Softly Grow the Poppies (35 page)

‘Harry, darling, what . . .?’

He knelt beside her, then leaned forward to pull her into his arms.

‘My love, my dearest love.’

Her voice rose to fever pitch. ‘What is it? What is it?’ she almost screamed and the baby turned her head in her mother’s direction and the sunny smile that wreathed her face disappeared and she began to wail.

‘It’s . . . it’s Will.’

‘Not dead, please say he’s not dead,’ she implored him.

Into Harry’s fevered mind slithered the thought that perhaps it would be better if he was. The alternative crucified him.

‘No, darling heart. At least we don’t know, but the inspector has just been to say, after all this time they are . . . calling off the search.’

Rose fell into his arms, the pair of them huddled on the floor while the baby’s cries reached the kitchen. Dolly listened to it for several minutes, exchanging glances with Nessie. It was not like their mistress, or the master for that matter, to let the little pet cry so long.

‘I’m going up,’ Dolly declared stoutly while the housemaids stood about, white-faced, knowing something had happened. The inspector had been and now their precious little bairn was screaming her head off and no one taking a blind bit of notice. Polly began to cry.

‘Oh, give over do, girl,’ Nessie snapped though she felt like having a good cry herself.

Dolly knocked sharply on the bedroom door, the bedroom where Miss Rose – as she still felt the need to call her – and Sir Harry slept, and without waiting for an answer opened the door and marched in. She was startled to see Miss Rose and Sir Harry on the floor, arms about one another while the baby wailed and so did Miss Rose.

‘Well . . .’ expostulated Dolly, embarrassed and maddened beyond words. The master and mistress ‘at it’, for she knew no other word for what they were doing, while the bairn cried her little heart out. But . . . but Miss Rose was in a torrent of tears and Sir Harry looked not far from it.

‘Oh, Dolly . . . Dolly,’ wept Miss Rose. ‘Our little boy is . . .’

Dolly put her hand to her mouth and whispered the same words as Rose had done a few minutes ago.

‘Not dead . . . eeh, don’t say he’s dead, Rosie. I couldn’t stand it. Not that beautiful boy.’ She broke into a wail of sorrow and out on the landing the female servants who had, knowing something bad was happening, followed her up and gathered behind her, began to weep.

Nessie swept into the bedroom and snatched the distressed, hiccuping baby from her cradle, rocking her in trembling arms.

Suddenly it was all silent as everyone realised they might never see their handsome, winsome, lovable boy again. Their hearts were breaking.

T
hey all mourned the boy who had played such a big part in their lives. Dolly and Nessie, the older generation, still wore the black they had donned for Mr Charlie’s funeral and it was only the baby, darling of their hearts, who kept them going.

Harry, begged by Rose, who was a wealthy woman, employed private detectives, unaware that Sergeant Mark Newton, who had been unable to keep up with the rest in the search that night, and now had no job with Will gone, kept up his own search. He had become fond of the boy who was bright, receptive and lovable but the other men were inclined to ignore him. What good could a man with one leg be, they asked one another, but not in an unkindly way. He was a nice chap but didn’t know the area like they did.

As though to mock their sadness the spring was the most beautiful any of them could remember. Yellow iris crowded beneath the newly greening trees and along the hedgerows that lined the lanes. Harebells spread handfuls of pale blue mist and wood anemones peeped shyly from behind the fallen trunks of oak and beech. Celandine, dog violet and primroses grew madly at the edge of the yew hedge and above them magpies and blackbirds began the anxious task of preparing homes for the arrival of their young.

In April on the day that would have been Will’s sixth birthday Rose told her husband that she was pregnant again. Poppy was almost four months old and was at that delightful age when she smiled at everyone who looked into her perambulator and that was everyone on the estate from Tom the head gardener to Billy, the most recent addition to the staff. She was a cheerful, contented baby, growing up in a home filled with sadness.

Charlie’s funeral had nearly finished them all off. Their sorrow turned for a moment to astonishment, for it seemed the whole county attended the ceremony. The church and the churchyard surrounding it were packed from wall to wall, inside and out. In the actual church folk stood alongside the pews and across the back, most of them, including some men, weeping for the lovely young man who had given his life into the hands of the brutal war machine. He had come back a broken man only to be murdered by some unknown thugs and the small boy who had been his own son and companion spirited away never to be seen again. How could a family bear up under such desolation?

