Читать книгу Daisychain Summer - Elizabeth Elgin - Страница 6

1920

She should have told him long before this. When she held their firstborn in her arms she had said it would be, yet that baby was four weeks old now, and still he did not know. Nor had he asked. It was as if he had pushed that part of her life behind him; locked it in a small, secret corner of his mind, never to be spoken of again.

‘Whatever it was,’ Tom had said, ‘is in the past. It’s you I want, Alice. Just you.’ And in that moment she had known that one day she would tell him the truth of it, explain how it had been so he might understand – and forgive.

‘Very well, if you choose not to know. But since you are taking me on trust, I’ll make you a promise, Tom. The day I hold our firstborn in my arms, then you shall know – every last word of it …’

Yet was this really the right day on which to tell him? Why not yesterday, or tomorrow? Why today, the first anniversary of their wedding?

She dropped to her knees beside the cot. She spent so much time just gazing at her daughter, trying to believe the wonder of her birth, the ease of it and the joy. And Tom, eyes moist, holding her close, telling her how happy he was.

‘She’s so beautiful, so perfect.’ The tiny fingers had twined around his own and claimed his heart. ‘I thought newborn bairns were – well …’

‘Ordinary?’ she smiled. ‘They are. Every one of them. Pink and puckered, or looking as if they’ve been in a fist fight. But there’s one exception – your own. They are always born beautiful, and perfect.’

‘I love you,’ he’d said, huskily, and she knew that when the midwife came to shoo him from the room he would go to his hut, and weep. Tom was like that. Hard on the outside and given to sudden anger, yet soft and gentle inside.

‘And might a man be told his daughter’s name?’ Alice should choose, he’d always said, if they had a little lass.

‘Daisy Julia Dwerryhouse,’ she announced promptly.

‘Daisy Dwerryhouse.’ He liked the name, truth known. ‘And Julia for –?’

‘For my best friend – her godmother.’

‘You’ve asked her?’

‘No, but she’ll come. She didn’t get to our wedding. I want her here, for the christening.’

That had been when the midwife bustled in, bearing a cup of sweetened gruel, announcing that the new mother needed to sleep and that he could come up, later, and see them again.

Alice lifted the sleeping child, kissing her as she laid her in her pram, raising the hood against the bright August sunlight. She had wanted to buy the magnificent perambulator long before Daisy was born, but no! she had been told. Didn’t she know it was bad luck to have the pram in the house before the babe – the first babe, that was?

So Alice had chosen a model in shiny black, with large wheels and the body suspended on leather straps and paid a deposit on it, explaining that it wasn’t convenient, yet, to have it delivered, and so flushed with excitement had she been that the awfulness of it only struck her on the way home.

Five guineas, the pram would cost, to be paid for with her own money; her private money Tom didn’t know about – money Giles had given to her. Sir Giles Sutton, Julia’s brother, who died not of war wounds, but because of them; a stretcher bearer and the bravest of the brave. Giles, whose name reminded her that today she must tell Tom what she should have told him before they were married, yet had bitten back the words because she hadn’t wanted her secret to lie between them on their wedding night.

She gazed at her child, a small smile lifting the corners of her mouth. Beautiful, her little one, with eyes blue as Tom’s and a newly-grown haze of hair that promised she would be as fair as he was. And did you ever see such a mouth; pink as a rosebud, puckering into little sucking movements as she slept.

Reluctantly, Alice turned away. She had a man to feed and a cake to ice for the christening, Sunday week. It might have been nice, she thought, taking the cake from its tin, sniffing its richness, if the christening could have been tomorrow; the date on which they were married. But she wanted Julia to stand godmother and a christening on a wedding anniversary might seem they were flaunting their happiness in the face of a woman whose husband had not come back from the war.

Julia did not travel south for their wedding. Alice had forbidden it. I love you dearly, she wrote, but my joy would be your sadness. Come instead when our babe is christened – if the good Lord grants us one quickly –

Hastily, she rewrapped the cake, glad that food rationing was over. Eighteen months after the Armistice the very last commodity was de-rationed. Sugar, it had been, and many the housewife who spent the whole day baking cakes the likes of which had not been seen for five years. And with sugar on sale to all again, they could really put the war behind them – or try to, though with some the scars were slow to heal.

