The Storms of War (6 page)

‘Well, as he said, his uncle, I suppose. I think the situation in Europe or something like that.’ Celia blushed again, hard.

‘But what have we to do with that? I don’t understand.’ Verena shook her head, and Celia saw the nerves fluttering over her skin. ‘You know, dear, I wish you would invite girls from Winterbourne to stay in the holidays.’

‘They are always away, in places like France and Switzerland,’ Celia lied. Really, she did not want Gertie or Gwen King or anyone like them at Stoneythorpe, fingering and mocking her books, wanting to ride Silver. Verena wished her to make friends so she could stay with them, meet their brothers and then one day find a husband. But Celia didn’t want to pass the summers in their houses. She wanted to be at Stoneythorpe, with Tom.

Verena touched her hair. ‘I just don’t understand why Jonathan would leave so suddenly.’
I don’t know,
Celia wanted to cry.
You’re
the mother! I wish we could go back to the days when you were all powerful, knew everything.

As if she had heard, Verena snapped tall. ‘Anyway, I have a task for you. I’m sending Thompson to town to collect some more elaborate gifts. He was supposed to be wrapping the presents for the lucky dip today. I wondered if you might do it?’

‘Of course!’

Verena ushered her to the parlour, where there was a pile of presents and some crackled tissue paper and ribbon. ‘Do be careful. I asked Emmeline but she has the dressmaker with her.’ She picked up a box of sweets and wrapped it in paper and ribbon, showing Celia how to tie the neat bow on the top.

There was a knock, and Smithson appeared at the door. ‘Madam, Miss Wilton wishes to discuss a matter with you.’

Verena sighed. ‘It is impossible. I simply cannot settle to anything. Now, Celia, do try to leave them looking tidy. I’m trusting you.’

She shut the door behind her.
Don’t think of Jonathan,
Celia told herself.
Think about something else!

Celia’s father liked to tell them, usually at Christmas and on her mother’s birthday, about how hard he had tried to gain Verena’s affections. They had met at a ball, and Rudolf had gone to visit her family every Wednesday afternoon in London, and then followed them to Norfolk.

‘Your mother was the girl for me,’ he was fond of saying. ‘I simply had to persuade her. Lady Deerhurst said to me, “I have not spent years on my daughter’s education and finished her in Paris, only for her to marry into canned meat!” But I knew I would win them all round in the end.’ Celia had seen a daguerreotype of her mother as a bride, delicate and smiling, her hair a great nest on her head. ‘Well,’ Verena said once, ‘the pictures make it look more dignified. Cousin Sarah had a cold and sniffed all the way through the ceremony and the photographs. And my corset was so tight I could barely breathe.’

Last time they had visited Grandmother Deerhurst had been two years ago, in the little house she lived in near the estate. There
had been many more photographs of Celia’s English cousins, Matthew and Louisa, than of the de Witts. Verena had complained and asked what was wrong with her children. Since then Lady Deerhurst had not issued any invitations. Verena shrugged and said she was too angry about the Kaiser and would get over it one day.

Grandmother Deerhurst was tall and stern, her bosom jangling with jet beads. When she spoke to Celia, she looked at her through an eyeglass and talked thinly of the different dress of girls in her day. Celia could not imagine her being won round. But then she could not imagine her mother or father as young as she was – or her father ever having to fight for anything.

‘I think my mother believed Papa was going to whip me away to Germany and I would never return,’ said Verena, smiling. Celia thought that her mother liked that, the idea of being taken away entirely. And yet she did return, numerous times, for Verena often mentioned the Deerhursts, meeting the Queen as a debutante, reminding them that she was an aristocrat. When Sir Hugh proposed, she had said to them all at the table, ‘He saw the
right blood,
that is it.’

Celia sat on the floor. She took the crackled tissue paper and the ribbon and began sorting through the presents. There were cones of sweets, boxes of nuts, two little brown bears, a skipping rope, a wooden top and stick. For one lucky boy there was a toy train engine, and for one girl a large china doll with yellow hair and a green silk dress and hat. Celia held her out of her box, against the light, decided to wrap her up last. ‘You will be Belinda,’ she said, under her breath. ‘And Missy Cotton will take you.’

