Grace Hardie (26 page)

‘There's no one else, is there, Grace?'

It almost seemed that her mother was reading her thoughts. The question startled her into a decision.

‘No. You're quite right. I do love Christopher.' What other explanation could there be for her shyness whenever he arrived for one of his rare visits, or her feeling of desolation when he said goodbye. ‘I'll write tomorrow. We'll be married as soon as the war is over.'

She accepted her mother's hugging and congratulations with a sudden lightheartedness. This was how a young woman's life should run, and she was glad to be ordinary. That night she lay in bed repeating to herself ‘Mrs Christopher Bailey'. At first the words made her smile happily. Only as she was on the point of falling asleep did her uncertainties return. What sort of a life would Mrs Christopher Bailey be expected to lead? Where would she live? She was unable to answer those questions, but by morning had forgotten them.

Over breakfast next morning Mrs Hardie decreed that
it would soon be time to make contact with Christopher's parents.

‘We'll allow long enough for your letter to reach him and for him to tell his parents of the engagement. Early in the new year I'll invite them here to meet you.'

Grace made a face at the thought of the coming ordeal, but had little time to think about it, for she was kept busy both at The House of Hardie and with the Christmas preparations at Greystones.

For Mrs Hardie, Christmas had become a time for regret rather than rejoicing. David and his wife were expected, and Midge would spend a week with them as usual. In addition, Will Witney was always invited to Christmas dinner, because he had no family of his own. Yet it was hard not to compare the tiny gathering with the lively pre-war days when her husband and daughter and five sons were all assembled for the festivities.

So Grace set herself the task of decorating the house as lavishly as in the old days, bringing in holly and mistletoe by the armful. She made birds out of paper, colouring them as brightly as parrots before suspending them from the ceilings; and when Jay arrived home from school he helped her to dress a tree as large as any in the past with tinsel and candles and the coloured glass globes which were stored in nests of tissue paper for eleven months of each year. Had Gordon Hardie walked into the house on Christmas Eve he would have seen nothing to suggest any lack of a festive spirit.

There was to be no hospital visiting on Christmas Day, they had been told by the sister in charge of Philip's ward. It made for unhappiness for any patients who found themselves alone. The doctors and nurses undertook instead to make the day a special one. So Grace and her mother, with Jay accompanying them for the first time, carried their gifts to the hospital on the day before.

They found Philip looking better in one way, because the tube had been removed from his throat. But there was no change in the deadness of his eyes, and he still lacked either the strength or the will to move. He attempted to smile as the parcels were piled beside his bed, but made no effort to touch them. His only movement, in fact, was caused by the unexpected bursting of a balloon brought in by the small son of another patient. This made him draw up his knees sharply and cover his face with his hands. It was half an hour before he ceased to tremble and managed to regain the state of immobility which alarmed his family as much as the trembling. When Mrs Hardie, at the end of the afternoon, emerged from the doctor's office, she looked more worried than ever.

‘They're sending him away for convalescence,' she reported. ‘There's nothing more they can do for him here, and he needs a period of quiet.'

‘You mean he can come home to Greystones?'

‘That was what I hoped. But the doctor …'Mrs Hardie's expression showed how much the interview had upset her. ‘They suggest that he should live for a while in a community that they know about. They've sent patients to it before. There's nursing care available if it's needed, but the main advantage is apparently its peaceful atmosphere.'

‘What kind of community? Do you mean a monastery?' Jay asked.

Mrs Hardie shook her head. ‘Not exactly. It's run by an Anglican ex-chaplain, but it doesn't belong to any particular Order, as far as I can gather. It's been started for people who need to retreat from the world for a while. They work at whatever suits them, and leave when they feel ready to face ordinary life again. We should think of it as being – well, a convalescent home. There are a lot of men like Philip, the doctor said, who need rest of this special sort while they're coming to terms with their injuries.'

