Summer's End (33 page)

‘Laurence,' she continued now, ‘I had a visit from Maud this morning.'

‘A
visit?
' His eyebrows rose, and the corners of his mouth twitched, then he suppressed it, realising that such a unique event must stem from great distress. ‘She is naturally concerned for Daniel and Reggie?' he probed gently.

‘Perhaps, but she would not unburden herself to me about that. No, it was the Manor. Sir John has offered it to the Government for a hospital for the wounded, and they have accepted.'

‘Many country houses have done so. It is not unexpected.'

‘But to Ashden it is. And to Lady Hunney.'

‘It is only temporary. They have the old Dower House to live in. Surely she is not so unpatriotic as to resent that?'

‘She does, but realises it is inevitable. She is brave within her own limits, Laurence. She has a Roman stoicism.'

‘I had not associated her, I must admit, with a faculty for looking on the bright side.'

Elizabeth managed to laugh. ‘But she does. Her very last words to me were –' she mimicked the precise crystal sharp tones – ‘“I do take comfort in the fact that Ashden will be a hospital for
officers
”.'

G
eorge was in his element. At last there was something decent to do in Ashden, even if it hadn't yet spawned its cinema. What's more, he was helping the war effort. Spies were being caught and shoved in stir all over the place, so there was no reason why Ashden shouldn't secretly be hoarding some. Hundreds had been shot out of hand at barracks all over Britain, the coastline was crawling with traitors semaphoring to U-boats, signal boxes were being taken over by enemy agents intent on wrecking trains, and German governesses were showing themselves in their true colours. Moreover Russian troops were on the move, on the railways, with the snow still on their boots. It was an alarming thought – even if the Russians were supposed to be on our side – and it was small wonder the scouts had been ordered to guard the railways, especially the bridges. George couldn't, he admitted, quite see how any of the villagers could have turned into spies overnight, and there was no one with a suspicious accent or he'd have heard it long since. Even Lizzie Dibble's husband at Hartfield had gone back to fight for the Kaiser, and good riddance to him. It was true Rudolf had always seemed a pleasant sort of chap when he came to visit old Ma Dibble and Percy, but that only went to show how cunning these Germans were.

He liked this job; it was an adventure, like in John Buchan's books or E. Phillips Oppenheim's.
Real.
The scouts had been given the task of guarding the highways, as well as railways and bridges, and his patrol route was along Station Road, keeping a careful eye on hedges and ditches, where they had been warned German soldiers might be hiding; then he marched to left and right of the railway line, through Three Oak Farm and the hop farm respectively; then he did a stint on the bridge, especially when railway trains steamed through, in case any Germans disguised as passengers had any ideas about blowing it up – and then down the other side, again to left and right, through open farmland. George was a little concerned about the river a mile
or so away. It wasn't in the patrol area he'd been allotted, but it seemed to him there was scope for enemy activity there. Still, here in Station Road he had a very definite part to play and to his excitement he realised
he could play it now
!

‘Stand away, please!' he bellowed. ‘Keep well away from the ditches,
if
you please.'

Two tiny tots, busy investigating the stickleback content of the River Crain as it emerged from underneath the shallow bridge of the road and across the line of the ditch, obediently scuttled for safety.

Tilly regarded the Common balefully through the windows of the imposing house on Mount Pleasant. Tunbridge Wells was neither one thing nor the other; not the battleground of London, nor the quiet thinking ground of Ashden. At least once upon a time girls, boys, and whole families had enjoyed themselves walking on the Common here; now, it seemed to be an ants' parade ground of uniforms, discussion groups and workers of every class. Everyone, it seemed, had something to do – save her. She was gathering her strength after being released from Holloway, but she and her fellow suffragettes were still worried that this was yet another of the Government's traps and that, whatever was said when they were released, they might still be re-arrested. She must avoid it, she had reluctantly decided. Her spirit might be strong enough to undergo the ordeal again, but she was forced to admit her body was not. Earlier this year the doctor had forbidden her to go on hunger strike again, and she had ignored him. If she went on at this rate, he said, her constitution would be so weakened she would be a prey to any disease she came across: tuberculosis, pneumonia, fevers. She could not risk it yet again, there was still too much for her to do.

