The Gates of Rutherford (26 page)

“Seems to me that you're getting a bit ahead of yourself there, Harry.”

“Am I?” Harry demanded. “I've had a while to think about it, especially when I was having my bloody leg operations one after the other. The world's changed. Do you know how many staff we had in the year I was born? Thirty! We had four undergardeners for a start.” He started ticking the names off on his fingers. “We had an underbutler as well as Mr. Bradfield. Housemaids, laundry maids, kitchen maids, scullery maids. I hear from Father that Miss Dodd and Mrs. Carlisle are struggling to run the show by themselves now, though. Do you know why? Because people want more. They want independence.”

“Rutherford can afford its staff because of the mills. That's where the income will come from.”

“Mills,” Harry said. “You suppose England will always corner the cotton and wool-weaving market? Maybe somewhere else in the world will do it cheaper. Maybe other empires. Think about it. We get our raw materials from our empire. But what if there's no empire? What then? What happens to the mills?”

“Whoa,” John remonstrated. “That's going too far.”

“Really?” Harry asked. “England's a very small country, Mr. Gould. Very small.” He stopped, and glanced back towards the inner rooms of the café, where they could hear Indian voices now. “By contrast, India's very big. Australia's very big. Vast places, like America. We're an old order here in our little island. Old orders fall and decompose. And I'll tell you something else. We're here and fighting this hell because of empires. Borders. Territorialism. It's all such . . . bunkum. Such petty bunkum.”

John sat back in his chair, looking at him in astonishment. “You've thought it through all right,” he said.

“I want to be part of the new, not the old,” Harry replied.

“And abandon Rutherford.”

Harry gave a great sigh, and ran a hand through his hair. “Oh, who the hell knows,” he muttered. “I don't, actually. I just feel it's all coming crashing down. The only thing I know for sure is that I must find Caitlin. I must see her, talk to her. She's the only good thing to come out of this whole war for me.”

“And get her to marry you.”

Harry said nothing. But he raised his glass, and then, in one swallow, drained it.

I
t was a beautiful bright morning in London.

Octavia was standing at her bedroom window, looking out at what could be glimpsed of the Thames through the trees on the Embankment. The garden was in full bloom: swathes of white and cream roses framed the gate to the road, and sunlight barred the patch of lawn. The herringbone path reminded Octavia of Rutherford's around their own rose terrace. How miniature Cheyne Walk was to Rutherford, Octavia thought. A small paradise.

When she and John had first fled to London, they had taken a suite in Claridge's. Every day she had expected to wake to find that his remarkable appearance had been a dream: that she would be back at Rutherford trying to make the best of the rest of her life without him. They had both been afraid to sleep for exactly the same reason: that, among the finery of their room, they were each nothing more than ghosts of the other's imagination. A strange concept, but it was the unreality of it all. To find that he was back, literally, from the dead. That he had wandered, alone, for so long, disoriented and
racked with guilt from his experience. “So many died around me,” he had told her in those first few days.

They had laid together and talked right through the night. She had kept kissing his hands when he talked of having been frozen with cold; wept when he said he had been half blinded by oil in the water. His image of having been dragged down in the ocean, and seeing the bulk of the
Lusitania
pass within inches of him—of him actually having put out his hand and felt the brush of the hull against his palm—had shocked her to the core. He had been so close to dying. So close. “We looked for you,” she whispered, again and again. “Even William sent a man to Ireland to look for you.”

John had listened with head bowed. “Did he?” he had murmured. “That was very good of him. Much more than I deserve.”

She supposed that she had never lost the thrill of those first days alone, shut away from the world. The feeling was still the same now. John erased every unhappiness, every moment of loneliness. She was almost drunk in his company; drunk with the very thought of him, like a child grown besotted with too many good things. She wanted to leap and dance. To run out in the street and shout. To take hold of the nearest unsuspecting passerby and shake them and say, “He is here. Isn't it a miracle? Isn't it impossibly good?” She would look in the mirror and see that she was endlessly smiling, and could not stop. And she thought—my God, how many times she had thought—
so this is what real happiness is like. This is what it's like to be loved, to feel wild with joy. And to have that sensation returned.