She glanced through the window, smiling. The man who stood beside the pram never passed the gamekeeper’s cottage without stopping. Tom’s employer had been besotted by Daisy before she was a week old. ‘She is exquisite,’ he’d said as Daisy Dwerryhouse fixed him with her eyes, and since then Mr Hillier called often to peer into the pram and smile his pleasure. Once, he had held her, then passed her quickly back, shaking his head sadly.

‘Foolish of me not to marry and have children of my own, Mrs Dwerryhouse. Too busy making my way in the world,’ he’d whispered shakily, making for the door.

Ralph Hillier. So rich that folk hereabouts said his pocket was bottomless. Poor, lonely man. Alice welcomed him with a smile.

‘Good morning, sir.’ She bobbed a curtsey. Not being servile, but mindful of her position and Mr Hillier’s position and to put their strange friendship onto its proper footing. To remind herself, too, that he owned the house in which they lived and paid her husband’s weekly wage. ‘She’s asleep – again.’

‘No matter. The vicar tells me she is to be christened next Sunday. Would you think me presumptuous if I gave her a small gift?’

‘Why, not at all! Thank you for your kind thought.’

‘Hmm.’ He liked his gamekeeper’s wife. There was a dignity about her he couldn’t fathom; that, and her way of speaking that lifted her above her class. ‘Daisy Julia, isn’t it to be?’ he asked, seeing in his mind’s eye the name and date inscribed on the silver christening mug he had already ordered from a Bond Street jeweller.

He left, smiling almost shyly, raising his hat, thanking her, and she stood at the door until he reached the garden gate, nodding her head deferentially.

Poor soul. Alone in that great house. Pity he couldn’t marry some war widow with children of her own; heaven only knew there were plenty of them around, Alice frowned.

She looked at the watch pinned to her apron; the one she had looked at so often when nursing, in France. Tom would be home soon for his dinner; would arrive promptly at noon because that had been the time of their wedding. They were given no choice. There was to be a service of thanksgiving in the church at two, followed by sports for the children and a splendid tea for all, the vicar had said. She and Tom had chosen to marry, though they hadn’t known it at the time, on the day the entire British Empire was to celebrate the victory of the Great War – and another reason, she had conceded, for not asking Julia to be there.

Alice raked the fire, then pulled out the damper to redden the coals, placing the vegetables on the hob to simmer. Last year, just about this time, she had been brushing her hair, twisting it into a knot, tilting her rose-trimmed hat this way and that before she was satisfied enough with its angle to secure it with a hatpin. A bride in waiting, ready to walk to the church, yet one year on she was a wife and mother, fervently grateful for something she thought she had lost for ever. Blessings she had in plenty – and a secret, still to be told. It hung over her like a confession unwilling to be made, because the penance might be more than she could accept.

Tom came home one minute before noon, dipping into his gamebag, telling her to close her eyes. She knew what he had brought her, had hoped he would remember.

‘Just to let you know I haven’t forgotten,’ he smiled, giving her the flowers, tilting her chin to lay his lips gently against hers.

He had brought her buttercups, the flower so special between them. He had picked one and held it beneath her chin, so long ago. Seven years, if you counted.

‘You’re my girl, aren’t you, Alice – my buttercup girl,’ he’d whispered, kissing her for the first time.

‘Alice?’ His voice invaded her thoughts. ‘You were miles away, lass.’

‘No, love – years away.’ She felt her cheeks pinking. ‘I was remembering when you first gave me buttercups. And I know I shouldn’t be thinking back – not today, especially – but there’s something I want to tell you, Tom; something I promised more than a year ago.’

‘To love, honour and obey?’ he teased.

‘No. Something else I promised and I’ve made up my mind to tell you, today.’

‘And what if I don’t want to know?’

‘You must know, Tom. For both our sakes. What I did – it wasn’t what you thought …’

‘How do you – did you – know what I thought?’

‘Because I saw betrayal in your eyes, and it wasn’t like that.’

