The Lorimer Legacy (36 page)

‘But I shall come back,' protested Kate. ‘I know it's a long training, but this is my home. Of course we shall see each other again. I shall still need someone to practise my bandaging on when I come.'

‘I'll wait for that,' said Duke. ‘Just so long as you never call me “boy”.' He must have seen the flush that showed he had hurt her feelings, for he was quick to withdraw. ‘You always did fall for every tease I could think up. You remember that time there was a caterpillar on your foot and I told you the hairs had poisoned your skin and the only cure was for you to hang upside down till all the blood was drained out of your leg.'

‘Your teases never were very funny,' said Kate, but she was smiling again. Her father, who had been listening from the back of the verandah, stepped forward to interrupt.

‘No time for a session of reminiscence now,' he said, and Duke nodded obediently.

‘I wrote a letter for Brinsley.' He held it out to Kate. There was a moment of awkwardness between them, neither knowing how they should say goodbye. Duke solved the problem by holding up his hand in a kind of salute. ‘Well, good times, then,' he called out. Grinning once more, he left at a run.

‘Look after the house!' shouted Kate after him. He turned and waved again. She was sorry at once for what she had said. Duke, working on another plantation,
would not have time to care for a derelict piece of property, which would be no fun without company; and she had given her father the chance to ask awkward questions.

He took it at once. ‘Which house? he asked, although – knowing where Duke had spent his childhood – he must have guessed the answer before he spoke.

‘Bristow Great House,' Kate answered. ‘Duke and Brinsley used to play there. Duke helps his grandfather look after the garden. He's very attached to the place.'

‘He writes a neat hand,' commented her father, glancing at the envelope which had been addressed to Brinsley. ‘Or did his mother do it for him?'

Although the question was a natural one, Kate was indignant on her friend's behalf. The children of Hope Valley were taught to read and write in the schoolroom, but the lessons did not come easily to them, and in most cases were forgotten as soon as they began to work on the land. Duke, though, as the son of a schoolteacher, had been taught earlier and more thoroughly than the others, and not allowed to forget his skills.

‘He's very clever,' she said. ‘He's much better at sums than Brinsley ever was. When they played cricket together they used to have great competitions and work out batting averages and that sort of thing, and Duke always got the right answer first. If ever you need an assistant, Father, to help you with all those accounts you have to do, you ought to ask Duke. I promise, you'd only have to show him once what needs to be done.'

‘I'll bear your testimonial in mind,' her father promised with a smile. ‘And now, are you ready at last?' The luggage had already been taken to the railway station on a donkey cart and it was time to move in the same direction. Her mother, who for the past hour had been pressing messages to Brinsley on her, as well as warnings
on her own account, fell silent; and Kate, not normally emotional or demonstrative, found to her surprise that she was on the verge of tears.

‘What if I should never see her again!' she thought, suddenly aware of her own youth and good health and exuberant spirits as she embraced someone who looked old beyond her age. The years of Grant's dependence, added to the rigours of the climate and Lydia's self-imposed programme of community health work, had left a woman who had never been plump or pretty looking strained and haggard, her sallow skin stretched tightly across the bones of her face. ‘You will come to England soon, won't you?' Kate begged aloud. ‘You ought to have a holiday, and Brinsley and I will need to see you.'

As though Lydia shared her fear, the embrace was returned with an almost painful tightness. Grant, excluded, began to shout for his mother's attention and was sharply rebuked by his father. Kate held out her arms to the little boy, anxious to leave in friendship, but he turned away petulantly.

She looked from one parent to another. It was difficult to believe that once upon a time they too had been students, healthy and high-spirited, as sure of their own vocations as she was now of hers, embarking with eagerness on the separate trainings which were to bring them in the end to this obscure corner of the world. Had they been happy, she wondered: was this how they had expected their lives to turn out? There was a moment in which all her excitement and her memories of a loving family life seemed to be obscured by shabbiness and sadness and Grant's flash of spite, causing her courage to falter. Then she straightened her shoulders and smiled for a last time at her mother before she took her father's arm. It was time to begin her own adventure.

