The Hardie Inheritance (23 page)

‘Depends what his status is. Maybe he's a naturalized Frenchman by now. I must say, if I were in his shoes I wouldn't hang about. But when you've got a wife and children and land, I don't suppose the choice is easy.'

They did not have to wait long before discovering what he had chosen. Only two days later a weary figure trudged up the long drive. It was Andy, asking whether he could stay in the lodge. His tiredness was of a different kind from Rupert's, caused not so much by lack of sleep as by hopelessness. He looked like a defeated man staring into an empty future.

‘I'd thought to find Jean-Paul here,' he told Grace and Trish.

‘Didn't you know he'd been called up?'

‘Only that he was waiting for his papers. Letters haven't been getting through these past weeks.'

‘Your farm's in occupied territory, I suppose,' said Grace.

‘It's not a farm any more. Part of a battlefield. I watched the tanks roll over the land and I thought, “This is where I came in.” And my wife –' He had to wait for a moment before he could speak. ‘She was in the barn when it was shelled. The roof came down on her. Broke her back. She lived for ten days, but she'd never have been able to walk again. It was a good thing, really, that –'

Grace stretched out a sympathetic hand but then, to Trish's surprise, withdrew it without touching him and instead began asking questions about the rest of his family. Only after a few moments did a sudden thought seem to occur to her. She put her arm round Trish's shoulders.

‘You haven't been up to the house since my marriage, have you? I suppose you've never met my stepdaughter, Trish Faraday. I should have introduced you properly.'

‘Hello, Trish.' He shook hands with a formality which made her giggle. ‘I've heard a lot about you from Jean-Paul.'

‘You'll come back later for supper with us, I hope,' said Grace after she had fetched the keys of the lodge.

Andy shook his head. ‘I've no appetite, thank you very much. Somewhere to rest, that's all I need for the moment.'

‘But there'll be nothing to eat in the cottage at all.'

‘I'll bring something down to you,' Trish offered. ‘Just so that you have something handy when you start to feel hungry.'

Half an hour later she walked carefully down the hill carrying in one hand a jug of milk and in the other a basket containing not only bread and potatoes and rhubarb, but butter, honey, cheese and eggs. The occupants of Greystones had learned to be self-sufficient long before the war.

Looking through the window as she approached she could see Andy sitting at the kitchen table in an attitude of lonely despair. Grace had told her, when she asked, that he was not yet fifty, but he looked older. She kicked at the door with her foot, to save having to put her load down on the ground, and the pressure was enough to open it.

‘Here you are.' She set the basket down on the table. ‘And Grace said to remind you about the blackout tonight. The ground floor has got blackout curtains, but Jean-Paul used to go to bed in the dark, to save bother. And you're to come and ask if there are things you find you need.'

‘You're very kind, all of you.' She could see that he was trying to smile, but failing.

‘It must be horrid, having to leave your home.' She sat down to face him across the table, well aware that he did not want to chat, but feeling that it would do him good. Her comment, though, went too directly to the heart of his distress, and for some time he was not able to answer.

‘You'll be able to go back when the war is over,' she added in an attempt at consolation.

‘Shall I want to go back? When you see twenty-five years' work spoiled in a week, you think that only a fool would make the same mistake twice, stake his happiness on something so quickly spoiled.' He looked up at her, trying to explain. ‘You
know that people are going to die. Your wife or yourself, one of you's got to face bereavement one day. Doesn't make it any easier when it happens, of course, but it's, well, in the natural order of things. But land: you think that land will last for ever. For your own lifetime, anyway.'

He sighed.

‘You don't make any other plans, that's the trouble. Just what's going to happen on the land next season. That seems enough. So when you haven't got the land any more, you haven't got anything. But no, I shan't go back. Even if it becomes possible, it will be for the boys to start all over again. So I don't know what I'm going to do with myself. Don't know at all. I never really liked France. My roots are here. But –'

He sat with his head bowed as though on the verge of tears. Trish stared at him with an intentness of which he was unaware.

‘Did Jean-Paul tell you that Philip had died?' she asked at last.