‘I still don’t want to know, Alice.’

‘And I still want to tell you. When I held our firstborn, I said it would be.’

‘Sweetheart.’ He reached for her, holding her tightly. ‘This has been the best year of my life – don’t spoil it?’

‘But you’ve got to know about the child, Tom – how it really was.’

‘You call him the child, always. He’s Drew, Miss Julia’s son, now. He’s a Sutton.’

‘Yes.’ Oh, he was a Sutton, all right! ‘But Tom, will you let me tell you? Not meaning to hurt you, but won’t you hear me out? I love you so much, you see, that I can’t bear to have this thing hanging over us.’

‘All right, then. We’ll talk about it tonight – there’ll be no pleasing you, until we do. When Daisy is in her cot, we’ll talk about it.’ He nodded towards the mantel clock, smiling. ‘And round about now, a year ago, you were saying, I will – so what have you to say to me?’

‘I love you, Tom Dwerryhouse; so much that it’s like a pain inside me, sometimes. I love you so much that I’ve got to tell you.’

‘And I love you so much, wife darling, that I’ll listen – but later. So does a man get a kiss, and his dinner, then?’

They sat either side of the fire, Tom with a mug of ale, Alice twisting the stem of a wedding present glass, gazing down at the last of the Christmas sherry.

‘Happy anniversary, lass. Thank you for Daisy and for the twelve-month past. It’s been good, but I don’t have to tell you that, do I?’

‘I know it. But will you love me as much when I’ve told you?’

‘Dammit, woman!’ He hit his knee with his hand. ‘Can’t you let sleeping dogs lie?’

‘You said that tonight you’d listen …’

She rose to kneel at his feet, her hand on his knees, remembering the quickness of his temper, the highs and lows of his emotions. ‘It has always bothered me, Tom, that you thought I married so soon after your death – after they told me you’d been killed, I mean.’

‘Aye – and I’ll admit it bothered me, an’ all. When the war ended – when I got back to England – I came to Rowangarth, looking for you. I thought you’d have waited. Even though you thought me dead, I’d never have imagined that so soon after, you’d take another man to your –’

‘To my bed?’ she interrupted, sharply. ‘Make a child with him?’

‘Since you put it that way – yes.’ He winced at the directness of her words. ‘But Alice love, must we rake up the past? It’s you and me, now, and Daisy. That war is over, and best forgotten and all the misery it caused.’

‘I was in France, too, don’t forget. I saw the degradation of men treated no better than animals. But it can’t be forgotten until what it did to you and me is brought into the open, Tom.’

‘You’re set on me knowing, aren’t you? Even if you hurt me?’

‘You won’t be hurt – angry, more like. Reuben knew about it, and Julia. And Nathan Sutton, an’ all. They’ll bear out my story.’

‘Seems the world and his wife knew; everyone but Tom Dwerryhouse. When you walked in on me that day at Reuben’s house – why didn’t you tell me, then?’

‘When I’d just seen a ghost? When you were standing there, back from the dead? And you didn’t help any, Tom. You turned away from me as if I were beneath contempt – tipped your cap to me and called me milady. You knew how to hurt!’

‘I’d come looking for you. I couldn’t go to Rowangarth; I was dead – or so the Army had told my folks.’

‘I understand that, and that you were a deserter. You had to be careful, or they could have had you shot.’

‘Not any more. The war was over, by then. They’d have put me in prison, though – still could …’

‘There’ll be an amnesty for you, soon – for all deserters. The newspapers say so.’

‘Happen. But we are talking about now, and about you and me. I went to Reuben’s house. I thought he’d get word to you that I was back. I couldn’t wait to see you, touch you …’

‘And instead he told you I was married and had a child; that I was Lady Sutton, newly widowed.’

‘Something like that. It was as if he’d slammed a fist into my face. You wedded and bedded and though your being a widow made you your own woman again, I knew you’d never leave your son and come away with me, even if you still loved me – and it seemed you didn’t.’

‘But I did leave my son. I left him with Julia and her ladyship because Rowangarth was where he belonged – his inheritance. And I followed you here, Tom, wanting to tell you the truth of it, even then.

