Broken Music (13 page)

Gervase Hatherley? Well, no. Perhaps not. He was simply too boring to be regarded as a potential son-in-law. In addition, dear Nella would be one of her guests, and it was obvious that, no doubt because he had been so very devoted to poor Marianne, even the sound of Hatherley's name was painful to her. Sybil knew she avoided situations where she was likely to meet him. It really looked as though the possibles were boiling down to George Featherstonehaugh, who had come out of the war having suffered nothing worse than something utterly disgusting called trench fever, which was apparently caused by the bite of a louse – but perhaps one wouldn't mention that – and to pleasant, handsome Freddie Anstruther. She put a mental star against this last name. Yes, Freddie could be a strong contender. He had a nice, obliging nature, had survived the war with only a shoulder wound and much gallantry, had inherited a large house and estate not too far away, and several thousand a year to go with it. He was a bit of an ass, but his only major fault, that Sybil could see, was that he was likely to talk of nothing else but how soon hunting could be resumed, which was frightfully tedious, but one couldn't have everything. Of course, his sister, Gertrude, would have to be included, a woman with a face like a boot who had been something terrifying in the Ministry of Food during the war. Which made a total of eleven, and left her short of a man. It looked as though she would have to invite Gervase Hatherley, after all. But that might be just too embarrassing…oh, dear!

This dinner party was proving a little more than Sybil had anticipated. Well, I've started it and I must go on with it, and I'll do my best to enjoy it, she thought. Her matrimonial ambitions for Eunice were only part of this proposed junket; she was genuinely pleased with the opportunity to celebrate William's homecoming, but she could feel no real sense of joy. Would she never cease to feel that everything was dust and ashes since the loss of Grev? People thought her hard because, when he was believed to have been killed, she had never, in public at any rate, shed a tear, although the thought of him being blown to pieces, his body parts never found, was sometimes more than she could bear. Yet, she must still go on. She was still only forty-two and must manage to go on for the rest of her life. She pressed a hand to her temples.

‘We must decide what you are to wear, Eunice,' she said at last, forcing herself back to the matter in hand and handing her daughter the list to look over.

Eunice looked up. ‘Oh, I don't care what I wear. All that's such a bore,' she replied, though in fact she found the selection and wearing of pretty clothes anything but a bore, and she very much wanted to look her best at this particular party; it was simply that she increasingly felt if she did not stick up for herself her mama's ambitions might swallow her up. She wanted to say all this marriage-making was rot, that no one was going to bother with that sort of thing anymore, but she knew the last wasn't true: there would always be women like her mother, on the lookout for their daughters, although Eunice conceded that her mother genuinely wished to see her happily settled; the trouble was, happiness to her certainly included freedom from anxiety about money.

Sybil said suddenly, ‘I think I'll take a walk, Eunice.' It was no good, she simply could not concentrate, with this other thing on her mind. ‘I have rather a headache and perhaps the fresh air will do me good.'

Eunice, contrite, put aside her book. ‘Would you like me to come with you, Mother?'

‘No, no, just a few minutes' fresh air, that should clear it.'

‘Are you sure? You do look awfully pale.'

‘Dearest child, I'm quite sure, thank you.'

‘In that case…' Eunice put the list down, unread, smiled at her mother and said she thought she might walk along to visit the convalescents. She was aware of her mother's eyes following her, knowing that these excursions were something else of which Sybil highly disapproved, but could find no adequate reason for stopping.

 

Whenever Sybil was troubled, one of the things which helped her was to walk around her garden. She called it her garden but was under no illusion that it really belonged to Hughes, her head gardener. He was a tyrant who had not, before the war, allowed her to do anything much more exacting than deadhead the roses – under his supervision, of course. He would listen to her suggestions, nod, and then act upon them or not, as he felt fit. She was sure he had been quite glad that her war work had left her with no time to interfere, allowing him to concentrate on his vegetables.