Poppy had been left at home in the care of Polly, would you believe, who absolutely adored the baby. She had been found not to be the ‘daft ’apporth’ that Nessie and Dolly had believed and even called her, and Rose was seriously considering making her up to nursery nurse when Poppy was weaned. Given such responsibility, Polly was a different young woman to the girl who had snivelled over the dirty pans. She slept beside the cot in the nursery, giving Poppy’s parents not only a good night’s sleep, which they needed to run the growing success of the estate, but also the privacy they had longed for in their lovemaking, which led inevitably to another pregnancy!

‘A boy this time, my love,’ Rose told Harry. ‘I want you to have a son to continue the line. To keep Summer Place and the estate in the good order it is achieving. But I only want . . .’

‘What, my darling?’ Harry mumbled into her shoulder, nearly asleep, complete in the joy they had just shared in their bed.

‘I don’t want more than two children, I mean. That is if this one is another girl. A son would be perfect so . . .’

‘Yes, darling?’

‘Can we arrange it so that we have no more babies?’

Harry reared up with a great roar. ‘You’ve been reading that woman Marie Stopes, haven’t you? Now I’m not one of those chaps who says that whatever God sends must be accepted, that is if there is such a being, which I seriously doubt after what millions have been through not so long ago but—’

‘Harry, Harry, darling love.’ Rose tried to calm her incensed husband. ‘There are ways to . . . to prevent pregnancy.’

‘What ways, apart from complete celibacy? And neither you nor I could manage that. We love each other too much, in . . . in every way.’ He thumped back on his pillow, arms folded across his chest, looking so like Will when he wasn’t getting his own way, Rose wanted to cry, or laugh. Instead she uncrossed his arms and put her head on his chest.

‘I love you so much I’m afraid sometimes.’

At once his arms were round her, holding her to him in remorse. ‘Sweetheart, I’m sorry if I upset you, but the thought of . . . dear God, if anything happened to you I wouldn’t want to live. Some half-baked way of preventing your having another child is . . . it might be dangerous. To you or the child.’

There was silence, then: ‘I’ve written to the the Mothers’ Clinic in London and have received literature on how to plan your family. Condoms are . . . have been used for years . . .’

‘Condoms, yes, I have heard of them but . . .’

‘You do not want to have anything to do with them.’

‘I did not – do not – say that. Let us have the child inside you then we will discuss this again. Our love has been so . . . so . . . spontaneous that the idea of . . . well, let us wait and see.’

Rose had no choice but to accept this answer but her mind which for twenty-odd years had made its own decisions with no need to consult anyone, told her to say no more on the matter. For now!

The small boy bowed over the table, a pen in his hand, watching the woman who sat opposite him from under his long lashes. She tapped on the table with the ruler in her hand. It had already twice been cracked across his knuckles and his hands, both of them, were very sore. He wanted to cry or scream as he had done at first, to weep his bruised heart out in fear, but had learned that to do so would only result in further punishment.

‘When you have finished those sums I have set you I will check them for mistakes so concentrate or it’s the cupboard for you.’

He did his best to concentrate on the simple addition. Two and four make six, three and seven make ten and so on until the last one: seventeen and sixteen make . . . what? his traumatised brain asked. He didn’t think he could do it with the grey woman staring down at him with those cruel grey eyes and even as he contemplated ‘the cupboard’ into which she would fling him his child’s mind froze. He must get away from her since he was sure she would kill him. The stout man who came in now and again petrified him just as much and as he saw no one else in this nightmare room there seemed to him a great possibility he might as well be dead. What would they do to him when the woman told the man what a clever boy he was? Since that was unlikely he looked towards the window. It did not open but if he pulled a chair up to it he could perhaps jump through the glass and the frames in which it was set. The woman brought him back to earth with a nasty crack across his little hands but he did not cry out or speak. She seemed incensed that she could get no reaction from this poor tortured child so she smiled.

‘I’m going to the bathroom and you’re to the cupboard, my lad, when I return. Think about it while I’m gone.’ She smiled again showing him her grey teeth.

