Summer's End (22 page)

She could see Father below her in the entrance hall talking in a low tone to Mother. Felicia was hovering at their side, and she had obviously been crying. She looked up, and, seeing Caroline, hurried up the stairs towards her. ‘Something terrible's happened,' she cried. ‘Mr Ifield and two more policemen came, and they've
arrested
Aunt Tilly. They say – oh, how
stupid
, that she's a suffragette and that she's already been in prison several times. How can they be right? Oh, poor Aunt Tilly.'

Caroline's heart plummeted. All their efforts had been to no avail. William Swinford-Browne had won and Aunt Tilly had been taken from them to face yet more forcible feeding in prison. What would it do to her health this time? She had barely recovered from the last onslaught. She felt torn apart between her old love for her aunt, her horror at Aunt Tilly's militancy, and the knowledge that somewhere, in between, lay a reconciliation. As yet, it was a reconciliation whose nature she could not grasp or even define.

Her first task was to explain to her sisters and George that Aunt Tilly was neither martyr nor monster, and that would be difficult – save, perhaps, she suspected, with George who since the tennis match had idolised her aunt and might see this latest development as another feather in her hat. And, indeed, Caroline reminded herself, Aunt Tilly herself might see it that way.

‘The police are right, Felicia. Aunt Tilly is a suffragette, and has been for some years. It's what she passionately believes in, darling, so don't be too upset.
She
isn't – for she sees it as another step towards the vote. She
wants
it this way.'

‘But Aunt
Tilly
of all people.' Felicia looked dismayed.

‘Yes. We never really knew her, did we? We took her for granted.'

‘We'll see her again, won't we?' Felicia cried in alarm, swinging round to her parents. ‘She'll come back here.'

Laurence waited for Elizabeth to answer, and she did. ‘Of course. This is her home now.'

As the days passed, the ruffled waters of the Rectory seemed to smooth over Tilly's departure. Perhaps she would be out again in time for the wedding was Mother's invariable response. Isabel, on the other hand, made it quite clear that she hoped nothing of the kind; she was only too relieved that such a potential source of danger to her plans had been removed from the household, though full of lamentations as to how the scandal of a suffragette aunt in prison might affect her plans as a future Hop House hostess. Disgusted for once, rather than amused by her sister's self-centredness, Caroline questioned her father closely. He would only say that Aunt Tilly had returned to Holloway to serve out her eighteen-month sentence, of which thirteen months still remained.

‘But, Father, I read in the newspaper that fewer and fewer suffragettes are re-arrested under the Act now because forcible feeding is horrifying the public so much. Why is Aunt Tilly an exception?'

‘I fear, Caroline, though as yet without proof, that Mr Swinford-Browne could answer that question for us. We can but pray for her. I shall speak in Church on Sunday.' Would he get proof, he wondered.
Should
he get proof? As so often, the man shouted yes, the servant of God must debate.

Would he pray for her if he knew how narrowly Aunt Tilly had avoided being one of the group who set fire to Missenden Church? Knowing Father, in some ways more than he did himself, Caroline knew the answer was yes.

‘Take your stockings off, Aggie. Paddle your feet with me.'

‘No, thank you.' She instinctively shrank from such intimacy. ‘Anyway, Jamie, it's time we had the picnic.' She hurriedly began unpacking the basket on to the rug, making great show of chasing away an early wasp, and ignoring Jamie as he removed his bare feet from the Medway and rolled down his trouser legs. She was aware that he was watching her, as she unwrapped the sandwiches she'd made that morning under Mrs Dibble's scathing eye. Everybody
thought she was a fool for still seeing Jamie. Everybody's eye followed her in the village. Everybody knew he was still refusing to marry Ruth. And everybody thought he was no better than his brother, and using her, Agnes, as an excuse to get out of either paying support to Ruth's child or marrying her. What did
she
think, though? Aggie just didn't know.

It would have been nice in this heat to feel the cool water trickling over her toes, but to do that she'd have to pull up her skirts in front of him to take her stockings off, or go behind a tree and have him think … No, it wasn't worth it.

‘Would you like a sandwich? It's fish paste.'

