The Hidden Years (25 page)

Was it because of her child, Kit's child? The child who
would one day inherit Cottingdean? Was it for him that she felt this
urge, this need to take hold of the house, to cherish and love it, to
restore it to what it must once have been? Or was she simply giving in
to some foolish, impossible-to-achieve daydream?

It was impossible for them to use any of the bedrooms.
They had to sleep in the kitchen on mattresses she had managed to
salvage, wrapped in blankets she had aired over the range. The
mattresses were single ones and as she lay sleepless within the cocoon
of her own blankets, while Edward slept several feet away from her, she
remembered how earlier Edward had made an awkward attempt to embrace
her, out of gratitude, she knew, and not desire, but the sensation of
his dry lips moving against her cheek had caused such a surge of
revulsion inside her that she had only just managed to conceal from him
what she was feeling…

Now, curled up in her thankfully solitary bed, she relived
that small incident, shuddering inwardly. Her reaction to Edward's
touch only reinforced her conviction that for her sexual intimacy was a
part of married life she was more than pleased to have to do without.

How lucky she had been to find Edward, she thought
naively. How fortunate to marry such a kind, considerate man, who was
willing not only to accept her child as his own and to provide them
both with a home, but was also a man who would never be able to
criticise her lack of sexual responsiveness to him in the way that Kit
had.

It was not perhaps a conventional beginning to their
marriage, but nevertheless she was determined to make Edward a good
wife, to give him all the care and devotion he might need, to love and
cherish him as her husband, even if that love could never be sexual. As
she fell asleep she promised fervently that from now on she would do
everything she could to show Edward how grateful she was to him for
what he had done for her. Somehow between them they would find a way of
making Cottingdean habitable, a true home, a home filled with warmth
and love, because that was what she wanted for her child. A proper
home, the kind of home she herself had never really had… not
after she had gone to live with her aunt.

'Today
we heard officially that Japan has surrendered and the
war is over
.'

Liz stared down at what she had written, knowing guiltily
that since she had come to Cottingdean her life had been so full of so
many obstacles, so many small and intensely immediate problems, that
somehow the war had lost its prominence.

Their isolation didn't help; they had no radio, no
delivery of a daily paper, and they seldom had visitors.

At first she had attributed this latter lack to herself;
but those visitors they had had quickly if unknowingly reassured her.

It amazed her that people here should so readily accept
her as Edward's wife, ignoring her youth and the disparity of that
youth and his ill health, although she had seen the way even the vicar
had uncomfortably avoided looking directly at Edward for too long. Only
the doctor, Ian Holmes, a bracing Northerner in his mid-fifties, seemed
prepared to acknowledge Edward's infirmities.

It was true that the locals, the villagers, still treated
her with reserve, but not, she was coming to realise, because they had
guessed the truth about her. No… it was simply that both she
and to some extent Edward himself were strangers to them.

It was from the doctor that they learned that the couple
who were supposed to have been taking care of the house had left it
over twelve months ago. Edward suspected that Kit must have been aware
of the situation, but it was impossible now to question his cousin
about his reasons for allowing the house to fall into such a state of
neglect.

It hadn't taken Liz more than twenty-four hours in the
house to realise how much she was going to need all the skills her aunt
had taught her. What she was slower to recognise was how much of the
older woman's indomitable will had also been passed on to her. No one
who had any real alternative would ever choose to live in such a place,
she had acknowledged despairingly the first morning, when she woke up
in Cottingdean's kitchen, her body stiff and uncomfortable from the
still-damp mattress, her nose wrinkling up at the stale smell of the
air.

But then what alternatives had they had? She had seen the
shock and bewilderment in Edward's eyes when he too woke up, the
despair and the humiliation, and in that moment she had unknowingly
picked up the burden she would carry for the rest of her
life…

It had been an effort to persuade Edward into a more
cheerful frame of mind, to insist on pushing him down to the village so
that they could buy a few supplies, find out what had happened to the
Johnsons, visit the doctor and present the letter from the hospital.

It had surprised her when Edward referred to her as Liz
instead of Lizzie, but after a while she had decided she rather liked
it. It seemed more adult, more mature. It made her feel less of a
helpless child.

Somehow or other, with some help from the doctor, who had
given them the names of several local farmers who might be able to
spare the odd pair of hands for half a day or so, they had managed to
make a small part of the house habitable; just the kitchen, on which
Liz had worked ceaselessly for a week, scrubbing and re-scrubbing its
floors, walls and shelves with as much hot water as the range could
provide, and the coarse yellow soap she had found in the stable, until
she was satisfied that it was, if not clean enough to match her
great-aunt's standards, then at least a great improvement on what it
had been.

Downstairs, the cleanest and driest of the rooms had
received the same treatment to turn them into temporary bedrooms, and
if the uncomfortable trestle beds and thin mattresses, obviously
intended for the use of whoever the house had originally been
requisitioned for, were even less appealing than her bed in the hostel,
then at least they were somewhere to sleep, and she was so tired at
night that not even the discomfort of the lumpy mattress kept her
awake. Edward was another matter. She had been disturbed at first when
Ian Holmes had prescribed a sleeping potion for him, but she had to
admit that after a week of proper sleep Edward did look better.

If they hadn't had a sudden spell of good weather,
enabling her to take Edward outside in his chair while she worked on
the house, she didn't know what she would have done.

It was plain that the shock of discovering the neglect and
deterioration of the place he remembered had affected Edward deeply. At
first he seemed sunk into such despondency that Liz began to wonder if
she was doing the right thing in staying at Cottingdean, if Edward
might not recover his spirits better if he wasn't confronted by the
reality of the house's downfall. But where else could they go?

