Summer's End (4 page)

Reggie broke into her thoughts. ‘I suppose you'll get married some day anyway.'

‘Why do you suppose that?' Her step quickened; the criss-cross of beaten paths was taking them across exposed heathland, the bedraggled dead bracken still covering most of the ground, with only a few green shoots struggling through here and there. Ferns were the oldest greenery, Father said, prehistoric, pagan, and here in the middle of the forest-land it was easy to believe it. All around them must be hidden some of the thousands of animals that dwelt here, retiring, waiting for the friendliness of night before they emerged. Unknown shapes in the dark. Like the future. Like marriage.

‘Women have to.'

‘Suppose no one asks me?'

‘Oh, come. What about that curate, Oliver, who stomped off to drown his sorrows in Manchester? Or Philip Ryde? He's always making sheep's eyes at you. Don't say you hadn't noticed.'

She had, but was carefully ignoring it. She liked the schoolmaster, but that was all. Marry him? She simply couldn't imagine kissing him. ‘I have no intention of marrying Philip Ryde. If it's any of your business,' she added brightly, glad that the path was taking them back into the comforting shady woods full of the familiarity of the known.

‘It is,' he said seriously. ‘In my position as future lord of the manor, I feel I have to keep an eye on you village girls. It's my
droit de seigneur
.' He yelped with laughter as she attacked him with a dead branch, to the great astonishment of a young couple walking decorously by who quickly averted their eyes.

‘That's a fine example to Agnes,' Caroline said ruefully. Agnes was so restrained, she was never quite sure what she was thinking, though her sweetheart always had a twinkle in his eye.

‘Your parlourmaid, wasn't it? And young Jamie Thorn?'

‘It was. Future lord of the manor brained by branch wielded by Rector's daughter, the
Courier
will say. Maybe even the
Church Times
.'

‘I won't tell Joe Ifield,' he reassured her. ‘No charge will be made to the police.'

‘Joe Ifield doesn't know what a charge is. He thinks it's made by a goat. In this case he's right.'

Crashing over the dead bracken to catch her as she tried to escape, Reggie pinioned her arms from behind. ‘Apologise.'

‘No,' she said suddenly.

Reggie watched her, knowing she was upset, not knowing quite why. ‘When's the wedding?' he asked casually.

‘The first of August. They wanted it in July, but there's the Rectory fête, Sunday School treat, the flower show
and
my birthday.'

‘Good.' Reggie was pleased. ‘Daniel will still be here before he goes off on his grand tour. Come up to the Manor after church and meet him. You haven't seen him since Christmas, have you? Bring the whole bunch of lilies if you like. Come to dinner.'

‘No. I can't miss supper. The lily bunch will be chewing over events.'

‘You can spit them out at the Hunney Pot afterwards, then. If I know the Mater, she'll be dying to hear, though she'll pretend she isn't.'

If only to gloat, Caroline thought crossly.

Sleep was coming hard that night. Unfinished thoughts whirled round her mind like rose petals on a windy summer's day, falling to earth only to be whisked up once more. Isabel engaged – that meant she would leave the Rectory when she married. What would happen here when she did? They all loved the Rectory as home, but Caroline saw it almost as a member of the family with its own character, one who needed to be consulted on such major events as Isabel's marriage.

She knew the old red-brick house was far from beautiful to most people's eyes, but it was to hers. It was a higgledy-piggledy mixture of styles from the mediaeval to the almost modern, including one wing which was an early Tudor house, serene in its red-brick, mellow glory, and a pretentious tower and porch added last century. The centuries had settled down contentedly together, however, into something that
shouted home. Inside the house was a children's paradise and a maids' nightmare. Odd steps linking different levels provided traps for the forgetful; nooks and crannies beckoned everywhere.

Bedrooms … Who would have Isabel's bedroom now, the coveted one on the corner? Would she still be the same Isabel after she was incarcerated in The Towers like Rapunzel? Would there be a baby? She'd be Aunt Caroline, if so. The Swinford-Brownes would become part of the family, take part in the games, be present at their table … Her thoughts raced on. Why had Felicia been so quiet this evening at the Manor? She was always subdued, but this evening it had been very noticeable. Only she and Felicia had gone to the Manor, for the others could not be prised away. Daniel, Reggie and Eleanor had made up for it, firing questions like a machine-gun at them, but it was nearly always Caroline who answered – even when Lady Hunney was questioner. Her rigidly corseted self-control shimmered within its midnight blue velvet dinner gown, and its high-necked lace fichu displayed the Hunney pearls as a discreet reminder of her qualifications to render what would be overbearing inquisitiveness in others into her proper sphere of concern. Eleanor, bless her, a silent but whole-hearted sympathiser with Caroline's predicament, winked in a most unladylike manner as her mother proclaimed:

‘Such a pity Isabel takes nothing with her to the marriage. I presume that is the case?'

