A Season of Secrets (9 page)

In late August, wearing well-worn country tweeds and with two cocker spaniels at his side, Gilbert Fenton walked down off the moor towards Gorton Hall a happy man. The sun was
hot, the air heavy with the fragrance of heather and the sound of bees. It was only the second time he’d been back to Gorton since having been given a junior ministerial appointment and, with
Parliament now in recess until mid-September, he had every intention of enjoying as much of that time in Yorkshire, with his family, as he possibly could.

Politically the last few months had been momentous and the chance to reflect on things was welcome. In Paris the Peace Conference, in which a treaty between twenty-seven Allies and associated
powers had been drawn up and signed, had finally ended, but nobody – not even the French – thought it had ended satisfactorily.

Lloyd George had promised to ‘squeeze the German lemon until the pips squeak’, but even he had been aghast at the demands made by France. Not all of them had been acceded to.
Together with Great Britain, America had baulked at the French demand that Germany be partitioned and a separate peace made without Prussia. France had still carried the day, though, on lots of
other issues and the end result was a Germany impoverished, humiliated and burning with bitterness.

Gilbert’s longtime friend Winston Churchill, who, as Britain’s Minister for War and Air, had attended the talks at Versailles, had said grimly to him when congratulating him on his
new appointment, ‘Instead of seeking Germany’s utter ruin, our watchword should be magnanimity in victory and, in peace, goodwill. If cripplingly excessive war reparations are demanded
of Germany, her working classes will be reduced to conditions of sweated labour and servitude – and the result will be another war in twenty or twenty-five years’ time.’

Winston’s opinion hadn’t carried any sway. The terms finally agreed – and which the Germans had had no choice but to sign – stipulated a provisional compensation payment
from Germany of billions of gold marks, with the final reparation figure to be decided later, and a stripping-away of all her territories.

Gilbert brushed past a clump of gorse, sending a cloud of yellow petals scattering. Ahead of him Caesar and Pluto, his two spaniels, were fruitlessly chasing a rabbit.

Still deep in thought and with his hands in his pockets, he continued walking in the direction of the river and the bridge. Gloomy though he felt the results of the Paris Peace Conference had
been, there was a ray of light where world politics were concerned, and that ray of light was the newly formed League of Nations. The League had been dreamed up by President Woodrow Wilson, its
purpose to sort out international disputes, as and when they occurred. In this way – and by sanctions – world peace would be maintained. It was an idea that fired Gilbert’s
imagination and he couldn’t understand why Lloyd George was so lukewarm about it.

Now on the bridge, he paused, leaning against the moss-covered stonework, staring down into the water. Lloyd George was a Liberal, as had been the former prime minister, Herbert Asquith, and the
present government was a coalition of Liberals and Conservatives. As a Conservative, Gilbert had issues with many Liberal policies, but nothing disappointed him more than the prime minister’s
lack of fervent enthusiasm for President Wilson’s great vision.

The water below him flowed down towards the village, gin-clear. A fish leapt in a flashing silver arc. A dragonfly darted low, skimming the surface.

Watching it, he turned his mind from the League of Nations to the latest death-by-influenza figures, which showed that the Spanish-flu pandemic – which had taken nearly as many lives as
had been lost in the war – was now officially over, and without ever having touched Outhwaite.

It was something to be deeply grateful for, but the thing he was most deeply grateful for was the news Blanche had given him earlier that morning. ‘I’m pregnant, Gil darling!’
she had said, her face radiant. ‘And I’m sure it’s a boy. Isn’t it wonderful? Isn’t it just unbelievably splendid?’

It was so unbelievably splendid that as he thought of it now he felt dizzy with joy. Even if the new baby wasn’t a boy, it would mean a fourth daughter, who would be as loved and cherished
as his other three daughters; and, if it
was
a boy, it would mean the continuance of his family name and an heir for his ancestral home.

For a moment he felt dizzy at his good fortune. Even sending Thea and Olivia to St Ethelburga’s had turned out to be inspired, for they had both settled down there without a beat of
homesickness and had come home for the long summer holidays full of new slang expressions and bursting with happy chatter about new friends.