She longed to meet Tom’s sisters; Missy, six, and Mary, who was fourteen and – Tom said – fond of her own way. But Tom refused to bring them to the house and they had never come to the summer party. Michael had pointed out their house in the village once, but it had been shuttered up, no sign of anybody there at all.

Once, when they lived in London, she had been driving in
a cab with her father through another part of the city. Where Hampstead was made up of rows of great houses, bearing down on the road like grandfather clocks, these houses were squat and small, red-brick and huddled together on the dirty roads. After some minutes, they came to a wider road, where the houses had small gates and painted fronts. A little girl walked past holding the hand of her mother.

‘This is the home of the Cotton family,’ Rudolf said abruptly, gesturing at the road. A carriage clattered past them, obscuring Celia’s view.

She grasped the window pane. ‘Which one, Papa? Show me.’

Her father looked vague. ‘One of those.’ He sat back against the seat, his face disinterested.

‘But which one? Can we stop?’ She’d pressed her face on the window, trying to smell what was outside. She wanted to hear the children sing. ‘Let’s go and say hello.’

He shook his head. ‘They wouldn’t like it.’

She turned to him. ‘But I want to see where Tom lives. Tell me which one the house is!’

‘Now, Celia, your mother is expecting us.’

The carriage rolled on. ‘Let’s go back!’ she cried, but Rudolf shook his head. Celia craned, trying to see the houses, in the hope that Tom might come out, or one of his sisters.

When Rudolf had said they would be moving to Stoneythorpe, Celia’s first question had been: ‘What about Tom?’

She could not be without Tom. Whenever she attended the parties of the other little girls in Hampstead, she yearned to escape the flurry of lemon and pink, dresses and cakes and presents, so that she could play with Tom. They did everything together, from pretending hospitals and schools to racing in the garden.

Rudolf looked down at her and his face was pure confusion. Then it cleared. ‘He shall come too.’

Verena drew in her breath. ‘Now, dear, Tom would wish to stay with his family.’

Rudolf nodded. ‘Well then, all the Cottons shall move to
Eversley, just nearby.’ Celia clapped her hands. Tom, his mother, his sisters, all together in the manor house.

Verena’s face flamed. Celia saw her clench her fist. ‘But my dear. Surely not?’

Rudolf patted his knees. ‘If they wish to come, they shall. We shall find them a cottage nearby, or something similar.’

‘That’s you, Papa,’ cried Emmeline, standing. ‘All you care about is the servants.’

‘Or at least the Cottons,’ Celia heard Arthur say under his breath. She had given her father a wide smile. In the country, she and Tom could spend every day together.

Celia tied a bow around a small bunny rabbit and looked at Belinda. She imagined Missy seizing her with a cry of joy, clutching her to her heart, thanking Celia shyly – and then Tom would invite her round for tea. She would sit at the table with Tom’s mother, telling them jokes that made them all laugh. She looked down at her wrappings, the parcels resplendent in tissue and gold. Even Marina Evershold, the neatest girl in the class at Winterbourne, could not have done a better job. Surely her mother could not fail to be pleased with that.

Next day, Rudolf went to London, early, before any of them rose. The day was theirs – to plan the party and for Celia to get in everybody’s way. ‘Oh, Celia,’ Verena sighed, as she looked at a tangled section of bunting Celia had been trying to deck over the tables. ‘You are always so
clumsy
.’ She’d written two letters to Arthur so far, had them all sign both. She said Celia’s signature was wobbly.

Celia fled to the kitchen. It was her second favourite part of the house, after the library. She loved the coolness of the white surfaces, the stone of the floor under her feet and the high glass jars full of sugar and flour. Sometimes Mrs Rolls would show her the recipes and give her scraps of cake mix or raw pastry. Not today. The kitchen was all activity. Ellie was sieving flour, and all around them were meat pies in stages of preparation. There were two empty pastry cases on the side, alongside a bowl of raw meat, chopped eggs and chopped parsley. Jennie and Sarah, the housemaids, were hunting for a tin, taking out piles from the cupboard, deep in conversation.