‘Yes, Lady Hunney.' Nothing but her youth, warm heart and good spirits, she had thought angrily, loyally overlooking her sister's defects.

‘A home wedding. At the Rectory, you say?'

‘Naturally.' In fact there was no ‘naturally' about it. The Swinford-Brownes had pushed hard for The Towers, and Isabel had visibly wavered.

‘How delightful. Provisioned by Fortnum, of course. Their usual pies. They are most reasonably priced, I am told.'

‘Provisioned by ourselves, Lady Hunney, as our privilege and pleasure.'

Reggie had given her an approving pat as he and Daniel walked them home afterwards. The sky had been clear and the air still mild. The April evening touched them with the silken hopefulness of spring.

And still she could not sleep. Try as she would, she could not imagine Isabel sharing a bed with Robert. Caroline was fully aware of
what this meant, not through any enlightenment from her mother but through the auspices of Patricia Swinford-Browne, who was by no means as repressed and demure as was generally believed – particularly by her own mother.

Isabel and Robert … Yet curiously enough it was not of them she was thinking as at last sleep came, but of Reggie's new brown boots marching over the fresh green shoots aggressively pushing their way to the light in Five Hundred Acre Wood. How silly.

E
ven the cows seemed to be looking at Caroline reproachfully as she hurried along the footpath through Manor Farm, waving guiltily to Hilda Sharpe, the farmer's wife, who was coming out of the dairy on Silly Lane for her milk round, bowed under the wooden yoke with its two buckets. She always looked the same, man's cap on head, and cracked black boots on feet under the hitched-up serge skirt. The Sharpes did not welcome passers through, not even the Rector's daughters, because generally it meant they were Manor-bound, and the Sharpes did not see eye to eye with their landlords, the Hunneys. But on a God-given day such as this, which shouted summer rather than late April, much should be forgiven, Caroline told herself.

‘I'm glad to hear about Joey,' she called, conscious of seeking favour. The Sharpes' fourteen-year-old son had been rushed to East Grinstead hospital by Dr Marden with suspected scarlet fever, but it had proved a false alarm.

Hilda grunted. ‘Danged doctors.' It might or might not be an overture. Certainly the buckets lurched in grumpy agreement. They had almost lost their round thanks to the brief quarantine, and Arthur Sharpe had had a battle with the predatory Sebastian Plum of Grendel's Farm, on the outskirts of Ashden. It had started as a verbal battle, continued as a fight outside the Norville Arms, and ended in a win for the Sharpes after Father had donned his Solomon's cap at ‘Rector's Hour'.

The tradesmen's entrance to Ashden Manor had two advantages: it was the nearest to the path across the park; and it greatly reduced the chances of meeting Lady Hunney, whose morning territory, even on a day such as this, extended from her upstairs boudoir to the morning room, with a short tour of inspection of dining and just possibly drawing rooms.

For Caroline, there were two Ashden Manors, the one demanded of its social and economic position as the hub of the village, and a secret
Ashden, discovered in her childhood, that a sudden whiff, a jolt of memory, would raise before her like a lost Atlantis.

To enter Ashden as a child and run up its stairs to the day nursery was to enter a land of the story books, where anything might be possible, for the Hunney boys might have turned their domain into Treasure Island or the Scarlet Pimpernel's Revolutionary Paris, or Ruritania. ‘Hunneying' she had called it, as talks of derring-do flashed like sabres through the eternity of youth.

A young Reggie, wastepaper basket on his head, poker in his hand, astride his desk. ‘I'm Kitchener at Omdurman.'

‘And I'm a whirling dervish,' shrieked Caroline, hurling herself into the fray, as Reggie leapt from his horse, whirling his sword menacingly.

When the Hunneys came to the Rectory, their headquarters was the secret room Caroline had discovered years ago when, investigating a cupboard by the chimney-nook in her room, she had come across a narrow staircase. Here, in the stifling atmosphere, plans were laid and expeditions mounted. The consciousness, even as a child, that there were differences between them, other than those of Hunney and Lilley, gave these conferences an extra thrill, but after Reggie went to Winchester a gulf had gradually opened between them. Now it had narrowed again almost to imperceptibility, thanks to the tennis parties, the rides, the picnics and the dinners that permeated their social year, but Hunneying was relegated only to the echoes evoked by an idly tossed down book of travel, a mountaineering stick, or a postcard from Cannes or Rome.