They were each other's new worlds.

She thought again of this now, and whispered a fervent, brief prayer that he would once more be returned to her unharmed from France. Still, the fact that Louisa had come back with her to London had partly eased the agony of waiting. It had given her a small pang of guilt to take Louisa away from Sessy and William, but she
considered that Louisa needed London, just for a while. It had been a wrench nevertheless to leave little Sessy, so appealing in her little canvas pinafore with her starched ringlets escaping their curls; Octavia saw how much Louisa looked back to catch a last sight of her niece.

It made her think that it was time Louisa had a family of her own. Octavia adored Sessy—she was such an image of Harry—but she looked forward to a time when Louisa would be a mother herself. There was such affection in her daughter, and nowhere to lavish it but on her brother's child, and on her father. William too looked a lonely figure as they had departed. Octavia had patted his arm. “I shall send her back to you very soon,” she promised. “And Mrs. Nicholson will be here shortly. I've introduced her to you all. Louisa likes her. And I take it you approve?”

William had shrugged eloquently. “Not my business, hiring staff. She seems a nice woman, however.”

Mrs. Nicholson was indeed a pleasant surprise. Octavia supposed that, in the back of her mind, she had half expected some sort of sluttish harpy—it was hard to remove Elizabeth Kent's sadly despairing face from her memory—but Mrs. Nicholson had turned out to be small, fair and neat, and rather well-educated. Hardly the image of a farmer's wife, nor of a potential mistress to some self-deluding husband. Softly spoken, she had arrived at her interview with Octavia ahead of time. She had not curtseyed nor fawned in any way, but met Octavia's eye with utter calm.
She'll do
, Octavia had decided, almost at once.

Octavia had smiled at William again on the day of departure, pulling on her gloves, and glancing down Rutherford's long driveway. “I've asked for the building plans for the old carding shop to be copied to me in London,” she said. “When you've cast an eye on them . . .”

“I shall tell you my opinion. I shall go over there myself and talk to Ferrow, and look at the site.”

They smiled briefly at one another as Octavia got into the motor cab, and Louisa followed. William had held his head up, his spine straight, his face then stripped of expression. Impassive. He had turned and gone back into the house before the car had pulled away.

•   •   •

B
ehind her now, Amelie was taking up her nightclothes from the bed. “It is a sunshine at last, madame.”

“It is, Amelie. I think that the girls and I will walk to Tower Bridge today. It will do us good.”

“Mrs. Preston is coming to see you, madame?”

“Yes, to see us both.” Octavia smiled and out of sheer pleasure clapped her hands together like a girl. “My goodness. We were last all together at Christmas. At least Charlotte's broken wrist has got her out of the hospital drudgery.”

“She came here while you were away, madame.”

Octavia gave a start of surprise. “She did? I didn't know that. You mean she called here unannounced? Did she say what for?”

“No, madame. I am sorry. I am thinking that perhaps you knew this?”

“No, I didn't know at all. She didn't write to say so.” Octavia frowned. “How odd. Did she say anything? There was no note left, was there?”

“No, madame. I am called down to speak to her. She is with her friend . . . I don't know the name. . . .”

“A woman friend?”

“Yes, Madame. Christa . . .”

“Christine Nesbitt, the artist?”

Amelie's face lit up with humor. “Yes indeed, madame. She is dressed like an artist.”

“And they said nothing at all, simply visited and went away again?”

“That is so, madame.”

Octavia sat staring down at the things on her dressing table. It was rather odd that Charlotte had not written or telephoned to say so. But Christine would have been helping Charlotte, no doubt. Taking her out of her listless mood. And there would certainly be no one better than Christine to do that. Although . . . Octavia sighed. Christine was a little fast; a little outré. Charming for a while, but not a constant companion. Not for a married woman of Charlotte's class.

