Fiercombe Manor (47 page)

While Mrs. Jelphs and my mother shared a pot of tea and reminisced in a rather forced manner in the small parlour, I excused myself to finish my packing. I left a sleeping Joseph with the two of them—not that my mother had done more than give him a cursory look before setting her jaw in the disapproving way I had seen so many times. Mrs. Jelphs had surely noticed her lack of interest, and I wondered what she had made of it.

In my room, I tried not to think about the fact that everything was the last time: the last time I would pull open the wardrobe door, the last time I would see myself in its foxed glass, the last time I would look out across the Great Mead, unfamiliarly shadowless under the dulled sky.

Outside on the gravel, my case and a bag of items pressed on me for the baby by Mrs. Jelphs had been loaded into the carriage. I looked around, but there was still no sign of Tom. I didn't blame him: the truth—the whole truth—was rather sordid as well as hopeless. I thought he probably didn't like good-byes, either. Perhaps I would see him in London, as he had suggested. But probably I wouldn't.

Mrs. Jelphs clasped me to her while Ruck waited to help me up into the carriage. My mother was already settled on the seat and making no effort to hide her impatience to leave.

“I will miss you—and the little one—so very much,” Mrs. Jelphs whispered fiercely in my ear, and when I drew back, I knew that she would go to her room and weep after we left.

I looked around for Tom again, and she must have seen my disappointment—though it was so much more than that—in my face.

“I don't know where he's got to,” she said anxiously. “I know he'll be sorry to have missed you.”

“Alice,” said my mother sharply. “I'm sure Mrs. Jelphs has plenty to be getting on with today. Mr. Ruck too.”

I climbed gingerly into the carriage, Ruck supporting me gently, and Mrs. Jelphs handed up Joseph.

“Will you send me a picture now and then?” she said. “You know you can bring him to see us whenever you like. Will you come next summer? We would be so glad to see you.”

“Yes, perhaps,” I said, biting the inside of my cheek so that I didn't cry. “Thank you again for everything you've done. I'll never forget it.” My voice trembled.

Ruck lifted the reins, and we moved off. I looked back, and Mrs. Jelphs was standing at the gate to the kitchen garden I'd first walked through at the beginning of the summer, wondering what
the next months would bring. She raised her hand, on her face a curious mix of emotions: sadness, loneliness, and even something that looked like relief, though I knew she was sad to see me leave. I clutched Joseph closer to me, and felt my mother stiffen slightly as she noticed.

We rounded the corner of the manor, the gravel beneath us giving way to packed earth. Too soon we were passing the little churchyard, past the tomb of Edward Stanton and his baby son. Now I would never know what had really happened to Elizabeth and her daughter and I felt a pang that I was leaving them behind, as well as everything else. It was all too sudden, and as we reached the tunnel of storm-damaged but still lush rhododendron bushes, I had to fight the urge to clamber down from the carriage with Joseph and run.

It was as we came out from under those unchecked flowers that I saw him: a lone, lean figure who stepped out into the middle of the lane. Ruck slowed the horse to a gentle stop.

“Who's this then?” my mother said, loudly enough for Tom to hear.

“I'm Thomas Stanton,” he said as he reached us. His voice sounded confident and privileged in the quiet lane. “You must be Alice's mother.”

He put up a hand, and my mother shook it quickly. “Mrs. Eveleigh. Pleased to meet you,” she said curtly. “I hope Alice has thanked you for allowing her to stay here.”

“Oh, yes. In fact, she's made herself quite indispensable in her time here,” said Tom.

I blushed. “Well, I've tried to be as much of a help to Mrs. Jelphs as I could, although in the last few weeks I . . .”

“Not just to Mrs. Jelphs,” Tom interrupted. “Mrs. Eveleigh, I'm afraid I've rather taken advantage of Alice's skills as a typist while
she's been here. I'm no good at correspondence and the like, and now that my father is abroad so much, most of the estate paperwork falls to me. Alice has been invaluable. In truth, she's become something of an unpaid secretary.”

I opened my mouth to speak and then closed it again. Tom had a curiously intense look about him, and instinct told me to keep quiet.