‘You’ve said I never use my son’s name – always call him the child – and you are right. I had little to do with him – I was ill after he was born. I wanted to die. I tried to. I’d been nursing Giles, you see. He died in the ’flu epidemic’

‘Died of it – like my mother did.’

‘Just as she did, Tom.’ She rose to her feet, backing away from him, returning to her chair, standing behind it as if to shelter from the fury she feared would come.

‘I had a difficult confinement, Tom. When my pains started, we couldn’t get the doctor. He was working all the hours God sent – half of Holdenby was down with that ’flu. Julia was with me from start to finish. She’d just delivered the child when Doctor James arrived.

‘There was only time to tell Giles he’d had a son before he died. Her ladyship was sitting beside his bed. She said, afterwards, that he’d gripped her hand, as if he understood.’

She stopped, taking in a shuddering breath, tilting her chin defiantly, wondering, now that she had started the awful business, where it would end.

‘Go on,’ Tom urged.

‘I had a fever. Doctor James said I’d taken influenza from Giles. I was so ill they kept the baby away from me – didn’t want him to get it. Julia was in a bad way. She’d just come back from France. Andrew had been killed only days before the Armistice and it was as if she wasn’t with us; as if she were sleep-walking, all the time. I thought she’d die of a broken heart.

‘But the baby saved her sanity. She had to look after him, you see – find milk for him, make sure he lived. By the time I was well enough to get out of bed he was six weeks old – and Julia’s. They’d bonded, each to the other. The child was the son she would never conceive and I was content to leave it that way.’

‘It didn’t bother you that some other woman had your bairn?’ He shook his head in bewilderment. ‘It was like giving him away.’

‘Yes, it was. But I didn’t want him – didn’t want to touch him, even. When I was well enough to think for myself, I was even glad there’d been no milk in my breasts for him.’

‘Alice!’ He slammed down his mug, spilling ale over the hearthstone. ‘How could you – your own son? There must have been some affection for Giles Sutton? You must have felt something for him, or how could you have got that child?’

‘I had great affection for Giles – always. I worked at Rowangarth for his mother, remember, and when he was brought to our hospital wounded and more dead than alive, I asked Sister if I could stay with him. He was in another world – on morphine. They used to give them morphine, Tom, to let them die peacefully – those who were lucky enough to be got to a hospital, that was.’

Her eyes filled with tears and she was back again in France with the stench and the horror and the hopelessness of it all. Then she pulled her sleeve across her face, sniffing loudly, facing him defiantly.

‘Yes, I felt affection for Giles Sutton, I’ll not deny it, and pity, too. And I think I could have cared for the child, if it had been gently got. But that bairn wasn’t the result of love or affection, Tom. When Giles was brought to our hospital, I was already four weeks pregnant. And before you pass judgement,’ she hastened, ‘before you say what I can see in your eyes – let me tell you just one thing. The child – Drew Sutton – was got the night I’d been told you were dead. Your sister wrote to tell me. Julia was in Paris, on leave with Andrew. I had no one to turn to, so I ran out of the nurses’ quarters, half out of my mind.’

‘And someone …?’ His face was chalk white, his lips so tight with distaste he had difficulty speaking.

‘Yes. Someone. He smelled of drink; his eyes were wild. He didn’t know what he was doing – I’ll swear it.’

‘He must have!’

‘Don’t, Tom? Let me tell it the way it was?’ she whispered dry-mouthed. ‘We nurses were quartered in what had been the schoolhouse of a convent. There was a shed at the back where the nuns once kept their cows. He dragged me in there. I didn’t have a chance and anyway, I think I wanted him to kill me. You were dead, and I wanted to be dead, too.’

She walked across the room to stare out of the window, taking in gulps of air, holding them, letting them go in little steadying puffs. Then, hugging herself, she turned to face him again.

‘I fainted. I must have done, because when I could think clearly again, he’d gone. But it had happened – there was no telling myself it hadn’t – and I got myself back to the schoolhouse. It was dark, by then, and when I got upstairs, Julia was back.