Celia supposed her mother wanted one to play apple bobbing or some type of party game. Jennie she was most devoted to, tall and thin like a candle, with a pale face and a shock of yellow curly hair she could never control. She was like you had drawn her picture on a piece of paper and slotted it into a top and made it run very fast: she hurried everywhere, talked a thousand words a minute, did everything quickly. ‘More haste, less speed,’ Mrs Bell called after her, hopelessly, because Jennie was always rushing. Once Jennie had even fallen down the stairs, she had been so determined to dust them in double-quick time. Celia had come out from the parlour just as she fell, hands flailing, landing on the
bottom step with a bump. ‘No harm done, miss!’ she called out, then leapt to her feet and hurried off. A ball, that was what she was, a yellow rubber ball that never stopped.

‘More pies? I cannot credit it.’ Mrs Rolls beat the pastry circle with her plump hands. ‘As if I don’t have enough to do. After all that fuss on Tuesday over French soup and ice stacks, and Sir Hugh returning my chicken almost untouched.’ Celia pulled herself up to perch on one of the surfaces, kicking at the morning light with her feet.

‘Mama worries when Sir Hugh comes.’

‘And now she is demanding enough for this party to feed the whole of Africa.’ The cook’s face was the plumpest of all, a big moon under her tight bun of brown hair streaked with grey. Celia wondered if cooks were ever thin. Mrs Rolls held up her hand and counted off. ‘Meat pies, plum cakes, hams, a pig’s head and apple tarts. That alongside the normal meals, and however many other visitors plan to descend.’

‘I could help,’ said Celia, thinking of red and amber jam tarts and plum cake mix.

‘You? Whatever next.’ Mrs Rolls brushed her face with a floury hand.

‘Someone’s after my job,’ said Ellie, smiling at Celia. ‘I could swap and marry an aristocrat like Miss Emmeline.’ She was a tiny girl from the village with red hair in a plait and bright green eyes – too pretty to be a kitchen maid, Mrs Rolls had complained when she first arrived.

Mrs Rolls continued to beat her pastry circle. ‘Less of that, my girl.’

‘I might be good at chopping,’ pushed Celia.

‘I’m sure, miss. Get along with you now. Come back in half an hour or so and you can have the pastry ends.’

‘No one will play with me. Even Tom is too busy.’

‘Well,’ said Mrs Rolls, banging the pastry with her pin. ‘That is no bad thing, Miss Celia.’ She spoke carefully. ‘You are getting to be a young lady now, no need to play with boys.’

‘Tom and I have always played together.’

‘That’s what I mean.’

‘She
’d make sure you did,’ said Ellie.

‘Who do you mean?’ asked Celia.

‘Her,
you know. Madam Cotton,’ said Ellie.
‘Mrs,
oh yes.’

‘Ellie!’ Mrs Rolls brought down the rolling pin. ‘Stop that talk, right away. Get to those pans before I give you something proper to do.’

Celia shook her head. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I’m warning you, Ellie!’ called Mrs Rolls. ‘Miss de Witt, time for you to go back upstairs.’ She turned to Ellie. ‘To the scullery pots for you, my girl.’

Celia was about to go when Jennie burst out: ‘Sarah, you mustn’t let him!’ They all turned to her. ‘Sorry, Mrs Rolls,’ she said, dropping her voice. ‘It’s just that Sarah said she would gladly give her brother to the King. She shouldn’t, should she?’

Mrs Rolls put a hand to her forehead. ‘Well …’

‘King needs men,’ said Sarah. She looked up. ‘He’d need your Davey too, Mrs Rolls, if he had a mind to it.’ Sarah was small and dark, the opposite of Jennie, Celia supposed. At Christmas, she dressed up as a gypsy and told their fortunes until Rudolf stopped it, said God would not approve.

Mrs Rolls held up her rolling pin. ‘Davey wouldn’t want to fight.’

‘Who?’ asked Celia. ‘What does the King need?’

Mrs Rolls beat the pastry hard. ‘To come and eat here, if you ask me. Twenty pies in three days, can’t make them before because they won’t stay fresh, then the cakes and all the rest later and goodness knows what. Every year Mrs de Witt asks more from us.’

‘Amazing how much those children can eat,’ said Jennie. ‘Pockets full of the stuff, bulging. I’ve seen.’