She took deep breaths of the fresh, cold air as she walked around. It was better to think about the garden than this other dreadful business, which was beginning to make her feel less alarmed than it had at first, but more angry. She bent to pull a dandelion in the lawn. It snapped off, as Hughes always warned her they would. The two of them kept up a running battle which she'd rather suspected he enjoyed as much as she did, truth to tell, about what was to go where and how, especially since he usually won, and was often proved right. But she'd won over the philadelphus he'd attacked so ferociously with the pruning shears early one spring. There were no arching branches dripping with heavenly perfumed white flowers that year. He kept silent, but thereafter the shrub had been pruned at the proper time.

She was sad to see how neglected everything now was. What havoc the war had wreaked, even in the thousand little everyday, but important, things that made life worth living.

She paused to speak to some of the recuperating soldiers who were making a start on helping to restore the garden to its old beauty, under the direction of that formidable sergeant major, Broadbent, with his jaw half blown off. Sybil applauded his courage and tenacity in herding his volunteers, but to get the garden in good order again it was going to take a great deal more than goodwill, which was the most many of them could yet manage. None of the men was yet in the prime of health and this sort of work needed strong men, but it was a start, they had already made a difference, and in any case, she understood very well that it wasn't the garden itself which was the object: it was the contribution to the men's well-being which it would make. Not only by physical exercise, but with the feeling of damp, crumbly earth beneath your fingers, watching the yearly miracle, the cycle of life start again, the understanding that war could not destroy everything.

She came to a decision. She had a problem, and the problem must be faced and not just put aside. She must do something about it.

 

There was always a distinct brightening when Eunice came into the wards. A pretty face, a smile and a word for everyone, perfumed and prettily dressed, she was a change from the eternally busy, uniformed nurses and brought a breath of fresh air and femininity into the wards.

She spoke to one or two, then went to sit by Jack Shawcross, to whom she made daily visits. He was the son of a Huddersfield mill worker who'd won a grammar school scholarship, become a bank clerk, enlisted in the ranks at the beginning of the war and had risen rapidly to warrant officer, all of which were absolutely wonderful achievements, though her mother probably would not see it that way. Sympathetic as she was to all the men who had ended up here at Oaklands, Sybil was not able to keep a trace of disapproval from her voice whenever Eunice mentioned the young soldier. She would have been astonished, not to say delighted, at the nature of the conversation which followed, and to hear Eunice's bracing tone when sat down by his bed.

‘I've brought you a book, I hope it isn't one you've read.' He glanced briefly at
Diary of a Nobody
, shook his head and murmured his thanks.

‘It's very light. I think you'll find it amusing. Have you replied to your dear Emily's letter yet, Jack?'

‘No.'

‘That's not really fair, is it? She must be waiting for an answer.'

‘Then she'll have a long wait. I won't have anybody marrying me out of sympathy.'

‘Why don't you try to have a little sympathy for
her
? Hasn't it ever occurred to you that she might love you? It's wrong, you know, and not like you, I'm sure, not to face up to things, to make two people unhappy. Wouldn't it be tremendous, if you went back home and got your old job back…?'

His face twisted. ‘Are you pulling my leg?'

‘Don't make bitter jokes like that, Jack, please.'

‘How do you suggest I should manage such a thing, then? Peg legs, I suppose you mean.'

‘
You
can do it, if anyone can. You're a hero; they've given you the Military Cross for what you did, and I know how you got it – going out into no-man's-land to bring a wounded comrade who was caught on the wire, under enemy fire—'

‘Yes, and he died after all, and I lost my legs. Who's told you all this rubbish?'

‘Sergeant Major Broadbent, and it's not rubbish. You're a hero to him, too.'

‘How did I come to be in the same hospital with that fool? He talks too damn much.'

It was a familiar conversation, and never got much further than this, but Eunice kept faith with herself that it would, one day. She rose and laid a hand on his. ‘Think about what I've said, Jack. And do try to have some thought for your poor Emily.
Courage, mon ami.
'

He hesitated. ‘I'm sorry I was rude, I'll try to do better next time. Goodbye, Miss Eunice, and thank you for the book.'