To a small child every house is large, and a grand house a palace. Memory increases the illusion, bringing disappointment to a return visit if in the intervening years the visitor has grown to fit the scale of the building.

Brinsley House, however, was substantial enough to survive the test of remembered grandeur. Even to an adult's eyes its marble entrance hall was vast, its entertaining rooms numerous and palatial, its terraced gardens spacious. For a moment, as she stood in the doorway, Kate was overcome by shyness. She had hoped that Brinsley might have been at the dock at Portishead to meet her, but instead it was her cousin Beatrice who had come. Beatrice had been polite enough, expressing all the proper hopes for the comfort of the voyage and the enjoyment of her visit to Bristol, but there was a sharpness about her manner which made her seem cold even when her words were friendly.

The difference of fourteen years in age was another barrier. Beatrice, in her early thirties, belonged neither to Kate's own generation nor to her mother's. The two had nothing in common but their relations, and that was a subject quickly exhausted.

Now it was her aunt's turn to greet her. Tall, and tightly laced into a stiff stateliness, Sophie's approach was so formal that for a moment Kate found herself struggling wildly to remember all the petty rules of etiquette which her mother had tried to recall for her benefit. Should she unbutton a glove, or remove it – and one, or both? But of course, even though she might be almost a stranger, an aunt was to be kissed.

Sophie offered first one pale cheek and then the other. Again there were murmured hopes that the voyage had not provided too much discomfort, that her parents were well. She would no doubt like to be shown to her room at once, in order that she could refresh herself: luncheon would be served in half an hour. Brinsley, she was told, had been staying with a schoolfriend for the past week, but was expected back at any moment. The boat which had brought Kate from Jamaica had arrived earlier than had been expected when his plans were made.

Kate had been allocated one of the bedrooms which afforded a view of the Gorge. She stared out of the window at the plunging cliffs and the graceful bridge suspended above them and the calm woods on the further side. The climate was not after all as grey as she had anticipated, but even the sight of sunshine and white puffy clouds scudding across the blue sky could do nothing to disperse her feelings of desolation.

She was not wanted here: it was as simple as that. Before she left home Kate had been unhappy in her belief that she would be an expense to her relations. Her father's assurance on this score had lightened her mind completely – it had never occurred to her that they might feel her mere presence a nuisance. Anyone, even a total stranger, who came to Hope Valley and asked the pastor for hospitality would be given not only food and shelter but also a genuine welcome from the heart. Sophie Lorimer had more rooms at her disposal than she could possibly use herself, and servants to ensure that little of the work of entertaining a visitor would fall on her own shoulders; yet in spite of all this she could put no warmth into her welcome. To provide accommodation for a niece and nephew when requested to do so was merely an irksome duty.

Without warning Kate found herself overwhelmed by
homesickness. She felt completely cut off from Jamaica: from childhood, friends, loving parents, all the sights and sounds to which she was accustomed. How many years would pass before she saw them again! It was even possible that she might never return.

For a little while, pressing her forehead against the cold glass of the window, Kate indulged her misery. Then she straightened her shoulders and tossed her head in the gesture with which she had always before been able to shrug away disappointment or depression. Her thick hair, instead of swirling across her shoulders, remained firmly pinned in place. It was a necessary reminder that she was a young lady now, no longer a child.

And Brinsley would soon be here to greet her. And her stay in Bristol was in any case only an interlude. Everything would be different when she arrived at Aunt Margaret's house in London. It was only four years since her father's sister had visited Jamaica: she was warmhearted, and not a stranger like these cold Bristol Lorimers. Even four years ago Margaret had been sympathetic to her niece's ambitions: she could be relied upon now for support which would go deeper than the mere provision of a home. Then there would be work to be tackled – hard work, leaving no time for this kind of sentimental self-indulgence, Kate told herself firmly. She had been accepted temporarily into William Lorimer's household merely because she was a Lorimer. In London, she would be able to make a life for herself.