She moved to the door and for the first time in six months she did something unusual. She forgot to lock the door behind her.

As soon as it closed he was out in the corridor, catching a glimpse of her as she entered the bathroom. He ran past the bathroom door, down the back stairs, then another set of stairs, and another until he arrived at a door which, when he opened it, led into a little square garden of herbs. Like a hunted animal he hesitated, then jumped across the herbs which smelled heavenly, through another gate on the far side and out into an enormous and immaculate garden centred by a sweeping lawn. Two men were working on the far side but they did not see him as they had their backs to him.

Like a hunted animal he ran until he came up to a high stone wall. There was a gate which he wrenched open and fled through, closing it carefully behind him. He was suddenly in woodland surrounded by magnificent oak and beech trees. Brambles clung to and scratched his legs and though he longed to stop and rest, he ran wildly on. He had no idea where he was but he was away from
her
so he didn’t care if he was in the wilds of Africa or the Highlands of Scotland. He wanted to sing and whistle and dance but he knew he must put as much distance as he could between himself and that chamber of horrors and
her
. In his eagerness to escape he ran into the trunks of trees, fell down a dozen times, and from behind him he could hear the voices of men shouting to each other, getting nearer and nearer.

With a silent plea to Rose and Harry to help him, wherever they were, he jumped up and clung to the branch of a horse chestnut tree that had wide, spreading branches, a rounded crown and a towering mass of luxuriant foliage. It made a good hiding place. He and Charlie were good at climbing trees and he knew this one was the best. He went up and up like a small monkey until he was sure he was invisible from the ground, climbing to the top. The bark was rough and scaly. It was an old tree and his legs in their short pants, his hands and arms and face were scratched and bleeding.

He heard the men coming nearer and nearer and as they passed under the tree he began to cry. Silently the tears slid down his little gaunt face which had once been rounded and rosy with good health. He didn’t dare move until darkness fell, trying to imagine what Charlie or Tim or Harry, or even Sergeant Mark would do. He knew he could not stay here, for the naughty men might come back and find him. His brain was numb, as was the rest of him. He was a child, six years old, but he had been subjected to a torment that had almost turned him into a shadow of his former self; yet something in him, some spark that he had inherited from Charlie and Alice, but was not aware of, had kept him safe so far. He must leave his frail nest of safety while it was dark. His friends, those he had loved and trusted, had all been brave soldiers in the war and poor Sergeant Mark had lost his leg so he must be brave too.

He slid down slowly, feeling with his feet where the next branch would be, pausing before he reached the lowest one, listening, hardly daring to breathe just in case they – who were they? his frightened child mind asked. Friends of the grey lady? – should be waiting for him at the base of the tree. He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know what day it was or even what time of the year. Time had no meaning for him. He was so tired his brain seemed to have gone to sleep. He wanted to scream for Dolly, or Rose, or Summer Place where he had once lived and been loved. It was his home but where was it?
Where was he?
His eyes kept closing but he couldn’t sleep in case in his sleep he might fall from the tree.

Being as quiet as he could he slid down the rough bark until his feet touched the mossy ground beneath. There were clouds drifting in a soft breeze across the sky and as they moved slowly a full moon shone and he could see as though a light had been switched on and at once he knew where he was. He and Charlie, and Tim, and even Sergeant Mark had come this way many times on one of their adventures. He was in the stretch of woodland at the back of Summer Place where he had last seen Charlie and the robin. In fact he and Charlie had climbed this very tree.

Beginning to sob with relief, no longer feeling tired and afraid, he ran and ran, dodging familiar places until he reached the gate that was let into the wall surrounding the house and gardens. His home, Summer Place, where were peace and love and safety. The horses, Pixie and Molly, Corey and Foxy, sensed him in the yard and were restless and he distinctly heard Ned say, ‘What’s up wi’ them?’ but he did not stop. He reached the kitchen door, turning the handle, weeping with frustration when he found it locked. It was never locked, never, but he was not to know that since his own disappearance everyone, cottagers, farmers, everyone with children on the estate, took no chances. Gypsies, vagrants, those with no fixed address were viewed with great suspicion.