The Hardie Inheritance (22 page)

‘There's not so very much to do, is there? Philip always said that the pruning was the most important thing. I could do that, if you showed me how. A few weeds between the rows wouldn't matter too much.'

‘Oh, the grapes could be grown, yes. But the picking needs many hands, and even that is only the beginning. The making of the wine needs skill and full attention. This year already, with Philip ill, it was too much for me. And each year from now on there will be more grapes, more work; and I shall not be here.'

‘I could get some of the girls from school to help pick and tread.' Trish was thinking aloud. ‘They'd think it was fun.'

‘There's much more than that to be done. Go to the coach house now and listen to the fermentation. Every day I – or someone else – must top up the levels and – oh, there's too much to say. No one in England knows how to make wine. And no one cares. They think it's impossible. It can only be
done by someone who has Philip's enthusiasm and skill. You'd waste your time, Trish, just trying.'

Trish had been brought up to believe that nothing was impossible. Any kind of achievement, she had been taught, was the result of determination, willpower, commitment – the adults in her life used different words but all said the same thing. Any kind of failure, in whatever sphere it might show itself, had its roots in the mind. It was hard for her to accept that there were some physical obstacles which could never be surmounted.

Nevertheless, common sense told her that Jean-Paul was right. And in her own life she did not expect anything to last for ever. She painted pictures and threw them away. She made clay models and squashed them flat again. When she first came to Greystones and was offered a piece of land to be her own private garden, she had tended it for one season and then watched without caring as it reverted to jungle when she began to neglect it. How curious it was that she should feel the need to preserve what Philip had loved.

‘It just seems terrible that everything he's done should die with him. As though he'd never lived.'

‘That's what almost always happens. Except to people who have children, I suppose. Or people like Mrs Faraday, who leave behind things they've made. But most of us – we disappear!'

She handed back the box of matches and wandered away, trying to think her feelings straight. It wouldn't matter to her if she disappeared after her own death. But if other people disappeared, totally disappeared, out of her life while she was still alive, then she was being robbed of something she didn't want to lose.

‘Greystones!' she exclaimed to herself, stopping in her tracks. A house could keep a person alive in memory. Someone who had lived in Greystones for forty years had become part of it. There were places – rooms and corners and chairs – which would always be Philip's, as long as other members of the family still lived there and were able to remember him.

Rupert felt like that about Castlemere, she recalled. That was why it hurt him so much to think of a crowd of schoolgirls running riot there. It was not just a house to him: it was his family's history. Trish had not exactly understood his feelings before, but now the sense of attachment to a place struck her with an almost physical pain. Already she had spent more than half her life at Greystones. She had become part of it, as Philip was part of it.

So the vineyard was not important. It would be sad if all that work had to be wasted, but wastage was no doubt a necessary consequence of war. The important thing was that Greystones must survive.

Very often during the first five months of 1940 Trish wished that she had not abandoned her request to be a boarder. Life at day school was busy and pleasant enough, but she returned each afternoon to a home which had been drained of its normal light-heartedness.

Jean-Paul had received his call-up papers and disappeared. Whenever Grace was not busy carving she was even more busily working in the vegetable garden. If Trish came to look for her, whether to have a chat or merely report that she was home, she was handed a fork or trowel and set to work weeding or planting out seedlings; it was impossible to have a proper conversation.

As for Mrs Hardie, she seemed to be fading away. All her meals were carried to her room, and she ate little of what she was offered. Most of her time was spent turning the sheets of her portfolios of paintings, staring in silence at the faces of her children when they were young and at the sketches she had made during her honeymoon journey in China fifty years earlier.

So there was no one for Trish to talk to at home: nothing for her to do except homework and gardening. Nothing to look forward to, either. Easter was spent slogging away and nobody had even mentioned the possibility of a summer holiday. Life was boring, boring. At the age of not-quite-fourteen she had yet to learn that in the middle of a war boredom was greatly to be desired.

