The House at Tyneford (30 page)

“You look quite awful,” he announced with forced gaiety.

“Thank you,” I said, turning my head away.

“Yes,” he said cheerfully. “Really dreadful. Hideous, in fact. Good thing I’m hopelessly in love.”

He grabbed the breakfast tray and set it on the bed.

“I’m under strict instructions to make sure that you eat everything.”

I scowled, still cross with him, but I was hungry, so I took a spoon and attacked an egg.

“Ah, one moment at death’s door and the next eating a boiled egg.”

He tried to kiss me, but I had a mouth full of yolk and I shooed him away.

“So cruel,” he sighed. “Did Flo tell you that I was there every minute that you were poorly? I was most attentive.”

“Yes. You’ve been very kind. But I’m better now.”

I watched him over the top of my cup of coffee. It was such a relief not to have to drink that awful brown tea in the mornings anymore. I dunked a toast soldier in my egg.

The warm September sun spilled into the room. Kit unfastened the window and a breeze fluttered inside, carrying the scents of heather and the sea.

“Kit. Will you fetch me paper and a pen? I must write to Margot.”

“Darling, you can send a wire.”

I shook my head, regretting it as the pain cracked against my skull. “No. Let her have another few weeks of hope and happiness. The letter will arrive soon enough.”

“Mrs. Ellsworth, I should like to work tomorrow,” I said a few hours later when she brought me up a pile of magazines and some lunch.

I needed to do something. Anything but lying there thinking. The housekeeper fussed around the bed, straightening the covers and picking at a nonexistent mark on the blanket.

“When you feel better, you can order the dinners, and there’s some linen you can help me sort.”

“No. I need to work.”

There was a trill of desperation in my voice, and Mrs. Ellsworth stopped fussing and turned to look at me. For the moment the burning behind my eyes helped me, but when the pain subsided I must have work. Scrubbing the scullery, digging in the vegetable garden—I did not care.

“Has Henry joined up yet? Because he will, you know that,” I said, pleading. “And the gardener’s boy will go and May must do war work, and who knows if the dailies will stay. You and Mr. Wrexham can’t keep the house between the two of you.”

Mrs. Ellsworth busied herself tidying the already neat scent bottles lined up on the dresser.

“Mr. Rivers was very clear about you not washing any floors no more. It’s not proper.”

I snorted. Until a few months before, I’d been making his bed and folding his pyjamas.

“It’s different now. I’ll be called up to the labour exchange. Unless I’m doing essential work in the house and on the farm, I’ll be sent away. I don’t want to be in a factory. I want to stay here, but I must work.”

Mrs. Ellsworth tutted softly. “Mr. Wrexham won’t like it one bit,” she complained.

“Well, you tell him that if he won’t let me, I’m going straight to the dairyman to offer my services for the milking of cows. In fact, I’m not sure that wouldn’t be more fun. . . .”

“No, no, miss. I’ll tell him,” said Mrs. Ellsworth, shooting me an anxious glance. “But it’ll never do. You’re not to do any cooking. And you’re not to set a foot in my kitchen.”

We sat before the hulking kitchen range, Mrs. Ellsworth demonstrating the correct technique for the peeling of carrots. “It’ll be over by Christmas,” she announced, snatching the peeler out of my hands. “Like this—stop scraping at it. Or spring at the latest,” she concluded, moving seamlessly between the prognosis of war and vegetable peeling.

“Such a to-do. And the digging up of all those potatoes for an air-raid shelter,” she snarled. “What a waste! What’s Mr. Hitler want to bomb a potato patch for? He won’t do very well in the war if he goes around bombing people’s onions and taters.”

I did not try to explain. Mrs. Ellsworth remained convinced that the Anderson shelter had to be dug in the potato patch because that was the most likely target of attack, rather than because the sheltered kitchen garden was the safest place. “All this disruption. Gives me the collywobbles.”

I said nothing and let her rattle on. Mrs. Ellsworth was tired. The kitchen boy, who it turned out was eighteen despite the skinny legs and pimples (or else taking the opportunity to escape the most horrid job in the house), joined up at the first instant and disappeared in the night. We never heard from him again. It meant that Mrs. Ellsworth had a great deal more to do in the kitchen and my helping became a necessity. Several of the farm boys volunteered early for service, not waiting for their call-up, and the dairyman required his daughter’s assistance, which meant that we were down to one daily maid. Then Henry the footman joined up and marched off for training in Wiltshire on the twelfth of September, much to Mr. Wrexham’s disgust. “One week’s notice. That’s the legal requirement,” the old butler complained when the footman appeared in his parlour, dressed in his new green uniform, and handed back his once treasured footman’s livery, now shoved into an unwashed bundle.

Henry shrugged. “Don’t pay me my last week’s wages then. But it’s not very patriotic of you. There’s a war on, you know.”

