Daisychain Summer

‘And the rest we know, Alice. I suppose it was Nathan who married you and him?’

‘In the convent chapel,’ she nodded, eyes on her hands. ‘Just Julia and Nurse Love as witnesses. I’d not have done it, but Geordie Marshall came to see me. He was passing through Celverte – where we were nursing – and he brought me your Testament, and letters I’d written to you. Said that you’d been sent on special duties and that he’d heard that twelve of you in an army transport had all been killed by a shell. No chance you were alive, he said, but at least it had been quick and clean. I was grateful for that. I’d not have wanted you to die like some I’d nursed …’

‘And you got away with it? Didn’t you feel one bit of shame, lying to her ladyship – deceiving her?’

‘No.’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘It wasn’t me told the lies. I just went along with them. And they were white lies. Sir Robert had been killed – you knew that already – and with Giles not being able to have children, the title would have been lost to Rowangarth – passed to the Pendenys Suttons and you know how that would have grieved her ladyship.’

‘So what did you all cook up, between you?’ He looked at her as if she were a stranger; a lying, deceiving woman and not the girl he married a twelve-month ago; not the mother of his Daisy.

‘We cooked nothing up. So Nathan Sutton and Julia knew about it – that didn’t make them criminals. And the child would be born in wedlock, which made him the rightful Rowangarth heir – what harm did we do? Her ladyship was overjoyed, looking forward to it being born …’

‘And you? Did you feel grand, being a lady of title in the house where once you’d started off a housemaid?’

‘No, Tom. That part of it took a lot of getting used to. And I’ll admit I was always aware of the deceit. But it was Giles told his mother the child was his. He didn’t mention about it being a rape child. Said he’d come across me all distressed, because I’d just heard that you’d been killed – told her he’d held me and soothed me and well – it had happened between us, just the once. An act of comfort.’

She drew a deep, shuddering breath, covering her face with her hands as if she were afraid to look at him; see the hurt and disbelief in his eyes.

‘Tom, love – don’t you think it was better for the poor, dear woman to think her grandchild had been conceived that way? And it explained away the fact that he was born eight months after we were married. When a boy was born, that night Giles died, it helped her, a little, to accept it.

‘I had the child named Andrew Robert Giles for all the Rowangarth men the war had taken. Julia was pleased about it because he’s Sir Andrew, now – he’s got her husband’s name. Little Drew – there, I’ve said it again. It’s as if telling you has driven all the hurt out of me and I can really think of him as Giles’s son. Do you forgive me, Tom?’

‘For what?’ Still he sat there, making no move to take her in his arms, kiss her, tell her he understood. ‘It wasn’t your fault some drunken soldier got you pregnant, though that nurse was right – he should have been found, and arrested. But what worries me is that yon little Drew has already inherited a title and stands to gain a whole lot more, when he comes of age. Can that be right? If Giles Sutton had died childless – and in all honesty, he did – then the title should have passed to the Pendenys Suttons – to Mr Edward, Giles’s uncle. That’s how it should have been.’

‘You mean that some drunken soldier’s hedge child has landed on his feet, did he but know it?’

‘Don’t, Alice? Don’t use such talk. It isn’t like my lass.’

‘But am I your lass, now?’ she demanded, head defiantly high. ‘Oh, I wish you could see your face, Tom Dwerryhouse. You look all holier-than-thou, even though an army chaplain – a priest – connived at the deception, as you want to call it. Don’t you think we did it for a reason – or do you think we set out to cheat the other Suttons – those at Pendenys Place – out of what is rightly theirs?’

‘To my way of thinking,’ he said deliberately and quietly, ‘that’s exactly what you all did.’

‘Passing off a bastard as a Sutton, you mean?’ she flung, face white with outrage.

‘Alice – what’s got into you?’ He took a step towards her as if he knew he had pushed her too far and was willing, now it was too late, to make amends. ‘I told you before we were wed I didn’t want to know about that little Drew at Rowangarth, nor why you could bring yourself to leave him there, and come to me. You know I was willing to put it all behind us and start afresh, here.

‘And we’ve been happy, Alice, till now. Why must you rake over what’s past? What’s done is done, and if Giles Sutton died happy, and the son of his marriage –’

‘My son, Tom!’

‘All right – your son! If the bairn is acceptable as a Sutton, then who am I to gainsay it, wrong though it might be in law.’

