Barbara Cartland: Stand and Deliver your Heart

‘What can be going on?’ she wondered. ‘And why are the Taylors being so mysterious about it?’

When she then thought about it, there was really no one to tell.

Mr. Rushman, the Manager, was over seventy and could no longer ride a horse on the estate, but instead drove a gig.

He was not in good health and in the winter was laid up with bronchitis and rheumatism, which kept him in his house week after week.

She pulled her chair nearer to the table and, resting her chin on her hands she said,

“Now tell me what it is that is troubling you both. You know I will help if I can and, if you want me to remain silent, I will say nothing to anybody.”

Taylor looked at his wife.

Mrs. Taylor let out a big sigh that seemed to shake her whole fat body.

“We’ll tell you,” she offered at length, “but I for one be too afraid to even speak of them.”

“Speak of who?” Vanda asked.

Taylor cleared his throat,

“It be like this, Miss Vanda. We be ’ere as you knows to look after the ’ouse till ’is Lordship comes back ’ome.”

“No one could do it better,” Vanda said encouragingly.

It was true that, with the help of three women from the village, the house was as well looked after as when the old Earl was alive.

Granted there were not four footmen in the hall as had been usual or a butler in charge of them.

Nor was there a chef in the kitchen, the equal of the one employed by the Prince Regent and with four scullions under him.

When the Earl had died, Mr. Rushman had appointed the Taylors as caretakers of the house.

They had certainly lived up to that name and had taken the greatest care of Wyn Hall and they had always in the past told Vanda how much they enjoyed their job.

She just could not understand what could have occurred now to make them so frightened and reluctant to talk of their fears.

“Go on,” she prompted Taylor.

“They comes ’ere first about two weeks ago,” he began,

“They?” Vanda asked. “Who are they ?”

“That be what we ain’t supposed to know,” he replied, “but they be men.”

Vanda knew that from the voices she had heard so she did not interrupt and Taylor continued,

“They asks for water and they says to the Missus and I, ‘you keep your eyes to yourselves and your lips closed and no harm’ll come to you’.”

“They said that!” Vanda exclaimed. “And what did you reply?”

“They be not the sort of men you’d make any reply to,” Taylor said.

“Then what happened.”

“Don’t tell ’er, don’t you tell ’er,” Mrs. Taylor said in an agitated manner.

“I had much better know the whole truth,” Vanda said, “and then if anything happens I will be able to help you.”

“Nothin’ll happen, but nothin’.” Mrs. Taylor chimed in. “They promised that if we said naught.”

“I don’t count,” Vanda said with an encouraging smile, “and I don’t like to see you both so upset.”

“We be upset right enough,” Taylor said, “but there be nothin’ we can do about it. Nothin’!”

“So where are these men?” Vanda asked.

There was a pause.

Then lowering his voice to little more than a whisper Taylor informed her,

“They be in the West wing, Miss Vanda.”

Vanda looked at in astonishment.

The West wing had been shut up for a long time before the old Earl had died. He had decided that the house was too big and the West wing had a good number of rooms that were never used.

In the East wing there was the fine Picture Gallery, the ballroom and a few bedrooms on the top floor and the West wing was just some rooms of no particular historical interest.

Vanda thought that the architects had built it merely to balance from the outside the other wing of the house. At the same time it was definitely a part of Wyn Hall.

She could not imagine anything more horrifying than having hooligans, or whatever these strangers were, living in the house.

It seemed extraordinary that the Taylors had not gone to see Mr. Rushman and demanded that these men were turned out.

She knew, however, that it would be a mistake for her to criticise their behaviour in any way.

She therefore said,

“If they have threatened you, then it must have been very frightening. But surely they don’t intend to stay for long.”

“We don’t knows about that,” Mrs. Taylor replied. “We just keeps ourselves to ourselves and pretend that they ain’t there.”

“But they are trespassing,” Vanda pointed out quietly.

“We knows that,” Taylor said, “but they are dangerous, Miss Vanda, and we ’ears tales of things that ’ave ’appened, which might ’appen ’ere.”

“What sort of things?” Vanda enquired.

Again he lowered his voice so she could hardly hear and she was really reading the movements of his lips as he said,

“Murders.”

“I don’t believe it!” Vanda exclaimed. “And if these men are murderers, then how can we allow them to be here in The Hall and near the village?”

Taylor glanced over his shoulder because he was afraid that they were being overheard.

“Not so loud, Miss Vanda,” he begged her. “If anythin’ ’appens to thee we’d ne’er forgive ourselves.”

“No indeed,” Mrs. Taylor agreed at once. “Now you say nothin’ aboot it, Miss Vanda, and perhaps they’ll go away.”

“And if they stay?” Vanda asked.

The Taylors looked at each other and she realised how frightened they really were and she wondered what she could say to comfort them.

At the same time she was trying to decide quickly who could turn out these trespassers.

They had taken possession of an empty house with no one to protect it but two elderly people.

‘I suppose,’ she thought, ‘it would be foolish to believe that something like this could never happen especially after a war.’

Men after risking their lives in fighting for their country had been turned out of the Services without a pension. Even those soldiers who had been wounded or had lost a limb had been granted no compensation.

Her father had been informed of what was happening in the coastal areas.

Sailors who had been dismissed from the Navy roamed the countryside in search of food and demanded money from quite humble householders.

“I can hardly blame them,” Sir Alexander had remarked bitterly. “They won the War, but no one is concerned about them now that there is peace.”

“Surely the Government should do something,” Vanda had suggested hotly.

“They should,” her father had replied, “but then I doubt if they will.”

They had gone on to talk about how the men who had fought came back to find that their jobs had been taken by those who had stayed at home.

Many men in battle were lost altogether and could never be traced

Now that hostilities had ended there was no longer the desperate requirement for food that there had been over the last fifteen years.

And farmers could not now sell their crops in an open market.

Also a great many aristocratic landowners had suffered financially from the War.

They could not employ the large numbers of staff they had been able to do before it began.

Tenants needed their houses repaired, but the landlords did not have the necessary money to spend on doing it.

It was so difficult to know exactly where England could find purchasers of what goods there were available for sale.

‘There must be somebody who could make these men behave,’ Vanda was thinking.

She felt she could hear again the sharpness of the voices and the rough way they spoke in the wood.

But she knew that there were few men available in the village who could stand up to them.