“Oh well,” she murmured. “She is getting about, at least. And we shall have such a nice walk today. We shall go to Simpson's-in-the-Strand for luncheon. Lord Cavendish and I always went to Simpson's at one time. It will be interesting to see how much has changed.”

“Very traditional, madame.” Amelie nodded approvingly. She was a very old-fashioned girl in some respects; Octavia thought that the developments of the last year or so—her own personal developments, that is—were not really to Amelie's taste. Still, as Octavia's personal maid, it was not her place to say. Octavia watched Amelie bustle around for another moment or two. “Is Miss Louisa up, do you know?”

“Since some time, madame.”

“Really?” Octavia was surprised. It had never been Louisa's habit to rise early when at Rutherford. Of course, that was when she was still very young, Octavia supposed. Still in the time before Charles de Montfort. Still in the rose-colored heyday of balls and flirtations. A great deal had altered since then.

“I'll go down,” Octavia murmured.

The housemaid Milly was just in the act of closing the French doors to the garden when Octavia entered the dining room. “Good morning, ma'am. Miss Louisa has gone out to the summerhouse. . . .”

“Leave the doors then, Milly. Let the fresh air in. I'll join her. Bring out our tea, would you?”

“Yes m'm. I'll bring fresh. That one has been made a while.” The girl left the room, china teapot in hand.

Octavia glanced at the table. The morning mail had been delivered. She sorted through it, and gave a gasp. Harry's handwriting. She tore it open at once.

My dearest Mother,

I am instructed by an extraordinarily irritating fellow called John Gould here to inform you that we are on our way to port. He has a painful habit of smiling twenty-four hours a day. How on earth do you stomach it?

We are stopped en route in a place that I am not permitted to mention; and we have, of course, been in a place that I am again not permitted to mention. Except to say that it was rather hot there and—shall we say—sky-high. This letter shall be handed in at the next station. I hope it finds you.

I have instructions to come to England to repair this leg once more. Don't concern yourself that it is serious as I certainly find it more of a nuisance than anything else. But more so than the blasted leg I am concerned over Caitlin, Mother. I have had no news from yourself or Charlotte; I wonder if you have found anything out? It seems very strange that she should go to ground unless she were very ill. I feel sure she would not do you the disservice of ignoring you should you contact her. Would you have any news for me? I will probably be back before the week is out.

Mr. Gould has been a decent companion. He instructs me to send the regards that he was not able to make in person to you on
account of my commandeering the only piece of writing paper on the Western front.

Would you please inform Father of my intended return?

Harry

She smiled, and walked out into the garden, holding the letter in her hand. She couldn't wait for Harry to be home. Part of her felt a childish selfishness and greed to get her boy on the next boat; there was a little voice in her mind,
don't keep him from me
. But he wasn't her possession. He was a man in the service of her country. Nevertheless in her deepest heart she didn't believe it. He was still her son, her child. He belonged with her. She thought of his small hands resisting hers when he was a little boy, and there was something of that feeling in this apprehension now. Fighting to protect him, when nothing she could do would alter his will. She knew that her worry for him was threatening to overcome her, and she wondered at it. Wondered why now, just as he was coming back, that she should feel this so strongly. This shattering frustration.

They'll both be back this week,
she told herself firmly.
You'll have them here in England, both of them, Harry and John
.
Just a few days. Be thankful. Don't be ridiculous. Don't be weak.
She closed her eyes, and there in the warmth of the sun she pressed the letter to her mouth. “Please Lord,” she murmured.

When she opened her eyes again, she saw that Louisa was sitting at the far end of the garden in the summerhouse; she was in profile and staring rather vacantly into space. Octavia walked down to her.

“Hello, darling.”

Her daughter gave a jolt, as if she had not heard her coming. “Oh, hello, Mother.”

“A wonderful day.”

“Yes.” Louisa shuffled a little on the bench seat, tucking her skirt underneath her. “There's room for two.”

“Thank you.” Octavia sat down. She held up the letter. “Look. From Harry. He's coming home.”

Louisa took it. She read it carefully—very slowly, in fact. At last, she put it down, and smiled. “What a relief.”