Home for Christmas (25 page)

‘How are you, Lydia my dear?’ Sylvester said.

‘I’m fine.’ She knew he wanted to know what Robert had written, but she wasn’t going to tell. Robert’s words were for her and her alone.

‘More than fine, I think,’ said Sylvester. ‘In fact you look very fine indeed for a woman who works for a living.’

He was doing his best to sound amiable, but somehow his air of superiority always won through.

She felt him eyeing her condescendingly from head to toe. Her head held high, she gave him the same look back. Hair that had once been very light blonde was now darker and trimmed close to his head. He was clean-shaven, crisp and despite her comment, she had to admit he was splendid to look at. The trouble was, Sylvester being the way he was, he knew it.

‘Yes, and I wear a uniform, just as you do.’ She looked him up and down in the same way he had looked at her. ‘A fine uniform, Sylvester. I take it both that and your commission as an officer cost a pretty penny.’

She saw him wince at the insinuation that he’d purchased his commission without having to earn it. The rich could do that. You could buy anything if you had enough money.

‘I expect you were looking forward to seeing my dear cousin. Shame he couldn’t make it.’

His sympathy didn’t match his expression or his tone. He sounded as though he were well pleased with the fact.

‘Yes. It is,’ she said, smiling as she folded the message and put it into her pocket. She would not disclose what was in the message. ‘Never mind. There’ll be other weekends when he can make it.’

‘I dare say, though not always in such fine weather, don’t you think? He’s taken one of his flying machines down to Dover. The whole shebang will be setting off from there, all those intrepid young men in their flying machines. Must say I don’t rate their chances of crossing the Channel without losing a few. String, canvas and little else. And if that engine fails … whoosh …’ He did a diving motion with his hand. ‘Into the drink!’

‘Robert is a very capable pilot.’

‘Of course he is, but is the flying machine capable of flying all the way across the Channel? That’s what you have to ask yourself, dear girl. That’s what you have to ask yourself.’

He stepped close enough for her to smell his hair oil, his mannish sweat and the fish he’d eaten. The buttons on his uniform gleamed, no doubt polished and buffed by some lowly batman. In time that same man who took care of Captain Travis Dartmouth would be given a rifle and shoved into battle – fodder for the big guns.

She found herself repeating the kind of things Agnes had told her.

‘Robert knows what he’s doing and aeroplanes are improving all the time. Anyway, he’s doing his duty and I have to do mine.’

‘How about I take you out this weekend? We could go to a music hall. That Kate Mallory woman is performing in something at the Prince of Wales. I hear she’s lovely, loud and of loose morals, but a damned good performer. How about it?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’ All she wanted was to get away from him, to drive off with Agnes and stay at the cottage anyway. Agnes had been going along as chaperone. Now it would be just the two of them.

Sylvester seemed loath to leave.

‘Shame you’re not wearing your uniform. I was hoping you would be.’

‘I’ve already changed.’

‘So I see. I do love women in uniform,’ he suddenly said. ‘I think I told you that once before. It brings out the brute in me.’ He reached out and cupped her cheek.

Lydia stepped away, her worst instincts about Sylvester urging her to flee. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘The caveman instinct I believe it’s called. Come on, old girl. Robert’s not to know. I won’t tell him if you don’t. How about we step out on Saturday night? We can go wherever you wish. We’ll make a good pair.’

‘I don’t want to go out with you.’

Sylvester’s expression darkened. ‘You think too highly of yourself, Fraulein Miller – or should that be Muller? Who do you think you are? You should think yourself lucky to be going out with a commissioned officer. I usually only favour titled ladies of good breeding from excellent
English
families.’ He stressed the word English so she was in no doubt that he knew her father was German, and knew he had her at a disadvantage.

‘Then you should call on one of those ladies,’ she said, her words becoming more and more clipped.

She kept moving backwards, but he kept coming until the edge of a table was digging into the back of her thighs.

‘Do you recall when I locked you in the grotto at Christmas? I would have come back later. I would have set you free. We could have had such fun together. Shame Robert got there before me. He has got there before me, hasn’t he? You and him have done the dirty deed, have you not?’

