In Distant Fields (20 page)

But of course at Waterside House, Elizabeth found that none of this now mattered in the least. Down by the seaside everyone was expected to get on hugger-mugger, with the result that she found that she was holding on to every minute of every hour, probably because she had never
been
on holiday with young people of her own age before. She had never before changed in a beach hut and followed friends down to the waterside wearing only her bathing suit. It was as if by being released from the constrictions of her parents' moribund relationship she could at last become herself.

Besides, there was always some new excitement. For instance, the new guests from London that the Duchess had invited to join the house party were certainly not from Elizabeth's, or even Kitty's, sheltered background. They wafted into Waterside House smelling slyly of sophistication and tango teas. Roses and sweet peas would not be the flowers to which anyone would want to compare them. If anyone should wish to choose flowers to which Lavinia Ponsonby, Emerald
Bickford and Mollie Hanley Montague could be compared, it would be orchids and wild flowers, although which would be which was not something either Elizabeth or Kitty would find out, for the three new arrivals soon sequestered themselves with Allegra and Cecilia.

‘They are old now,' Partita said factually, ‘so they will all be worried about whether or not they are to be engaged by the end of the summer, or whether or not their younger sisters will be engaged before them.' She looked mischievously from Kitty to them and back again. ‘How about if we all become engaged before any of them? Wouldn't it be too-too, my dears?'

‘Oh, I don't think anyone wants to be in a race to be engaged,' Kitty began, while Elizabeth said nothing.

Partita pinched her lightly on the arm. ‘We all know who is in love with you, my dear.'

‘No one – truly, no one,' Elizabeth stuttered.

‘No one,' Partita stood back and laughed gaily.

‘No one, indeed! We all know that dear Pug becomes a pool of devotion the moment you come within three miles of him. As a matter of fact he goes precisely the same colour as you are going now. It is too, too sweet.'

Kitty frowned at Partita.

‘You know how I feel about Pug?' Partita continued.

Elizabeth stared at her, dreading what she might be going to say next, and yet knowing that nothing, and no one, could stop her.

‘I feel that Pug should have as his bride the sweetest girl in the whole house party, and it just so happens that it is you, Miss Elizabeth Milborne.'

Elizabeth turned away. She had no idea that everyone knew, or even suspected, that she thought the world of Pug, and she could not bear the thought that Pug might, in his turn, be teased about her, that she might be causing him embarrassment.

Seeing how upset she was feeling, Kitty put an arm around Elizabeth while continuing to frown furiously at Partita, who promptly turned away, pulling a little face. Really, Elizabeth had not just one skin too few, but a dozen. Everyone had to be teased. She should try being the youngest sister of three. Partita could not count the times she had had her plaits tied to the bottom of her bed, or Tinks had found her locked in a cupboard. Jossy even found her one day shut in with the pony stallion. Happily Partita had carrots in her pocket and a riding crop to bang on the door, or, as Jossy said, she might have been there all night.

‘You must not take any notice of Partita, she is just ribbing you,' Kitty begged. ‘Besides, everyone knows Partita is in love with Peregrine.' Kitty looked defiantly across at Partita.

Partita turned very slowly back to face Kitty, hands clenched, mouth set.

She was just about to order Kitty and Elizabeth from Waterside House, and run and tell her mother she never wanted them to come and stay
again
ever
, when she remembered just how few friends she truly had, and how lonely she had been, how much in want of company of her own age, until she met Kitty at Miss Woffington's Academy. Not only that, but nowadays Kitty was so much Circe's favourite that Partita knew that her mother would give her daughter short shrift if she complained about Kitty.

After a short pause, during which the other two stared at Partita's murderous expression in silent fascination, she finally declared ‘Of course I am in love with Perry, I have always loved Perry ever since I was five years old and he used to take me riding on a leading rein in the park here. He would let me jump logs long before I could even sit to the canter.'

She sat down on the edge of the bed and the other two sat down on the chaise longue, silenced, as girls always are when a confession of love has just been made.

‘Does he love
you
, do you know?' Elizabeth asked her in a low voice, her face so serious that Partita started to laugh.

