Dorothy Eden (18 page)

Attack? Surely not. Just a frenzied physical release, lacking tenderness or thoughtfulness. It was behaviour that was surely uncontrollable, for she was sure he would not willingly have hurt her or ignored her pleasure.

Or would he? Did she know this man, his mind over-full of the dark memories of war?

Of course she didn’t know him, war or no war. She might discover that he had a brutal streak which he no longer intended to conceal. Or his mind could be full of Julia, her hair streaming in the wind, galloping ahead of him over the Four Hills. His supreme ideal of beauty, Hetty suspected bitterly.

The sound of the piano was far away, slightly melancholy, totally unsuitable. She remembered suddenly how Effie had said that Lady Flora always played the piano when she was upset. Why was she upset tonight when her eldest son was home and in good health? Because he was in bed with the wrong woman?

“Give me some more champagne, darling?

“I’m sorry, was I a bit sudden for you?”

She smiled into his thin face, the bones pressing against the sallow flesh, the slightly prominent eyes lacking any semblance of tenderness.

“A bit. But we have all night.”

And the next time it was better. If anything it was she who, through tension, tiredness and perplexity, lacked genuine response. However, one could simulate. She was discovering more than she had bargained for. Women were versatile, in many different ways.

The precious four days did not result in a regained love and tenderness. That had been too much to hope for. But Hugo wanted her every night and held her as if he would like to crush and consume her. It seemed as if he were driven by some monstrous futile anger against the whole clouded and stormy universe. It was only after this physical assault—for that was virtually what it was—that he could sleep.

And only after he had been out riding with Julia, or alone, that some of the rigidity went out of his face.

Kitty said that he was beginning to look like half a dozen pompous irascible old colonels and brigadiers she had known. Surely he was too young for that. Hetty would have to soften him after the war. She could do so if she tried.

“Do you think so?” Hetty said wistfully. “He seems to be permanently angry.”

“How can the way he behaves in four days be permanent? You just haven’t got time now, that’s all. And I don’t believe you have ever really got to know him, have you?”

“I thought—in New York—”

“He was a debutante’s dream?” Kitty was blunt, as usual. “Well, he was never that, in my opinion. He hasn’t got half of Lionel’s brains. But he’s usually a good-natured fellow. He’s suffering from a bit of shell shock, I think. We’re beginning to see more of it among the men just back from the front. It takes time for them to recover. But they do, with help.”

“Oh, I’ll help,” Hetty said fervently. “If only I can guess how.”

“I suspect you’ve done that partly already.” The slight bruise on Hetty’s throat hadn’t escaped Kitty’s notice. “I hope you’ve got a baby out of it, at least.”

Hetty looked doubtful. “I wonder if this is the right time, the right conditions.”

“You think you’ll have a squalling angry tortured little brat? Don’t be silly. He’ll be yours. You’ll be the mother.”

Hetty’s eyes filled with tears.

“You’re always so kind to me.”

“I think you deserve a bit of kindness. I really do.” Kitty shrugged in her casual way. “Freddie thinks the same. Confer with him.”

Then Hugo was gone, and it was late November and they read that snow covered no-man’s-land, and the men in the front line trenches slept in their great-coats, and balaclavas and mittens, and almost never took their boots off, yet still got frostbite and a host of other ills. The ground became too frozen to dig new trenches, and when a thaw set in they nearly drowned in mud. The wounded did actually drown.

The icy waters of the Atlantic would be preferable to that horror of suffocation.

It was terrible reading about it, or hearing it from the lips of survivors, men with amputated fingers or toes, one of whom said cynically, “They say there’ll be cowslips and larks and poppies and other nice things in the spring, but I don’t believe it. There’ll just be bones, you know. Just bones sprouting up out of the earth.”

By Christmas it was rumoured that the Gallipoli campaign had been a failure and might have to be abandoned. All that heroism and tragedy, the blue Aegean running with the blood of the most splendid young men on earth, and for a lost cause. But Kitty was jubilant; she only cared that Lionel might soon be home.

Hetty was not jubilant about anything, for there was not to be a baby. She had a feeling of time racing by, of too many uncertainties, too many dangers.

And Julia was up to something.