‘Yes. That was the last letter I got. Oh, I should have told Grace how sorry I was while I was up at the house.'

Trish drew in a breath to speak but then let it out again, wondering whether she would do better to wait. Patience was not one of her virtues, though. She put her elbows on the table and leaned earnestly forward.

‘It was something I wanted to do, after he died. To keep the vineyard going as a kind of memorial to Philip. You know about the vineyard, don't you?'

‘It was my idea. I sent the original vines.'

‘Of course! Well, I asked Jean-Paul if we could keep it going, and he said not without him. But I got him to show me how to do the pruning before he went. The thing is, though, I didn't realize how much time it would take just tying the vines as they grow. And Grace expects me to spend hours in the vegetable garden. It's too much, really, just like Jean-Paul said it would be. If you're going to stay here, Mr Frith –'

‘Oh, call me Andy,' he said. He tilted his head as he looked at her. ‘Well, go on.'

‘I was thinking of what you said about having a feeling for land, and wondering whether you needed to own it for that. Because you must know the Greystones land just as well as what you had in France.'

‘Better,' he said. ‘When you're a boy, you cover your territory in a different way. Get to know every twig and puddle. That's what I meant about my roots.'

‘It's not my business, really,' said Trish. ‘It's for Grace to say. But we need someone like you here. Everyone keeps telling us all that we should grow as much of our own food as we can, and at Greystones we do it more than most people, but it's terribly hard work now that Philip's dead and Jean-Paul has gone. And Grace really wants to spend more time on her carving and I ought to be doing homework though I don't specially want to, and so you see we do need you terribly badly.'

‘But Grace might not want –' He checked himself and stared at Trish for a long time. His face gave no indication of what he was thinking.

‘Let's go and have a look at these vines,' he said suddenly. ‘See what sort of a mess you've been making of them. Just let me cover the milk, though.'

He set the jug down in a bowl of cold water to keep it cool, and covered it with the beaded muslin that his mother must once have used as a protection against flies. With the simple domestic action he seemed to shrug off a little of his depression, and he strode across the sheep meadow towards the vineyard with no trace in his movements of the heaviness which had earlier weighed him down.

‘Well, most of this looks healthy enough,' he said approvingly, testing the firmness of the nearest stakes and wires. ‘The Riesling Sylvaner's doing very well. But I see what you mean about the tying. Getting out of hand, isn't it?'

Trish nodded. Content now to leave him to make up his own mind, she stood still as he walked up and down the rows,
patting away the tendrils which seemed to stretch out to touch him as he passed. By the time he returned to stand beside her again he had made up his mind.

‘As you say, it's for your stepmother to decide. Or your father, perhaps, if he's the master here now.'

‘Oh no!' Even as she laughed at the idea, Trish had time to notice the oddity of her surprise. It might have been considered normal for a man who married the owner of a property to consider himself its proprietor. But nothing in his behaviour had ever suggested that to be the case. ‘No, my father's terribly fond of the house. It was built by my grandfather, you see. But gardening isn't his line, any more than it's mine. Greystones is still the Hardies' place.'

‘Well then,' said Andy, ‘why don't you tell your stepmother that you had this idea about putting me to work here and you realized that it shouldn't have come from you and so you didn't exactly ask me the question: but you got the impression that I'd be glad to help out if I was wanted. Well, more than that – that I need a roof over my head and I'm looking for a chance to earn it. Then it'll be up to her to raise the subject if she wants to, and if she doesn't there'll be no hard feelings.'

‘I'll do it now!' exclaimed Trish, and began to run up the hill, pausing only to call over her shoulder, ‘Don't forget the blackout!'

Ellis had returned from a day in London by the time she reached the house, so she was able to pant out her idea to both of them at once.

‘What do you think?' Grace asked Ellis with a note of doubt in her voice which was surprising in someone who normally made all the decisions regarding the property without hesitation.

‘How you feel about it is up to you,' Ellis replied. ‘But speaking in a practical sort of way, I'd have thought it solved all your problems. And his. From what you've told me, his father was always more than a mere gardener, and the boy may well have inherited his loyalty to the land.'