‘She was waiting there, with Nurse Love. I’d thrown your sister’s letter down, and they’d read it. They were kind to me. Julia held me – then it all came out. Not just about you being reported killed, but about him, and what he’d done to me. Julia took my uniform off – it was all dirty and torn – and got me into a bath. Nurse Love wanted to tell Sister, have the Military Police arrest him, but Julia said not to.

‘She was livid, though. You know what she could be like, when she had a temper on her? She said to wait a bit – that with luck no harm had been done. She was only thinking of me. She knew I’d been through it before, you see.’

‘But she was wrong. Harm was done, it seems, and you passed that child off as Giles Sutton’s. How could you, Alice?’

‘Because Giles didn’t die, did he, though it might have been better if he had – with hindsight, that is. He survived to become only half a man. He told Julia one night that he would never father a child, though I think I’d known it, all along. I’d helped dress his wounds, you see. There were no niceties in those wards, in France. And she told him that life was cruel, because I was carrying a child I didn’t want.’

She looked into his eyes, hoping to find understanding there, or pity, even, but there was none.

‘Anyway, Nathan had been coming in every day, to see Giles,’ she rushed on. ‘He was stationed only a couple of miles away – an army chaplain, you’ll remember – and Giles told him about me and the terrible mess I was in; said it was on his mind to ask me to marry him – say the child was his. The baby would be the one her ladyship had always wanted, and if it was a son, so much the better.’

‘So you were glad to wed him, Alice – let him claim the child as his?’

‘Not glad. Grateful, more like. And I didn’t say yes, right away. I had this feeling inside me that I was going to hear from you or about you. I couldn’t accept you were dead, you see. I thought that one day you’d come back.

‘Julia stood by me. She’d wanted me to go to Aunt Sutton to have the baby and maybe get it adopted into a good home. Then Giles came up with a better idea – to marry me.’

‘And the rest we know, Alice. I suppose it was Nathan who married you and him?’

‘In the convent chapel,’ she nodded, eyes on her hands. ‘Just Julia and Nurse Love as witnesses. I’d not have done it, but Geordie Marshall came to see me. He was passing through Celverte – where we were nursing – and he brought me your Testament, and letters I’d written to you. Said that you’d been sent on special duties and that he’d heard that twelve of you in an army transport had all been killed by a shell. No chance you were alive, he said, but at least it had been quick and clean. I was grateful for that. I’d not have wanted you to die like some I’d nursed …’

‘And you got away with it? Didn’t you feel one bit of shame, lying to her ladyship – deceiving her?’

‘No.’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘It wasn’t me told the lies. I just went along with them. And they were white lies. Sir Robert had been killed – you knew that already – and with Giles not being able to have children, the title would have been lost to Rowangarth – passed to the Pendenys Suttons and you know how that would have grieved her ladyship.’

‘So what did you all cook up, between you?’ He looked at her as if she were a stranger; a lying, deceiving woman and not the girl he married a twelve-month ago; not the mother of his Daisy.

‘We cooked nothing up. So Nathan Sutton and Julia knew about it – that didn’t make them criminals. And the child would be born in wedlock, which made him the rightful Rowangarth heir – what harm did we do? Her ladyship was overjoyed, looking forward to it being born …’

‘And you? Did you feel grand, being a lady of title in the house where once you’d started off a housemaid?’

‘No, Tom. That part of it took a lot of getting used to. And I’ll admit I was always aware of the deceit. But it was Giles told his mother the child was his. He didn’t mention about it being a rape child. Said he’d come across me all distressed, because I’d just heard that you’d been killed – told her he’d held me and soothed me and well – it had happened between us, just the once. An act of comfort.’

She drew a deep, shuddering breath, covering her face with her hands as if she were afraid to look at him; see the hurt and disbelief in his eyes.

‘Tom, love – don’t you think it was better for the poor, dear woman to think her grandchild had been conceived that way? And it explained away the fact that he was born eight months after we were married. When a boy was born, that night Giles died, it helped her, a little, to accept it.

‘I had the child named Andrew Robert Giles for all the Rowangarth men the war had taken. Julia was pleased about it because he’s Sir Andrew, now – he’s got her husband’s name. Little Drew – there, I’ve said it again. It’s as if telling you has driven all the hurt out of me and I can really think of him as Giles’s son. Do you forgive me, Tom?’