She did not bother to keep up with the news, so the sweep of events which culminated in the Dunkirk evacuation seemed
to come out of the blue. Then the radio was rarely switched off. It became the focal point of the household, which abruptly ceased to be a collection of individuals who had forgotten how to communicate.

Once she understood what was happening, Trish was as much affected as her elders by the drama and anxiety. Jean-Paul might not yet be in France, but Rupert would certainly be involved. At this moment he might be standing in the sea to organize the lines of men who waited for rescue while German planes dropped bombs and raked the beach with machine gun fire. Terry Travis might be there as well, although Trish did not know enough about him to be able to envisage him as a soldier. Her father, as an accredited photographer, might even be recording the scene on film and in as much danger as the fighting men. Trish put out her hand to Grace and felt it gripped tightly.

‘It'll be all right,' she was told. ‘We'll soon hear something.'

This optimism was not immediately justified. For three days they heard nothing at all. Then, on the first Saturday in June, Rupert arrived at Greystones.

He was almost unrecognizable as the handsome, teasing young man who had waved goodbye to Trish at the end of her visit to Castlemere nine months earlier. His exhausted eyes seemed to have sunk into the black hollows of tiredness which surrounded them. As he waited for someone to answer the bell, he leaned his head against the doorpost, almost asleep on his feet. The taxi driver, obviously concerned about his passenger, lingered to make sure that there was someone at home.

Trish, returning from her afternoon walk with Mrs Hardie, was the first to see him and ran anxiously forward.

‘Rupert! Rupert, are you all right?'

With what seemed an enormous effort he managed to smile.

‘A bit tired. Greeted into England with a cup of tea and a travel warrant for immediate leave. The army trying to save on soap. Can't face Castlemere and Mother's in Scotland.
Wondered if you'd let me doss down here for the night.'

‘Wait while I fetch Grace to help you.' Trish could see that he was on the point of collapse. Together they supported him, staggering, to the nearest bedroom. Mrs Hardie, meanwhile, drawing strength from the need to help, looked for the housekeeper. A returning hero ought not to be restricted to the five inches of bath water allowed to civilians, so the range must be stoked up.

Too exhausted to be aware of the luxury on offer, Rupert slept for fourteen hours. When at last he appeared for a meal, clean and shaved and wearing a set of Philip's clothes, he still seemed to be a stranger, wanting to talk and yet apparently unable to formulate the words; ravenously hungry and yet finding it painful to swallow.

Mrs Hardie – a stranger herself at the breakfast table – came to the rescue, as though remembering how once she had needed to coax her shell-shocked son back into life. Speaking gently, she patted and stroked her young cousin until without warning the floodgates opened and he began to describe the experiences of the past few days.

To the women, listening on the radio, the evacuation had been presented as a miracle, almost as a victory. Rupert painted a very different picture – one of horror and disgrace. Trish listened wide-eyed, and it was her obvious alarm which in the end brought the account to an abrupt end.

‘Enough of that,' he said. ‘That battle's over and lost. The next one will be in England. May I use your telephone, Cousin Lucy? I must speak to my parents. I sent them a telegram to say that I was safe and well, but they don't know where I am.'

‘Of course, dear.'

He was away for some time, returning to report a lack of success. ‘My mother's been up in Scotland with her sister for the past two months but left there yesterday. No one seems to know exactly where she is, but I've scattered messages around. I'm hoping she'll get one of them and phone me here. Would it be very rude if I went back to sleep while I'm waiting?'

‘Much the best thing,' Mrs Hardie assured him.

He did not, however, return to the bedroom, but carried garden mattresses out into the shade of the oak tree – for the heatwave was continuing unbroken. At first he read, but after less than an hour the book fell from his hand. Trish settled down with a book of her own nearby, to be near when he awoke.

When Mrs Barrett came hurrying from the house to announce that there was a telephone call for Lord Rupert, Trish went quietly across to awaken him, picking up one hand and squeezing it gently.

