Elizabeth Elgin - Daisychain Summer

‘Of course.’ She hadn’t for a moment imagined he would want to leave Pendenys. ‘But if you don’t come, I shall need someone with me. I shall take a couple of servants.’

‘Take whom you wish, Clemmy.’

She usually did. She considered it cheaper to buy train tickets for them than pay out good money to keep permanent servants there – apart from what they ate and stole in her absence.

‘Yes.’ She intended to. After all, it was she who paid their wages, not her husband.

‘When will you go?’

‘Tomorrow, Edward, I think. I shall take a cook, a housemaid and a footman.’ Sufficient to impress the people next door if they were what she supposed them to be. She would have taken her butler, pompous and arrogant though she thought him, had she imagined for a moment he would agree to go with her. But the Cheyne Walk house was far beneath the man’s dignity. For one thing, its cellars were completely empty of wine and for another, it did not provide him with his own sitting-room and a man in his position, he stressed, whenever London threatened, was entitled to his privacy. A snob, Clementina brooded, who looked down his nose at her; at Mrs Clementina Sutton whose hand fed him. She only put up with him because as butlers went he knew what he was about and she got his expertise cheaply on account of his liking for red wine. They understood each other, she and that butler!

‘I said I would take –’

‘Yes, my dear. Do as you wish. Take Elliot, too.’ Elliot had been on his best behaviour these few weeks past. Soon, his instincts would surface and better they surfaced in London – and under the eye of his mother!

‘You can’t bear to be alone in the house with him, can you?’ she countered tartly. ‘Can’t speak a civil word to your own son …’

‘Clemmy – let us not quarrel over Elliot?’ he sighed. ‘Leave him here at Pendenys, if that’s what you wish.’

She did not reply. Her mind was back at Cheyne Walk and the people next door. Refugees, of course, but what refugees! Not destitute, if what she had heard was to be believed, and real aristocrats, possessed of a title! A daughter, too, and unmarried; strictly chaperoned by the fierce Cossack whenever she ventured out.

She purred inside her, just to think of it. To have what she had been searching for landed next door to her was past belief. Such luck – even if they were Russians. She wouldn’t mind betting they’d got out of St Petersburg with a small fortune sewn into their corsets and the benefit of a London bank account set up long before the shooting of the Czar. Oh, my word, but it was worth looking into. Well worth looking into!

Tom Dwerryhouse checked his pocket watch with the station clock and found they agreed. He was in time. He had sent the pony along at a brisk pace, determined that Julia MacMalcolm should not arrive before him and take the station taxi.

He needed time alone with her to explain the way it had been; thank her for what she had done for him. But mostly he wanted to tell her that he knew about young Drew and that Rowangarth’s secret was safe with him. It was why he had taken time off work and harnessed up the pony and trap provided by his employer for the use of the estate workers – them being so cut off from civilization. The pony and cart could be used by any employee at any time, provided due notice was given to the groom who looked after Ralph Hillier’s hunters.

He had, Tom considered, done very well for himself, all things taken into account. A decent employer, a good house, now that Alice had licked it into shape; a suit of clothes every second year and boots and leggings, an’ all. And by far the most important, he had Alice and Daisy.

Why, then, should Miss Julia’s coming disturb him? Not entirely on account of her being gentry and him being working class nor because he was an army deserter, either, though he wasn’t proud of it nor ever quite free of the fear that one day the Army would arrive to cart him off.

He set his jaw tightly, shaking such thoughts from his head because they were not the cause of his misgivings. The truth of it, he was bound to admit, was that she was coming from Rowangarth; from the place where he and Alice met and where they had expected to end their days. Keeper’s Cottage on the Rowangarth estate had a woodman in it now because these days there was no need of a gamekeeper there; not until young Drew – Sir Andrew – was old enough to handle a shotgun, that was.

Yet that was still not all and if he were honest, he would admit it. Miss Julia would be bringing the north country with her and Tom Dwerryhouse was a son of the north and no matter how well suited he was with the way his life had turned out nor how contented Alice was with her new little bairn and her own hearth, one thing could never be denied. Northern roots did not easily transplant into southern soil. He was surprised Mr Hillier had seen fit to do it, him being a northerner, an’ all. But maybe it was all right for the likes of someone who owned another house in Westmorland and who could take off whenever the fancy took him. Windrush Hall, on the edges of the New Forest, was where it was convenient for Ralph Hillier to live, being close to a port and near enough to London where most of his business deals took place. But whenever his early years tugged on the thread of memory, he need only order his motor to be driven round to the front entrance and he could be away and back to his roots.

It was different for Tom Dwerryhouse who could never return to Rowangarth. For one thing, most folk thereabouts thought him dead, killed in the last year of the war; and to go back there would be to carry hate inside him for a man he might meet at any time. Elliot Sutton lived only a cock-stride from Rowangarth and for Alice’s sake – and for young Sir Andrew’s, too – it were best the two of them should never meet.

A signal fell with a clatter. A porter pushing a trolley and the stationmaster with top hat and green furled flag appeared on the platform. The train, no more than a noiseless speck down the track, would arrive on time. Julia was coming, and bringing their past with her.

She got down from a third-class compartment, lifting a gloved hand to bring the porter hurrying from the far end of the train and the first-class carriage that usually put a sixpenny tip his way.

She had not changed. Everything about her proclaimed her status; her understated air of command, her well-labelled leather suitcases, the way she held her head, even. She was still a Sutton. Not even what she had endured in the war could wipe out her breeding. She saw him, and smiled, and he walked towards her, removing his cap.

‘Tom!’ She held out her hand, her voice low with emotion. ‘It is so good to see you. How long is it?’

‘More’n five years, Miss Julia, and it’s right grand to see you, an’ all.’

They walked unspeaking beside the porter, waiting as he lifted her luggage into the cart.

‘Step up carefully, Miss Julia.’ Tom offered his hand, settling her comfortably, laying a rug over her knees. Then he jerked the reins, calling, ‘Hup!’ and clicking his tongue.

They were well out of the station environs before he said, ‘I want to say I’m sorry about what happened to the doctor, Miss Julia. And I’d like to thank you for being so decent about giving me a reference. It got me the job, though I’d have understood if you’d have wanted no truck with a deserter, after all you’d been through.’

‘Alice gave you the reference, Tom …’

‘Aye, but written in your hand, Miss, and it was you signed Alice’s name to it. I’m grateful.’

‘Then don’t be. Any man who had the guts to desert that war has my understanding. And Tom, there’s one thing I’d like to say to you. You must not call me Miss Julia. Not only am I Mrs MacMalcolm, now, but I am also a guest in your house. Alice calls me Julia – I would like you to do it, as well.’