She and Lady Flora had been visiting old friends in Bath, staying overnight and returning the following afternoon. Like mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, Hetty thought, watching them descending from the Rolls, clutching hats and scarves which threatened to be snatched away in the sharp November wind, clutching each other, too, and laughing.

They had enjoyed their brief stay away, particularly Julia who looked more animated than Hetty had ever seen her. That surely couldn’t have been the result of enjoying something as mildly stimulating as a musical soiree and a sedate dinner party, where, as far as Hetty could discover, the youngest male was on the wrong side of fifty.

The secret came out eventually.

“We met a friend of yours, Hetty,” Julia said airily.

“You couldn’t have!”

“Oh, but we could. Couldn’t we, Lady Flora?”

“Don’t tease the child,” Lady Flora said quite kindly. “It was only the Eversleigh girl, Hetty. She says she did meet you on the
Lusitania
although you did tell us you didn’t remember her.”

“No, I don’t. Everything’s so blurred. I don’t seem to have Miss Eversleigh’s memory.”

“Perhaps you were a bit too occupied with a certain young man,” Julia said slyly.

“Don’t be a bitch, Julia,” Kitty interrupted. “Everyone has shipboard flirtations. Except Kate Eversleigh, probably. Didn’t there always used to be a flap about getting her a partner for the Hunt ball?”

“Girls, you’re behaving like schoolchildren,” Lady Flora chided. “Anyway, Hetty will be able to see whether or not her memory is reliable when Kate comes tomorrow.”

“She’s coming here!” Hetty couldn’t keep the alarm out of her voice.

“Just to tea, my dear. On her way to London. She’s catching a troop train on her way to France with the Red Cross. You may think her a dull person, but I must say she has plenty of courage.”

“And you never told us what a gay little creature you were, Hetty,” Julia was determined to persist with her petty persecution. “Who was the irresistible young man you spent so much time leaning over the rail with?”

“Nobody, nobody!” Hetty cried in a high strained voice. “At least he’s nobody now because he was drowned. They all were. Except Katharine Eversleigh, and me. That’s why my memory is so bad. It wants to shut out things.” She added more steadily, “I would rather not see her, if you don’t mind. It sounds hateful, like forming a survivors’ club. How long were you in the water, Clemency? Who fished you out?”

They were all staring at her in surprise. Afterwards Kitty said it was because she had called herself Clemency for the first time. They had hardly known whom she was speaking of.

She did see Katharine Eversleigh, of course. By the next day she had collected herself and knew that she was capable of being in command of the situation. After all, she had had plenty of practise at being quick-witted in tricky situations. Something the dull Miss Eversleigh with her secure upbringing in an English county family would know little about.

And indeed this was how it turned out to be. Katharine Eversleigh was a well-built plain-faced friendly young woman who wanted only to congratulate another survivor.

“Of course I don’t expect you to remember me, Lady Hazzard. You were always so popular, weren’t you? Always the centre of attention. And such lovely clothes. I could have snatched that green silk dress off you, if you can imagine a carthorse like me in moiré silk.”

Hetty knew the dress she referred to. Clemency had liked it, too. She had been inordinately fussy about how it was ironed. It had taken exactly an hour, and after one wearing it had all to be done again. There was no way Hetty could have forgotten it.

“It was an adorable dress,” Katharine was going on. “Young Mr—I don’t think I ever heard his name—admired it too, didn’t he?”

Had this large, seemingly good-natured, young woman been primed by Julia?

“You must mean Mr Merrit. His family was in sugar. Terribly rich. Actually he got to be rather a bore. Adulation gets to be so artificial. Mother and I were planning ways of ditching the tiresome young man. But eventually it wasn’t necessary. The Germans—” the high affected note went out of Hetty’s voice. She had gone very pale. “Well, they did it for us, didn’t they? Were you—?”

“Yes, I was lucky. Our lifeboat got launched safely. We had no idea until afterwards how many were upset into the water, how many people never got ashore, at least not alive. But now here I am—” Miss Eversleigh sensed the uncomfortable atmosphere and gave an awkward laugh, “sticking my neck out again, going to France, though I don’t suppose I’ll get too near the German guns.”

“You astonish me, Hetty, being such a wicked little flirt,” Julia murmured. “Isn’t she a marvellous actress, Lady Flora?”