“In fact, I've been mulling things over during the last day or so. If I'd known you were coming to fetch Alice and the baby so soon, I would have been a bit quicker off the mark.” He brought out his cigarettes, lit one, and looked thoughtfully at it.

“I'm glad she's made herself useful,” my mother said with an impatient edge. “I'm sure it was the least she could do. It's nice to meet you, Mr. Stanton—is that what I call you?—but unfortunately we really must be on our way if we're to catch our train.”

“Well, that's precisely what I wanted to talk to you about. I have an offer for Alice.”

My heart began to thud in my chest, and the baby shifted about in my arms as if he could feel it.

“An offer?” I said faintly. “What do you mean?”

Tom smiled broadly. “Well, to be precise, it's an offer of work. A few days here and there at first, of course, but later, when the child is older and I take on full responsibility for the estate, there will be rather more to do. Mrs. Jelphs adores children, and so I'm sure she'll be keen to help you with little Joseph. Of course you can continue to live in the house. Perhaps, eventually, we can tidy up one of the estate cottages for you.”

“She can't possibly stay here,” said my mother sharply. “She'll need to find work in London as soon as we get back. I'm afraid we need her contribution, since her father lost one of his groundskeeping jobs. Times are hard for some of us.”

“But surely she won't be going back to work yet? Not with such a young baby?”

My mother said nothing, her lips a thin line.

“And as for money, well, that presents no difficulty,” Tom continued blithely. “I understand that I must match a London wage to secure a secretary as good as Alice. She'll get her bed and board here, of course, so I suppose she'll have rather more than she did before, some of which I'm sure she would send home.”

He looked at me and raised his eyebrows.

“Oh, yes, I would,” I said dazedly.

“Besides,” continued Tom, “it's viewed as rather irregular for a mother to go back to work at all, isn't it? In that sense it's different here at Fiercombe. We can do things our way—one of the few advantages of being so isolated. I assume you were planning to look after the child yourself, Mrs. Eveleigh?”

“There'll be no need,” she began to say.

“Oh?”

I watched the colour rise on her cheekbones, just as it always did on my own. “I mean that Alice will bring up the child herself,” she said.

Tom looked perplexed. “But then, as I see it, things will be rather difficult. How can Alice take a job in an office, working Monday to Friday and quite probably Saturday mornings too, and bring up her child at the same time? Do you think she will find an employer who will let her do her work with her child by her side, as I would?”

I glanced at my mother again, expecting to see fury. Instead she looked strangely defeated.

“Alice has had a dreadful time, losing her husband so young,” said Tom. “The doctor was right to prescribe rest in a new place. Perhaps her fresh start ought to become a bit more permanent.
After all, she and the baby seem to be thriving here—no one could deny that.”

My mother turned to me, and I made myself meet her eye. “Is this what you want, Alice?” she said.

I nodded, my eyes filling with tears. “I can't go back now. I just . . . can't. Mother, do you understand?”

She searched my face for a long time but then finally nodded once. “Have it your way then, though I can't think what I'm going to tell your father.”

“I think he'll understand,” I said.

She pushed out a sort of laugh. “Yes, he always was soft when it came to you.”

I looked at Tom. “Do you mean it? Can we really stay?”

He smiled openly. “It will be as much for my sake as yours if you do. My father is about to start his retirement in earnest, and I had no idea how much of the estate paperwork he still did.”

I could have cried again, but managed to swallow the tears down. “I will, then. Thank you, Mr. Stanton. You're very kind.”

“Not at all. Now, you're very welcome to stay a night and catch the train tomorrow,” he said gently.

My mother shook her head. “No, I must get back. Mr. Eveleigh will worry otherwise.”

Tom lifted my things out of the carriage and then held out his arms for the baby. I had to lean over my mother as I passed him down, and then, as I straightened again, I knocked her handbag, which fell into the footwell and spilled its contents.

“Oh, how clumsy of me,” I said as I bent to pick it all up.

“Leave it now,” she said, but I'd already crouched down awkwardly for the spare handkerchiefs, keys, a folded train timetable, loose change, and a cardboard envelope that reminded me of the photograph of the little girl I felt sure was Isabel.

