Anne Bennett - If You Were the Only Girl

‘He hasn’t,’ Lucy protested. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, look how he was just before Christmas,’ Clodagh said. ‘Calling you by your full name and all.’

‘Yeah,’ Evie added. ‘And he watches you all the time and smiles at you a lot.’

‘He smiles at everyone,’ Lucy said. ‘He’s just a smiley person.’

‘No,’ Evie said. ‘He definitely has a soft spot for you.’

Lucy blushed and Clodagh said, ‘Don’t worry about it, Lucy. The gentry don’t usually bother with the likes of us and our Master Clive will probably be just the same when he has grown up a bit. Just now you probably amuse him because you are so small for your age.’

The girls weren’t the only ones to notice Clive’s attention to Lucy, for he visited the kitchen at least once a day and he always had some word to say on a teasing note to Lucy in particular. She was well aware that Mr Carlisle didn’t like special notice taken of a girl on the bottom rung of the ladder, but she didn’t see what she could do to stop him. If she was honest she didn’t want to stop him because he disturbed her in a way no man or boy had ever done before – not that she’d had that much experience in that department. But with Master Clive she only had to see him, or hear his voice, and she would start to tingle all over.

There were no festivities planned for New Year. Rory told them that though Lord Heatherington had enjoyed the visit of the Mattersons and the Farandykes, he had been exhausted after their departure. In deference to that, the staff’s own celebrations for the coming of 1936 were muted. As for Lucy, she was quite dispirited because the harsh winter weather that held the North of Ireland in such an iron grip meant that she was unable to go home in January when the rails were too coated with ice for the rail buses to run. She was especially disappointed because as well as her wages she had the five shillings that Clara had given to her on Christmas Day, and she had thought at the time that she would use it to buy some little things for all of them in Letterkenny, but the weather had been too bad to allow her to go there either.

She was thinking about this one day in early January as she scrubbed the steps up to the front door when she was startled as the door suddenly opened and Clive stood there, illuminated in the threshold for a moment. He was dressed in riding gear and appeared annoyed to see her on her hands and knees scrubbing away.

He knew that she must have started before it was light because the black winter’s night was only just turning into the gloom of a grey pearly winter dawn. It was also so cold that whispery breath escaped from his mouth as he said, ‘Lucy why don’t you go inside, now? They say it will snow later, which is why I want to get my ride in early, so all your work will be in vain, and what’s more it’s bitterly cold.’

‘It’s all right, sir,’ Lucy said. ‘I’m used to it.’ She spoke the truth and just then she wasn’t cold, for the proximity of Clive Heatherington had caused the heat to flow through her body in a very odd way.

Her words, though, seemed to irritate Clive. ‘This is nonsense,’ he said as he took her elbow to encourage her to her feet. ‘Get inside, little Lucy. Whatever you say it is far too cold for you to be out like this. If anyone complains tell them to come to me.’ Their eyes suddenly met and it was as if they locked together. Lucy was unable to tear her gaze away and then, without any warning, Clive bent his head and kissed her cheek.

She gasped and put her hand to the place he had kissed, which seemed to burn under her fingers as he bounded down the rest of the steps. She returned to the house in a sort of daze as she recalled his eyes so intense and deep blue that she’d felt as if she were drowning in them. She knew she would tell no one of the encounter. She wanted that memory all to herself.

When he came into the kitchen later that day, though, Lucy was at first very embarrassed, but Master Clive was just as normal so she was soon as relaxed as much as she ever was when he was around. Not that he was around much longer, because just a few days later he returned to school. Lucy knew it would be a duller kitchen without the possibility of Master Clive’s visits.

Adding to the despondency of them all was the snow. It began in earnest the day that Clive left and fell so thickly that the Lodge was virtually cut off.

‘I know we always have snow, but I can never remember it like this,’ Clara said to Lucy one day when the snow reached halfway to the windowsills.

It was the evening before Lucy should have seen her family in Mountcharles, but no one had been able to leave the grounds. Though the gardener had made valiant attempts to clear the drives, as soon as he had, the unrelenting snow covered them again.

‘I’ve never seen it this bad either,’ Lucy said to Clara. ‘But I had never been as far as Letterkenny before.’

Clara nodded. ‘You’re right, of course, and yet I should have given it some thought, for we are quite a lot further north. Do you mind very much?’

Lucy did mind, but she reasoned it was no good saying that to Clara, for she could hardly do anything about it. ‘Well, it’s not just me, is it?’ she said. ‘Clodagh and Evie can’t go home either.’

‘It is good too to see that you are being so mature about this,’ Clara replied. ‘And I am glad to see that you get on so well with the other two girls. It is what you needed, friends of more or less your age.’

Even royalty, it seemed, was not immune to the rigours and dangers of the extreme cold, and the English King George died on 20 January. It was reported on the wireless and Rory told them all about it as they sat having their evening meal.

‘So his son Edward will be the new king, then?’ Clara said, wrinkling her nose in disapproval.

Rory shrugged. ‘Seems so.’

Lucy had seen the expression on Clara’s face. ‘Don’t you want this Edward to be king?’ she asked, wondering why she or any other ordinary person should care who was on the throne, because it would hardly change their lives in any way.

‘He likes the Germans too much,’ Clara said.

‘Yeah, and a murdering lot of buggers they are.’

‘Mrs Murphy!’ Mr Carlisle exclaimed outraged.

Cook gave a defiant toss of her head as she went on, ‘You can say what you like and be as shocked as you like as well, but I’ll say it again, the Germans are buggers and murdering buggers into the bargain. Look what they have done to this family. Three sons, they’ve lost, and if that isn’t enough to make someone swear then I don’t know what is.’

‘That’s not the point—’ Mr Carlisle began primly.

But Cook cut him off: ‘Oh, yes, it is exactly the bloody point, Mr Carlisle, and I don’t want a king of this country to be friends with a nation that started a war that stripped England of thousands and thousands of fit young men.’

‘She’s right,’ Norah said. ‘Madame said something similar. And then there’s that Wallis Simpson that Edward is always seen with.’

‘Who’s she?’ Lucy asked.

‘Some American heiress,’ Norah said, ‘and a divorcee, into the bargain.’

‘Well, he will have to give her up if he is to take up the crown,’ Clara said. ‘We could hardly have a divorced American called Queen Wallis sharing it, can we now?’

The three young girls giggled, for it was just too ridiculous, but there was no time to talk further then because Cook had jobs for them all. The topic of the succession didn’t go away, and as time passed it seemed the staff at Windthorpe Lodge were not the only ones to be concerned, especially as the new king continued his association with Wallis Simpson, who seemed to like the Germans even more than he did.