‘Have you read Mrs Pankhurst's letter?' Penelope came bursting into the room. ‘What does it say? Pa pleaded with me to launch this knitting circle or I'd have been here earlier. You should have heard me nattering on about scarves for the war effort when all
I
was longing to do was to find out what
Mrs P.
was going to do.'

‘We're to suspend militant activities until hostilities are over.' Mrs Pankhurst's letter had been circulated to all groups on the 13th, and the Tunbridge Wells group to which Tilly had speedily allied herself had delivered one to her as promised.

‘You sound rather blasé about the prospect. It makes sense,
doesn't it? We want to make people
think
about women and the vote, and at the moment all they can think about is the Kaiser and the cost of bread.'

‘The question is, Penelope, how long will hostilities last? Weeks? Months? Years even? Memories are short, especially in politics. We will lose all the ground we have won towards gaining the vote. Even the publication of
The Suffragette
is to be suspended.'

‘We must support the war effort,' Penelope pointed out reasonably, ‘or it shows us in a bad light. Look at the Women's Freedom League. They've already established the Women's Suffrage National Aid Corps to help the poor. If Mrs P. doesn't come up with something like that, I'm off to offer the Corps my invaluable services, or if not them,
someone.
Trained to do nothing, ma'am; willing to run the whole bally shooting match, ma'am. There's us ruling classes for you.'

Tilly managed to grin. ‘How right you are.'

Penelope paused, not knowing quite how delicately she should tread. ‘Do you have plans for when you're fully better?'

‘I did. I read that the War Office through the motoring organisations was appealing for motor-cars with or without drivers. I offered my services. I was told that the motor-car would be welcome, but that as a woman I could be returned to the bosom of my family – unwanted. I drove off
in
my motor-car and came straight here.'

‘Idiots. I'm glad anyway, because I want you to stay here as long as you like. Pa thinks you're a corker. A misguided one, but a corker all the same.'

‘Even though I'm leading his daughter astray?' Penelope's offer of shelter, after she had come to see her in Holloway, had been accepted gratefully and immediately. It had solved Tilly's biggest problem. She was not well enough to live on her own, nor able to return to Dover, nor, for the moment, was it advisable for her to go to Ashden. Laurence had nobly suggested it, but he had enough to do in the current crisis without hauling the cuckoo back into the Rectory nest. She had been amused to see slight relief on his face when she refused; this was what she had always loved in her brother – that he was a human being as well as a man of God. Or perhaps the two were the same? Anyway, time enough for Ashden. Give Swinford-Browne enough rope and she would be back.

Lord Banning was an amiable, vacant-looking man, who greeted
her pleasantly and courteously every time he met her in the house with a faint air of surprise as though it took him a moment to recall who she was; it made her feel like an injured bird, welcome, but transitory.

‘I don't need leading. I
run.
'

Tilly relaxed. ‘Forgive me. I am forever treading on eggshells at Ashden, because of my brother.'

‘He disapproves of your activities?'

‘Of course. Therefore I'm somewhat inhibited in what I say to his daughters.'

‘You mean Caroline.' It was a statement, not a question.

‘Yes. You heard she was engaged to Reggie?'

‘
No
! By golly, she'll do him a power of good.'

‘And what about he to her?' Tilly asked drily, relieved to see there were no signs of regret for Penelope's own lost opportunity. She'd be a wonderful supporter for the cause.
That
was her metier.

‘They'll live happily ever after.'

‘Penelope!'

‘Very well then. They
could
live happily ever after.'

‘I'm going to press you. I love my Caroline. Why your doubt? Because of the war?'

‘Yes. The question is: which war?'

Belgium, everything was
Belgium.
For the last couple of weeks
Paris
had been the talk, that, and the sainted Isabel. Phoebe worried about Isabel too, but not all day and every day. She knew she must be safe, or they would have heard, whereas all those poor people in Belgium were having terrible things done to them; babies were being killed and nailed to doors, women's breasts were being cut off, and from what she could gather,
worse
things were happening to women. Phoebe did not like to speculate on that for it pushed her back into her own darkness. What was
she,
Phoebe Lilley, going to do? Not what Caroline and Felicia were doing, she was sure about that, but everyone around her was rushing around talking about the war effort. Phoebe wasn't going to knit or sew,
and
she was too young to be a VAD, thank goodness. She wasn't sure what it entailed but it sounded messy and she hated blood. Philip Ryde had said she could help him when school started again in September, but that wasn't exactly a war effort, and besides, Philip was old and dull,
and
he had
a limp. He was safe, of course, unlike – no, she wouldn't think of
him.
She quickly decided to walk over to The Towers on the pretext of asking Patricia if there were any news of Isabel. She wouldn't walk up Station Road in case she saw
him
lounging outside the forge in the High Street; she'd go the long way round past the hop farm. She wondered whether hop-pickers would still come from London this year, or whether like everything else that too would change.