His eyes opened and he smiled in his old way, as if the past few days had been banished from his mind.

‘Beautiful Patricia. This is what we all dreamed of during the retreat – or would have dreamed if ever we'd been allowed to sleep. A beautiful girl to hold our hands and stroke our fevered brows.'

It was good to hear him teasing again and she was sorry to spoil the moment with news of the telephone call. Although he was still stiff as he rose to his feet, there was a spring in his movements to suggest that he had thrown off the nightmare of the past days. But when he returned to the garden twenty minutes later, his step was heavy with shock. Both Grace and Trish came hurrying to find out what the matter was.

‘My father's dead,' he told them. He sat down on the mattress with his knees wide apart, burying his head in his hands. ‘Apparently he tried to get to Dunkirk.'

‘How?' Grace was astonished.

‘He had a boat. Used to keep it in the Mediterranean. Sailed it back to England last summer, when he saw how things were going. Apparently, as soon as he read about the evacuation he sent for Murray, his old chauffeur, to act as mechanic and dashed off to get her – the
Beverley Belle
– shipshape again. Had a heart attack hauling her down to the water.'

‘Oh Rupert, I'm so sorry.'

‘Bad time for Mother. Hearing about him and not knowing about me.'

‘Where's your brother?' asked Trish. She knew that he was a professional soldier and as likely as Rupert to have been in danger.

‘He's just been posted abroad. We don't know exactly where he's going, of course, but since they've seconded him to the Indian Army it's probably Bombay or Singapore. At this moment he'll be somewhere in the Atlantic, surrounded by U-boats. I must go to my mother. I can't tell you how grateful I am to you all for taking me in. Tell Cousin Lucy that for me, will you, Grace? I don't want to disturb her rest. We'll meet again in happier times, Patricia.'

For once she did not make the usual protest that her name was Trish. Right from their first meeting he had refused to use the abbreviation because it was childish. Calling her by her real name had always been one of his teases – but there was something different in his voice today: a new kind of seriousness. Was he beginning to recognize that she was growing into the grown-up name?

No, she told herself, there was no chance of that yet. Although she was overwhelmed by the wish that he would kiss her, he would have no idea how much she loved him. He still thought of her only as a child. She nodded, faint with emotion but just managing to keep it under control.

‘To happier times!' he repeated, rubbing his fingers affectionately against her cheek before hurrying into the house to collect his kit and phone for a taxi. Within half an hour he had gone.

Dunkirk might have killed the Marquess of Ross and exhausted Rupert, but Ellis emerged very much alive. In the chaos of the evacuation he had lost his own camera but had managed to attach himself to a film unit which had suffered casualties, and in a time of crisis quickly mastered the art of taking moving pictures. He telephoned from Dover to say that he was safe; then spent two days there filming the returning soldiers. By the time he arrived at Greystones he had had a bath and had caught up on his sleep.

Trish changed rapidly from a young woman hopelessly in love with a handsome hero to a schoolgirl delighted and relieved to see her father again. For the first time she noticed how differently he greeted Grace and herself when he arrived. For Trish he had a vigorous, cuddly hug, but for his wife only a smile. It was a warm smile, a loving smile, but it was odd, all the same, that they did not kiss. She stored the small question up in her mind to be considered later.

‘You won't be going back to France, will you?' she asked her father when the first flurry of news had been exchanged.

‘No, I don't think that would be a very good idea. Any Englishmen who get caught in France after it surrenders will be interned as enemy aliens. So, until the paper decides where it wants me to go next – or allows me to switch to being a newsreel cameraman – I hope you and Grace will put up with me here.'

He looked at Grace almost, thought Trish, as though he were asking her permission.

‘Of course,' she said, laughing. ‘It's about time you visited
your own home for more than a few days at a time. But Ellis –' her expression became more serious again – ‘what you said about enemy aliens. Will that apply to someone like Andy Frith? You know, Jean-Paul's father.'