The Lost Soldier (48 page)

Nick smiled at her and said, “Good, because I’ve some exciting news. I’ll tell you about it at lunch.”

When they were comfortably settled in the bar of the Arthur and had ordered their food, Rachel turned to Nick and said, “Well what’s this news then?”

“I’ve been busy this morning,” Nick said. “I heard from my solicitor yesterday that we’d exchanged contracts on the house I wanted to buy in Charlton Ambrose.”

“Nick, that’s great,” cried Rachel. “Which house is it?”

Nick didn’t answer her but went on, “So I went to see Mike Bradley at Brigstock Jones.”

“Mike Bradley? Whatever for?”

“I had a proposition to put to him.”

“What sort of proposition?” asked Rachel. “Surely his office was still closed?”

“So it is,” Nick said, “but I tracked him down at home. He wasn’t that pleased to see me at first, but I convinced him that it was worth listening to me.”

Rachel was intrigued. “And?”

“And I was right. We’ve the outline of a deal.”

“What sort of deal?” asked Rachel the journalist.

“I think we may be able to save your Ashgrove,” Nick said, “and still let the building go ahead.”

Rachel stared at him, and he grinned a wolfish grin, pleased with the effect he was having.

“How?” she demanded.

“I’ve sold him my house.”

“You’ve what?”

“I’ve sold him my house. You know where it is, its garden backs on to the allotments.”

“But I still don’t see…”

“Oh, Rachel,” he laughed, “you disappoint me. I thought you’d see at once. He will buy my house and knock it down, then he can put his access in through the space it creates instead of across the village green.”

“You’re joking!”

“No, darling girl, I’m not.”

Rachel hardly noticed the endearment, but it was not lost on Rose and she smiled, sitting back watching them both and thinking Rachel had met her match in Nick.

“If Bradley buys my house for a reasonable price, and it is, let’s face it, the sort of house that only commands a reasonable price, he can carry on with his development without touching either the village green or the Ashgrove.”

“But even a reasonable price would put his figures out,” objected Rachel the journalist.

“Not really, when he was already factoring in the cost of the compensation for the trees. This way it is a one-off payment, without the time and effort of tracing all the families. It avoids a wrangle about the amount of compensation, and actually,” he added, “it will probably save him something on the cost of his access road. It’ll be far shorter than the one round the village green.”

“But what about the new hall?”

“Nothing changes there,” said Nick. “That was part of the original deal for the land and had nothing to do with the Ashgrove.”

“And he’s going to do this?”

“Nothing agreed yet,” Nick said. “He will have to talk to the planners and then apply for the permission, but in principle, yes, I think he will.” He smiled the smile that usually made her heart beat faster and said quietly, “I think your trees are safe, Rachel.”

“He may have problems with the families who think they are in line for compensation,” Rachel the journalist pointed out. “They’ll think you’ve taken all their money.”

“That is ludicrous,” Nick said sharply. “I shall be selling my house anyway, it doesn’t matter to me who buys it, or what they do with it when they have.”

“No, I know,” began Rachel doubtfully, “but I don’t want you to end up the big bad wolf in all this.”

“I’ve broad shoulders,” Nick assured her, “but I really can’t see that there’ll be a problem.”

“Well, I think it is a splendid plan,” interrupted Rose. “It should satisfy everyone concerned. The memorial will remain undisturbed, the houses will be built, everyone gets what they want.”

“Except those expecting a hefty compensation,” repeated Rachel.

“There will be nothing to compensate them for,” Nick said reasonably. “Their trees will be untouched.” There was a pause and then he went on, “I thought you’d be pleased, Rachel, specially as you have a personal interest in one of the trees now.”

“I am, of course, I am,” Rachel assured him, “as a person, but as a journalist I have to look at every angle.”

“I know,” Nick said with a sigh. “I suppose I’ll have to get used to that.”

Their food arrived at that moment and when it had been served, Rose said in the hope of easing the tension that still lay in the air, “You didn’t tell us, Nick, which house you have bought?”

Nick grinned at her and said, “No, I didn’t, did I?”