‘Not exactly a boy!' exclaimed Trish: but she understood what he meant.

‘My only doubts would be about the vines,' Ellis suggested. ‘To give him a free hand on the fruit and vegetables and general maintenance would be absolutely fine, I should have thought, but is it really worth struggling on with the vineyard?'

‘I think that might be the attraction for him,' suggested Trish. ‘I mean, that he'd do the donkey work for the sake of looking after the vines.'

‘Could be. Well, we'd better let Grace sleep on it.'

It seemed an unnecessarily cautious answer to Trish, who could see no possible objection to her inspired plan. Why were grown-ups always so stuffy and slow to recognize good ideas? But by the next morning, although no one said anything directly to her, she could tell that a decision had been made. There was a change in the atmosphere, a lightening of the sky. She found herself excited by the atmosphere of coming and going and planning for the future. Greystones had come to life again.

‘I'm in Oxford.' Sheila's voice over the telephone sounded breathless, almost secretive. ‘David will be at the shop all day, but he doesn't need me hanging around so I wondered if little Max and I could come up for an hour or two?'

‘Yes, of course.' Grace did her best to inject a note of welcome into her voice, although without any great success. There were very few people whose company, in her opinion, justified the loss of her working hours, and her sister-in-law was not one of them.

The two women had nothing in common. Sheila's only topics of conversation were her children and the affairs of the church which was not just a place of worship but also the centre of her social life. Her conventional mind made no pretence of understanding Grace's way of life and for a long time she had kept away in disapproval. But perhaps the advent of a husband and stepdaughter had made Grace more respectable in her eyes, for since then she had invited herself to Greystones several times.

Although she sought the invitation from Grace, it was Mrs Hardie with whom she and Max usually spent their visits. No doubt she would do so again today. And Trish must be somewhere around and could help to amuse them. With any luck half an hour's chat over a cup of tea would be enough to discharge the duties of a hostess.

The two visitors who were shown into the drawing room an hour later provided a startling contrast in appearance. Sheila, always a sturdily-built woman, had become stout since the birth of her fourth child. Max on the other hand was small for
his age, and everything about his body was compact and neat. He was always on the move but – unlike Boxer and Dan, who during their stay at Greystones had tended to barge around noisily and clumsily – his movements were under control and even graceful. Everything about him – the back of his head, his chin, his ears, even his eyebrows – seemed to be more pointed than was usual. Grace saw him as an elf, who should be dancing on his toes round a giant mushroom instead of sitting politely in a drawing room.

‘Could Trish take little Max out to look at the statues?' asked Sheila, almost before the first politenesses had been exchanged. ‘The fresh air –' Her voice trailed away, but not before she had made it clear that she had something to say without her son listening.

Trish, who hated to be excluded from grown-up conversations, looked sulky for a moment but did as she was asked.

‘It's about Max that I want to talk to you,' Sheila said, looking from Grace to Mrs Hardie after the door had closed. ‘Everyone thinks that there'll be an invasion now. And that there's bound to be bombing before that – to knock London out, so to speak.'

Grace did not disagree, but as her mind leapt ahead to the possible point of this remark she had to fight to prevent her dismay from revealing itself in her expression. From David's point of view it might seem reasonable that he should control the affairs of The House of Hardie from Oxford rather than London, but if he thought he could come with his family to live at Greystones he would have to think again. ‘Harrow hardly counts as London, does it?' was all she said.

‘It's got railway lines. The main line to Scotland is only a quarter of a mile away from us. It could be a target. And bombs don't always fall exactly where they're intended to. David doesn't plan to move, and of course I must stay with him. John's in the air force and Lily's going to do her first year at college before she decides what sort of war work to do, and
Peter's away at school all term. But little Max – I don't know what to do for the best. He's too young just to be packed off with a crowd of other evacuees. I'd never have a moment's peace, thinking of him crying in bed, missing his home. And yet if he stays and the bombing starts and he's frightened or hurt …'