Summer's End (20 page)

‘You're tired of me.' Reggie felt Caroline flinch away from him.

‘No. Your arm was hurting me – you're holding me too tight.'

Reggie released her, horrified. ‘I'm sorry. I can't get over how differently I see you now. I'm afraid you'll disappear. Did I bruise you?' He kissed her arms in penitence, secure in the knowledge that they were far enough away from the Manor to escape attention.

‘There's one advantage in having been friends for so long. No one seems to think I need a chaperone.' There was satisfaction in her voice.

‘They're wrong.' He flicked the lace of her bodice absently, his fingers rubbing though the holes on the bare flesh beneath. ‘Very wrong.' His lips followed the fingers. ‘Do you want a chaperone?'

Thump went her heart. ‘No. I want to know –' she continued with difficulty – ‘what comes next.' There was a silence and she had a sudden fear she had said something irreparable.

‘When we're married?' He sounded puzzled.

‘Yes – no. I mean, just to be
alone
with you.' She floundered. Her body seemed to be racing on and leaving words far behind, yet surely he must be feeling what she was feeling?

He was. He embraced her again, his voice hard against her face. ‘To hell with my mother. I want to marry you
tomorrow.
Then in fifty years' time we can wobble through these gardens on our sticks, and kiss in this same spot.' He let her go, and looked round at the large rhododendron bank that divided the formal gardens from the rest of the park. ‘These
same
gardens. That's the glory of England.'

‘I shan't use a stick,' Caroline declared, glad the tension was broken.

‘I'll be too feeble to carry you. I'll get the children to do it. Shall we say six?'

‘We'll say nothing of the sort.' Children, children born of her and Reggie? Another enormous thought to consider. ‘The gardens don't have any hop-bines.'

‘Plenty of gooseberry bushes.'

‘Mother used to say –' Caroline's tongue ran away with her and she could not draw back – ‘under the hop-bines was where babies were found.' His hand was very heavy resting on her shoulders, and he was looking at her intently again. Had she embarrassed him? ‘I was joking. I do know about babies,' she managed to say.

‘Soon, Caroline, I must marry you
soon.
Look, I've an idea to outwit Mother. Isabel's wedding is only just over a month away. After Isabel and Robert have gone to Paris in the evening, we'll just
announce
our engagement! Mother won't be able to say a word if the whole of Ashden knows.'

‘She'll blame me.'

‘No matter. It will be done and Father won't let her undo that!' He caught her to him again, kissed her in a lengthy embrace, but as a tremor of feeling shot up through her body, he let her go. ‘I'm sorry. My hands seem to have a mind of their own.'

‘Why sorry? It was –'

‘Because I'm going to marry you.' He seemed surprised she should ask.

‘But I liked it,' she said uncertainly. ‘Shouldn't I have done?'

‘Yes, but not yet.'

Flabbergasted, she stared at him until he saw the funny side. He
gave a hoot of laughter, and caught her as she thudded into his arms again. ‘Kitchener never had this problem with
his
dervishes.'

‘Maybe he never had time to kiss like you.'

‘He's all the time in the world, and so have we.'

H
arriet felt as though she were suffocating. How could old Dibble work in this stewpot of a kitchen? The range emitted great belches of warmth all day long, because the Rector had to keep his strength up with good hot meals, praise the Lord. The windows and doors might be open, but that only let a fresh blast of heat in from outside. Mrs D. looked like a turkey with her thin neck red with heat sticking out from her high black collar. Greatly daring, Harriet had undone the top button of her print dress, only to have the sainted Miss Pilbeam yell at her. Now old Dibble was, judging by her expression, about to do the same thing. The Rectory, Harriet admitted grudgingly, wasn't a bad situation, but any position in service meant long, back-breaking hours whether the sun was scorching or Jack Frost was freezing you. Perhaps she could go and work in a factory; some girls did. Or be one of them typists? She was good with her hands. She wondered vaguely how she would go about this, and when no answer was forthcoming, dismissed the idea. She could always marry Bert Wilson if things got too bad here. No, on second thoughts, she might end up with a tray on her head like his Auntie Gwen.

Old Dibble had had it in for her ever since the affair of Fred. Harriet still felt aggrieved. There had been a shadow outside the window, she was almost sure, and who could it have been if not Fred? Percy had no interest in women, only his blessed garden. How Fred and his brother and sister ever got born, beat her. Old Dibble must have lain down and covered herself with compost to lure Percy into digging in her with his dibber. No, it must have been Fred peering in, and she was righteously offended that his word had been taken against hers.

‘Did you order them raspberries, Harriet?' Old Dibble's querulous voice broke in upon her thoughts and her dinner.

‘Course I did,' Harriet lied indignantly. She hadn't exactly forgotten, but who was going to walk out to Grendel's Farm half-way to Withyham in this weather to order raspberries? She'd been
expecting to see Uncle Seb, who farmed it, in the village but must have missed him. Plenty of time. She'd see him at the flower show on Saturday.

‘White ones, mind.' Old Dibble was looking at her suspicously.

‘If he can,' Harriet hedged.