“So, where is it?”

“I thought you might like to come and see it after lunch,” he said, still not answering the question. “I picked up the keys from the estate agent this morning.”

When they left the pub Rose said she would like to go over to the Ashgrove and look at it properly, so they wheeled her along the track and across the green.

It was a cold but sunny afternoon, and the bare branches stood out against the ice-blue sky. Some of the wider branches reached out to each other, their tips touching as they moved with the breeze.

“I wonder which one is Tom’s,” said Rachel.

“I’ve been trying to think back,” Rose said. “I have this recollection of being here in the dark and being scared, but I’ve no idea which tree my mother planted.”

Rachel moved to each tree, placing her hand on its trunk, feeling the roughness of the bark, wishing she could tell. Then she turned and smiled at her grandmother, “Come on, Gran, you’ll get cold.”

They went back to the car and Nick drove up the lane past the church slowing to turn in at the gates of the manor.

“I should have guessed,” said Rachel almost to herself.

Nick laughed. “Yes, you should,” he said. “I told you, a new roof and re-wiring!”

They drove up the weed-covered drive and pulled up on the turning circle outside the front door.

“I haven’t been here since I was a little girl,” Rose said wonderingly. “I came here once with my mother, but I don’t know why. She left me in the garden while she went in. I remember the lion.”

The panelled front door stood within a portico and beside the step was an old stone lion, its features weathered almost smooth, but its mane still curling round its head.

“I think I’ll stay in the car, if you don’t mind,” Rose said. “You two go on inside.”

As Nick opened the front door, Rachel went to the lion and ran her hand over its head, realising as she did so that she must be echoing many another hand, the stone was so smooth.

The door opened into a square hall with doors opening off it and a staircase curving up to the first floor. Nick stood in the hall, looking round him and Rachel said softly, “Have you really bought this?”

Nick grinned at her, “Me and the bank,” he said. “I saw it in the summer and simply fell for it, even though it needs a cartload of money spent on it.”

Rachel laughed. “Have you got a cartload?” she asked.

“Not even a wheel-barrowful,” said Nick cheerfully. “But it doesn’t all need to be done at once. Come on, I’ll show you round.”

He took her hand and together they wandered round the house where Sarah and Freddie Hurst had grown up; where Molly Day had worked, cleaning and polishing. The house from which they had all three left for the war and to which none of them had returned. Rachel found herself trying to see the house as it would have been then, not the tired, dirty place it was now, just empty rooms in a once gracious home. The drawing room, high-ceilinged with its Adam fireplace, filthy but intact, looked across what had once been a lawn and the windows of what must have been the library faced west, catching the last of the sun. They went into the kitchen, which contained only an old stone sink, shelves along one wall and some hooks in the ceiling. There was nothing to heat the place, or to cook on. The windows gave onto a yard at the back and an old stable block, sometime converted into garages.

All the downstairs rooms were completely bare, their floor-length sash windows looking out over the wilderness of garden beyond.

“How long since anyone lived here?” asked Rachel with a shiver.

“Several years,” replied Nick. “It was left in trust by the last owner, to someone in Canada, so all that had to be sorted before I could buy it.”

Upstairs, the bedrooms were large and airy, the single bathroom cold and dark, with brown paint and ancient plumbing. One of the bedrooms had a window seat with an old padded cushion on it, and Rachel could imagine Sarah sitting there, looking out over the garden, watching the moon rise.

“Quite a bit to do, you see,” said Nick cheerfully as they inspected it, “but it has great possibilities, don’t you think?”

Rachel laughed. “There speaks the architect,” she teased. They went up to the servants’ quarters on the third floor, peering into the little rooms that had been partitioned off for servants’ quarters. Rachel wondered which of them had been Molly’s.

Nick took her hand again and they went back down to the car, but as they reached the hall, Nick pulled Rachel gently into his arms. “I’m buying this house, whatever,” he said, “and I’m selling the other.”