He took one in silence and proceeded to munch his way through four of them, together with a tomato and an apple.

‘What's the matter, Aggie?' he pleaded. ‘You're doubting me again, surely.'

No, no, she wanted to cry, but it wouldn't be true. ‘I saw Ruth,' she managed to blurt out at last. She saw him flinch. Why, if he had nothing to hide? Her heart suddenly pained her.

‘She's going to sue me, she says, for breach of promise.' His face was full of misery.

‘How can she if she's no proof?' Agnes struggled to be practical, but inside she was being torn to bits.

‘I don't
know
, and she don't need me or money now anyway. Old Swinford-Browne's going to give her a cottage, so Rector says, and set her up as a laundress. I reckon he's the father, that I do. Folks are saying –'

‘He's not the father.'

‘How do you know?' He was taken aback.

‘I told you, I
saw
her. She says it's you.' Agnes could hear the water trickling, trickling, cool. Not like the trickling sweat down her back making her dress cling to her.

‘And you believe her?' His voice rose.

‘She says – things.'

‘What things?' She saw the fear in his eyes. Why, if he had nothing to hide? She could
smell
fear, like a hedgehog standing rigid waiting for danger to pass by.

‘Things she could only know if – personal things.'

There was a silence. He should be asking: what things, and how did Agnes know they were right? But he didn't. Instead he began to
shout at her. He'd never done that before.

‘If you don't believe me, Aggie, I'd best marry Ruth. You said you'd believe me, you said you loved me, but you wouldn't let me touch you, not like I wanted to, not before we were married. So you don't love me, not like I loved you. Well, I don't love you any more, because you've betrayed me. You don't love me at all or you wouldn't have wanted to wait.'

She began to sob, her tears falling on to the slice of cake he wouldn't eat. He just stomped off and left her alone with the picnic basket. She felt numb, dead really. All she could register was that he hadn't put his stockings back on. They lay there, two brown symbols of her rejection. Him of her. Or was it her of him? She could have said nothing mattered but him. She could have said she'd do what he wanted, here and now in the warm grass. Only that would be lowering herself to be like Ruth.
Besides, what if she saw a scar?
Ah, what then, what then? Trust in the Lord, the Rector said. Sometimes it was easier to trust in a God you couldn't see, than a man you could.

‘Well, Miss Harriet Mutter, who d'yer think I ran into this morning in Tunbridge Wells? Your Uncle Seb, him of Grendel's Farm, and you know what he told me?' Retribution faced her, with its arms akimbo, and the turkey neck poked forward for the final peck. ‘He told me you ain't never ordered no raspberries.'

‘He's forgotten. He always does.'

‘T'ain't him that's forgotten,' Mrs Dibble snapped. ‘If we don't have any raspberries for our wedding, it'll all be your fault, Harriet, that Miss Isabel's day is ruined.'

‘I'll get your silly old raspberries.'

‘Don't you talk to me like that, miss. You Mutters are all the same. All lip, no work and lazy as spit water. And no raspberries either, unless we're lucky. No chance of the whites now. They'll be reds and we can be thankful for them.'

‘At least I baint dinlow,' Harriet retorted spitefully and unwisely. ‘Good job your Fred can't climb trees. He'd be staring in and frightening Miss Felicia or Miss Caroline, afore we knew where we were.'

Mrs Dibble turned red with rage. ‘That's a disgusting thing to say. You made it all up and you know it.'

‘Made it up? When his face was leering in at me, staring at
me.
Like
that
?' Harriet shuddered theatrically, telling herself she hadn't felt right about having a bath since. ‘A young girl ain't safe in this house, not with him around.'

‘What is all this noise about?' Elizabeth Lilley materialised, deducing the noise level was not going to abate.

‘It's just the heat, Mrs Lilley,' Mrs Dibble replied promptly. St Swithin had answered her prayers only too well. ‘Tempers are a little frayed.' She cast Harriet a filthy look. ‘Aren't they, Harriet dear?'

‘Yes, Mrs Dibble,' Harriet answered sullenly. ‘That's what it is. The heat.'

Even so, she polished the brass more vigorously than usual as she puzzled as to why old Dibble didn't split on her. Then the answer came to her in a burst of triumph. She knew Harriet was right about Fred, that's why.

