Someone Special (64 page)

‘Oh, I see,’ Margaret said doubtfully. ‘But it’s horrible for Lilibet, Huntie; she must wonder what people will say if papa decides they can’t get engaged. I mean I’m sure she’ll be Queen one day, and terribly important, but now she’s just a daughter like me.’

‘But a daughter of most loving parents, dear,’ Huntie said gently. ‘Your parents will do what’s best for both you and Lilibet, I’m sure of it.’

‘And in the meantime? Until they decide?’

‘Until then poor Lilibet has to get used to having even her private life made public, I’m afraid,’ Huntie said, plunging her needle into her stocking. ‘It’s hard, but she’s a sensible girl. She’ll come to terms with it.’

Margaret wandered across the schoolroom and knelt on the wide windowseat, staring through the window at the rapidly approaching April dusk.

‘Poor Lilibet,’ she said softly, more to herself than anyone else. ‘Nothing of her own, ever. Not even her love affair.’

17

‘SHE’S SO HAPPY
, Matt – as happy as I am, and that’s saying something. Do you know, when she first brought Snip back here all I thought about was, well, all I thought was that she was jumping into the water without really looking, but now I think she did the right thing, even if her reasons weren’t the usual ones.’

Hester and Matthew were sitting over breakfast on a bright sunny morning in early May, Matthew with a Sunday newspaper spread out before him, Hester energetically crunching toast. Matthew laid his paper down and grinned at her across the white cloth.

‘They both did the right thing but for the wrong reason, same’s you and me did,’ he said contentedly. ‘They’ve done marvels with the castle, an’ all. How they did it, mind, when the snow come down and we were cut off – no electric, no food, no nothing – I can’t say, except that they worked like a pair o’ navvies, but it’s rare grand, now. I keep wonderin’ when the old man will come up and take a look, but he hasn’t showed much interest, truth to tell. Got other fish to fry, I reckon. Now if our Nell was to have a babby …’

‘She won’t, not yet. She’s only a baby herself, just twenty-one,’ Hester reminded him. ‘Besides, Snip still depends on her. Too much, I sometimes think. But if they make a go of it, and I believe they will, they deserve every ha’penny they get.’

‘Yes, the place is beginnin’ to look better’n when the old man did it up first. And as for the lad, he’s twice the man he was,’ Matthew said. ‘I don’t deny he leans on her but time was when he’d not have been able to come to market wi’ me, leavin’ our Nell at home, and he does it
now. He strolls round calm as you please, makes a bid or two, has a pint and a cheese barm, chats. Tis only if he feels shut in, like, or if he’s havin’ a bad day …’

‘Which isn’t often; I know, I know,’ Hester said amicably. ‘But you must admit he needs her, Matt. If she had to give half or more of her attention to a baby then I don’t know quite how he’d face up to it. And I guess Nell thinks the same because I thought they’d have a family right off, but they’ve not done so.’

‘Babies don’t come for the askin’,’ Matthew pointed out. ‘You’d ha’ liked another, that I do know, but wantin’ weren’t enough. Does Nell ever tell you how she feels about kids?’

‘I had a prolapse after Nell was born; that can stop you having another baby, Dr Burroughes told me. And with a daughter of twenty-one I’m not exactly keen to start again,’ Hester reminded him. ‘As for Nell, she doesn’t want children until Snip’s a lot more independent and their future’s more assured. She’s delighted with the way things are going right now, though. When they open the castle at weekends Snip will take parties round if she’s busy, a thing he couldn’t have done six or nine months ago. But he still has nightmares from time to time, and he won’t wear his artificial arm. I wish he’d try, but he won’t.’

‘He says it hurts and why should he be hurt more’n he’s been already, that’s what I say. Hes, what’s it like up there on a Saturday?’ Matthew asked curiously. ‘I know I ought to go up, take a look, but I feel awkward-like, with the people all starin’ and wonderin’ where you fit in. I work around the buildings, of course, but I haven’t ever been inside the castle when the kids have got it open to the public, but that don’t mean to say I’m not very curious.’

Hester shook her head chidingly, though she smiled as she did so.

‘I’m not surprised you’re curious, I was myself. I’ve
not been in on a Sunday, because the locals are a bit po-faced about it and so I’ve held back, but at Easter, when they did teas and buns, I waited on and it was great fun. The folk are ever so friendly and when our Nell gets going about the ghost in the Long Gallery and the White Lady in the West Tower they drink in every word. There’s more than a touch of the showman in that young lady – all those years of barking for me and Phillips, I daresay.’