Proud of his heritage, Sir John had taken pleasure in once showing her the plans of the Tudor house that had stood here – if plans they could be called, for this was before the days of architects. The present white-painted house had replaced it in the eighteenth century. The Hunney family had been granted the manor by Queen Elizabeth I, and had remained here in an unbroken line ever since, as in so many other of the country houses of England. They had come to Ashden as usurpers in village eyes, but a century later were accepted as incumbents, and were now more greatly respected than their predecessors. The Norvilles, Sir John had told her, being Catholics and too outspoken in their political preferences, had been dispossessed. Caroline had felt a traitorous sympathy for them, probably because in the Hunneying dramatisation of the Battle of Ashden Manor, she was always forced to play a Norville, albeit, by special concession, a male.

Two centuries later, a Norville returned to Sussex, perhaps attracted by the forest hunting. He had settled on Tillow Hill to the east of the village, and turned the existing property into a monstrous folly castle merely to annoy the Hunneys by dominating the skyline, higher even than the oaks that had given the hill its name. He had then browbeaten the innkeeper into restoring the family name to the Norville Arms, and endowed a Norville pew in St Nicholas in a change of religion as convenient as the Vicar of Bray's.

The last two Norvilles, sisters, now lived as virtual recluses in the ruined castle, with one retainer almost as ancient as they. A girl from the village so clumsy she could find no other work attended daily. Even she had refused to live in and found her way by the stars each night to her parents' cottage. Caroline had never visited Tillow Castle, and nor had anyone of her acquaintance, save for her father and, on one rare occasion, the doctor. Father would never speak of it, though they were all agog with curiosity. Needless to say, no Hunney ever crossed the Castle threshold, and the pews, to her father's annoyance, had been carefully chosen so that no Norville need lay eyes on a Hunney.

It was the Norville collection on which Caroline was engaged in the library this Tuesday morning when the door opened, and the impossible happened: Lady Hunney entered, as always immaculately attired, this morning in a straight purple gown with tunic draperies that added regality to her already imperious slender figure. Caroline sometimes tried to reduce the spectre of Lady Hunney to manageable terms by imagining her in bed at night smothered in cold cream and wearing a chin-strap (to preserve that impossibly angular jaw). Reality, however, usually quickly dispelled such momentary relief.

‘Good morning, Caroline.'

Sugared sweetness on her lips – so she had been well aware of her presence before she came in, Caroline realised, heart sinking, for she knew every nuance of Lady Hunney's voice. She glanced up with a happy smile.

‘I was so much enjoying this volume, but I feared you might miss it,' her ladyship continued.

‘It's very good of you to return it.' Caroline took the book, congratulating herself that for once she was giving the right answer. She laid it on the desk without glancing at it, though she was longing
to see which of the thousands of tomes here had been so fortunate as to attract Lady Hunney's attention.

Lady Hunney did not leave, once this vital mission had been accomplished. ‘Mr and Mrs Swinford-Browne have kindly invited us to dear Isabel's engagement ball. I do hope the arrangements progress well?'

‘Thank you, yes.' Caroline proceeded to answer her question, still puzzled as to why Lady Hunney should have bothered to seek her out. ‘Mrs Swinford-Browne wished to hire the Pump Room, but it was decided the inconvenience of travel would be a disadvantage.' She was beginning to sound like Lady Hunney herself, Caroline thought crossly. As soon as she saw Lady Hunney's smile, she knew she had somehow played into her hands – as usual.

‘Travel,' Lady Hunney murmured. ‘Such a problem for you.'

Caroline was nonplussed. The Towers was little more than half a mile from the Rectory, and even in the dark this did not seem a matter of pressing concern.

‘How fortunate your aunt is staying with you. She has a motor-car, has she not?' Lady Hunney continued.

‘Yes, but –'

‘Normally Reggie would have been only too delighted to have driven you himself.' There was deep regret in her voice. ‘However, he will be escorting his friend Miss Banning, and his new motor vehicle, as you know, ridiculously allows only one passenger.' Caroline was more taken aback at Lady Hunney's desire to impart this information than at its content. ‘A delightful person. The daughter of the Viscount Banning, of course.'

Let there be light, and light there was. The Viscount Banning had unexpectedly become heir to a dukedom, so no wonder his daughter had won such high approval from her ladyship. Caroline felt tempted to advise Lady Hunney that any assistance she could render her son in ridding Penelope of her chaperone might reap greater long-term rewards for her than continually expending effort in trying to nobble a non-runner in the Matrimonial Stakes for Reginald Hunney. And non-runner Caroline most certainly was. She elected to refrain from pointing this out in case such levity won her a permanent ban from Ashden Manor, and, fully satisfied with Caroline's silence, her ladyship departed. Not until her task was finished for the day did Caroline pick up the book that had so engrossed her ladyship.

It was
Bicycling
Tours
in
France.

