Her lad, Tom brooded. Born when Alice was wed to Giles Sutton, then left at Rowangarth for Julia and Lady Helen to rear, Drew being of substance and title before he’d hardly drawn breath. But Alice had come to love her son in the end; had forgiven his getting.
‘Your tea is going cold. You were miles away.’
‘Mm. Thinking about the birds in the far cover,’ he said offhandedly. ‘They’re thick on the ground, this year. Won’t be long to the first.’
The first day of October when pheasant shooting would start. No need to remind a gamekeeper’s wife. Mind, it wasn’t the same as in the old days, Alice thought longingly, when there had been weekend shooting parties for Sir John’s friends. Giles, who took over the running of Rowangarth estate when his father died, hadn’t been one for pheasant shoots; didn’t hold with killing. Never had. Yet he’d enlisted in the Great War for all that, but as a stretcher-bearer because stretcher-bearers and ambulance drivers and medical orderlies weren’t called on to fire guns, take life. Life had been sacred to Giles Sutton. All life. Pheasants included.
‘I said I was thinking about game birds in the far cover, and you didn’t hear a word of it.’
‘Sorry, Tom. I was miles away. In France, if you must know.’
‘Lass, that war is over. We’ve had another since. They’re even calling them World War One and World War Two now.’
‘So they are.’ But that first war, hers and Tom’s, would always be the Great War to those who had fought in it. Great only because it was obscene and bloody and uncaring. Patriotic slaughter. Alice Dwerryhouse knew, because she and Julia had been there. ‘I was a young nurse at the Front and now I’m a grandmother. Things change.’
‘Aye, they do.’ Tenderly he touched Alice’s cheek. ‘They do, thank God. And you’re still my lass.’
‘And I love you Tom Dwerryhouse, but I’ve got things to do, so drink up that tea and be out of my kitchen from under my feet!’
Alice, Tom thought contentedly as he made for the far end of Brattocks Wood, dogs at his heels, who regularly ordered him out of her kitchen with a sharp word, but who loved him with her eyes every time she looked at him. Dear, precious Alice, his first and only love. How much better could life get?
Lyn Carmichael smiled at the ring on her left hand, then at the letter that lay on the table in front of her. It had been the first thing she saw when she opened her front door, last night. An envelope bearing an airmail sticker and a Kenyan stamp. From darling Blod; Blodwen Carmichael, who for years had been her aunt and was now her mother. Her real mother; birth mother. The news of it had shocked, amazed and delighted Lyn. When she had given it time to sink in, that was; when her father had written to tell her that her mother – the woman she thought was her mother – had been killed in a car accident. It was only then Lyndis learned the truth; that she really belonged to the dear person she called Aunt Blodwen and had been given to her twin sister to rear in Kenya, half a world away. Given to Myfanwy, who spoke with an English accent and had never, Lyn supposed, completely forgiven her husband and sister.
Lyndis looked at the generous, rounded writing and was glad that everything had come right for Auntie Blod and her father; glad they had married the minute the war was over and sailings to Kenya available to civilians once more.
… Can’t wait to see you again, and talk things over with my girl, Auntie Blod had written. In fact, your dad and me got a sudden yearning to spend Christmas in Wales. You could put us up if we decided to come, couldn’t you? I said to your dad that I couldn’t wait to see that little cottage again and he said that was all right by him and anyway, we’d both have to meet Drew’s family and talk about the wedding because your dad is determined to pay for the lot, he said, and you are to let him, because he isn’t short of a pound or two as well you know. Lovely girl, I’m so happy for you. I know I have said it twice already in this letter, but I shall go on saying it, because your happiness is all that matters in this world to me – apart from your dad’s, that is.
Christmas in the little house near Llangollen and the three of them together as a real family for the first time in her life, Lyn realized with delight. So long since she had seen her father. She had been a schoolgirl of twelve when they said goodbye the day she sailed alone for England, and boarding school. Stay with your Aunt Blodwen for your holidays, they said, with no mention made about when she would go back again. And anyway, the war had prevented her return to the country she was brought up in.
Maybe they would all be asked to Rowangarth for Christmas. A good idea, that, because sooner or later the parents would have to meet and there was room enough for twenty Christmas guests in the house she was soon to share with Drew.
Lyn Sutton. Lady Lyndis. Mistress of Rowangarth, and she not knowing the first thing about belonging to the aristocracy and living in a big old house where money was no problem and everything she could see when she looked out of any upstairs window, belonged to the Rowangarth Suttons.
All at once Lyn wanted to see her parents at Christmas; no, dammit, needed them with her because there was so much to tell them, so much she was unsure about. Now, it was important she talk to Auntie Blod – to her mother – and tell her of the doubts she sometimes had about marrying Drew. Not that she didn’t love him. She did; loved him with all her heart and mind and wanted no other. But she and Drew were chalk and cheese and the life Drew had been born into and accepted as normal would take Lyn Carmichael a lot of getting used to, even with Daisy nearby to open her heart to.
Drew and Kitty, now, had been another matter. Kitty was a Pendenys Sutton whose parents were richer, even, than the Suttons of Rowangarth. Kitty would have fitted in well; would have slipped into her role as lady of the manor with no trouble at all because a manor – or its Kentucky equivalent – was what she was used to. And though a flying bomb had snuffed out that young eager life, Kitty would always be at Rowangarth, sleeping away time beside Drew’s grandmother, beneath a white marble gravestone.
Kathryn Norma Clementina Sutton
KITTY
1:11:1920–18:6:1944
Lyn jumped to her feet, pulling in her breath, holding it, then letting it out in little calming huffs, closing her eyes, whispering, ‘I’m sorry, truly sorry …’
But sorry for what? That Kitty would never carry white orchids at her wedding, the flowers every Rowangarth bride carried; those same special orchids Jack Catchpole laid at the white gravestone every June, on the anniversary of that tragic death.
And there was something else. She recognized it, truth known, the moment Drew suggested the eighteenth of June for their wedding. Yet she had stubbornly pushed it to the back of her mind, even though she knew it was the anniversary to the day, almost, when he and Kitty should have been married; and a year later, on that same June day, when a bomb took Kathryn Sutton’s life.
‘Damn!’ Lyn reached for her coat, not caring that it was late and that they might be in bed, not even caring that the ringing of the phone might awaken Mary. She had to speak to Daisy now because if she did not, it would be Drew she would ring and heaven only knew what might be the outcome then.
She slammed the door shut behind her, then wheeled her cycle from the shed, determined to pedal to the crossroads and the telephone box that stood there.
All right, so it was a long-distance call and she couldn’t be sure, even now, that she would get through straight away, but she had at least to try. For the sake of her peace of mind she must face the doubt that had nagged her since the night Drew asked her to marry him and Daisy, dear Purvis-from-the-bottom-bunk, was the only one who could help, give the comfort Lyn was so in need of.
How could Drew not have remembered, she fretted. And even if he had and was determined to put it behind him, did he expect Lyn Carmichael, much as she loved him, to walk down the church path to her wedding and ignore the white gravestone beside it, which bore the name Kitty?