Even that prospect was a subject on which it was necessary to be discreet. Her father had warned her, without going into details, that William and Margaret were not on good terms. The quarrel was no concern of Kate's, he said: there was no reason for her to conceal from either of them the fact that she had visited or was planning to visit the other – but she might find the
atmosphere pleasanter if she refrained from talking about her aunt while at Brinsley House, or her uncle when in London. And then Lydia had added another warning, to the effect that any reference to Matthew Lorimer in his parents' presence might bring a chill to the conversation. Kate had never, so far as she remembered, met her eldest cousin, so to refrain from enquiring after him was not a great problem; but it was an odd family, she thought, which found it so difficult to like each other.

Then Brinsley came rushing into the room, and the last of her doubts vanished as she was given a genuine welcome to England at last. There were so many questions to be asked and answered that the sound of the luncheon gong came as an unwelcome interruption. For an hour it was necessary to be formal and polite again, although now that Kate had regained her good spirits she was able to accept that Aunt Sophie's voice did not indicate any active resentment of her young guests' presence, but merely a lack of interest in anything but herself.

As for Beatrice, a positive note of friendly enthusiasm came into her voice as she invited her cousin to accompany her that evening to a suffrage meeting. Kate hardly liked to admit that the word suffrage was unfamiliar to her, but fortunately the invitation was expanded to the point of comprehension by a strongly worded attack on Mr Asquith – who had apparently made promises, or half promises, in respect of the claim by women that they should have the vote. The prime minister, it seemed, had broken his word in a treacherous manner. It was necessary for strongly worded resolutions to be passed and forwarded to Downing Street. Such an abrupt plunge into the politics of a country to which she was still a stranger was bewildering to Kate. For once she was glad of Sophie's calm intervention.

‘Stop pestering the child, Beatrice. If she plans to be
one of these working women like your aunt, no doubt she'll form her views on the subject soon enough.'

‘But staying with Aunt Margaret will expose her to unsound influences.'

‘What
do
you mean, Beatrice? Your aunt's opinions may not accord with mine, but I understood that you and she were in agreement. You both attend that committee of Lord Glanville's, after all.'

‘Oh yes,' agreed Beatrice. ‘Aunt Margaret's views are reasonable enough. But the same cannot be said of Alexa, and she stays with Aunt Margaret whenever she's in England, so that Cousin Kate will hardly be able to avoid meeting her. And Alexa becomes rasher and more militant with every year that passes.' Beatrice turned to Kate to explain. ‘Alexa is much in demand because she is famous and her voice is so strong and her appearance so striking. Whenever the militants plan a procession, they ask Alexa to march at the front, and to sing as she marches. The news that she is going to be present increases the number of people who come to watch. I suppose they think they're being given a free opera performance. Her photograph is always appearing in the popular papers. Would you believe it, the press has nicknamed her “The Singing Suffragette”. In my opinion, she does it only for the publicity it brings her – I suspect her of having no coherent views on the subject at all.'

Since it was impossible for Kate to guess the cause of Beatrice's dislike of Alexa, she felt her way cautiously into the conversation.

‘Why is it called militant to sing and to march in processions?' she asked.

‘Oh, that's only the respectable part of it. The militants throw stones. Not Alexa, as far as I know – I don't imagine she fancies the thought of a few weeks in prison – but a lot of the others. And they've made it almost
impossible for any public figure of whom they disapprove to hold a political meeting without disturbance. The result is, of course, that those of us who believe in pleading our cause with rational argument now find that we can't get anyone to listen. Alexa and her fine friends are doing a great deal of harm, in my opinion. She'll almost certainly try to get you under her thumb too. Which is all the more reason why you should come to our meeting tonight and hear a properly argued case.'