would she!
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered to the empty room. ‘So sorry, Tom …’
He did not return until it was dark; long after she had lit the lamps and given Daisy her evening feed.
She sat beside the hearth, rocking the chair back and forth, worrying, waiting, and he came as quietly and suddenly as he left, his face pale, still, yet with contrition in his eyes.
‘I’m sorry, lass,’ he said, his voice rough with remorse. ‘It was none of it your fault. You did what you had to do – what was best for all concerned. It was just that it was too much to take – him, having touched you.’
‘Where have you been?’ She rose slowly to her feet, wanting him to take her in his arms and not stand in the doorway, putting the length of the room between them.
‘Walking. Just walking. I must have covered the entire boundary of the estate. And I was thinking, Alice; thinking how much I hate that man. I was even hoping to meet him around the next corner, because I wanted to kill him; beat the life out of him …’
‘It was all my fault.’ Tears trembled on Alice’s whispered words. ‘I could think of nothing else but to tell you. I didn’t want you to think wrong of me for seeming to forget you so soon after I’d heard you’d been killed; didn’t want you to think I could love any man but you, much less get a child with him. And I didn’t want you to think I was so unfeeling that I could desert a child to come to you. I knew all the time I ought to have loved him, but I couldn’t, even though he was born Sutton fair, and not dark, like – like him. I couldn’t have borne it if Drew had fathered himself.’
‘So the little lad is fair?’
‘He is, thanks be. To my way of thinking, he looked like his grandfather – his real grandfather, Mr Edward Sutton – but Julia could only see Andrew in him, because that was what she wanted to see, and Lady Helen swore he’d come in Sir John’s likeness. But no one could say, or even think, that he looked like Elliot Sutton. It was the one good thing in all the sad and sorry mess.’
‘Then I’m glad about that. No child deserves to be saddled with such a father.’
‘His father was Giles Sutton and never for a minute forget it, Tom. Am I forgiven?’
He smiled, unspeaking, and opened wide his arms as he’d done when they were courting, and she ran to him as though she were seventeen again, clasping her arms around his waist, resting her head on his chest.
‘I love you, Tom – let’s never speak of it again?’
‘Not ever, bonny lass. But I’ll never forgive that man for what he did. I swore, out there, that if I could ever do him harm, I would – will – if ever I get the chance. I killed finer Germans than him …’
‘Then it’s a good thing you’re never likely to set eyes on him again. Y’know, Tom, I used, in my dreamings, to think of you and me living in Brattocks Wood in Keeper’s Cottage, and Julia and Andrew not far away and Reuben nicely settled in his almshouse. I’d think of it when things got bad, in France.
‘But Julia’s husband was killed and I thought I’d lost you, yet it was meant to be, my darling. Fate landed you and me here, miles and miles away, and I’m glad. Up there, I’d be scared half out of my mind that you and him would meet.’
‘Happen you are right.’ He unclasped her clinging arms, standing a little away from her, cupping her face in his hands.
‘I love you, my Alice. I never stopped loving you, even when I thought I’d lost you. The past is over and done with, I promise it is.’
‘Happy anniversary, Tom.’
Yet even as they kissed passionately, kissed as if there was to be no tomorrow, she knew he would never completely forget; that his hatred for Elliot Sutton would fester inside him and that if ever he could do him harm, he would.
Without so much as the batting of an eyelid.
Helen, Lady Sutton closed the door behind her, then let go a gasp of annoyance.
‘The fool! The smug, unfeeling fool! I am so angry!’
‘Oh, dear.’ Julia MacMalcolm kissed her mother’s flushed cheek. ‘Why don’t you sit down and tell me what happened at the meeting to make you so very cross.’
‘That vicar! I don’t know how I kept hold of my temper!’
‘Don’t let him upset you. He’s only a locum. He’ll be gone when Luke Parkin is fit again.’
‘But Luke won’t get well and we all know it, Julia. Six months, at the most,’ she whispered bitterly.
All the men she could once rely on, lean upon – all dead, her husband, her sons, her son-in-law; bluff, brusque Judge Mounteagle and soon, Luke Parkin. That ugly war – how dare they call it the Great War – had taken so many young men and now the older ones, weakened by four years of too much responsibility and too little consideration and overburdened with the worry of it, were themselves falling victims to its aftermath.
‘Sssh. Just tell me?’
‘We-e-ll, it was the usual parish meeting – or should have been. I knew they’d be talking about the war memorial; I was happy about that.’ She had promised any piece of land the parish saw fit to choose so the war dead of Holdenby should be remembered. ‘But to suggest a German field gun should stand beside it!’
‘A what!’ Julia flushed scarlet. ‘Whose damn-fool idea was that?’
‘Our temporary vicar’s! He said that any city or town – Holdenby, even – could claim a German gun as spoils of war and wouldn’t it be a splendid thought to have one here and site it beside the war memorial? So I said that upon further consideration, I wasn’t at all sure that I could offer that piece of land – leastways, not if an enemy gun was to stand on it. Indeed, I said, if anyone was thoughtless enough to bring one here, I would hope to see the wretched thing rolled down the hill and into the river! That’s what I said!’
‘And then you swep’ out! Good for you, mother! How could he even think such a thing?’
‘How indeed, when not one household in Holdenby came through that war without loss. The last thing they want to see is a German gun. Julia – did we really win? It makes me wonder when I see heroes with no work to go to; men with a leg or an arm missing, begging on street corners. Half our youth never to come home again and oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to remind you.’
‘You didn’t, because I don’t need reminding. And I’m glad you put him in his place. If Luke retires, I hope that vicar doesn’t get ideas about getting the living for himself. When the time comes for a new parish priest, I think it should be Nathan. I’d like to have him here. He’ll be back from the African mission, soon – and who better?’
‘I agree, and since Rowangarth will have some say in the matter, perhaps we can help him. Nathan saw service as an army chaplain – he’d be a popular choice, hereabouts. But this is not the time to talk