‘No,’ she shouted. She slapped his face. He grabbed her wrist with one hand and grabbed her breast with the other.

With her free hand, she scratched his face.

‘Bitch!’ He fingered the marks she’d left behind; long enough for her to step sideways then back until she was safely behind one of the armchairs with which the library was furnished.

‘Get out of here!’

He stood there smiling, looking down at his hand. ‘What a lovely feeling that’s left.’

Lydia’s grey eyes flashed with anger. She had been looking forward to this weekend. Sylvester had managed to ruin it.

‘I shall tell Robert what you did,’ she said.

He shrugged. ‘Not until he gets back from flying his little machine. Anyway, you’re hardly off limits, my dear Lydia. I mean, it’s not as though you two are
formally
engaged is it? I mean, you’re only a nurse and half foreign, whereas my dear cousin is heir to a great fortune. What a waste. Do you know that if he dies I get to inherit? No doubt your attitude will change towards me then. I know your sort. Nothing but a little gold digger.’

Lydia picked up a heavy book, raising it above her head ready to throw.

‘Get out!’

He grinned. His lips were wet. His face glistened with sweat.

‘Feisty. I do like that, but obviously, the time is not yet ripe. I’m sure at some time in the future you and I will come together, one way or the other. I’m willing to wait. In the meantime, I have other fish to fry. Very tempting fish in fact. Nevertheless, do bear me in mind. If ever you need a man, I’ll be there for you. Toodle pip for now.’

Once he’d gone, she leaned against the armchair to catch her breath, the book falling to the floor with a loud bang.

The door opened and Sister Bertha entered. She frowned at the sight of Lydia’s flushed face and the tendrils of hair that had escaped to fall in wisps around her face.

‘Are you all right, Miller?’ She nodded. ‘Yes. I’m fine.’

‘I take it the fine young officer was your sweetheart?’

‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Definitely not my sweetheart.’

Captain Sylvester Travis Dartmouth frowned at a stubborn stain that his batman had failed to remove from the cuff of his jacket. A poor job indeed. The man would have to go. He’d given him a chance and he’d blown it. The likes of him, working class with a horde of children, were best off holding the front line so their betters wouldn’t have to.

Sylvester believed in spending on himself. In his opinion, servants should work for their keep, just enough to keep them clothed and fed. The new Labour movement that had sprung up thought otherwise, but their protests were weak and easily suppressed. They really had to accept that the plight of labourers and servants in general had not changed for centuries and it wasn’t about to change now. Not in his opinion anyway.

Stepping away from the main entrance to the hospital, he took a deep breath before lighting a cigarette. My God, but he needed a smoke. The fresh air was an added benefit. He couldn’t stand that sterile smell of carbolic and whatever other stuff they used to clean the wards and treat people. Obnoxious smell whatever it was.

The road outside was noisy and crowded with trams and horse-drawn trade vehicles, street vendors pushing two-wheeled carts, and flower sellers offering posies to passers-by. He wished he could sweep them all away and leave only the buildings, some of which he would delight in knocking down, and some he could almost worship.

He turned and looked up at the imposing entrance to the hospital. He thought the building excellent and wasted on sick people. It would take a few more cigarettes and a cab journey to his club to get rid of the stench of sick people in poor clothes. Moreover, more were coming in.

Two children were helping a thin woman up the steps to the hospital entrance. Her face was sunken by sickness and her clothes were as black as her hair, clean but shabby. He assumed she was Jewish from Russia or Germany, a peasant victim of persecution that had sent the Jews fleeing in terror. As if we haven’t enough of our own peasants, he thought to himself.

The woman nodded to him, a courteous nod that he was used to getting from anyone from the lower classes.

He grimaced in response and said aloud, ‘Damn it, there will be more peasants and foreigners in this country than us before long.’

August, 1914

The weather was fine and things would have been wonderful if only Robert had been able to get away to see her.

Staying in the cottage had been her idea; he’d looked surprised when she’d suggested it.

‘Well. If you’re really sure, though I think your father would prefer you to have a chaperone. Unless he comes too.’

She’d shaken her head. ‘I think not.’