She set off across the Withyham road into Mill Lane. She liked this winding lane, which led up the hill to the mill; then she could turn off on to the footpath skirting Gowks Wood. The hill made her feel as if she had passed out of Ashden and into some brave new world of her own, a kingdom ruled by Phoebe Lilley. The corn was only stubble now, with sheaves dotting it like wigwams, and prickly as she lifted her skirts to jump the ditch into the wood. Gowks Wood, unlike Nye Wood, near the Forest, was a friendly place, filled with bluebells in spring and yet with enough room between the trees for grassy clearings. Once, as a child in her favourite glade, she'd found a fairy ring, which appeared for the mornings and vanished before nightfall. It had become a ritual to stand in the middle of it, and make a wish.

Today, her heart jumped painfully, someone else was standing there: Len Thorn. She stood still, like a cat spotting an adversary in the dark of the night, trying to ignore the thudding within her.

‘I saw you coming, Miss Phoebe. I've been to the hop farm. I thought I'd wait for you here.' He grinned.

‘Why?' she enquired, surprised that she managed to sound so calm.

‘This and that.' He ambled out of the ring that once had enchanted her.

‘Don't come near me.' His slow tread was more sinister than if he had rushed at her.

‘You're not afeared of me, are you?' He put a hand on the sleeve of her voile gown and slowly ran it up and down the length of her arm. She felt powerless to move, feeling the heat of his touch through the thin material. He stared at the rounded flesh as though it mesmerised him. ‘Just a kiss, Miss Phoebe.' He turned those tawny eyes on her, and she felt her face inclining to his as though she had no control over it; his lips were on hers, lightly at first, then his arms were holding her closer and words something like, ‘You're a witch, Miss Phoebe, and no mistake,' tumbled out. He held her against him hard,
then released her. ‘There now, that weren't so bad, were it?'

‘No,' Phoebe agreed, doubtfully.

‘You sit by me, my lovely, and tell me what's amiss that you look at me as though I were the devil himself. You sit by me and talk to your heart's content.'

To her surprise, it seemed quite natural to pour out her feelings about her sisters and the Rectory and about how she was always being left out. He said nothing, but, chewing on a piece of grass, he listened.

‘I'll never ever have anything to do, now that I can't go to Paris in September. The war might go on for months and nobody cares at all. I'm not important to
anybody.
'

‘Everyone's important to someone, so my old grannie said.'

‘Not me.'

‘You're important to me, Miss Phoebe. Every time I see you, with your rosebud lips and eyes like a young doe, and hair like the wind through the forest trees, I want to kiss you.'

After all, it was rather nice, with her arms round his neck, and his lips pecking gently at her. She closed her eyes, enjoying the sensation of his lips darting from neck to eyes, to ear, to chin, and even inside the unbuttoned neck of her gown. The sun was pressing in upon the blanket of her closed eyelids, pleasantly warm in the still, quiet glade. But then she became aware that it wasn't quiet. The warm breath was turning into harsh gulps, and the gentle kisses becoming harder. She was aware of the grip of his hand digging the boning of her girdle into her; she opened her eyes in protest, but, as the hand shifted and the pain receded, the other hand moved down her body to grasp her between her legs, kneading the thin voile dress and cotton of her petticoats. An ache shot up through her body, just as terror gripped her. What was happening to her, to him? His face was inches from hers, gleaming with sweat and a kind of triumph in his staring eyes. Just so must demon monsters have looked in fairy tales when they seized their prey. And she was his; she couldn't move. She was held so tight, held in the reality of her nightmares.

She was Phoebe Lilley, she tried to tell herself, struggling in vain, and nightmares didn't happen. They
didn't.
She hit out instinctively wherever she could, using struggling arms, feet, knees and almost by accident teeth, which dug themselves firmly in his chin. Taken by surprise, he howled in pain and relaxed his hold. She was free to run
from this horror, this darkness of the unknown.