Rachel looked up at him and said, “I know. I shouldn’t have said what I did. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said “It was Rachel the journalist who spoke then, and she had every right to.” He kissed her then, standing in the dusty hall of the house where her great-grandmother had been a maid, before saying, “Come on, or Rose will be getting cold.”

The wind whipped among the spiky black buds of the ash trees, but the crowd gathered round them was well wrapped up in the uncertain March weather. Even those in wheelchairs, with blankets round their knees and muffled in scarves and gloves, ignored the cold and waited expectantly.

Mary Bryson sat in her chair, surrounded by her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Rose Carson had Rachel on one side and Nick Potter on the other. Peter Davies and his wife stood between the two trees on the extreme left, and Cecily Strong was with her niece, Harriet, beside the tree on the right. There was a murmur of conversation as the small groups gathered, and more people walked across the green to join the growing crowd.

Rachel had worked long and hard tracing the families of the men on the church memorial and had reasonable success. Only the family of Corporal Gerald Winters were not represented, and, try as she might, Rachel had been unable to trace them. Sergeant Hapgood’s family still lived in Belcaster, and his great nephew, Paul Hapgood, had been fascinated to hear that one of the Ashgrove trees, which had caused such a stir in the paper recently, commemorated his grandfather’s brother.

“
I shall certainly attend the dedication of the stones,
” he had written to Rachel in reply to her invitation.

She traced Alfred Chapman’s family through the parish records, discovering that his daughter Jane had indeed married a man from Belmouth, as Cecily had thought, and, though she had died just a year ago, her three sons and one daughter were alive and well, and living in Belmouth. They would all like to be there for the service. Rachel’s greatest triumph was finding the descendants of Freddie Hurst. His daughter, Adelaide, had been adopted by her stepfather and had taken his name, but his surname, Anson-Gravetty, had been unusual enough for her to pick up the trail, and Adelaide’s grandson James Auckland was standing with his wife in the gathering crowd.

Under each tree was a small wedge of granite, engraved with the name and dates of the man it commemorated and hooded with a canvas cover. As part of his public relations exercise, Mike Bradley had agreed that Brigstock Jones should donate the stones and Rachel had researched them all with the War Graves Commission, to ensure each was correctly engraved. The crowd was swollen with people who had come out from Belcaster, the press, and not just the
Belcaster Chronicle
. The national press had latched on to the stories that Rachel had been telling each week in the paper and had come to see the dedication of the stones for the famous Ashgrove for themselves. Mike Bradley was there, with Tim Cartwright from Brigstock Jones, making sure any favourable publicity going came their way, and to add to the solemnity of the occasion, all the workers on the embryo building site beyond the trees ceased work and came over to watch the ceremony.

The buzz of conversation died away as the rector, Adam Skinner, came across the green, in cassock and surplice, and the service of dedication began. It was not long, there was an introductory prayer, a simple explanation of why they were there, and then he went to each stone, removed its canvas cover and read aloud the soldier’s name. As he reached the tree off centre at the back, Rachel gripped her grandmother’s hand. The rector drew off the cover, and there for the first time, with tears in their eyes, they saw the stone with the simple inscription,

P
RIVATE
T
HOMAS
C
ARTER

1
ST
B
ELSHIRE
L
IGHT
I
NFANTRY

1893–1916

Rachel leaned down and kissed her grandmother on the cheek and whispered, “He’ll never be forgotten now.”

They joined in the Lord’s Prayer and then Freddie’s great-grandson read the Laurence Binyon poem. As he read the final lines

“At the going down of the sun, and in the morning

We will remember them”

the crowd echoed the words “
We will remember them
”
,
before a bugler played the Last Post, followed by two minutes’ silence.

When the ceremony was over, Nick took Rose back to the manor while Rachel did her journalist bit on the village green. He had moved in three weeks before, having made the kitchen useable and two other rooms habitable, and was camping out as the necessary work on the house was done. Wombat gave them an ecstatic greeting, and jumped up on to Rose’s knee, sure of his welcome. He and Rose had become old friends.

“How are you coping?” Rose asked Nick, as he brought her a cup of tea. They, too, were comfortable together, their friendship having grown over the months he and Rachel had been together.