All I Want Is You

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‘Oh, Belfield Hall,’ people are fond of exclaiming at the fashionable London parties and restaurants with which I am now familiar. ‘It really is the most amazing place. Home to the dukes of Belfield for centuries, you know – it’s truly one of the grandest houses in England…’

After a while I find I’m no longer listening to their chatter, for my mind drifts away, and I am there. I see the lush beech trees unfurling their leaves on a spring morning in a peaceful Oxfordshire valley. I see the river winding through sheep-dotted pastures, I see the familiar drive that leads through the woods to the Hall itself, with its mellow stone gleaming and its windows sparkling in the sunshine.

When I was a child, it was a place of mystery to me. My family was not wealthy, far from it, and I imagined those who lived in the Hall to be different in every way: stronger, wiser, more beautiful than we ordinary folk. Such were my fancies, but disillusion set in when at thirteen I became a scullery maid there. With time I grew used to rising before dawn every morning, to scrubbing floors, lighting fires and scouring pans till after ten at night, while my meagre existence was hidden away from those who lived in grandeur above stairs. I
learned so much, so quickly. But nothing –
nothing –
could have prepared me for what happened to me next. I learned, you see, that when love arrives – physical love, physical desire – there is a complete surrendering of all the normal rules of existence. You do things, you allow things to be done; there is a time – it may be a year, a month, or one night only, perhaps – that becomes unforgettable. That is etched on your memory for ever.

When I met him, it was an awakening. A time after which nothing could be the same again. The man I loved and had thought unattainable was scarred, in both his body and his soul, and I longed for my love to heal him; indeed I believed my love
could
heal him, which was why I gave myself to him so completely.
You are mine
, he used to say as he lay beside me in the darkness, his body aroused and blissful against my delicate underwear, against my skin. Sometimes, when his mood was lighter, we danced together, because he loved music and so did I.
I’ve told you – you are mine
, he would breathe, holding me tenderly in his arms.
Don’t leave me.
And I would say,
Never. Never, my love.
Even though his eyes were shadowed with secrets, and often so impenetrable that I had to turn away shivering, I would have done anything –
anything –
for him.

All I want is you
, just as the song says. When he was far away from me I would cry out his name in my loneliness, in the night: I heard his voice; I saw his face. And oh, I’d waited for him for so long. For so very long.

My name is Sophia, though most people call me Sophie. My father Philip called me his little sparrow, because I was always chattering and singing, he said. He worked at the village smithy, and sometimes, when there was a house party at Belfield Hall, the grooms would bring the fine horses down to him for shoeing. Will and I would run to peep at them, marvelling at their beauty.

My mother worked four days a week as a laundrymaid at the Hall and I remember that I used to be upset by the soreness of her pretty hands. But she would smile and shake her head and say there were servants there who had to work seven days a week, from six in the morning until half past ten at night.

‘Imagine that, Sophie,’ she would say, brushing my long fair hair as I sat on her knee. ‘Imagine that.’

I was born in 1903 and when I was five I started at the village school. Every day on my way there and back I would gaze at the gates leading to the Hall, though of course you couldn’t see the building itself because of the woods. But sometimes in summer I would run to the top of Win Hill nearby, so I could see the windows and turrets all gleaming in the sun, and to my mind it was a fairy palace.

Will Baxter was my best friend. He was two years older than I was, but the Baxters were our nearest neighbours and because I was an only child he was like a brother to me. He and I would run races on the way to school and he would do things like hop on one leg so he didn’t beat me. Will was kind and made me laugh. And in class I would help him with his letters, because I was quicker than he was at learning, and sometimes he minded it.

My father didn’t see much need for learning, not in our kind of lives, he said. But my mother owned a few treasured books and often, when I was small, she used to read to me from
The Tales of King Arthur.
As I listened to her calm, clear voice, I would look at the pictures, and I used to imagine that people at the Hall must be like that, the ladies beautiful as the princesses, the gentlemen as brave as King Arthur’s noble knights.

One hot June day when I was eight, the Duke of Belfield gave a party in the Hall’s gardens, because the new king had been crowned in London. All the servants and their families were invited, and I still remember the trestle tables laden with food set out on the lawns in front of the Hall, while the men were given free beer. A band played music for dancing, then the Duke, a whiskery man, made a speech of which I don’t remember a word because I was watching the butterflies dancing in the herb garden, and I danced too, thinking no one could see me there amongst the lavender bushes. But a gardener’s boy chased me, and I ran into a thicket of trees and got lost.

I was a little afraid, I remember, and the scent of the
herbs my skirt had brushed against seemed suddenly too strong in the heat. Then I heard a man’s voice, softly calling nearby. ‘Where are you? Where
are
you, you mischievous thing?’