‘Dear, sweet heaven, you can be so stubborn!’ She stood, hands on hips, cheeks blazing red. ‘I wanted to tell you. I thought you’d understand, aye, and happen sympathize, an’ all. But everything is either black or white to you, isn’t it? You don’t allow for the shades of grey, in between.

‘And I wasn’t going to tell you all, because I thought there’d be no need to. There was one thing I didn’t want you to know; but since you see fit to set yourself up as judge and jury and find us all guilty, then best you should know that young Drew is a Sutton! He’s taking what would, in the course of time, have passed to his father – to Elliot Sutton!

‘There, Tom! You have it all, now – every last sordid bit of it. The drunk who tumbled me on the floor of a cowshed was the man you so hate, so think on before you pass judgement on me!’

She stood, tears streaking her cheeks, shaking with anger and dismay at what she had said. And she looked into the face of the man she loved and saw hatred in his eyes.

‘Elliot Sutton!’ he spat through clamped jaws. ‘So he had his way with you, in the end?’

‘Aye. He tried it in Brattocks Wood, didn’t he, when I was a bit of a lass. But I had Morgan with me then, and Reuben within calling distance. And I had a young man who thrashed him for what he’d tried to do. But no one was there to help me that night in Celverte, Tom; neither the dog nor Reuben, nor you! You were dead, remember?’

‘Thrashed him? I should have killed him!’ He drove his fist hard into the palm of his hand. ‘That first time he tried, I should have beaten the life out of him. And I would, if I’d thought I could’ve got away with it.’

His face slablike, he rose to his feet, walking across the room and out of the house and she knew better than to try to stop him. To leave in a rage with a flinging open and a banging shut of doors would have seemed more normal. Things done in temper, in the shock of the moment, she could understand, and forgive. But to walk calmly out with never a word, closing doors gently and quietly behind him, sent apprehension coursing through her.

It was then she was grateful for the discipline of her nursing years and she closed her eyes, breathing deeply, resisting the urge to take his beer mug and hurl it against the wall.

She straightened her shoulders and tilted her chin. She would not weep on her wedding anniversary; not for anything would she!

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered to the empty room. ‘So sorry, Tom …’

He did not return until it was dark; long after she had lit the lamps and given Daisy her evening feed.

She sat beside the hearth, rocking the chair back and forth, worrying, waiting, and he came as quietly and suddenly as he left, his face pale, still, yet with contrition in his eyes.

‘I’m sorry, lass,’ he said, his voice rough with remorse. ‘It was none of it your fault. You did what you had to do – what was best for all concerned. It was just that it was too much to take – him, having touched you.’

‘Where have you been?’ She rose slowly to her feet, wanting him to take her in his arms and not stand in the doorway, putting the length of the room between them.

‘Walking. Just walking. I must have covered the entire boundary of the estate. And I was thinking, Alice; thinking how much I hate that man. I was even hoping to meet him around the next corner, because I wanted to kill him; beat the life out of him …’

‘It was all my fault.’ Tears trembled on Alice’s whispered words. ‘I could think of nothing else but to tell you. I didn’t want you to think wrong of me for seeming to forget you so soon after I’d heard you’d been killed; didn’t want you to think I could love any man but you, much less get a child with him. And I didn’t want you to think I was so unfeeling that I could desert a child to come to you. I knew all the time I ought to have loved him, but I couldn’t, even though he was born Sutton fair, and not dark, like – like him. I couldn’t have borne it if Drew had fathered himself.’

‘So the little lad is fair?’

‘He is, thanks be. To my way of thinking, he looked like his grandfather – his real grandfather, Mr Edward Sutton – but Julia could only see Andrew in him, because that was what she wanted to see, and Lady Helen swore he’d come in Sir John’s likeness. But no one could say, or even think, that he looked like Elliot Sutton. It was the one good thing in all the sad and sorry mess.’

‘Then I’m glad about that. No child deserves to be saddled with such a father.’

‘His father was Giles Sutton and never for a minute forget it, Tom. Am I forgiven?’

He smiled, unspeaking, and opened wide his arms as he’d done when they were courting, and she ran to him as though she were seventeen again, clasping her arms around his waist, resting her head on his chest.

‘I love you, Tom – let’s never speak of it again?’