‘Then they’re doin’ all right?’ Matthew asked, taking a drink of tea. ‘It used to worry me that they’d get into a muddle wi’ money, but they’ve both got their heads screwed on. Snip’s a showman an’ all, of course. I tend to forget that.’

‘I think they’re doing very well,’ Hester confirmed. ‘On Easter Monday there was a queue all day despite the frightful weather and they must have taken quite a lot of money. A shilling seems a large sum but people are paying it willingly enough, which Nell says may mean it’s too little. And have you heard the latest? They’ve gone and traced Gullivers and asked if they could spare some joints and perhaps a couple of children’s rides, so they can advertise a fair as an additional attraction during the summer. It means clearing the home paddock and levying some sort of charge on the fair, but I think it’s likely to be a real money-spinner. There isn’t a lot for kids at the moment, so a fair would be well patronised. I wish Gullivers would send Ivy and Phillips, but I don’t suppose they will. He’s a great attraction, old Phillips, so they’ll want him down on the coast somewhere, to get the crowds in.’

‘Why don’t you catch a couple o’ grass snakes and offer to do them a show yourself?’ Matthew asked, grinning at her. ‘Hester the Snake Woman and her Venomous Adders … See her wrestle them down, subdue their sinewy length …’

Hester laughed with him. ‘Get on with you, I’ve gone
soft, I doubt I could stand up in front of an audience without blushing all over. Besides, it’s a knack, handling snakes, and I reckon I’ve lost it over the past couple of years. I won’t remind you that grass snakes aren’t adders, because poor-old Phillips wasn’t a cobra, either.’

‘The flatties don’t know that,’ Matthew quoted. ‘Except that country folk do tend to know grass snakes and adders be uncommon similar. Still, old gal, the kids do pretty well by themselves from what I’ve seen. So you think Nell has no regrets, eh?’

‘I don’t know that I’d go as far as that,’ Hester said cautiously. ‘Few regrets, anyway.’

‘Few? Why not none?’

‘Oh Matthew, you must have known she thought she was in love with someone else when she and Snip married!’

The words had slipped out before Hester had realised what she was about to say. She felt the colour rise in her cheeks and knocked her knife on to the floor, then bent to retrieve it, staying down for a moment until she had mastered her expression. After all this time, to say something like that in an unguarded moment! It just went to show you could never lower your guard if you had a secret.

Matthew, who had picked up his paper once more, put it down, his eyes rounding, his lips pursing into a silent whistle.

‘I did not, then. If that was so, why did she marry Snip?’

‘Because … because the other chap wasn’t suitable, he was abroad, she didn’t think … anyway, she was very fond of Snip and wanted to do what was right. And I’m sure she never gives the other fellow a thought now. She’s really very happy.’

‘Hmm.’ Matthew picked up his paper but did not start to read. Instead, he continued to regard Hester steadily over the top. ‘Unsuitable, you said? Was that why you took to Snip the way you did? I remember Nell
said you’d not taken to Snip when they were kids. I just grunted, never said owt, but it made me wonder at the time. You never were a gal to blow hot an’ cold, Hes.’

‘I didn’t like Snip when he was young,’ Hester admitted, ‘but I like him immensely, now. And when Nell turned up with him that day all I could think of was how the war had changed him. When I knew him before, he was aggressively sure of himself, rough as well as tough, not the sort of young man you’d want your daughter to marry. Afterwards he was a man not a boy and, well, we both liked him, didn’t we?’

‘Yes, but I never had any idea of the sort of man our Nell should marry,’ Matthew said. ‘This unsuitable feller – anyone I know?’

What on earth made him ask that, Hester thought uncomfortably. As though he could possibly have known the young man his daughter had doted on, except that in this case he did, of course. But she could scarcely tell him so because he would want to know why she considered Dan unsuitable, which would lead either to her telling lies which she did not want to tell, or to revealing a truth best left untold.

‘Whatever makes you ask that, Matt?’ Hester leaned across the table and tweaked the paper out of his grasp. ‘If you aren’t going to read the news …’

‘Cheeky varmint!’ He grabbed the paper back and it tore. ‘Now look what you’ve done, you young spitfire! Come on, you’ve ruined me Sunday newspaper, now you can just come over here and give me a kiss to make up.’

