The Penny Bangle (30 page)

Rose had no money to repair it, so all she could do was watch her childhood home decay.

Frances had been on leave and staying in Charton when Rose first learned the Minster would soon be hers again, and Frances wrote to Cassie to tell her all about it.

So when Cassie next had leave herself, she wrote to Stephen. If he could get some time off too, she said, they ought to go and see Rose.

‘Yes, good plan,’ wrote Stephen. ‘I haven’t seen Mum for months. She wanted me to go back home for Christmas, but I couldn’t get any leave, not even a day.’

They travelled down to Dorset on the train. Stephen didn’t seem to remember getting drunk and trying to kiss Cassie. Or perhaps he did, for he was on his best behaviour. He carried Cassie’s kitbag, found her a window seat and paid for lunch, treating her like the sister-in-law that she still hoped to be.

‘Tinker!’ Cassie cried, as they approached the bailiff’s cottage, and the chocolate Labrador came hurtling out to greet them, barking and wagging his tail in ecstasy.

Rose came running after him, hugged Cassie and Stephen one after the other, and then she told her dog to just calm down, stop making such an exhibition of himself.

‘Steve, look at the size of him!’ cried Cassie, as she made a fuss of the dog, who licked her face and hands delightedly. ‘Rose, what on earth have you been feeding him?’

‘We go out hunting,’ Rose replied. ‘I shoot the rabbits, he retrieves them, and of course I share the kill with him.’

‘I didn’t know you could shoot, Rose?’

‘I’m a country girl, my dear,’ said Rose. ‘So I learned to shoot when I was young. It’s what people did. Back in 1939, Alex got me polishing up my skills again, in case the Germans came.’

‘As long as you’re not trapping, Mum,’ said Stephen.

‘Steve, as if I would,’ said Rose. ‘I remember when you and your brother used to rescue animals caught in Michael Easton’s traps. I’d never trap or snare. It’s far too cruel. Well, you two, don’t stand there looking vacant – come inside.’ She took her visitors into the comfortably cluttered cottage, which smelled invitingly of rabbit pie.

After Stephen and Cassie had eaten supper and washed up, they thought they’d go and look at Rose’s house. They could see its lichened roof and chimneys, and some of the leaded windows in its upper storeys, from the lane that led from Charton village to the bailiff’s cottage. So now the house belonged to Rose, they both thought they’d like a closer look.

Rose had been emphatic she didn’t want to stir up any old hostilities, reminding them the road to Charton Minster was on Easton land. So Stephen told his mother they were going to the pub.

Cassie and he walked down the lane, and then sneaked off across the moonlit fields. Disregarding all the Keep Out, Private Property notices which were nailed up everywhere, they jumped over the stiles, crossed fields, and climbed high boundary walls.

‘When Rob and I were kids, we were always trespassing on the old bugger’s land,’ Stephen said to Cassie as he helped her fight her way through undergrowth, which might once have been a formal garden but which now was merely tangled laurels, brambles, bracken and straggling, dying weeds. ‘As Mum was saying, we used to rescue animals caught in Easton’s traps. We had a hospital for them in our old stables back at Melbury House.’

At the recollection, Stephen grinned, and suddenly he looked so young and childlike that Cassie could see the children he and Robert must have been – two grubby, black-haired urchins on undercover missions, taking wounded fox cubs and badgers out of traps, then smuggling them back to Melbury.

Finally they made it and stood in front of the old mansion, staring at its dull-eyed, leaded windows from the weed-strewn gravel drive.

‘What a dump,’ said Stephen.

‘I think it’s romantic.’ Cassie gazed and gazed. ‘It’s beautiful. It’s like the enchanter’s castle in a fairy tale.’

‘It’s a crumbling ruin.’ Stephen walked up to the entrance porch, once grand but now decrepit. ‘Look at this wood here, Cass,’ he said, breaking off a piece of rotting timber streaked with green and orange mould. ‘It all needs replacing. The whole building must be riddled with dry rot.’

Stephen tossed the piece of wood away. ‘It would cost thousands to repair it. More than the house is worth, I shouldn’t wonder. Mum should go and talk to Lady Easton. They could either have a giant bonfire, or they could knock it down and sell the stone for building. Then Mum could flog the land back to the Eastons, if they’ll buy it. She doesn’t need more stuff to worry about, and all this place would be is one big worry.’

‘How do you think she’s feeling these days, Steve?’ Cassie could see his point about the worry of this rambling great house, but thought it was a pity it might have to be knocked down. ‘She must be lost without your father?’

‘Yes, she must.’ Stephen looked at Cassie. ‘Mum was brought up to be stoical, and not to make a fuss. But I can see she’s grieving. She still misses him. She always will. Now Robert’s missing too, of course, it’s hard for all of us.’

‘You keep telling me you think he’s dead. I hope you haven’t shared that with your mother?’

‘Of course I haven’t, Cass.’ Stephen looked apologetic now. ‘I’m sorry, Cassie. I should keep my gloomy thoughts and worries to myself. Come on, let’s get back.’

‘It’s the only thing to do.’ Rose had not been pleased to hear they’d been to look at the old house. When they told her it was in a terrible condition, she’d merely shrugged and sighed.

‘I’ll need to go and see Lady Easton,’ she continued. ‘I’ll have to get permission to move the demolition people in.’

‘But do you have to knock it down?’ asked Cassie.

‘I think so,’ Rose replied. ‘I can’t afford to have the place repaired.’

‘But it’s so lovely,’ Cassie said reproachfully.

‘I know, my dear, I know.’ Rose shook her head. ‘Cassie, I was born there, I grew up there. I remember what the house was like when people cared about it.’

‘How did you come to lose it?’