Mrs Rolls shook her head at Jennie, but Sarah was already looking up, her face hot. ‘Not mine!’ Sarah’s four brothers and sisters always came to the party, along with Ellie’s little sister. Mrs Rolls and Jennie both lived in the house. Celia thought Jennie came from a village half an hour away, but of Mrs Rolls she was not sure. Her mother had placed an advertisement in
The Lady
for exactly the type of chef she wished for, able to cater for large and fine parties as well as cook for a polite family. She had even interviewed a few Frenchmen, who arrived at the house in black suits, patted Celia absently. Probably best that they hadn’t come to Stoneythorpe in the end, Celia thought. They probably wouldn’t like cooking for the yearly party.

‘I’ll eat the leftovers, Mrs Rolls. Michael too. Anyway, what were you talking of? Who does the King need?’

‘Men for the war. But I don’t believe a word of it,’ said Jennie. ‘It’s just to sell papers, they just make up all these words.’

‘We have to teach the Kaiser a lesson,’ said Sarah. ‘We need to do it now.’

‘I don’t believe we’ll have a war either,’ said Celia. ‘The Kaiser doesn’t mean it. His people won’t support it.’ How could they? Not Hilde and Johann and their family.

Mrs Rolls straightened at that and looked up. ‘Indeed, miss. Quite so. Sure all the Kaiser’s subjects are decent, law-abiding people.’ Celia watched Sarah’s eyes flicker as she turned to her pans. Mrs Rolls held out her hand. ‘Why don’t you have this pastry, dear? And then run and tell Mrs de Witt that we are proceeding well with the pies and will start on the cakes in an hour or so. Time we all got back to work.’

‘Yes, Mrs Rolls.’ Celia turned, walked to the door. She wanted to say it again: the people do not want war. But it was all too much and too complicated, so she hurried into the corridor with her pastry, eating it there next to the small window, feeling the dough fill her mouth so she did not have to think about war or Germany or Hilde and Johann running by the stream in the Black Forest, throwing sticks in the water in the sun, without her.

She often had to remind herself that others saw her as German. It had been a shock to her when they had started German lessons at school and Frau Gritt had expected her to recite a poem in the first lesson.

‘My father told us to learn another language,’ she said, blushing to the entire class. Frau Gritt told her to go on, and she stumbled her way through the words and the rhymes, watching surprise
and disappointment spread across the mistress’s face. She knew the words, but she couldn’t say them, unnerved by the beam of Frau Gritt’s attention. After that, she was inattentive and lazy in German on purpose, feeling disloyal to her aunt Lotte who had practised sentences with her at the kitchen table in the Black Forest. But despite herself, she found the language flowing from her pen. She knew the words, recognised them, understood the sentences. ‘It must be in your blood,’ said the mistress later, looking over Celia’s excellent exam.

Rudolf had hated Latin and French at school. ‘If my children like,’ he had said, ‘they can learn. But I don’t see the point. English is the language of the world now. In fifty years’ time, no one will remember German. We will all be part of England.’

Verena had travelled to Germany, with Rudolf, in a second trip after their honeymoon. But not long afterwards, Rudolf’s parents had both died and his cousin, Heinrich, whom he said was like a brother, moved to the Black Forest. Celia imagined a big country full of mountains, thick with dark trees, and a house that looked as if it were made of gingerbread. It was something of a disappointment when she did visit to find that it was really not so different to England after all.

Celia walked past the village women cleaning the paintwork now. Down the hall, she saw Mr Vine, the butler, flurrying about, his feet clapping the floor like a dancer’s. Everyone would be busy today – her mother scouring her lists, Michael helping move tables, Mrs Rolls chopping and stirring, the maids polishing, her father going to London. She had no lessons, so that she could help, but there was nothing to do. She didn’t even want to go to the library. Around the corner in the lower part of the servants’ hall, Smithson and Thompson were setting up the children’s games.

