Elizabeth Elgin - Where Bluebells Chime

But this dizzy-making feeling could not be a part of duty but a need, and to have children with Tim would be a shivering delight. And why in the sanctimonious privacy of a bedroom? Why not here on the wide hilltop with the sun to bless them and little scuds of cloud to see them, then float by uncaring.

‘Penny for them?’

‘A penny won’t buy them, Tim.’ They had, to her reluctant relief, begun to walk again. ‘I’ll tell you if you want, but you mightn’t like it.’

‘Try me.’

‘Remember I once said I thought I was falling in love with you?’

‘Aye. You said it in Russian.’

‘Well, I don’t think any more.’ She took a deep, steadying breath. ‘I know I’m in love with you.’ She looked down at the grass at her feet, cheeks blazing.

‘Then that makes two of us. What are we going to do about it?’

‘I can’t marry you, Tim. My family wouldn’t let me.’

‘Because I’m a Scottish peasant, a Keir Hardie man, and you are landed gentry?’

‘No, darling, no !’ She wanted him to kiss her again but he walked on, chin high. ‘All right – my mother was a countess, but countesses were two a penny in St Petersburg. And the Petrovskys aren’t rich. The Bolsheviks took almost all they owned. What Mother and I have is because of the Suttons. It’s their charity we live on!’

‘Charity! You live in a big house with servants!’

‘Only Karl, now, and Cook, and Maggie who comes twice a week. And Cook might have to do war work in a factory canteen, she says.’

‘Aye, well, my mother works in a factory and glad of it, and my father works in the shipyards – unemployed for years till the war started – so I suppose that rules out marriage. And let’s face it, your Grandmother Petrovska wouldn’t take kindly to one of her enemies marrying into the family.’

‘You’re a Bolshevik?’ He couldn’t be!

‘They call us Communists, now. And I’m not red. Just nicely pink around the edges. Before the war I wanted to go into politics – Labour, of course – try to help my own kind, because there are only two classes in this life, Tatiana: those who have and those who have not.’

‘Then why do you love me when you despise my kind of people?’ She was angry, now. Any minute she would round on him in Karl’s earthy Russian.

‘I don’t know, God help me. But I do love you, Tatiana Sutton and I want you like I’ve never wanted a woman in my life.’

‘And I think I want you, Tim. When you touch me and kiss me something goes boing inside me and I think how lovely it would be to make a baby with you.’

They had stopped walking again and she stepped away from him because all at once she knew that if he held her close, laid his mouth on hers, there would be no crying, ‘No, Tim!’ because she wouldn’t want to say it.

‘Make a baby! Are you mad? I could get killed any night and then where would you be?’

‘Pregnant and alone, I suppose, and people would call me a tart.’

‘And would you care?’

‘Only that you were dead,’ she said softly, sadly. ‘But it doesn’t arise because I wouldn’t know what to do. I’ve never done it before …’

The pulsating need between them had passed now. They linked little fingers and began their upward climb and she didn’t know whether to be sad or glad.

‘I’d teach you, henny. And there wouldn’t be any babies. No mistakes – I’d see to that. They tell you how to keep your nose clean in the RAF – if you don’t already know, that is.’

‘So you know how?’ She felt mildly cheated. ‘You’ve made love before, Tim?’

‘Aye. It was offered, so I took it. It wasn’t lovemaking though, because I didn’t love her. It would be different with you, sweetheart. We’d be special together.’

‘We wouldn’t. I’d spoil it thinking about Grandmother Petrovska.’

‘Not when I make love to you you won’t!’

They scuffed the lately flowering heather as they walked, not looking at each other.

‘So shall we, Tim …?’

‘Aye. When the mood is on us. It doesn’t happen to order, you know – leastways not for a man.’

‘And will I know when?’

‘Oh, my lovely love – you’ll know when.’ He threw back his head and laughed. ‘Darling lassie, we’ll both know.’

‘There, now.’ Catchpole straightened up, hands in the small of his back. ‘That’s them seen to. Plenty for the house and for me and Lily, and two score extra for the vegetable man. Just got them in in nice time for the rain.’

‘But how do you know it’s going to rain?’

‘A gardener alus knows, Gracie. Don’t need no newspapers nor men on the wireless to tell me what the weather’s going to be like. A drop of nice steady rain towards nightfall and them sprouts’ll be standing up straight as little soldiers in the morning. You’ll learn, lass.’

‘I hope so, Mr C. I like being here.’ She liked everything about being a land girl except being away from Mam and Dad and Grandad. ‘I had a letter from Drew this morning. He said he’d write, but I never expected him to.’

‘Why not? Drew don’t say things he don’t mean.’

‘I’m sure he doesn’t, but he’s a sir, and I come from mill folk.’

‘He’s a sailor and you’m a friend and sailors like getting letters. You write back to him and tell him about the garden and what we’re doing, so he can see it all as if it was real.’

‘But he didn’t give me an address. He just put Somewhere in England and the date, because he’s expecting to be sent to a ship, he says.’

‘Then he’ll send it later, or you can get it from Daisy Dwerryhouse. She’ll have it, that’s for sure, her being related.’

‘Mmm. I know she’s his half-sister, but how come?’ Gracie concentrated on wiping clean her fork and spade before putting them away; one of Mr Catchpole’s ten commandments. ‘What I mean is – well, I know Mrs Dwerryhouse is Drew’s real mother, but she’s the gamekeeper’s wife now, and you’d think the gentry wouldn’t be so friendly with their servants – and I don’t mean that in a snobby way,’ she hastened.

‘I know you didn’t, lass. And to someone as don’t know the history of the Suttons – both families – it might seem a bit peculiar. But Daisy’s mam came to Rowangarth a bit of a lass nigh on thirty years ago. Worked as a housemaid till they realized she’d a talent with a needle and thread, and so made her sewing-maid.’

He rinsed his hands at the standtap then dried them on a piece of sacking with irritating slowness.

‘And then, Mr Catchpole?’

‘Well, one summer – before the Great War it was – Miss Julia went to London to stay at her Aunt Anne Lavinia’s house. A maiden lady, Miss Anne Lavinia Sutton was and alus popping over to France, so her ladyship sent Alice with Miss Julia – Alice Hawthorn her was then. In them days, a young lady couldn’t go out alone, not even to the shops. Alice was a sort of – of …’

‘Chaperon?’

‘That’s the word! Any road, Alice went as chaperon and to see to Miss Julia’s clothes and things, and there was all sorts of talk below stairs when the two of them got back. For one thing, they’d got themselves into a fight with London bobbies and for another, Miss Julia had met a young man and them not introduced neither.’

‘So Daisy’s mam wasn’t very good at chaperoning?’

‘Nay. Nothing like that. Miss Julia had fallen real hard for that young man and her mind was made up. Headstrong she’s always been and not ten chaperons could have done much about it. A doctor that young man was, name of MacMalcolm. Was him seen to her when she got knocked out in the fight. That was the start of it.’