In high good humour again at the thought of a tightly laced, serge-bloomered Lady Hunney pedalling to Paris, Caroline blithely sailed out by the front entrance, ignoring the disapproval of Parker, the butler, who always managed to imply she was a complete stranger to him. Perhaps like dogs, butlers grew to look like their mistresses?

Late that afternoon, Caroline decided to visit Nanny Oates. Nanny had cared for both Father and Aunt Tilly at Buckford House. She had come to Sussex when Elizabeth was expecting Isabel, and had simply stayed on to wait for the next. After the tragedy of Millicent's death, there was no question of her leaving. Now she had retired to a cottage whose rent was paid by the Rector. She was eighty-three now and, as she put it, not going in for no pancake races no more. Even the chickens she kept behind the cottage were under threat. ‘You'll be for the pot, the lot of you, afore long,' she'd heard Nanny threaten them on her last visit, ‘especially you, Miss Caroline of Brunswick.' They were all invariably named after the Queens of England – except for Victoria, whom she deemed it disrespectful to consign to a pot, or to claim eggs from. So when Nanny reached Queen Adelaide she started again at Boadicea.

She knocked at the door of the cottage, at the far end of Bankside, and almost simultaneously turned the knob and walked in as she usually did. Nanny had a visitor, but the strange thing was that at her approach both of them instantly fell silent. Even stranger since the visitor was Aunt Tilly.

‘Don't tell me you're discussing your dress for next Friday too, Nanny?' Caroline bent down to kiss the upturned button face. Here was a comfortable double chin that saw no need of chin-straps.

‘That's right, Miss Caroline,' she agreed. ‘Scarlet, 'tis, showing me bosom, and with a hat to match with three white feathers. Being presented to His Majesty, I am.'

Tilly laughed. ‘And I'm in white lace with a pale pink underskirt, Nanny, with darling little embroidered rosebuds.' She rose to go. ‘I'll leave you to talk to Caroline.'

‘Tell the Rector, mind,' Nanny said.

‘What about?' asked Caroline. She'd been right. There was something odd going on.

‘None of your business, miss. Just jawing the hind leg off a donkey like I usually do.'

‘Why don't you tell her, Nanny? You can trust Caroline.'

‘She's a young lady, Miss Matilda,' Nanny reminded her charge severely. ‘She's unwed.'

‘Young ladies grow up, Nanny, and I too am unwed.'

‘That's different, Miss Tilda, and you know it.' Nanny's mouth snapped shut. Her decision was made, and Caroline knew she would get no more out of her.

When she returned to the Rectory, none the wiser, she was surprised to find Felicia in her bedroom, and Isabel draped gracefully on the bed looking supremely bored. Caroline's room was the only one that boasted a full-length mirror and Felicia was standing somewhat dolefully before it. This too was surprising since Felicia was the least interested of them all in what she wore, though she was easily the most striking in looks.

‘You'll help, won't you, Caroline?' Felicia pleaded. ‘Isabel won't take me seriously and I must do something to this.' She glanced disparagingly at her old white satin skirt and blouse.

‘I don't know why Felicia's getting so het up about it. It's my dance,' Isabel pointed out unmaliciously.

Seeing the flush on Felicia's face, Caroline quickly intervened. ‘We all know you're to be the belle, Isabel, but even bells need clappers.'

‘What?' Isabel stared at her, then dismissed, first, this incomprehensible statement, and, secondly, the problem. ‘Ask Mrs Hazel to look at it, Felicia. There's still time.'

‘We can't afford her, Mother says. Not for all of us.' The village dressmaker lived on Bankside next to old Sammy Farthing the shoemaker, and was occasionally employed on new dresses for the Rectory womenfolk, and frequently on repairs and alterations.

Isabel made no reply, but Caroline knew what that look on her face meant: that Isabel was planning something she was slightly ashamed of. If so there was no use pursuing it, for Isabel kept her own counsel.

‘It needs an overskirt adding, Felicia, or ruche this one up and provide a different underskirt. You could have my blue one,' Caroline offered, ‘and dye the blouse to match. You could do it, Isabel. You're the handiest with a needle.'

‘Me?' Isabel looked astonished. ‘I'm far too busy. Get Harriet to do it.'

‘It's too big a job for her. She hasn't time.'

‘She's only a housemaid. She'll do what you tell her to.'

‘You're not a Swinford-Browne yet, Isabel.' Caroline was irritated. ‘And this isn't The Towers.'

‘Don't I know it,' Isabel yawned.

‘Please don't be horrid,' Felicia pleaded.

‘Why not? You'll be even more glad to get rid of me.' Isabel slid off the bed. ‘I'm quite sure you're already fighting over who's going to have my room.'