‘No, of course not!' She shrugged her shoulders, suddenly looking sad. ‘He thinks of me as being just like Livia, except younger. He thinks of me as being his younger sister, and nothing to be done about it.' Partita tossed her head and gave a great long shuddering sigh. ‘It is awful to love, and not to be loved back. That is why you are so lucky. Pug loves you back.'

‘Oh, I doubt that …' Elizabeth stammered.

Kitty and Partita looked at her and then each other and laughed.

‘
We
don't,' they said together.

Elizabeth turned away. She knew that poor Pug was considered a bit of a joke, but to her he was quite simply head and shoulders above everyone else. She saw reflected in his dark eyes not just amusement, but sensitivity and kindness. Very well, he did fancy himself as a fashionable knut, but that was just fun. He had told her that he thought it very likely that he would soon be joining the same regiment as Al, and there would be a bit of a dust-up, and then he would come back and go on farming. It seemed such a perfect plan.

‘You are not just a knut, Pug, you are a bit of a dude too, and all the girls think so,' Harry kept teasing Pug that night before they all sloped off to the bachelors' wing, but not without making sure to accept the girls' invitation to join them for a midnight swim.

‘I doubt that any of the girls will stay awake long enough to hear the chimes of midnight,' Almeric announced as they all started to remove their top clothes, before lying down on their beds and waiting for the appointed hour. ‘It's the sea air,' he went on. ‘It makes you so sleepy.'

‘I have banged the old head twelve times on the pillow and will let you know how or if it works,' Pug announced to no one in particular.

‘Very appropriate for a wooden head,' Bertie joked.

‘I will stay awake,' Harry volunteered.

‘You will not be able to stay awake for a second, Harry.'

In the event Harry did not let them down. Instead, he stared into the darkness, thinking of the wonder of being on holiday, of being part of all of the fun, of being with so many beautiful girls. Of course, he had every idea whom he thought was the most beautiful, but no good would come of his paying any special attention to
her
. Just as no good would come of his falling in love with any of the others. He was different, and always would be, not one of them – himself, Harry, their friend. Eventually he got up off his bed and went over to the window where he held up his watch to the moonlight. It was midnight.

He went over to Almeric's bed.

‘Al?'

‘Oh, don't wake him, I beg of you,' Gus called from his bed over by the window. ‘There is no one so frosty as Al when he is woken, that I can promise you.'

Almeric opened his eyes and, seeing Harry's face bending over him, he let out an over-dramatic yell, and they both started to laugh. Pug woke up shortly after, and went to the window.

‘I doubt that they will come,' he said. ‘Miss Milborne, everyone, they said they were so
sleepy they could hardly keep awake during the whist.'

‘If they don't come out, then I will climb in their window and wake them,' Almeric stated, pulling on his beach dressing gown with an air of determination. ‘Midnight swims are part of the tradition of Waterside House, and always have been. Besides, I gave – I can't remember her name – but at any rate I gave one of the maids a few bottles so that they could have a party, and she has put eiderdowns and pillows and flasks in the beach huts, not to mention cakes and all that kind of thing. Everything is ready and waiting for us, nothing to do but sally forth.'

‘That is all very well, old thing,' Bertie put in, ‘but if any or all of the other girls are like my sister, Elizabeth, mark my words they will be asleep as soon as heads hit pillows, really they will.'

‘And yet,' Pug announced proudly from his viewpoint at the window, ‘guess who is the first to come outside, and is even now looking round for us?'

He turned back to the rest of the room with a look of triumph. The others promptly joined him at the window, staring out into the moonlit garden, hoping against hope that it would be filled with the lovely sight of a group of the opposite sex waiting to run down to the water's edge with them.

‘Bless me, Bertie, if you're not made an ass of,' Gus told him, at the same time nudging him.
‘There your sister
is
, and here do come the rest of them and, all glory be to heaven, they
are
all standing waving their bathing things up at us!'

‘Right, first down, first in, wins the pot from cards last night!'