‘Georgiana Middleton, Olivia’s class monitor, is an absolute
screech
,’ Thea had said to him and, slightly more alarmingly, Olivia had assured him that, ‘Our French
teacher, Mademoiselle Moreau, is
divine
, Papa. Simply
everyone
is in love with her!’

St Ethelburga’s was close enough to the sea for them to be taken swimming once a week. As well as tennis, they were also playing lacrosse. All in all, he was very satisfied with St
Ethelburga’s – and with his daughters’ ability to adapt easily to new circumstances.

Other things had also gone well. For several months after the war had ended wounded officers had continued to convalesce at Gorton. The last of them had left in May and since then, under
Blanche’s careful direction, the wing of the house that had been given over in its entirety to them had been restored to its former use, and Gorton Hall was now ready for as many weekend
house-parties as he cared to give. Or would be, once it again had a full complement of staff.

In the aftermath of the war the servant problem had become acute. Where butlers, footmen, chauffeurs and gardeners were concerned, the problem was to be expected, for they had gone off en masse
to fight for their country and far too few of them had returned – and of those who had returned, far too many were permanently disabled. What hadn’t been expected, though, was the acute
shortage of female domestic staff.

With men away at the front, many of the jobs done by them had been taken over by women. They had acted as tram conductors, as postmen. In factories they had manned lathes, made weapons and in a
whole host of industries had proved they were as capable as men. After enjoying that kind of freedom – and wages – few of them wanted to return to domestic service, where they had no
choice but to live in, the pay left a lot to be desired, the hours were long and they were at the beck and call of an often tyrannical housekeeper or butler.

Tyranny wasn’t, of course, an issue at Gorton Hall, and neither were excessively long hours or pathetically poor pay. Because of this, although they were short-staffed where maids were
concerned, they were managing.

It was male staff that presented the difficulty. Heaton the butler was elderly, and had intimated to Gilbert that in the not-too-distant future he would like to retire and go and live with a
married daughter at Bridlington. Their two former footmen had died of wounds at Ypres and so far, despite several classified advertisements in
The Lady
, had not been replaced. Under
Charlie’s direction, two jobbing gardeners were doing their best with the flowerbeds closest to the house, but their three former gardeners had all been killed at the front.

Thinking of them, and of the ultimate sacrifice they had made, Gilbert reached into the pocket of his tweed jacket for his pipe and tobacco pouch. The first thing he had done, on returning home
from France, had been to fund the erecting of a war memorial to Outhwaite’s dead.

The memorial, made of Yorkshire stone, stood on the corner of the village green and among the names inscribed on it were those of Tom Bailey and Dick Wilkinson, his former footmen, and William
Beveridge, Colin Graham and Albert Dixon, his former gardeners.

He tamped tobacco into the bowl of his pipe and lit it. Not one of the five had been over twenty-one. They had been fine young men with all of their lives before them.

His free hand clenched so tightly that his knuckles were bloodless and then, as Caesar and Pluto skittered around him restlessly, he blew a cloud of blue smoke into the air and, keeping the dogs
happy, resumed his walk.

On reaching Gorton he approached the house across the east lawn, and Violet, who had been playing a lone game of hopscotch on the terrace, hurtled down the wide shallow steps and across the
grass to meet him.

‘Papa!’ she called out, racing towards him. ‘Where have you been? Why didn’t you take me with you? A tinker-lady woman came to the kitchen door this morning, selling
pegs. Mrs Hiscox was ever so cross when she found out. She said she didn’t know what the world was coming to!’

Mrs Hiscox was Gorton’s housekeeper and, as Violet collapsed breathlessly against him, he put an arm around her and hugged her close.

‘Thea and Olivia have taken Rozalind into Outhwaite to meet Carrie,’ she said, the sun making a burning bush of her fox-red hair. ‘I could have gone with them, but I wanted to
try and catch up with the tinker-lady so that I could have my palm read.’

‘And did you?’ There was alarm in his voice.

Violet shook her head. ‘No. I hadn’t even got as far as the lane before Jim came after me and brought me back. I don’t think he had any right to, do you?’

‘Yes,’ he said emphatically. ‘If he hadn’t, you could have found yourself in Lancashire, selling pegs alongside her!’