‘None of that,’ Hester said, but Matthew leaned across the table, knocking over the marmalade pot, and reached for her. She pulled back, trying to right the marmalade pot, and he stood up and walked briskly round the table, grabbing her despite her squeaks and lifting her off her feet, crushing her against his chest and then kissing the top of her head.

‘No horseplay, Matt! It’s time I started doing the spuds for Sunday lunch. And tonight we’ve invited the kids down for a meal, so I’ll have to do some fancy cooking, which takes …’

Her words were cut off by his mouth descending on hers. He kissed her hard and thoroughly, then held her back from him. He was breathing heavily, staring down at her with a look on his face she knew well. She reached up and stroked his cheek, then pressed herself against him.

‘Now behave yourself, Matt, we’re an old married couple, we can’t play around like a couple of lovesick kids when we’ve all this work …’

He swung her off her feet and held her in his arms as one would hold a baby, smiling down at her.

‘I’m a lovesick kid where you’re concerned,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I can’t touch your hand wi’out you set me afire. Besides, it’s Sunday; a day of rest. I’ll take you back to bed, we can rest properly there.’

‘Rest! That’s the last thing on your mind,’ Hester said as he strode across the kitchen and into the bedroom, tossing her down on to their neatly made bed as though she weighed no more than a kitten. ‘Just you stop it – any minute now folk will start streaming up into our garden, not realising it’s private, and take a look through the window.’

Matthew, always a man of few words, walked across the room and tugged the curtains closed, then began to pull off his shirt and breeches. Hester lay on her back, watching him through half-closed lids. She marvelled at the way she loved him, marvelled more that she had ever allowed herself to believe ill of him, brought herself to leave him, but then she’d been a silly young girl, now she was a woman with a bit of sense and she knew pure gold when she saw it.

Presently, stripped, he stood close to the bed looking down at her. Hester smiled lazily up at him.

‘Just what are you thinking, Hester Coburn, a-lying there all wicked and wanton on your bed on a Sunday morning?’

‘Oh, I was just thinking how I love a man whose face and chest are burned to a rich chestnut brown, and whose – whose other parts are white as milk! Just wondering, Matt darling, how I ever came to leave you.’

He sat down on the bed and, leaning over, began to unfasten her blouse, then her skirt. Hester half sat up to help him, but he shook his head at her, his fingers quicker now on the fastenings.

‘No, let me do it. I love to undress you.’

Hester sighed and trembled as the clothes came off and were tossed to the floor behind him. She told herself, as he took her in his arms at last, that it was a good ploy; it had caused him to forget totally about the unsuitable young man his daughter had wanted to marry. Of course it was wicked to entice her dear Matthew into bed on a Sunday morning when they should both have been in church – but it was the lesser of two evils. She did not want Matthew to remember Daniel and when they began to kiss, she forgot about Daniel Clifton too. It was Matthew who mattered, Matthew whose strong, suntanned body and big, sensitive hands were giving her such exquisite pleasure at this very moment. What did Daniel matter? His chance had come and gone, he would not trouble any of them again.

Anna was walking Beppo, the family fox terrier, along the bank of the River Yare, revelling in the hot sunshine and wondering what time it was. Earlier, she had bathed in the river, all by herself but for the dog, and though her tummy told her it was nearly teatime, she had no way of checking whether it spoke the truth or had been galvanised by the swim into early greed.

It was so lovely to feel the sun on her shoulders that she went on walking anyway, with Beppo racing ahead
and barking like a mad thing every time he disturbed a pair of ducks or made a water rat desert the bank and plop into the cool brown river. The winter which had just gone, Anna reflected, had been one of the worst in living memory and it had seemed, only a matter of weeks earlier, that the freak conditions were going to last all year. Never had a summer come later or more reluctantly, but it had arrived at last and here she was, where she and Jamie had played so often as children, roasting in hot July sunshine and beginning to feel worried because she hadn’t brought a hat and the back of her neck was painfully hot.

‘Anna! Anna, darling!’

She turned at the sound of the voice and it was her mother, hurrying along the path behind her. Constance was wearing a lemon-coloured cotton dress with a large straw hat flopping over her brow and she held a newspaper in one hand. Anna stopped and turned to smile at her parent.