I shrank back behind a tree, thinking he was calling to me; then I saw that the man was the Duke’s son, Lord Charlwood. People said he was very handsome, but I didn’t like his black moustache and his shiny black hair. Then he laughed and said, ‘Ah, there you are, Florence. You little tease, to run from me just when I was getting to know you.’

And I realised that he was speaking to my mother.

She was in her prettiest white blouse, and her long hair, as fair as mine, was falling a little from its pins. I thought she was the loveliest person in the world, but I was confused. She did seem to be running from Lord Charlwood, but it was obvious to me that she wanted him to catch her, and even as I watched she stumbled slightly and Lord Charlwood caught her in his arms.

He was kissing her on the mouth, and then he was putting his hand between the buttons of her pretty blouse. When she laughingly pushed him away, he stooped to lift her skirt and started running his hand up her leg.

I was frightened because, young though I was, I knew I was seeing something I ought not to see. He was pushing her back against a nearby tree, then kissing her again. I squeezed my eyes shut, but I could still hear my mother making strange sounds at the back of her throat, and though she’d put her arms around him, I was afraid he was hurting her. His lordship was breathing hard and calling her his sweet Florrie, his lovely Florrie.

I thought,
Her pretty blouse will be all spoiled by the bark of the tree.
I ran blindly to get away from that place and Will Baxter found me. ‘He’s hurting her, Will!’ I sobbed. ‘It’s my mother – Lord Charlwood is hurting her.’

Will’s face changed – I think he must already have known about Lord Charlwood’s pursuit of my mother that summer. He put his hand awkwardly on my arm. ‘It’s all right, Sophie. It’s just a sort of game – a secret game, that the grown-ups wouldn’t want us to know about, do you understand?’

In those days I didn’t understand at all, but Will’s mother gave birth to a new baby almost every year, so he was bound to know more than I did about such things. Will’s father was a farm labourer and he hated the rich – the toffs, he called them. Sometimes, when I knocked at Will’s door on my way to school, I could see that their cottage, as well as being full of children, was dirty, which embarrassed me; I couldn’t help but notice the grubby floor and the broken windowpanes that never got mended.

Will’s father used to say everything would change soon, and I wondered how. I imagined a great storm, I think, like in the Bible, perhaps blowing all the rich people away, but I knew it couldn’t really happen, because the rich owned the world, and the vicar preached to us in church every Sunday that if we honoured and obeyed our betters we’d get our reward in heaven.

There were a lot of funerals at the church, often of small children, and the vicar said that they were going to
paradise. But I used to think they would be happier by far playing in the river meadows on a sunny day, like me and Will.

When it was time to bring in the hay harvest, my father would drive me out with him to the fields in the blacksmith’s old cart, and I would carry the canvas bag with our lunch of bread and cheese. I was given a switch to keep the flies off the horses’ heads as they stood so patiently, while the men and boys, shirtless in the heat, loaded the sheaves on the wagons.

Will would come to me to talk every so often – to stop me feeling lonely, I think – but I was never lonely in those days. Once, when I was stung by a wasp, Will ran home and came back with a small jug of vinegar, which he poured onto my clean handkerchief and pressed to my skin. ‘Brave lass,’ he said. ‘Brave lass, not to cry.’

I think the war began with me hardly noticing it. I was eleven, and everyone said it would be over soon; besides, I had other matters on my mind, for my mother had started to look ill and I was terribly worried about her. She always used to wear a black dress to go and work at the Hall, and she put her lovely fair hair under a cap. But I could see that her dress was too big for her, and the black of it suddenly began to frighten me, because it reminded me of the funeral services at church.

‘Don’t wear that dress,’ I used to beg her. ‘It’s ugly.’

‘Sweetheart,’ she would say, kissing me, ‘I have to wear black for work. All the maids do.’

My father was quieter than ever, and often in the
evenings he would just sit outside our cottage, smoking his pipe.

One autumn day we heard that the Duke had given permission for the Hall grounds to be used for army training, so my father and I hurried with the other villagers to the top of Win Hill to see the cavalry galloping across the fine lawns, and the gun carriages being pulled by strong horses.

The men were so smart, in their red uniforms. The Duke had given thousands of pounds, it was whispered, so their outfits and horses would do the county proud. And that day we heard that Lord Charlwood, the Duke’s heir, who was riding about amongst the cavalry men looking very pleased with himself, was going to the war in France with the soldiers. He had married recently; the wedding had been in London, and there’d been no great party at the Hall, because of the war. I wouldn’t have gone to the party anyway; I hated him, because of that time I’d seen him with my mother in the garden.