It still seemed to Grace that the right place for her brother was his own home, but it was difficult to argue with the doctor's opinion. She did her best to cheer her mother.

‘He'll come home in the end. And he's alive – and safe. He'll never have to go back to the Front. That's all that matters.'

It was a thought which helped them all to be cheerful throughout Christmas Day – even at the moment when Will Witney rose to his feet at the end of dinner. Ever since Mr Hardie's departure four years earlier, Will had taken over the task of choosing a special selection of wines for the meal, and also of proposing the toast which would normally have been left to the head of the household.

‘We remember our Absent Loved Ones,' he began. ‘First of all Frank, who will always be present in our hearts. Gordon Hardie, for whose safety we all pray. Philip, who is thankfully on the way to recovery. And Kenneth, who still faces danger.' Kenneth's desertion was a secret which the Hardies had managed to keep to themselves, concealing it even from the manager.

The diners prepared to rise to their feet. Midge and Lucy, Grace and Jay, David and his wife Sheila, all gripped their glasses in readiness for the toast. But Will had not yet finished.

‘And to these family names we must this year for the first time add that of Major Christopher Bailey. We hope that it won't be too long before he returns safely to England. In the meantime I ask you to drink to all those we love who cannot be with us today.'

Grace stood up at the same time as everyone else, lifted her glass to her lips, murmured with the others the names of her father and brothers, but then lingered tenderly on the words ‘Major Christopher Bailey'. Yes, he must come
back safely. He was the guardian of her future life, and she could not live without him. How could she have doubted her feelings even for a moment? Of course she was in love with Christopher.

It was towards the end of January 1918 that Mr and Mrs Bailey arrived at Greystones to inspect their future daughter-in-law, although the occasion was naturally not described in such terms. Grace as a rule gave little thought to what she should wear, but on the day of the visit her bedroom was littered with rejected garments by the time she went downstairs. How could she decide whether Christopher's parents would prefer someone who was neat and demure or someone smart and lively until she had met them?

The ordeal proved not to be as great as she had feared. Mr and Mrs Bailey were prepared to like Grace just because their son loved her. After the meal Mrs Bailey retired to the drawing room with her hostess while Mr Bailey asked to be shown the grounds, in spite of the cold. Grace took him first to the top of the hill. From there she could point out the view of Oxford and the boundaries of the Greystones estate.

‘Hunt, do you?' enquired Mr Bailey.

‘I don't myself.' Grace saw no reason to add that she never went near the family's horses, since they had so often brought on one of her bouts of wheezing.

‘Good country for it, I can see. Christopher's a fine rider. Well, you know that. It's why he joined the cavalry – and now he finds himself sitting in one of these tank things! He's a first-class shot as well. Plenty of pheasant you've got here, I should say.'

‘Yes.' Grace tried to disguise her lack of enthusiasm for the idea that they should be killed. Her father, on his
expeditions abroad, shot for the pot and believed that every boy should be able to do the same. Each of her four elder brothers had been taught to use a gun, but only Frank had taken pleasure in it.

Kenneth had always refused point blank to kill even vermin. His twin was by now a Londoner, with no time for country sports. As for Philip, he – like his sister – took more pleasure in watching the handsome birds and their bustling mates than in killing them. Grace, who put out food for the pheasants in harsh weather, would have thought it a betrayal of trust to let anyone shoot them.

There was no need to feel shame about concealing her feelings. Mr Bailey might have hoped to acquire a hunting daughter-in-law; he was less likely to expect a woman to shoot. But his question made her uneasy. She remembered how Frank had once suggested that Greystones, because it was designed on such a grand scale, gave a false impression of the family's place in society. Was she unwittingly deceiving Mr Bailey, not by anything she said but by the simple fact of living in a spacious mansion with extensive grounds?