‘Not ever, bonny lass. But I’ll never forgive that man for what he did. I swore, out there, that if I could ever do him harm, I would – will – if ever I get the chance. I killed finer Germans than him …’

‘Then it’s a good thing you’re never likely to set eyes on him again. Y’know, Tom, I used, in my dreamings, to think of you and me living in Brattocks Wood in Keeper’s Cottage, and Julia and Andrew not far away and Reuben nicely settled in his almshouse. I’d think of it when things got bad, in France.

‘But Julia’s husband was killed and I thought I’d lost you, yet it was meant to be, my darling. Fate landed you and me here, miles and miles away, and I’m glad. Up there, I’d be scared half out of my mind that you and him would meet.’

‘Happen you are right.’ He unclasped her clinging arms, standing a little away from her, cupping her face in his hands.

‘I love you, my Alice. I never stopped loving you, even when I thought I’d lost you. The past is over and done with, I promise it is.’

‘Happy anniversary, Tom.’

Yet even as they kissed passionately, kissed as if there was to be no tomorrow, she knew he would never completely forget; that his hatred for Elliot Sutton would fester inside him and that if ever he could do him harm, he would.

Without so much as the batting of an eyelid.

2

Helen, Lady Sutton closed the door behind her, then let go a gasp of annoyance.

‘The fool! The smug, unfeeling fool! I am so angry!’

‘Oh, dear.’ Julia MacMalcolm kissed her mother’s flushed cheek. ‘Why don’t you sit down and tell me what happened at the meeting to make you so very cross.’

‘That vicar! I don’t know how I kept hold of my temper!’

‘Don’t let him upset you. He’s only a locum. He’ll be gone when Luke Parkin is fit again.’

‘But Luke won’t get well and we all know it, Julia. Six months, at the most,’ she whispered bitterly.

All the men she could once rely on, lean upon – all dead, her husband, her sons, her son-in-law; bluff, brusque Judge Mounteagle and soon, Luke Parkin. That ugly war – how dare they call it the Great War – had taken so many young men and now the older ones, weakened by four years of too much responsibility and too little consideration and overburdened with the worry of it, were themselves falling victims to its aftermath.

‘Sssh. Just tell me?’

‘We-e-ll, it was the usual parish meeting – or should have been. I knew they’d be talking about the war memorial; I was happy about that.’ She had promised any piece of land the parish saw fit to choose so the war dead of Holdenby should be remembered. ‘But to suggest a German field gun should stand beside it!’

‘A what!’ Julia flushed scarlet. ‘Whose damn-fool idea was that?’

‘Our temporary vicar’s! He said that any city or town – Holdenby, even – could claim a German gun as spoils of war and wouldn’t it be a splendid thought to have one here and site it beside the war memorial? So I said that upon further consideration, I wasn’t at all sure that I could offer that piece of land – leastways, not if an enemy gun was to stand on it. Indeed, I said, if anyone was thoughtless enough to bring one here, I would hope to see the wretched thing rolled down the hill and into the river! That’s what I said!’

‘And then you swep’ out! Good for you, mother! How could he even think such a thing?’

‘How indeed, when not one household in Holdenby came through that war without loss. The last thing they want to see is a German gun. Julia – did we really win? It makes me wonder when I see heroes with no work to go to; men with a leg or an arm missing, begging on street corners. Half our youth never to come home again and oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to remind you.’

‘You didn’t, because I don’t need reminding. And I’m glad you put him in his place. If Luke retires, I hope that vicar doesn’t get ideas about getting the living for himself. When the time comes for a new parish priest, I think it should be Nathan. I’d like to have him here. He’ll be back from the African mission, soon – and who better?’

‘I agree, and since Rowangarth will have some say in the matter, perhaps we can help him. Nathan saw service as an army chaplain – he’d be a popular choice, hereabouts. But this is not the time to talk of such things. We must hope for a miracle for Luke. And meantime –’

‘No German field gun,’ Julia supplied.

‘Not on any piece of Rowangarth land!’ And since Rowangarth owned every square yard of Holdenby village and much, much more besides, it seemed that Helen Sutton would have her way.

‘I shall miss you when you go to Hampshire for the christening.’ Deftly, she changed the subject.

‘You’re sure you’ll be all right, mother? Drew can be rather a handful, now.’

‘Of course I can manage. I’ve been looking forward to having him all to myself. And isn’t it wonderful that Alice has a little girl of her own?’