My mother reached for it, but it was too late, I'd already opened the flap. In many ways, it was like the Victorian photograph. A child had been positioned on a chair, cushions around her to prop her up and a ribbon tied in her hair. The only real differences were in the clothes and the expression on this little girl's face, which was open and eager, the eyes enormous and full of life.

“Is this . . . me?” I said wonderingly.

“Who else would it be?” my mother said sharply as she took it from me.

Tom helped me down and then moved away with Joseph so I could say good-bye.

I reached up to clasp my mother's hand. “It would have broken my heart,” I whispered. “You do know that, don't you?”

She looked into the distance, and I realised with a shock that she was holding back tears. “I couldn't think of another way.”

“I know,” I said. “But now there is one.”

“Yes,” she said. “I know I've been hard on you. If I wanted to toughen you up, it was only to protect you. There's so much of your father in you, and I didn't want you to be hurt. That was all it ever was, Alice. I wanted you to be strong like me.”

“I am, though. Can't you see I am?”

She nodded and reached down to touch my cheek briefly.

I glanced towards Ruck, who had thoughtfully got down to adjust the horse's bit, and dropped my voice.

“Mother, did you want me?”

She turned back to look at me with astonishment. “Whatever do you mean?”

“When I was born, were you . . . unhappy?”

She looked down at the cardboard photograph, which she was still holding. “Some women get that way, I know. There was someone I knew once who had been ill with it, mad with it even, and I
wondered a few times if I would be too. But it wasn't like that for me. With me, it was fear—not fear for my mind but fear that I'd lose you.

“I've never told your father this. I've never told anyone this before, but there was a baby before you, when we were first married. I began to bleed the very day I felt the quickening. Your father was at work, and I was going to tell him I was having a child that evening. When I fell pregnant with you, I expected to lose you every day. I thought that terror would stop when you were born, but it didn't. I couldn't live like that, so fearful, and it would have done you no good either.”

“So you closed the door,” I said quietly.

She sighed. “For both our sakes. Besides, you had your father to love you.”

I laid my hand on hers for a moment, withdrawing it before she could, but she hadn't moved, her hand still gripping the photograph of me.

“Mother, will you come and see us here, you and Father? If I send the fare?”

She glanced back towards the bundle in Tom's arms as though she was seeing it for the first time. “I expect we might. He'll be glad, you know, that you've been able to keep him.”

“Are you glad?”

“I think you'll do a better job of being a mother than I ever have, Alice.”

“Oh no, I didn't . . .”

“No, I mean it. You will, and I'm happy for it.”

I stood waving until the carriage had turned up Fiery Lane and my mother was out of sight. Then I turned back towards my child, and Tom.

J
ULY
1936

I
didn't forget about Elizabeth during the three years that followed. She was always there; it was just that my own life was suddenly so full, and then, in time, so content. Occasionally I caught sight of the sewing box, and her face would swim into view, though not as I had seen it in the portrait hidden in the manor's nursery, but blurred, like the photograph Hugh Morton had shown me. I suppose I came to associate her first with the uncertain and anxiety-clouded summer I was first in the valley, and then with the wooden box that had belonged to her, and finally with a box fashioned in my own mind, into which I put her and Isabel both.

There was one occasion when I might have been drawn back into their story, but I chose not to go. My own future was only tentatively secured then, and so I was still much too preoccupied with Joseph—and of course with Tom too.

It was almost summer again when I was nearly hooked for the second time by Elizabeth: a year on from my arrival in the valley. Hugh Morton had come to tea, and the two of us, full of Mrs. Jelphs's lemon and poppyseed cake, were sitting in a couple of
deck chairs on the lawn just beyond the Tudor garden, the tinkling stream a little way off.

A few days earlier, Tom had discovered the photograph of Isabel that had been hidden in the nursery window seat. We had never put it back, and it somehow found its way under the rug in the small parlour. He saw a corner of it poking out and brought it to me when he realised what it was. Now I remembered it and wanted to show it to Hugh, though I was careful not to let Mrs. Jelphs see it. Some instinct that had survived from the previous year told me it would upset her.