She hurried away before he should see the tears filling her eyes.

 

After his impromptu lunch on the Hill, Reardon, leaving his motorbike where it was behind the hedge, had wandered down the village street until he came to the humpback bridge, the oldest of the three bridges which spanned the shallow, winding river. Two further wooden bridges also crossed it, for there were houses and cottages clustering either side, but from here he had a good view of the police house on the main street, so that he could observe the comings and goings, while remaining discreetly stationed out of sight.

He leant against the stone parapet. After the winter, the water had risen to the level of the banks either side, though nowhere was it a deep river. Flooding, he had been told, was no unusual event: it regularly rose and spread out across the water meadows, along the street and into the cottage gardens, but in its retreat leaving behind a rich silt, wonderful for cabbages and dahlias, roses, beans and rhubarb. Bracey's garden certainly testified to this. From here Reardon had a good view of its flourishing vegetable patch, garden hut, chicken run and a pigsty beyond.

It was very quiet, the occasional sounds of the village were muted: the clop of a horse towards the smithy and the subsequent ring of the anvil, a woman shouting a greeting across a garden to another. The two shops were closed, until after the funeral. The children were still in school, the men at work. The clock on the squat tower of the church struck the half-hour.

The church and the tall-chimneyed rectory and the Greville Arms were the only large buildings in the village, with the bulk of Oaklands Park in the distance. Looking across the river towards the big house, you could see the small lake belonging to Oaklands, curving around the base of the Hill. They called it a lake, but it was in fact a backwater of the river, fed also by a spring that rose in the woods surrounding it. He watched a long-legged heron fishing in the shallows. Along the banks willows grew, their arching branches dipping to the water. The grass was starred with some little, shining gold flowers he thought were celandines. Emerging from winter, the bright day looked new and hopeful, the village peaceful and uneventful, and for a moment, part of him understood why Ted Bracey had dug himself in here. He was nearing retirement now, a man originally from a Devon village, Reardon remembered, used to an easy, undemanding countryman's existence. One that would never suit Herbert Reardon.

Yet somewhere in this new world, he too must find a place. Alone, of course, he would always be alone, what else could he expect?

He looked up and at that moment saw his patience was to be rewarded. Ted Bracey came out of the house, helmeted, steering his bicycle with one hand, the other still buttoning up the neck of his tunic. He mounted and began to make his slow, stately way towards the centre of the village. Reardon easily caught up with him. ‘Morning, Constable.'

Bracey slowed even more, and became official. ‘Morning, sir,' he said, touching his helmet.

‘You won't remember me, but we've met before, Constable. The name's Reardon. That case here, just before the war, that young woman who drowned, Marianne Wentworth?'

After a moment's slow inspection of him, Bracey replied in his slow West Country burr. ‘I do remember you. Sergeant Reardon. What brings you here again, then?' he asked, dismounting and wheeling his bicycle. Reardon did not disabuse him regarding his status, but walked by his side.

‘I needed a holiday and remembered this as good walking country. Maybe you could recommend some good walks?'

‘Don't do much walking meself.' Reardon could believe it. Bracey fitted into his tight uniform like a sausage into its skin. ‘You want to ask the rector about that. He's the one who does the walking round here.'

Reardon had been wanting to steer the conversation around to the Wentworths and now it was Bracey himself who had done it. He wondered if it had been done on purpose, but he decided that was perhaps overestimating the constable's powers of perception, though he was obviously wondering what Reardon wanted. ‘Would that be the Reverend Wentworth? Father of the same young woman we've just mentioned? Odd case, that. Never got to the bottom of it, did we? You can't get many like that around here.'

‘And thank the good Lord for it.'

‘Amen to that. All the same, I don't suppose it's been forgotten.'

‘Nine days' wonder. Nobody wants to remember it, now, poor young lady.'