Dear Alice. She at least was happy. It was to her, Helen acknowledged, they owed the beautiful boy who would one day inherit Rowangarth. So sad that Giles never lived to see his son.

‘I reared the three of you with no trouble at all. One small boy won’t put me out in the slightest.’

‘But we three had a nanny – and a nursery maid!’

‘So you did, but nannies are going out of fashion and there’ll be Miss Clitherow to help me – if I need help.’

‘Yes, and Cook and Tilda and Mary’ – all of whom spoiled Drew dreadfully.

‘A growing child cannot have too much love and affection. Children are treated differently, now,’ Helen smiled, calm again, for just to think of her grandson gave her such feelings of love and gratitude that any anger was short-lived.

‘I’d thought to leave a day earlier – stay the night with Aunt Sutton, whilst she’s at Montpelier Mews.’

‘A good idea.’ Her sister-in-law, Helen frowned, spent so little time in England, now. ‘How long since anyone saw her?’

‘Oh, ages.’ Since not long after Andrew was killed, Julia recalled. ‘She couldn’t wait to get back to France, once the war was over. We can have a nice long chat – catch up with the news, then I’ll go on to Hampshire. It will mean being away for five days – you’re sure you can manage?’

‘Of course.’ She loved him dearly, the grandson who was walking sturdily, now, and had cut most of his teeth with scarcely a disturbed night. Drew, who made her young again. ‘Think of it, Julia. He’ll be two, at Christmas.’

‘Mm.’ The months had rushed past. Soon, there would be the second anniversary of Andrew’s death to be lived through and that of Giles who died the day his son – Alice’s son – was born.

‘Julia?’ Her mother’s voice came to her softly through her rememberings.

‘Sorry. Just thinking …’

‘Aah.’ Her daughter was often just thinking. Sometimes she was far away, eyes troubled; other times there would be a small smile on her lips and she would be a girl again, impatient to come of age, marry her young doctor. There hadn’t been a war, then, nor even thoughts of one. Her elder son, Helen pondered, had been in India and Giles with his nose in a book, always, and nothing more to worry her than the next dinner party she would give. Lovely, gentle times. Days of roaring fires and hot muffins for winter tea and sun-warmed summer days and the scent of flowers at dusk and the certainty that nothing need change.

But then the war had come and nothing could be the same again. Only Rowangarth endured.

‘And talking about Alice – and we must talk about it, sooner or later – do you think you might mention it to her – and Tom, of course – whilst you are there?’

‘That people should be told she was married again, you mean?’

‘Well, it is all of eighteen months since she left Rowangarth; people will want to know what is happening.’

‘But it isn’t anything to do with people – not really, mother, though I agree with you. I’ll have a word with her. After all, she’s done nothing wrong. She had every right to remarry.’

‘I accept that – and Tom was her first love.’

‘Her only love.’ Her once and for ever love. ‘None of us ever pretended she cared in the same way for Giles – those of us who knew the real truth of it – about their marrying, so soon after Tom was killed, I mean …’

The real truth of it? Not even her mother knew that, nor ever could. There were things never to be told – even to Drew.

‘I know, my dear. I have always accepted the circumstances of Drew’s conceiving and been grateful to Alice for leaving him with us. I’d longed so for a grandson, you know; for a boy, for Rowangarth.’

‘And you got him,’ Julia smiled. ‘And what’s more, you can’t wait to have him all to yourself, can you?’ Best drop the subject of Drew’s getting. For his sake alone, it must remain a closed book. ‘Do you suppose he’ll miss me?’

‘I’ll do my best to see that he doesn’t. And you deserve a break, Julia. Just think how much news there’ll be to catch up on; it seems such a long time since Alice left us. And I’m sure she’ll let you share her little girl, if your maternal instincts get the better of you.’

Her maternal instincts, Julia brooded. Drew had been hers from the moment of his birth. She it had been who fought for him when Alice lay desperately ill and unable to feed him. That fatherless babe had given her something to live for after Andrew’s killing. She was Drew’s mother, now.