They were at Cottingdean almost a month before she had
enough free time to explore further afield than the immediate garden.

It was the discovery of an old estate map in one of the
cupboards that sparked off her decision to see more of the estate. She
showed the map to Edward, suggesting that they might hang it above the
fireplace in the room which he referred to as the library, but when she
saw the look of pain darken his eyes she knew she had said the wrong
thing. Inwardly she cursed herself for her insensitivity.

The library had been the room Edward had described to her
in the most glowing terms of all. In his memories, it was a mellow,
warm room, full of firelight, the scent of leatherbound books, and
tobacco. Rich velvet curtains had hung at the window, and his
grandfather's desk had been a huge island of polished wood. Two huge
chairs had stood either side of the fire. There had been a fender high
enough for someone sitting in those chairs to rest their feet on. His
grandmother had always had a bowl of fresh flowers standing on his
grandfather's desk, and to be allowed into the room had obviously been
regarded by Edward as an extra-special treat.

Now, no one walking into it would recognise it from
Edward's description. None of the furnishings he had described so
lovingly to her remained; even the bookshelves themselves had been
ripped out in places— whether by accident or design, Liz
didn't know. Their contents, those books whose smell Edward remembered
so clearly, lay in scattered disorder on the floor, their spines
broken, their pages mildewed and chewed into nests by the colony of
mice who had seemed to make this room their favourite domain.

Liz had done what she could to restore the room to some
kind of order, feeling that if she could somehow recreate for Edward in
this one room some faint shadow of what it had once been, it might help
to soothe the anguish she could see he suffered.

Hardly a day went by without him blaming himself for what
had happened, without him saying he should never have married her,
never have brought her here. He seemed to hate seeing her work,
although Liz herself was surprised to discover how much she was
enjoying it. To her there was no hardship in the gruelling task of
scrubbing and rescrubbing, of searching diligently through piles of
assorted rubbish, just to make sure that nothing of value was
discarded. Even when she could see no possible use for an article, she
still meticulously put it on one side just in case, at some later date,
when Edward was able, he might discover it to be some long-lost
childhood treasure.

No one seemed to know what had happened to the original
contents of the house. Liz was an intelligent girl, but, while
suspecting that the Johnsons had disposed of it, she had no idea that
Edward was allowing her to believe that rather than allow her to know
the truth, which was that he thought that Kit had sold everything he
could that was of value, and that for some reason of his own he had
decided to allow the house itself to fall into disrepair. Had not only
allowed, but for some reason had almost encouraged it.

It was Edward who discovered the desecration of the small
cellar his grandfather had painstakingly built up, and, together with
the debris of bottles and broken glasses, other evidence that the
parties Kit had brought here to drink the rich clarets and rare
vintages had not been comprised of only male friends.

Edward kept this information from Liz. It was bad enough
that he had deceived her so much already. She had believed she was
coming to a comfortable home, where she and her child would be cared
for and cosseted. Instead… instead, she was down on her
hands and knees scrubbing filthy floors…

Edward hated seeing her do that. He was an old-fashioned
man, who had been brought up by distant, formal parents. In his eyes
Liz was a precious and fragile creature, who should never have to
demean herself with such tasks.

Liz did not share his views. Some part of her was almost
enjoying the challenge of the house, now that she had overcome her
initial shock. Now, with her pregnancy well advanced, she was no longer
having to deal with her earlier enervating sickness.

One of the farmers, introduced to them by Ian
Holmes—the one who had grudgingly allowed them to pay for the
services of four of his labourers to repair the worst of the damage to
the roof—also, and equally grudgingly, passed on to Liz the
information that the best thing she could get for her garden was a pair
of goats.

'They'll give you good milk as well. Not that it's to
everyone's taste…'

Liz received this information cautiously. It seemed almost
too good to be true. An animal which would clear the wilderness that
was the garden, and leave it ready for digging over for the spring, and
who would be at the same time providing them with milk.

She would have liked to ask Edward's advice, but she had
quickly discovered that he knew nothing about farming, nor, it seemed,
did he wish to learn. Where
she
was discovering
an eagerness to find out just what kind of hens it was which produced
the big speckled brown eggs that Mrs Lowndes had generously slipped to
her the first time she had plucked up her courage and sought out the
farmer, Edward seemed to think such interests unsuitable for a lady.

A lady… Just for a moment Liz had been tempted
to laugh, to remind him that she wasn't a lady—but she knew
to do so would hurt his feelings.

She was beginning to discover things about Edward that she
had not noticed before. That he was perhaps a little
snobbish… not in any unkind way, but that such things as the
social distinctions between the classes, between himself and, for
instance, the farmers—even though the latter were far, far
more comfortably off than Edward himself—were important to
him, and, because she was his wife, it was equally important to him
that she maintain his standards. To Edward that meant preserving a
certain distance from other people, a certain aloofness, which Liz
found did not sit comfortably on her shoulders.

She wanted to please Edward but she wanted to be herself
as well. She felt equally uncomfortable when the farm labourers
referred to her as Mrs Danvers while she, so much younger than they,
had to call them by their given names.

Through her marriage to Edward she had stepped into an
unfamiliar world… a world where, she was beginning to
discover, money was not the main criterion of a person's social
standing. It was the world described to her so fondly by her aunt, but
now she was seeing it from the other side of the green baize door which
in her aunt's day had separated the servers from the served.

Another piece of useful information she elicited from Jack
Lowndes was the surprising fact that some of the lush, crop-filled
fields to the other side of the village did in actual fact belong to
the estate.