‘For what?’ Still he sat there, making no move to take her in his arms, kiss her, tell her he understood. ‘It wasn’t your fault some drunken soldier got you pregnant, though that nurse was right – he should have been found, and arrested. But what worries me is that yon little Drew has already inherited a title and stands to gain a whole lot more, when he comes of age. Can that be right? If Giles Sutton had died childless – and in all honesty, he did – then the title should have passed to the Pendenys Suttons – to Mr Edward, Giles’s uncle. That’s how it should have been.’

‘You mean that some drunken soldier’s hedge child has landed on his feet, did he but know it?’

‘Don’t, Alice? Don’t use such talk. It isn’t like my lass.’

‘But am I your lass, now?’ she demanded, head defiantly high. ‘Oh, I wish you could see your face, Tom Dwerryhouse. You look all holier-than-thou, even though an army chaplain – a priest – connived at the deception, as you want to call it. Don’t you think we did it for a reason – or do you think we set out to cheat the other Suttons – those at Pendenys Place – out of what is rightly theirs?’

‘To my way of thinking,’ he said deliberately and quietly, ‘that’s exactly what you all did.’

‘Passing off a bastard as a Sutton, you mean?’ she flung, face white with outrage.

‘Alice – what’s got into you?’ He took a step towards her as if he knew he had pushed her too far and was willing, now it was too late, to make amends. ‘I told you before we were wed I didn’t want to know about that little Drew at Rowangarth, nor why you could bring yourself to leave him there, and come to me. You know I was willing to put it all behind us and start afresh, here.

‘And we’ve been happy, Alice, till now. Why must you rake over what’s past? What’s done is done, and if Giles Sutton died happy, and the son of his marriage –’

‘My son, Tom!’

‘All right – your son! If the bairn is acceptable as a Sutton, then who am I to gainsay it, wrong though it might be in law.’

‘Dear, sweet heaven, you can be so stubborn!’ She stood, hands on hips, cheeks blazing red. ‘I wanted to tell you. I thought you’d understand, aye, and happen sympathize, an’ all. But everything is either black or white to you, isn’t it? You don’t allow for the shades of grey, in between.

‘And I wasn’t going to tell you all, because I thought there’d be no need to. There was one thing I didn’t want you to know; but since you see fit to set yourself up as judge and jury and find us all guilty, then best you should know that young Drew is a Sutton! He’s taking what would, in the course of time, have passed to his father – to Elliot Sutton!

‘There, Tom! You have it all, now – every last sordid bit of it. The drunk who tumbled me on the floor of a cowshed was the man you so hate, so think on before you pass judgement on me!’

She stood, tears streaking her cheeks, shaking with anger and dismay at what she had said. And she looked into the face of the man she loved and saw hatred in his eyes.

‘Elliot Sutton!’ he spat through clamped jaws. ‘So he had his way with you, in the end?’

‘Aye. He tried it in Brattocks Wood, didn’t he, when I was a bit of a lass. But I had Morgan with me then, and Reuben within calling distance. And I had a young man who thrashed him for what he’d tried to do. But no one was there to help me that night in Celverte, Tom; neither the dog nor Reuben, nor you! You were dead, remember?’

‘Thrashed him? I should have killed him!’ He drove his fist hard into the palm of his hand. ‘That first time he tried, I should have beaten the life out of him. And I would, if I’d thought I could’ve got away with it.’

His face slablike, he rose to his feet, walking across the room and out of the house and she knew better than to try to stop him. To leave in a rage with a flinging open and a banging shut of doors would have seemed more normal. Things done in temper, in the shock of the moment, she could understand, and forgive. But to walk calmly out with never a word, closing doors gently and quietly behind him, sent apprehension coursing through her.

It was then she was grateful for the discipline of her nursing years and she closed her eyes, breathing deeply, resisting the urge to take his beer mug and hurl it against the wall.

She straightened her shoulders and tilted her chin. She would not weep on her wedding anniversary; not for anything 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.