‘I wish I could carry things too,’ she said to Smithson. Celia often occupied herself trying to work out who was her favourite footman of the two. Smithson liked to listen to her jokes and let her chat. But Thompson sometimes gave her a jawbreaker sweet he had bought in the village. Even though she often ran their
names together in her mind, like twins, Smithson and Thompson looked very unalike. Thompson was tall and broad, with dark hair, and some visitors said he had an Italian air. He told her his bad leg had been crushed by a falling horse in a battle on a huge plain where they heard lions roar through the fighting; that he came home ashamed to have been injured in such a cowardly way. He was devoted to Michael, followed him everywhere, brought him little biscuits from the pantry and left them in his room in the afternoons. Smithson was a wiry, straw-haired little man with a great round face and a noisy voice that Rudolf complained you could hear through the entire house. Celia was his favourite. She liked him too: admired the way he screwed his face into a ball when he was concentrating.

‘Quicker if we do it, miss,’ Smithson said, tying a coconut to the frame.

‘I wish I could help you tomorrow.’

‘That’s our job too.’ They were to have more games this year than ever before: a coconut shy, apple bobbing, pin the tail on the donkey, of course, and races with eggs and spoons.

‘They are talking about war in the kitchen,’ she said.

‘Is Miss Jennie down there?’ Smithson was sweet on Jennie, hopelessly so, Mrs Rolls said, since Jennie saw herself as destined for better, although who knew who
that
would be. Sometimes she allowed him to walk with her to church or ask her questions about her family, and then he behaved as if a goddess had touched him. Celia looked at his eyes, dark with love, and wondered if anyone would ever feel the same about her.

Smithson peered at her. ‘Are you quite well, miss? You look a little pale.’

She nodded. ‘I don’t like the idea of war, that’s all.’

He shrugged. ‘Not up to us, though, is it, miss?’

Celia wandered to the front room and walked out on to the grass, a little dewy already. Tomorrow it would be teeming with children, rushing around, clutching cakes in their hands, gobbling gingerbread, waving to their parents (stuffing their pockets, Jennie
would say). Every year, Celia grew impatient with the lists and the preparations, and then she took it all back when she saw the wonders her mother had created: long tables strewn with bunting and flowers, the great bins waiting to be filled with the lucky dip, the spots for pin the tail on the donkey, the coconut shy, the skittles to knock over, the gold stars strung on the trees, the flowers sparkling and shining up at the sun. It was handsome, the kind of place some of the more romantic girls at school like Gertie or Laura would have called ‘fairy tale’. One year, it had been raining and so they had all transferred into the dusty old ballroom at the back, which Verena otherwise locked up. That, secretly, had been Celia’s favourite year of all, watching the children skidding up and down the once-polished floor.

The day always proceeded in a set way: the children arrived, most with their parents, or older sisters, and were welcomed by Jennie and Smithson, then through to the back garden. Every year Celia looked at them, thinking how much work had gone into their outfits, hours of sewing new dresses, scrubbing socks, plunging the children into the bath – for once before their father, who was usually first in line for the clean water. Their cheeks shone pink, hair newly plaited or combed, and their aprons had been scrubbed so hard that they shone white. In the garden, Michael, Tom, Smithson, Thompson and Jennie would divide the children into age groups and set them playing games: tag, hide and seek, egg and spoon races and jumping to begin with, then, after an hour or so, pin the tail on the donkey and blind man’s buff.

Last year’s party had been magnificent. More than forty children had come, the little ones racing around the lawn, the older girls watching them to make sure they didn’t fall, the big boys lounging in groups by the trees, pretending not to be interested in the babyish games. Everybody had been there, apart from the baker’s children, who were suffering from chickenpox. Even little Johnny came, the son of the village beggar, who never went anywhere because he was mocked and teased. He hid from the other children, watched them from a distance, along with Lizzie, the girl who had lost her arm to a farm scythe and whose mother kept
her home for fear she would lose anything more. Celia sat with Verena and Emmeline, as Michael and Tom ran the games. She watched Bill Smith winning pin the tail on the donkey and the Lyon sisters winning blind man’s buff. Finally, at half past three, Mrs Rolls brought out the big cakes and pies and the children settled around the table. Emmeline ate half a sandwich and then drank only tea, so Celia had her piece of ginger cake, treacle tart, scones and shortbread biscuits. ‘You’ll get fat,’ Emmeline had said, poking her in the ribs.