They all raced down the stairs of the small house and out onto the lawn, each elbowing the others out of the way in his haste to be the first to be at the side of the girl of his choice.

‘You are all late,' Allegra informed her brother as James Millings promptly attached himself to her side, and Almeric went straight up to Kitty, who was swinging her bathing hat from one finger, her swimming costume neatly rolled up in a large towel under her arm.

‘Does your sainted mother, the Duchess, know about this?' Peregrine asked Cecilia as, having changed, they all walked whispering and giggling through the garden down to the beach.

‘Yes, of course she does. Don't you remember, we always have midnight swims at Waterside,' Cecilia reassured him.

Peregrine nodded. It was some years since he had holidayed with the Knowles at Waterside, and he did seem to remember there was some sort of tradition to do with swimming in the moonlight, but they had all been so much younger then, or had seemed so much younger. His eyes drifted ahead to where Kitty was walking beside Almeric, and then he turned to Cecilia.

‘Isn't it strange how strictly we are all chaperoned, until we either go hunting, or swimming, and then it's just a free-for-all?'

Cecilia, who was watching Valentine Wynyard Errol slipping what he must have believed was a surreptitious arm around Livia's waist, looked up at him and knowing that she must distract him from what was happening, started to talk nineteen to the dozen.

‘I say, Perry, you know and I know that there is sure to be a bit of a dust-up quite soon. There is no getting away from it, Papa says. I know Papa is always a bit of an old gloom-monger, but he says Sir Edward Grey is only interested in salmon fishing and shooting, and he can hardly be brought to London, let alone be got to put his mind to preventing a war, and that the King is so much at odds with his cousin the Kaiser that they can't wait to get at each other, and that is all before their navy getting as big as ours is driving everyone to distraction, because
we
are meant to own the seas, and everyone knows it.'

Cecilia was talking so fast and so furiously that Peregrine was beginning to suspect that she had some other motive. He started to look round, partly because he found the conversation inappropriate to the setting, and partly because he could not help appreciating the delight of the scene, and he really did not much care to talk about stuffed shirts like Sir Edward Grey.

‘I can't see Livia,' he said suddenly, looking behind him.

‘Oh, Livia is here all right, Perry. Just behind you, as a matter of fact.'

‘Where?'

‘Just there …' Cecilia pointed vaguely in the direction of a smaller group of people who were bringing up the rear.

‘Oh, yes, of course.'

Cecilia had always loved and felt sorry for Livia, if only because it was so apparent that her mother did not love her. She wanted nothing more than to see her freed from her family. Behind her she could hear Harry being urged on by Emerald.

‘Come on, old thing,' Emerald was saying, catching at his hand. ‘No need to be shy! I have lived in Paris, even if you have not!'

Harry allowed Emerald to pull him along, and then she went to squeal and dance at the water's edge along with the other girls, who were all also holding hands with their chosen beau. Teddy had even managed to find Partita's hand, and since she had let him, had instantly become convinced that he was the happiest man in the whole world.

‘Oh, Teddy, isn't this romantic?' Partita asked, her face all innocence as she held it up to him in the darkness.

‘It is beyond the beyonds,' Teddy agreed. ‘And you are an angel.'

‘If only I were, but I have a dreadful feeling that I'm actually a devil,' Partita said in a purposefully tragic voice.

‘Remember when you came to see us at New-brook all those years ago?'

‘Mmm?'

‘Nanny Heaslip always said, “Sure that Lady Teeta, she'll either become a plaster saint or a she-devil.” So, which is it to be, Tita?'

‘Oh, both, don't you think?'

‘Can you be both?'

‘I can be anything I like, and so can you, Teddy,' Partita called, jumping into a wave, only to disappear into it, and not reappear again.

‘Tita! Tita!' Teddy called, diving into the same wave after her.

They both surfaced together, laughing, Partita doing her best to push him under just as the moon decided to appear from under its large, dark cloud, so that Teddy, who had leaned confidently under cover of darkness in an attempt to do what he had been dying to do since he was all of twelve years old, found he was kissing Partita in the full spotlight of the moon's brightest light.