‘Drought.' Mrs Dibble's teeth clicked together after delivering this judgement. ‘You mark my words, we'll have trouble with them raspberries. I'll have 'em straightaway, tell 'im, if there's any danger of 'em being finished early. I'll do 'em up with sugar in bottles. They'll keep ready for the ices.'

‘I'll get them,' Harriet said shortly, stirring her tea viciously.

‘Mind you,' Mrs Dibble sat down gloomily. ‘I say if this weather keeps up we'll be lucky if there's enough ice left in the Manor ice-house to keep the butter firm, let alone keeping that there champagne cold. Seems to me I'd best get the freezing-machine out and the ices done quick and into the refrigerators. Or back in the ice-house if there's no room. Covered, against the dust.'

Harriet grinned involuntarily. She had a sudden vision of Percy going into the old ice-house at a crouch like you had to, carrying tray after tray of ices. Mrs Lilley had arranged with Lady Hunney to use the ice-house, provided Percy did all the work. The Manor never used it now, only filled it each year from Stickleback Pond as an emergency, and sometimes stored blocks of ice from the ice-man there too. She supposed Mrs Lilley hadn't liked to ask The Towers for the use of their freezing machines to help out, after Miss Tilda shouted out that way. Harriet hadn't heard her, but she'd been told all about it by Myrtle, and the implication had been breathlessly discussed in whispers in Myrtle's bedroom. Harriet didn't know what to think; it had been pleasant to know Agnes Pilbeam's carefully laid plans for marriage were spoiled, but if it had really been Swinford-Browne then he shouldn't get away with it. Or should he? He couldn't be all bad. He was going to give Ashden a cinema once they'd moved that stubborn old fool Ebenezer Thorn out of the way. Harriet had only been to the cinema twice, to see
Sixty Years a Queen
– who hadn't – and later to see a funny film about the Keystone Cops. What she remembered about that most was the heady excitement of sitting in the dark next to Len Thorn, the warm sensation of his hand moving up and down her thigh – and what had come after that, in the hop-field, taking the short way home from
the station. He hadn't given her the time of day since, though, the bastard. Lucky she hadn't had a kid in the basket as a result of that.

‘The speed everyone's moving around this house you'd think we'd turned into snails. Time you were in your black and laying luncheon, Harriet. It'll be me and Myrtle doing all the work at this wedding, that I can see.'

Harriet's eyes flickered. ‘You'll have Fred, Mrs Dibble. He's all right, is he? Hot weather does funny things. You ought to keep your eye on him.'

‘Any more of that and I go to the Rector,' Mrs Dibble warned.

Her inimical eyes made Harriet aware she'd stepped over the agreed line. So what? ‘I'm sure we're all fond of Fred. Perhaps it wasn't Fred I saw. But there was someone, Mrs Dibble. There
was
.' The horror of it. She was quite sure now that the shape had been a face staring in through the window, seeing her with no clothes at all, in the bath. No one saw her like that. Not Len Thorn. Not even herself. She'd been brought up properly and always covered herself like she should. And there
had
been someone at the window. And Fred
had
meant to lurch into her in the garden that day. She didn't make mistakes.

‘And you keep a watch on them raspberries. If this heat keeps up, we'll all be hunting for blackberries instead.'

Caroline propped herself up with cushions on the rug in the garden. There was no escaping the heat inside or out (for St Swithin had obliged on July 15), but outside she could at least escape the word ‘wedding' for a time. She pulled her sunhat firmly over her head, and rejoiced that she was alone. Phoebe had taken to riding one of the horses from the Manor, George was at school, Felicia was out with Daniel, and Isabel was as usual at Hop House or The Towers, anywhere where she would not get involved in tedious detail. Caroline regretted this, for she had looked forward to these last months when they would all be together as a family at the Rectory. Irritating though Isabel often was, she added a spice of drama to daily life, and Caroline knew she would miss her.

She picked up her books, but somehow neither Mr E. Phillips Oppenheim nor Miss Phyllis Bottome succeeded in gripping her today. She began to feel guilty at abandoning her mother to the now daily Dibble debates about The Wedding. She lay back on the
cushions and decided to contemplate life – or herself. First she thought of Reggie, hugging their secret to her, then tried to think what her future would be like as the next chatelaine of Ashden Manor. That thought brought the question of Lady Hunney rushing back into her mind again, so she firmly switched back to Reggie. If she closed her eyes, this was a delightful way of passing the time, and entirely compensated for the indisputable fact that in the Rectory her sole role appeared to be as Solver of Minor Problems, Producer of Alternative Solutions and Chief Scribe and Clerk to the Grand Vizier and the Sultan of the Domain of the Wedding. If it wasn't the wedding under discussion in one or other of its hydra heads, it was what had happened at the flower show, what would happen at the fête tomorrow, the Sunday School treat, or Phoebe's departure to Paris, or the new curate Charles Pickering, a most humourless gentleman, whose attitude implied he was doing Ashden a great honour by joining their community.