Of course Mr. Rivers would not hear of Henry not being paid his last week’s wages, and he would have ordered the motorcar to take him to Dorchester if it weren’t for the rationing of petrol. Only essential journeys were to be taken by motorcar, but then Mr. Rivers and Kit always seemed to prefer traveling with Art and Mr. Bobbin, so there wasn’t much difference. I listened to Mrs. Ellsworth chatter and hum along to “The Frog King’s Parade” on the wireless. I liked being in the kitchen. It reminded me of home and hours spent getting in Hildegard’s way as she baked Sacher torte or diced steak for a goulash. The smells in Mrs. Ellsworth’s kitchen were different—pears, suet, sizzling bacon, kippers, scones and baked custard—but I liked them just the same. I’d just made my first fish and parsley pie and was feeling rather proud of myself. Mrs. Ellsworth took it out of the oven with a hiss of steam and placed it on the top of the cooker.

“Very good. Nice and brown. Go and wash, now. Mr. Wrexham will ring the bell for lunch in five minutes.”

There was no use objecting. I hurried out of the kitchen and went to straighten my hair and splash water on my face. Despite the lack of staff, and the inordinate distance between kitchen and dining room, standards had to be maintained. The digging up of the potato patch and the disappearance of the underservants had disturbed Mrs. Ellsworth, and she sought reassurance in the details of luncheon in the wainscoted dining room at one o’clock. Mr. Wrexham, walking past the kitchen door with his laden tray and perfectly starched shirt, proved to her that England was mighty and indestructible. Wars might be declared, kitchen boys vanish to join the navy, blackout curtains smother the French windows and previously reliable footmen leave without notice, but lunch would be served at five minutes past one and the butler would wear white cotton gloves.

“Lulcombe Castle has been requisitioned by the army,” announced Mr. Rivers. We sat taking tea on the terrace in the late afternoon. It seemed a lifetime ago that I had broken the porcelain teacup when serving the gentlemen. Today, Mr. Wrexham carried the tray and I poured tea for three and spread butter upon the scones. It was warm for late September, the sky a watery blue unmarked by cloud, and only the purple leaves fluttering to the ground from the flowering plum showed it to be an autumn day.

“I offered Lady Vernon and the Hamilton girls refuge here while the dower house is being prepared for the family.”

Mr. Rivers paused, noticing what must have been my stricken expression, while Kit shot me a sideways glance. Mr. Rivers gave me a wry smile. “No, you’re quite safe. She’s not coming to stay. Though I fear we may have to invite them to dine rather more often than we might wish.”

“Let’s hope that Tyneford’s not requisitioned,” said Kit, licking jam from his finger and ignoring the scone.

“Yes, indeed,” replied Mr. Rivers. “But it doesn’t seem terribly likely. There’s no decent road and we’re simply too far from the station. Besides, the house isn’t big enough for an officers’ barracks.”

“What about the schools? I heard Flo say that some of the country houses are being taken over by the London schools,” said Kit, lighting a cigarette.

Mr. Rivers shook his head. “We’re too close to the coast. It’s much too dangerous here. No point being evacuated from London into another danger zone.”

He folded his paper and placed it upon the table. “Best thing we can do is help on the estate. Half the farm lads have already joined up, and the rest will get their call-up in a month or two. I’ve not driven a plough since I was a boy. I’m rather looking forward to it.”

I stirred my tea with a silver spoon, watching the milk marble and then disappear. “Mr. Rivers, mightn’t you be called up?” I asked, wondering whether I was being rude. The English were so strange about age.

“I rather doubt it. I’m over forty. So they would have to be pretty desperate.”

I smiled. He made it sound like he was an old man, which, having seen him stride across the hills, I knew was nonsense. I tended to agree with Anna—forty for a man was still perfectly youthful. Kit surveyed his father in silence for a minute and then said with studied casualness, “Will’s joined the Second Dorsetshire. They sound all right. Thought perhaps I might too.”

Mr. Rivers set his cup on the table. He turned quite white, almost as if he were struck by sudden seasickness. “Not the army,” he said. “I couldn’t bear the army. You don’t know what it’s like. It’s not some boyish adventure. It’s hell.”

Kit took a long drag on his cigarette, trying to select words that would not further antagonise his father. “It’s different now. War is different. It won’t be like it was for you.”

“You might be right, but, please, Kit, no.”

Mr. Rivers’ eyes held a look that I had not seen before. A film of sweat coated his top lip. Kit reached out and brushed his hand, the first physical contact I had ever observed between them.

“All right. Not the army.”

Mr. Rivers sat back in his chair and took a sip of tea, and his hand shook ever so slightly. He turned to me. “Served for six months in 1918, when I was a year or two younger than Kit. God-awful. Hellish. Makes a mockery of the words one uses to describe it. All I can say is, it’s something a man never wants his son to see.”

Kit proffered his cigarette case and Mr. Rivers took one and struck a match, the only time I had ever seen him smoke. I toyed with the crumbs on my plate.

“My father’s elder brother served for three years. He was killed at Flanders in 1917. Julian’s first novel was about it,” I said.

Mr. Rivers stared at me for a moment with an odd expression, then he gave a short laugh. “Fighting for the Habsburgs, of course.”

“Yes.”

Silence fell between us as we sipped tea and nibbled scones and contemplated the fact that twenty-five years earlier we’d been at war on opposite sides. A large white gull landed on a terra-cotta flowerpot and eyed the cake hungrily. Kit broke off a corner and tossed it onto the lawn. A moment later a flock of gulls descended onto the grass in a blizzard of white wings, the air filling with their hollow cries.

“The navy. It has to be the navy. If I’m to be away from Tyneford, I want to be at sea.”