‘I don't see how it could be hotter than this even in Greece, do you?' Daniel lay on his back on the grass in one of the open stretches of the Forest, and thoughtfully chewed a long piece of grass.

At his side, Felicia clasped her knees through the light voile gown, trying to imagine Greece. ‘Father thinks there might be trouble out there,' she said.

‘In Greece?'

‘Near there. In Serbia.'

‘Oh, that will all blow over. The Serbs have apologised to His Great and Imperial Majesty in Vienna for that Sarajevo business. Anyway, Austria would simply march into Serbia and it would surrender overnight. You'll see. Why,' he stretched out a lazy hand and placed it in the small of her back, ‘are you worrying about me? You needn't. I'll turn up again. It will take more than a few Serbs to stop me seeing the world.'

‘Isn't Russia in alliance with Serbia, though? You talked of going to St Petersburg.'

‘You do know a lot. I thought they only taught girls about Harold burning the cakes. Or was that Canute?'

‘Or possibly King Alfred.' Felicia smiled. ‘They teach us to respect our minds, too.'

‘Like your redoubtable Aunt Tilly? I don't see you as a suffragette somehow. And I certainly wouldn't like to see you behind bars.'

‘What do you see me as?'

He considered. ‘A princess in an ivory tower waiting –' He broke off in case she thought he meant for him. That would be pointless, wouldn't it. He'd set his heart on conquering the world, not Felicia. True, he was fascinated by her, and not just by her beauty. There was something about her that was unusual in the women he knew, something indefinable. Perhaps it was that he sensed she already knew her way, sure-footed, through life. Faith should be her name, not Felicia. Still, he knew what he wanted too. They had that in common. He rolled over and drew her down to him, kissing her lightly, gently – for both their sakes. Hers, because he was leaving Ashden, and didn't want to mislead her; his because the body was unpredictable, warmth distanced tomorrows, and the seemingly impossible might prove temptingly possible.

‘Shall you marry me, Daniel?'

Had he heard right? He sat up quickly, snatching at another piece of grass to cover his shock and thinking to shield her embarrassment. When she sat up too and laid her hand on his arm, there was no embarrassment on her face, however. Merely enquiry.

‘Shall or will?' he managed to joke.

‘Shall. Will has too much freedom of choice in it, so I would not ask you that. Shall is merely what is written in the book of fate.'

Daniel laughed, though uneasily, for he was for once completely nonplussed. He'd thought, after Reggie's birthday, that the two weeks' OTC camp training at Aldershot would banish all thoughts of Felicia from his mind. Once back he found it hadn't. Now he desperately calculated how long it was before he could leave again; should he go now, without waiting for Isabel's wedding as he had promised? He knew he would not, however. That meant some kind of doubt was still claiming him. And Felicia was waiting for her answer. ‘How can I answer that? We none of us know what's to come. That book of fate can twist, turn and lead you back or on at its command.' He was getting as serious as her, but there was no help for it. ‘But if fate
did
lead me back, and for good, there could be no lovelier bride it could choose for me.'

She dismissed the compliment impatiently, and he felt rebuked, rather to his annoyance. ‘I did not mean –'

He interrupted her. ‘Fate usually takes one on, not back.' He had
tried to warn her – and perhaps also himself. Had he succeeded? Was there any way of reaching Felicia when she retreated as she had now? Not, he realised, in confusion, but in a certainty, so fixed it did not need help. Fleetingly he wished he could follow her, change his own path and stay. But the wish was born of a summer moment, and it vanished with the setting of the sun.

‘You've come then, Miss Phoebe.'

Len Thorn perched a foot indolently on the anvil. Phoebe knew he was doing it on purpose to provoke her, but all the same the smell of the sweat pouring off him and the sight of his body rippling in the light of the forge fire took her aback, solidifying in flesh the formless shape that had haunted her nightmares. Dark shapes, as she tossed and turned in the warm nights, had climactically resolved themselves into the devil's head of a grinning Len Thorn. Now that head had a body too, and it was displaying itself before her.

‘Only to ask you from the Rector if you could shoe Poppy tomorrow.'