‘You must take a lock of his hair, for Alice,’ Helen smiled. One of his fair, baby curls, now cut off. Drew had remained in his long baby clothes until he walked, though Julia hadn’t entirely agreed with keeping little boys in nursery frocks, she acknowledged, and allowing their hair to grow untrimmed so that many were hard put to know if the child was a girl or a boy. But it had been the custom when her sons were toddlers and she had wished it for Drew, though now he was a real little boy, her hair cut short and wearing his first breeches. ‘Well – if you think it won’t upset her too much. That child is the image of his father when he was little, you know.’

‘Take one of his curls? No – she won’t be upset.’

Not in the way you mean, mother. Alice won’t go all emotional and want to take him from us when she sees a lock of his hair. She never wanted him, couldn’t love him – but you didn’t know that, dearest. And never say Drew is the image of his father, because he isn’t – and please God he never will be.

Only she and Nathan knew, and perhaps Tom, now. And Giles had known; had married Alice knowing she carried another man’s child, then claimed it to be born a Sutton – a Rowangarth Sutton, and Rowangarth’s heir. Little Drew. Two years old, at Christmas.

‘Alice says I’m to take tweeds and tough shoes.’ Julia, too, was adept at subject-changing. ‘They live right out in the country – it’s quite a walk, I believe, into the village to post a letter. And it’s Reuben’s birthday in September,’ just three days after Andrew’s, ‘so she wants me to bring his present back with me.’

‘Dear old Reuben. He misses Alice for all there’s a letter from her every week. That’s why people should know Alice and Tom are married, now. Reuben isn’t getting any younger. There might come a day when Alice is needed here.’

‘But she can return to Rowangarth any time she likes. She’s done nothing wrong!’

‘Of course she hasn’t – but there’s Tom …’

‘A deserter, who could be put in prison for it, if people knew? Is that what you mean? But who is going to tell on him? Not you, mother; not me! I agree with what he did and so would Giles, if he were alive. Tom was a soldier who was pushed too far! He was reported killed in action – the authorities think him dead – so all we need say is that he wasn’t killed at all but taken prisoner and the Red Cross was never told about it. He wouldn’t be the first man to come back from the dead! I see no reason why the pair of them shouldn’t walk through Holdenby, heads high!’

‘Julia, child – hush your anger! You’ll never be rid of that Whitecliffe temper! Small wonder the old lady was so taken with you. And I agree with you about Tom Dwerry-house; there is nothing I would like more than to see them both back here, even though it can’t ever be.’

‘And why not, pray?’

‘We-e-ell, if they were to come back to Keeper’s Cottage – and we all thought that when Reuben retired, Tom would live there, with Alice – if they came back, just what would their position be? Alice is Drew’s mother; Drew – Sir Andrew – will one day inherit, so he would be Tom’s employer …’

‘Mother, how you do run on!’ Julia laughed. ‘I don’t think Tom and Alice will ever come back here. From what I read in her letters, she’s well suited in Hampshire. But I would like her to be able to visit us, from time to time. Tom would understand her need to see Reuben. And remember, she is still Drew’s legal guardian.’

‘Exactly – and that’s one reason I want it to be known she isn’t Alice Sutton any longer. I would like her to come home to Rowangarth whenever she has a mind to. She was my son’s wife, albeit for less than a year, and I cared – care – for her, deeply. And she’ll never take Drew away from us, I know it.’

‘She won’t. Not ever. I know it too, dearest. So what are we worrying about? I’ll have a talk with Alice and Tom – see what they think. We’ll be able to work something out and had you thought, there might soon be a pardon for deserters, so Tom wouldn’t have anything to be afraid of and never, ever, anything to be ashamed of. He fought in the trenches which is more than Elliot ever did!’

‘Julia! Why ever must you bring him into it? And why, since we are talking about your cousin –’

‘My nasty, over-indulged, awful cousin!’

‘Talking about Elliot,’ Helen went on, calmly, ‘why do you always get so prickly when his name is mentioned and make excuses not to meet him?’

‘Because I detest him, mother. No, I hate him. I dislike his womanizing and his arrogance and I won’t ever forgive his mother for arranging two safe postings for him when he joined the Army. She bought them, for him!’

‘You mustn’t say that of your Aunt Clemmy!’

‘Not even when it’s true?’ Julia jumped to her feet and stood, arms akimbo, at the window, staring out across the lawns and the wild garden to Brattocks Wood. ‘And I hate him because he’s alive – because he hardly got his boots dirty in that war, yet Robert and Giles and Andrew will only be names, soon, on a war memorial!’