Violet was tempted to say that selling pegs in Lancashire sounded like good fun, but there had been such strength of feeling in her father’s voice that she thought better of it. Only hours
ago she’d heard Cook telling Mr Heaton about a moving-picture show that her daughter had seen in Richmond. It had starred Charlie Chaplin and was called
The Vagabond.
The only person
she could think of who would take her to see it was Hal, and she was going to ask him to do so. She would have to persuade him to keep it a secret, though, for she knew without asking that her
father would be appalled at the thought of her jaunting off to Richmond to sit in the dark watching Charlie Chaplin.

To take her father’s mind off the tinker-lady she said chattily as they neared the house, ‘Is Mr Hardwick happy in the hospital, Papa? Has he got his new face yet?’

‘I don’t think he’s happy being so far away from Yorkshire.’ Gilbert saw no reason why he shouldn’t be absolutely truthful. ‘Whenever I’ve visited him
he’s said how much he misses all his friends at Gorton.’

‘I expect he means Jim and Hal and Miss Cumberbatch.’ With her hand in his, she skipped along at his side. ‘And us, as well. He does miss us as well, doesn’t he,
Papa?’

‘I’m sure he does, Violet. As for his new face, he’s undergone one operation, but he’s going to have to have many further operations. He won’t be back in Yorkshire
this year, but hopefully he’ll be back sometime next year.’

Gilbert wondered if he should prepare Violet for the fact that, however skilled Mr Gillies’s surgery, Charlie was never going to look as he had once looked, but that he would look a whole
lot less scary. He decided to leave it for the moment. Next year, before Charlie returned to Gorton and when Violet would be a year older, would be time enough for such a forewarning.

Violet cut across his thoughts. ‘And then Charlie can ask Miss Cumberbatch to marry him, Papa. I know he wants to.’ Unaware of what a thunderbolt she had dropped, she skipped off,
intent on heading at the first opportunity for the Crosby farm, and Hal.

‘Why do we have to walk all this way down the river-bank to meet this friend of yours?’ Buttercups brushed the hem of Rozalind’s linen smock. ‘It would
have been much easier to have met her at the bridge.’

‘The bridge isn’t our meeting place.’ Olivia swatted a bee away. ‘The vole place is where we meet. It’s our secret place,’ she added helpfully.

Rozalind rolled her eyes. A year older than Olivia, she thought meeting at ‘secret places’ pathetically childish.

‘It’s a breeding place for voles,’ Thea said, having seen Rozalind’s exasperated look towards heaven. ‘And it’s somewhere Hal can meet us.’

Rozalind still hadn’t met Hal – and saw no reason why she should. ‘I don’t understand these friendships you’ve made since I was last at Gorton. Why would you make
friends with a village girl and a boy who is a farm labourer? I’m not surprised Uncle Gilbert and Aunt Blanche object, and that you have to meet out of sight of the house.’

Instead of being indignant, as Olivia expected her to be, Thea burst out laughing.

‘It’s not like that at all, Roz. When Papa was a little boy, Carrie’s granny was his nanny, and when Carrie’s father was killed in Flanders, it was Papa’s idea that
Carrie spend time with us at Gorton. She’s one of the family now. As for Hal, you’ll like him when you meet him, and neither Mama nor Papa objects to our being friends with
him.’

Rozalind was intrigued. As a small girl she had always enjoyed her visits to her English cousins, and after an interval of nearly five years she was enjoying this visit just as much as she had
her earlier ones. Her parents were divorced and, compared to Gorton Hall, the Fifth Avenue mansion she lived in with her mother and stepfather was lifeless and dull, her mother being too busy with
her social life ever to spend time with her.

At Gorton Hall things were very different. There her Aunt Blanche, with her husky voice and gentle smile, was the centre of everything; always interested in whatever it was that her daughters
– and Rozalind – were doing. She would picnic with them, ride out on the moors with them, and was the very best audience when they plundered the dressing-up box to put on a theatrical
performance.

Only the previous evening they had acted out one of the funniest scenes from
Twelfth Night
. She had been Malvolio, wearing yellow stockings cross-gartered in red. Thea had been Maria,
Olivia had been Olivia (having refused to be anyone else) and Violet had been Sir Toby Belch, with a pillow stuffed up her smock to give her a middle-aged paunch.