Lady Flora was giving Hetty a long thoughtful gaze, obviously trying to conjure up the vivacious young woman in the green silk ball gown. She was frowning a little, and it was left for Kitty to say, “Can you blame Hetty if such an awful experience washed some of the frivolity out of her? And what was wrong with a bit of frivolity, anyway? Hugo obviously admired it.”

“I’m married now,” Hetty said, with stiff dignity. Then, “Yes, I was frivolous once. Not that long ago either, although it seems an awful long time now. I led that kind of life. Hugo knew and he enjoyed it, too. But he’s changed, as well.” She looked challengingly at the listening women. “How can one not, after what we’ve been through?”

It was left for Julia to say, rather ineffectually, “It is a pity about that lost trousseau. I wonder how you can be contented with provincial clothes. Yes, Cirencester is distinctly provincial, Kitty, and you can’t deny it. But Hetty doesn’t seem to want to go to London to shop.”

Hetty’s chin lifted sharply.

“I’ll do that when my husband comes home permanently. Just now it would be pointless to get oneself up like a gadfly. I have no intention of doing it.”

There was a brief awkward silence, Katharine Eversleigh looking bewildered and uneasy. She put her cup and saucer down with a clatter, and Julia, who had not given up the private game she was playing, said. “Did you suffer a sea change, too, Kate? I mean one as complete as Hetty’s?”

“I wasn’t in the water so long. I wasn’t in danger of drowning. And I didn’t lose my mother.”

“Or your maid?” Julia suggested.

A look of distaste came into Katharine’s mild brown eyes.

“I don’t think we should hash over those old things, Julia. It does no good. It’s only very distressing.” She added briskly and cheerfully, “I have a feeling that after tomorrow there are going to be worse catastrophes in my life. But I do wish you luck, Hetty. May I call you Hetty? Don’t have nightmares about that time. We’ve survived. We ought to be congratulating ourselves, and making the most of our lives. I mean to, anyway.”

“Oh, so do I,” Hetty agreed firmly. Julia suspected something, but could prove nothing since she didn’t know what she suspected. She would never know. How could she? There was no need to be afraid.

I
T SEEMED THAT CHRISTMAS
was spent to the background of the piano being played in the music room, though there was nothing so seasonal and ordinary for Lady Flora as Christmas carols.

She was fretting in her unspoken way for her absent sons, so the delicate nocturnes were interspersed with requiems.

The day before Christmas Lady Flora, accompanied by Julia, distributed Christmas gifts to convalescent soldiers and Julia was mistaken for the new young Lady Hazzard. It seemed to be a great joke to everyone but Hetty. Other modest entertainments took place.

The vicar and his wife, Mr Edmonds the manager from the bank in Cirencester, Doctor Bailey and one or two neighbouring farmers were invited to Loburn for hot punch or whisky, as they preferred. There was a Christmas tree for Freddie, and a small and rather subdued party for the much diminished staff. It was all, in Julia’s words, unutterably morbid. There were no carol singers, and there wasn’t even any snow.

Hetty caught Julia’s morbidity, for a letter had come from Uncle Jonas suggesting that it would be a sensible idea if she were to go and see that her mother’s grave was being cared for.

I understand ferry boats are still running to Ireland, and it’s your duty, my dear. Don’t want thistles or shamrocks, or whatever, growing all over it. And I trust you to have made all enquiries possible about the fate of your maid. This is not only humanity, but an employer’s duty. I’m not so fit myself; doctor gives me gloomy warnings to which I pay no heed. I shall go down drinking my brandy if I feel like it. Judging by the casualty lists, your husband seems to be on the lucky side. Though the new offensive they’re talking of on the Somme may tell a different story. We don’t know too much about it over here. I hope we have the sense to keep out of it…

And Hetty was going to have the sense to keep away from that windy Irish headland where she could do no good whatever. Mrs Jervis had had far too much attention all her life. Now she would have to do with only the odd prayer from a nun or a passing priest.

At last the Gallipoli campaign was over, the men slipping out silently night after night, not daring even to whisper. Not only because of the alert ears of the enemy, but because of the dead buried on the tortured hillsides, their own comrades who might feel deserted. The withdrawal was the most successful operation of that doomed campaign.