She looked up as the door opened and a smiling Mary brought in the morning post.
‘The Reverend is back from early church, Miss Julia, and there’s a letter from Sir Andrew.’
Eagerly Helen reached for it, tearing it open. It occupied just half a sheet and was soon read.
She passed it to her daughter then smiling happily she said, ‘He’s just confirming what he told us on the phone, Mary. Drew’s leave is definitely on. He says his divvy has okayed his application. What is a divvy, Julia?’
‘His divisional officer, I think, but who cares as long as he’s coming!’
Drew home! Her son – Alice’s son – coming on leave. So go to hell, Hitler! We don’t want your peace, at any price!
Gracie gazed around her, cheese sandwich poised. Only her second day at Rowangarth, yet it seemed as though she had always worked here; as if that other life of streets and mill hooters and wage packets had never been – except for Mam and Dad, that was, and Grandad.
The air seemed to shimmer golden, dancing with butterflies. She had never before seen so many; not all at one time. To her right, rooks cawed and flapped over the distant trees. Busy getting their second broods out of the nest, Mr Catchpole told her; told her, too, how special that rookery was to Lady Sutton and how, if ever those big, black birds left to nest in some other place, sorrow and tragedy would come to the Garth Suttons, or so legend had it.
‘Who are the Garth Suttons?’ Idly, she flicked breadcrumbs from her overalls.
‘Why, you’m working for them. There’s two Sutton families hereabouts, see. Those as lives here at Rowangarth – them’s the Garth Suttons – and there’s the Suttons at Pendenys Place as folks call the Place Suttons. And there’s Mrs Anna Sutton of Denniston House. Her’s a widow and an offshoot of the Place Suttons. Now, the Garth Suttons have the breeding and the title; the Place Suttons,’ he added, right eyebrow raised, ‘have the brass. Mr Nathan, as is married to Miss Julia, was a Place Sutton but he’s a decent gentleman, like his father …’
Gracie nodded, anxious not to interrupt, because people who lived in big houses – though she had come into contact with very few – intrigued her. Sometimes, on a day trip on the chara, she had passed such houses, all dignified and aloof, and wondered who lived in them and how many servants they had or if they ate off gold plates. And then her Lancashire practicality had taken over and she had tried to work out why they needed so many rooms and whoever found time to clean all the windows.
‘Tell me some more, Mr Catchpole …’
‘Not a lot to tell. I served out my apprenticeship at Pendenys. Wouldn’t have done for me to do it here, not with my dad being head gardener. But I was glad to finish my time and to come to Rowangarth as under-gardener. A right martinet that Mrs Clementina Sutton at Pendenys Place was. Had her servants bobbing and curtsying all the time. Not like our Lady Helen, who don’t hold with it.
‘Mrs Clementina’s father was a self-made millionaire and her his only child, so she copped for the lot.’ His eyes took on a remembering look. ‘By heck, lass, there’s things I could tell you about that one. Married Mr Edward Sutton, who was born here at Rowangarth. A case of brass marrying breeding, but it didn’t ever make a lady of her. An ironmaster’s daughter, that’s what, and she never changed. Silk purses from sows’ ears, tha knows …’
He bit savagely into a sandwich. At midday, Jack Catchpole was in the habit of eating a good, sustaining meal with his feet under his kitchen table, but today he had been fobbed off with sandwiches, and all on account of those Spitfires. Derisively he investigated the contents of the sandwich.
‘A man’s expected to dig for victory on fish paste?’ he snorted.
‘Mrs Catchpole not very well, then?’
‘Nay. Nowt like that. She’s busy collecting aluminium; her and Alice Dwerryhouse and Miss Julia got it all organized.’
‘The Government, you mean – wanting people’s pans to melt down for planes?’
‘That’s it. Got a right pile already in one of the stables at Rowangarth. Folks is chucking out pans like there’s no tomorrow. But I suppose we need fighters. Us lost a lot at Dunkirk, tha knows.’
Gracie knew. She had wept with pride when the soldiers were snatched off the beaches. It had been around that time, in a heady haze of patriotism, she had joined the Land Army.
‘Any road,’ Catchpole was eager to return to the ins and outs of the Suttons, ‘young Sir Andrew comes on leave soon, we hope, from the Navy. He’ll be down here for sure, having a look at the gardens. He’s real fond of the orchid house – but I’ll tell you later about her ladyship’s special orchids, the white ones. Very sentimental about the white ones, she is.’
‘So when he comes here, what do I call him?’ Gracie had never met a gentleman of title before.
‘Why, you gives him his rank as is due to him. “Good morning, Sir Andrew,” you’ll say, then like as not he’ll ask you to call him Drew as folk who’ve known him since he was a babbie alus do. Mind, when he came of age, some started to call him Sir Andrew – but more as a politeness. The lad hasn’t changed, though. He’s a credit to her as had him, and her as reared him. But we haven’t all day to sit here nattering.’ He threw the remainder of his sandwiches to hopefully waiting sparrows. ‘There’s a war on and we’ve got to get them potatoes and marrows ready for when the market man calls – and a score cabbages he wants, an’ all.’
‘But you’ll tell me some more, tomorrow – about the Suttons?’ Gracie begged. ‘About the one who had him and the one who brought him up, I mean.’ That small snippet had intrigued her. ‘Did Sir Andrew have a nanny?’
‘No, he didn’t. But that’s another story. For tomorrow,’ Catchpole chuckled. He could get to like this lass. Happen, if he and Lily had had bairns of their own, one of them might have been like young Gracie. ‘So on your feet, lass. Let’s get digging up them potatoes – for victory!’
Though when that victory would come, he thought mournfully, only the good Lord knew – and He wasn’t telling!
The first sight of Rowangarth had always been special to Drew Sutton. To walk the long slow curve of a drive lined with beeches and oaks and all at once to come upon the old house always aroused an ache of tenderness in him. But this afternoon it was particularly special and achy because he hadn’t seen it for six months and only now he realized how much he had missed it.
Mullioned windows still shone a welcome; the roof still sagged and the rose-red bricks were still smothered in blowsy Bourbon roses and clematis.
God – don’t let me die and lose it. The heart-thumping ache turned to panic inside him. Let me live through this war.
‘Stupid clot!’ he hissed. It wasn’t down to God. It was like the old Chiefie in signal school said: you just had to accept that there was a time to be born and a time to die. And you died when – if – your number came up. So best not worry overmuch about it, Chiefie said comfortably, because worrying only wasted the time you had left.
Good old Chiefie. He’d teach them the morse code if it was the last bloody thing he did, he said at the start of their training. And taught them he had, Drew grinned. DWRX805 Telegraphist Sutton A. he was now, and seven shillings a week extra at pay parade because of it.
He pulled back his shoulders and set off at a quick pace. They always said that the longest part of any journey was the last mile home and now there was only a hundred yards to go. A hundred strides, and he was there!
He