‘My parents and the Eastons were close friends. The Eastons’ eldest son – the one who eventually became Sir Michael – we were friends, as well. In fact, we almost got engaged.’

‘But then you married Mr Denham.’

‘Yes, and then my father decided to believe I’d broken Michael’s heart, and made
him
a laughing-stock, as well. He was so angry that he left the whole estate, the house and land and everything, to Michael.’

‘Blimey, what a mean old sod!’ cried Cassie. Then, ‘I’m sorry, Rose,’ she added, reddening. ‘That’s no way to talk about your father.’

‘I’ve often wished I hadn’t been quite so headstrong.’ Rose smiled ruefully. ‘When I was young, and everything seemed so black and white, I saw my choice as being between the man I loved, and piles of bricks and mortar. If only I’d been kinder to my father, a bit more diplomatic – ’

‘Oh, Mum, don’t cry.’ Stephen put his arm around her shoulders. ‘It’s only an old house.’

‘But it was
my
old house. It should be yours. This has been done to mock me. The intention was to give me back my home, then force me to watch it all fall down.’

‘There must be some way round it, though,’ said Cassie, frowning. ‘Why don’t we ask Daisy? She might think of something.’

‘Yes, she might.’ Rose wiped her hand across her eyes. ‘She’s most resourceful, is our Daisy. Steve, there’s some fresh shortbread in the pantry, and shall we have another cup of cocoa, made with milk? The coffee’s not worth drinking nowadays.’

Robert and Sofia sat in a mountain hut, drinking acorn coffee from tin cups and eating stale, dry bread which they softened slightly by dunking it into the acrid coffee.

‘I still dream of my morning
cappuccino
,’ sighed Sofia. ‘I dream of fresh, white bread.’

‘I dream of eggs and bacon and my mother’s home-made sausages.’ Robert glanced at his companion, and he sighed as well. ‘Sofia, please stop talking about food!’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Sofia.

‘I hate to see you cold and hungry,’ added Robert. ‘Why don’t you go home, while there’s still time?’

‘No, I’ve told you half a dozen times, I want to join the partisans!’ exclaimed Sofia fiercely. ‘So I shall stay with you.’

While he’d been in the pigeon loft, Robert had let his beard grow strong and black, leaving it untrimmed, so now it covered half his face. Although he hadn’t had any daylight exercise for months, and so he didn’t have a tan, he was naturally olive-skinned, and now he could have passed for an Italian, born and bred.

Like most Italians these days, he was very thin. Sofia had found him clothes so old and tattered that most people would have thought he was a beggar, or a jobbing labourer – the kind of half-wit wanderer who goes from farm to farm, picking up any casual work and sleeping rough in barns.

‘You must slouch and shuffle when you walk,’ she’d told him, when they’d first set off. ‘You must try to look confused and stupid, not arrogant and confident, not like a British army officer. If you have to talk to anybody, you must mumble, and stammering would be good.’

But, even though he was learning the language, and understood much more than he could say, Robert knew he’d never, ever sound like an Italian, however much he mumbled. So he was in almost constant danger of giving himself away.

Or of betrayal.

The German planes flying over Northern Italy dropped bombs, incendiaries, and also leaflets in English and Italian. Those in English told Allied POWs who had escaped after the armistice, and were still on the run, to give themselves up now, then spend the winter in a comfortable prison camp, rather than try to rough it in the mountains. Those in Italian warned that anyone found helping or sheltering Allied POWs would be shot. They also offered cash rewards to anyone giving information leading to arrests.

‘There’ll be plenty of people who would happily take the money,’ said Sofia. ‘So don’t trust anybody, keep your mouth shut unless you have to speak, and let’s hope we don’t meet any Fascist bounty-hunters on the road.’

On their journey north into the mountains, hidden under sacks and baskets in the back of an old Fiat truck belonging to a farmer who was a tenant of Sofia’s father, and who had dumped them when the road gave out, they’d made some plans.

If they were stopped by any Germans or Fascist militiamen, Sofia would say Robert was her deaf-mute idiot cousin, who had spent the summer and autumn working on her family’s farm, and whom she was taking home to his parents in their village up here in the mountains.

Sofia’s own papers were in perfect order. The doctor who had treated Robert had forged an identity card for him, so he was Roberto Russo now.

Robert hoped he wouldn’t need the card. The doctor had done his best, of course, and Sofia had roughed it up a bit. But, even so, it didn’t look convincing.

They had a week or more of wandering, of asking suspicious, anxious peasants who obviously didn’t want to talk, of being sent off along steep mountain paths in wrong directions, before they found the partisans – or, as it turned out, before the partisans found them.

Robert had long assumed that unseen eyes were watching them, weighing them up. ‘But we must wait for them to come to us,’ Sofia told him. ‘The people we’ve met, the farmers who have given us food and let us shelter in their huts and barns, they’ll have passed the message on, that we want to join the partisans.’

Sofia was proved right. One day in early January, on a clear, sharp morning after a freezing night, they were going to fetch some water when they met a trio of men with rifles, blocking their path and smoking.

‘We’ve been watching you,’ said one.

‘We know,’ Sofia said.

‘Why are you here?’

‘We wish to join a
banda
.’

‘Who’s your gormless friend?’

‘A British army officer.’ Sofia crossed her fingers – these people might easily be the Fascist militia, after all.

‘Yes, he looks like a British army officer – I don’t think!’ The man who’d spoken grinned. ‘Give your bags to him.’ He pointed to one of the other men. ‘Then put your hands up on your heads, and follow me.’

So, with one man leading them, another herding them and one man carrying their bags, Sofia and Robert stumbled along the track, and then through the wild countryside, hoping they hadn’t made a huge mistake.