They’d both fallen into silence. ‘I want to be alone with you, but for the sake of propriety I’ll bring Agnes,’ she said.

‘I’m not sure her presence will be enough to control how I feel – if you know what I mean.’

‘You mean sharing a bed,’ said Lydia with a sigh. ‘It’s the war,’ she said to him. ‘The war is barely begun, yet is altering everything.’

‘As long as you’re sure.’

‘I think there comes a moment in everyone’s life which defines them entering adulthood. That’s how I feel now,’ she’d told him. ‘This is the moment when we shall all grow up. Agnes will come with me. I can meet you there. She can drive me down.’

Robert’s weekend cottage was in Sussex, not far from the airfield. They, of course, did not stay there very often themselves. They had investments, land and sheep in Australia. They owned a logging company in Canada and a rubber plantation in Malaya.

Robert had mentioned it having roses around the door and a garden he considered overgrown, though in reality it was typical of a cottage garden, with hollyhocks, roses, lupins, gladioli and delphiniums all jostling for space like a crowd at the Derby or a football match.

Agnes had jumped at the chance of an outing, especially considering she got the opportunity to drive her employer’s car. She still wanted to become an ambulance driver, but nobody would give her the chance. In the meantime she continued to drive an old lady around. It looked as though she would have to do so for some time.

‘I told her it was for the war effort,’ she’d told Lydia cheekily when she’d asked how she’d managed to wangle it.

The car, being of the sedan variety, had a roof. Although Agnes preferred to wear her leather cap and goggles when driving, today she’d made an exception. She wore a hat; a very large hat made of straw with an enormous brim.

‘You look like Little Bo Peep,’ said Lydia as she got into the car after first strapping her luggage on at the back.

‘How would you know what Little Bo Peep looked like?’ asked Agnes, peering out at her from beneath the battered brim.

‘I had a picture of her in a nursery rhyme book when I was a child.’

Agnes grinned. ‘You had just about everything when you were a child!’

Although the comment needled her, Lydia chose to ignore it. She accepted that she’d had a privileged childhood, but Agnes had not really known poverty. Even the house in Myrtle Street was comfortable compared to some, and, of course, she had spent much of her childhood in one or the other of Sir Avis’s houses.

Agnes was wearing a silk scarf over the big hat, fastened beneath her chin with a large bow. Consequently, the large brim was bent and covered both sides of her face.

Lydia stroked the walnut panelling lining the interior of the car door. ‘This is amazing. Your employer must be worth a fortune to run something like this. What an amazing stroke of luck.’

Agnes tipped her head sideways and grinned at her. ‘Not for much longer. I have something to tell you. I’ve got a new job.’

Agnes was keeping her eyes on the road ahead, so Lydia was unable to read her expression, but she sounded quite exuberant.

‘What is it? What’s happened? Whatever it is, you sound very excited.’

‘Guess!’

‘Judging by the way your voice is bubbling over, I would guess that you’re going to be doing something you really enjoy, and there’s only one thing you really enjoy. You’re going to be driving a motor car. Am I right?’

Agnes laughed and shook her head. Fronds of hair showed from beneath her straw bonnet; like fine horsehair, wild and completely uncontrollable.

‘I already drive a motor car. It’s an ambulance. I’m joining up – in a manner of speaking. I can’t be a soldier of course, but I can be in what they call a supporting role.’

Agnes felt herself swelling with pride. What she wasn’t telling Lydia was that the people doing the recruiting had turned her down for the more mundane jobs, preferring instead to hire vicars’ daughters, girls with parents of note with cut-glass voices and the confident air of those in receipt of a private income, certainly not the daughter of a cook, an illegitimate one at that.

Lydia congratulated her. ‘That is simply amazing. Where will you be based?’

‘Here and there, though I’m hoping I might get to France. The army is heading there. Everyone.’

Lydia knew instantly that everyone meant Robert. Agnes was going to follow Robert – if she could.

‘Robert’s already there; at least I think he is.’

‘Under the circumstances, I’m not surprised he couldn’t get away to the cottage,’ said Agnes. ‘But you still want to go? Just the two of us?’