Elizabeth Elgin - The Linden Walk

‘Don’t know, Tatty. All I know is she goes all pofaced about him. Lady, too. I’ve learned to keep off the subject.’

‘Well, I’ve found out, Drew, but keep it to yourself, mind. Uncle Igor told me, swore me to secrecy, though. I got quite close to him. Used to visit at Cheyne Walk when he was there alone living in the basement, and the Petrovska here at Denniston because of the bombing on London. And I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned bombs on London.’

‘Tatty, bombs did drop on London. Nothing’s going to change that. But are you sure you want to tell me?’

‘I’m sure. Quite simply, my father was a womanizer. He didn’t love my mother but she had a title. Countess, actually, which meant very little in Russia and still less when you are a penniless White Russian refugee. But he married her to please his mother because she was a bloody snob and wanted a title in the family, and was desperate for a grandson. Grandmother Clementina thought her money could buy anything. I think had my little brother not been stillborn, my father could have gone his own sweet way with his mother’s blessing and his pockets lined with cash.

‘But my father overstepped the mark. Whilst Mother was pregnant he seduced a housemaid, here at Denniston. She was very beautiful, I believe. Spoke no English. Natasha Yurovska. She came with them to England when the Communists took over in Russia.’

‘So what happened to her?’ Drew felt bound to ask.

‘When my brother was stillborn I was told that the Petrovska and Uncle Igor took my mother and the housemaid back to London; both of them away from my father. I don’t know what became of the girl. It was all hushed up, the Petrovska saw to that. Had to be. Natasha Yurovska was pregnant.’

‘And does my mother know this, Tatty?’

‘About Natasha? I don’t know, but I don’t think that’s why she hates him. I reckon Uncle Nathan knows, though. Mother was once deeply religious – used him as her confessor I believe, but priests never say anything.’

‘And are you thinking what I am thinking …?’

‘That I have a brother or a sister – well, half so. It was one of the good things about finding out about my father, but I shan’t try to find him – or her. Needles in haystacks, and that sort of thing. But somewhere out there, someone belongs to me. I’ve asked my mother but she told me she didn’t know when or where Natasha Yurovska’s baby was born. Nobody would tell her. I sometimes think that even Uncle Igor wasn’t told. The Petrovska refused to say. But this is neither the time nor the place to lay souls bare. I’m sorry, Drew. I shouldn’t have gone on about it, especially when you are so happy – and me, too. We should forget about my father. He’s gone, and we shall talk about weddings and about being happy – and that it’s all right if sometimes we mention Tim and Kitty because people can love twice, but differently. Uncle Nathan and Aunt Julia are living proof of that.’

‘Well, it’s your turn first, Tatty. Are you excited?’

‘N-no. Not starry-eyed, breathlessly excited. More a warm sort of contentment and having someone at long last I can trust and who will always be there for me. And of course, it’ll be good going to bed with him,’ she said without so much as the blinking of an eyelid. ‘With Tim it was a kind of snatched, there’s-no-tomorrow loving. Things are different, now the war is over. We can plan ahead; have kids. And kids I said. Not an only child, fussed over by its mother and not wanted by its father. How many will you and Lyn have, Drew?’

‘Haven’t a clue.’ He laughed, disarmed by her frankness. ‘Lyn wants children, though. She told me so.’

‘Good. That’s settled, then. And you are both to come to my wedding. It’ll be the week before Christmas. No formal invitations, or anything. That okay?’

‘Accepted soon as asked. There’s Bill, crossing the yard.’

‘Mm. He’s an old love. Doesn’t want to sleep with me before we are married on account of someone getting his mother pregnant then shoving off and leaving her. Very puritanical, in some ways. So I told him that that being the case, he could stay in his studio over the stables till the wedding. He’ll be wanting a hot drink. Let’s go to the kitchen. Karl will have the kettle on the boil. And forgive me for blethering on, Drew, but I’m very happy this morning. Suddenly, it’s all happening for the Suttons.’

‘The young Suttons. For the Clan.’

And they smiled into each other’s eyes, because they understood each other and the way things were for them. And that it was going to be fine.

Lyn Carmichael sighed and laid down her pen. Already she had sent a cable to Kenya then bemused, still, had taken her place behind the hotel reception desk without a word to a soul. But it would all seem right when she had written to her parents, she told herself; had written it word for word so she could read it out loud and know it really had happened.

She sighed again, wriggled herself comfortable in Auntie Blod’s sagging old chair that stood beside Auntie Blod’s fireplace in the cottage she had left two years ago. And now that thick-walled little house was Lyn Carmichael’s, or would be in eleven years’ time, when she had paid off the mortgage. Four hundred pounds she had paid for it and nothing in it had changed, except that with the war over it had been wired for electricity. So she had stored away her oil lamps and promptly put her name on waiting lists for everything and anything that would plug in. A vacuum cleaner, a cooker, a toaster, a fridge and – there was posh! – a washing machine. And this far, she had been able to buy nothing to plug in, though she was climbing the lists nicely, she was assured, when every once in a while she checked.

Yet soon she would have no need of such things. Soon, by summer probably, she would live at Rowangarth; have no need for the little four-roomed cottage. And that would be a pity, because she loved the safe, warm little house.

How many rooms at Rowangarth? She had no idea. Fourteen bedrooms, she thought, if you counted the attics. And loads of bathrooms. More than three hundred years of Sutton history, too. Being a Sutton was going to take a bit of living up to. Kitty would have taken it in her stride, because she had been born a Sutton; been used to living in a big house and having money. Loads of it and even more when Clementina Sutton, who once lived at Pendenys Place, died. Apart from Denniston, half her fortune had gone to Kitty’s father, Albert; the other half to Nathan, parish priest of All Souls and married to Julia. Happily married.

Lyn longed to hear from Drew. Pity there was no phone, here. Auntie Blod had never bothered, so that was something else Lyn was on a waiting list for. Not that it mattered much now, and Drew might ring her at work tomorrow if he could remember which duty she was on. She hoped he would. Just to hear him say, ‘Hi, Lyn,’ might rid her of the peculiar feeling of being suspended between delight and disbelief, because being engaged to Drew Sutton took a bit of getting used to. She had been sure enough about things this morning when they had kissed goodbye at York station. She had closed her eyes and clung to him and not cared at all who saw them. His lips had been warm, his kiss firm and lingering. It had been all right this morning, yet now she was alone, and desperately longing for bed.

Yet first she must finish her letter – the most important one, she supposed, she had ever written – and seal it in the pale blue airmail envelope ready to take to the post office to be stamped and sent flying on its way.

So having picked yourselves up from the floor, isn’t it the most marvellous news? Drew asked me to marry him and of course I said yes. Everyone was wonderful about it, Daisy most of all. I am to wear her beautiful wedding dress and be married at All Souls by Drew’s Uncle Nathan. Sometime in the summer, I think it will be, with you to give me away, Dad. I can’t wait for you both to see Rowangarth and as soon as we have fixed a date, you must put a big red ring around it on your calendar.