What was
not
under discussion, Caroline realised ruefully, was Caroline's twenty-second birthday which fell in ten days' time on the 27th. Birthdays in their sprawling family occurred so frequently that they were not major events, but some effort was usually made to signify that on the whole the rest of the family was pleased that their relation had arrived in this world. This year the Rectory seemed to be dancing furiously round a maypole on which Caroline's string had somehow become misplaced as the music grew faster. Reggie hadn't forgotten, of course. Caroline wriggled a toe luxuriously. They'd agreed to go boating on the river in a Henley regatta of their very own, or else to the seaside, and she was looking forward to it, especially since neither Father nor Mother had yet suggested any need for a chaperone, despite the changed relationship between herself and Reggie. Although she relished this pleasure to come, she nevertheless felt her nose to be slightly out of joint, however hard she tried to straighten it.

Perhaps now she would contemplate life, even the world. Together both presented, she decided, a set of concentric circles, spinning independently with little or no reference to each other. Closest and most precious was her own circle with Reggie, the one they'd spin in for the rest of their lives. Encircling it was that of the Rectory and Ashden, and this, although it included Reggie and her, was complete in itself. Outside it, rarely touching it directly, was a bigger circle, the
world Father read about in
The Times
every day, a world which chillingly grew worse each day and, unlikely as it seemed, threatened civil war in Ireland. That would be terrible, and almost as if Kent and Sussex were to declare war on each other. What tragedies and problems it would bring where families were divided between Catholic and Protestant, between Ulster Volunteers and National Volunteers, both arming themselves as the Government tried to push the Home Rule Bill through with the temporary exclusion of six of the northern counties to appease the Protestants. Poor Mr Asquith seemed to be doing his best to please everybody and ending up pleasing nobody. She tried to translate this into Ashden terms, by imagining her father and the minister so bitterly divided over the parish council that they came to blows outside the Norville Arms. It would never happen, of course. Every issue could be discussed and settled, Father believed, where there was common desire for peace, and so it must in Ireland, surely. Perhaps the King could do something – though she was forced to admit he was doing his best to ignore the other big issue: women's suffrage. There'd actually been a bomb found in the church of St John the Evangelist in London on Sunday, the fuse had even been lighted when it was found.

Outside the British Isles, there was yet another circle spinning around, that of the world outside Britain, which touched them even more rarely, only when the Empire needed help or protection. Events like the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria at Sarajevo in Bosnia the day after Reggie's twenty-fourth birthday dance were terrible, but that circle did not collide with theirs. Their duty here was to do well by Ashden and their own path in life. But if that were so, Caroline wondered, why had that bird of freedom fluttered within her when she attended a suffragette meeting in Tunbridge Wells with Tilly and Penelope a few days ago? She had wanted to go to London and attend one of the rallies at Kensington Town Hall, but her chief interest – to see the Pankhursts – was frustrated by Mrs Pankhurst still being in Holloway, and planning, if released, to go to France to join her daughter Christabel and to recover her health. The Tunbridge Wells group, she knew from the local newspaper, was very active, very militant, and she was taken aback by the obvious pride in her aunt's voice as she talked almost non-stop on the railway journey to Tunbridge Wells.

‘McKenna said in the House last month that the public had four
suggestions as to what to do with us: let us die if we refuse to eat, deport us, treat us like lunatics – or give us the vote. That coward informed us he will do none of these, but it is obvious the country is with us – the vote it must be.'

It hadn't been obvious to Caroline. Bravely though the speakers had addressed their audience, their reward had been a shower of rotten eggs from men
and
women. It was only afterwards that Penelope had casually mentioned that there was a non-militant group in the town, with some prominent members, including a novelist; Caroline resolved that she would attend one of their meetings in the Victoria Hall in Southborough. Not now, for all-important at the moment was her engagement. Much as she tried to ignore it until Reggie's planned announcement at the wedding, it was proving impossible. It coloured everything, for in the middle of her own personal circle was a deep, deep happiness that crystallised into Reggie.

‘Caroline.'

At the unexpected voice, she sat up, blinking into the sun with surprise. It was Patricia Swinford-Browne, looking even larger than usual in a yellow muslin dress complete with mustard-coloured sunshade.

‘I expect you wonder why I've come skulking through the bushes,' Patricia continued cheerfully.

‘It does seem somewhat strange.'

‘I like you,' Patricia said unexpectedly. ‘May I sit down? The rug will do. We'll share it.' Patricia lowered herself cautiously to the rug and sighed. ‘I loathe this weather.'

‘Your skin doesn't suit it, that's all.' Tactful and correct. Patricia had the kind of complexion that erupted eagerly into spots and rashes, and grew excited at the faintest ray of sun.

‘I don't know why. I throw everything from pigswill to arsenic on it. I'm Mother's despair.'

‘I suppose you want to talk about the wedding?' Caroline enquired, since Patricia seemed hesitant to continue.

‘To escape from it would be nearer the truth. It's a race who will drive me mad soonest, Ma with her constant wailings, Robert with his happy smile, or your sister with her “anxious-to-please” helpfulness. But in fact I came to give you a warning. Promise me you'll never tell.'

At this childish plea, Caroline stopped feeling defensive about Isabel and began to feel rather sorry for Patricia. ‘I won't without your permission.'