What a ridiculous question! Mr Bailey knew as well as his son that the Hardies were in trade, and the pleasantness of his manner suggested that this did not trouble him. So many wartime marriages were arranged quickly that dowries and settlements had lost much of their importance, and lavish wedding ceremonies attended by all members of both families were almost impossible to arrange. The parents of the bride and groom had to be content if the match appeared ‘suitable'; and Greystones was probably helping the Hardies to pass this test.

There were, naturally, other tests. On her return to the drawing room she was invited to entertain the visitors on the piano, and did so willingly enough. Nor did she raise any objection when the visitors' attention was drawn to a
watercolour which she had painted, hanging on the wall.

‘Which is your favourite occupation?' asked Mrs Bailey, praising the painting. ‘What would you be doing at this moment if we were not here?'

Would it be wise to tell the truth? But Mrs Bailey was smiling as she awaited an answer.

‘I'll show you. If we may go into the studio, Mother?'

‘Of course, dear.'

The large, high room in the north wing of the house had been specially designed for her mother's use. But after the Christmas when her aunt gave her a present of clay, the carpenter had been summoned to fit a wide, strong workbench across one end. On a table beside it was a potter's wheel, a birthday present which arrived six months after the first gift. Some of the pots which Grace had made stood on shelves above the workbench; but instead of pointing to these, she indicated a piece only recently begun.

Her first visit to Philip had put the idea into her head and dictated its shape. For a while it was forgotten in the excitement of Christopher's proposal and the bustle of Christmas. But it remained in the back of her mind and, by the time the family group dispersed, the problem of supporting the wispy, swirling spiral of gas around the central figure had solved itself.

Wood was not the right material. Stone would have been perfect, had she known how to carve out the spaces from a single piece. But she had no idea how to set about such a task, and was too impatient to wait until she had learned new skills when she had another material to hand.

Clay could be formed to the shape she had in mind, but needed a framework to bear what might prove to be a heavy weight. This must hold one part away from another, allowing the light which came through the spaces to be part of the design. She had raided outbuildings which
contained tools and materials needed for general repairs, and now her workbench was littered with wirecutters and saws and thick fencing wire and palings of split chestnut. Round one of the palings, gripped in a carpenter's vice, she had constructed an armature of twisted wire; on this she could build up the clay. She thought of the wire construction as being a skeleton, but of course it was not the skeleton of any recognizable shape. It was not surprising that the Baileys stared at it in a puzzled fashion.

What a stupid thing to do, to show them something so incomplete. Hastily she drew their attention to the row of pots and chattered about her experiments with glazes.

To judge from Mrs Bailey's doubtful expression, even the making of elegant vases did not represent a suitable occupation for gentlewomen. Well-brought-up girls were not expected to get their hands dirty. But that was the only moment to cloud what was otherwise a successful day. In the course of the next week Mrs Bailey wrote not only a formal letter of thanks to Mrs Hardie, but also an affectionate note to Grace herself. Nothing, it seemed, was to ruffle the course of true love.

So it was with no apprehension of bad news that Grace opened a second letter from Mrs Bailey six weeks after the first. Indeed, her eyes sparkled with hope: was Christopher expected home on leave? Her excitement at the possibility made all the greater the shock of what she read.

The first paragraph of the letter repeated Mrs Bailey's appreciation of the visit to Greystones. The sting came in the second:

Christopher has asked me to write to you, to suggest that it might after all be unwise for the two of you to consider yourselves formally engaged to be married in the present uncertain circumstances. So much could happen before the war ends and it becomes possible to look forward to any kind of settled life. Although we must all pray that the successes gained by the
Germans in their recent attack will eventually be reversed, there seems little hope of seeing a satisfactory end to hostilities for a long time yet. It would be wrong, he feels, for you to regard yourself as bound to someone who is unable to offer you companionship now or security for the future.

He wants me to make it clear that his affection for you is unchanged, but wishes you to regard yourself as free, released from a promise which he had no right to ask of you.

With a gasp which combined shock and anger and distress, Grace stood up from the breakfast table so abruptly that her heavy chair fell backwards to the floor.