ve never taken liberties with a married lady until today.”

  A flash of guilt made me blink. I had done far worse with a married man.

  As if he’d read my mind, Dickon shook his head and confessed “Until the last, I expected your cousin to break down the door.”