Grace Hardie (17 page)

‘Is Mr Witney in love with Aunt Midge?' asked Grace, to turn the conversation away from herself.

‘What makes you ask that?'

‘He brings her name into conversations as if it gives him pleasure just to speak it. I wondered if that was why he was still unmarried – because he has a hopeless passion for her.'

‘Hopeless passion! What
have
you been reading!' But although Mrs Hardie was laughing, she answered the question seriously enough. ‘I'm sure, yes, that Mr Witney admires your aunt greatly. And when they were younger … well, I don't know what may have passed between them. But it's a rule of your aunt's profession, you see. Should she ever marry, she'd have to resign her post.'

‘Why? I should have thought that a married woman, perhaps with children of her own, might have a greater understanding of her pupils than a spinster.'

Mrs Hardie shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don't pretend to see the reason for it. A poor woman in need of money may work all day in a factory and come home to work half the night in her house, and no one will protect her from
herself. But if the woman is talented and educated enough to make her way in a profession, it's assumed that she can't have the energy to be a home-maker as well – or that if she has, her profession will suffer. And yet such a woman would have servants and assistants in both aspects of her life. It could only be her concentration which might be affected.'

‘How many professions are there in which a
gentleman
is forbidden the distraction of a wife and children?' asked Grace, laughing.

‘That's not a question that anyone asks. It's possible that Mr Witney may once have made an offer of marriage to your aunt, in spite of their difference of upbringing. But even when she was your age, she was determined to become a headmistress one day. She would have had to turn him down for that reason alone. Of course, if the governors of her school were to change their rules –'

‘I don't think she'd marry him anyway.'

‘Why not?'

Grace flushed with the knowledge that she had been indiscreet. She had seen Aunt Midge chatting pleasantly to Mr Witney and enjoying his company. But she had also once seen her aunt in London, standing close beside Mr Faraday, the architect, as they looked at a painting together. The fingers of the two adults, although not quite touching, appeared to be linked by some powerful energy in the air. At the age of eleven, Grace had not understood what it was that so charged the atmosphere. Now that she had been in love herself, she could make sense of the memory. If Aunt Midge were allowed to marry, it would be Mr Faraday she chose, not Mr Witney. But that fact, discovered by accident, must be regarded as a secret.

‘Oh, it's just that she likes teaching so much,' she said vaguely. ‘Do you ever wish that you had followed a profession?'

‘I wasn't brought up to look for employment. My education wouldn't have qualified me for anything and my family would have regarded it as demeaning. What I would have liked …' She paused, sighing. ‘I wish that I could have accompanied your father on all his expeditions, and not only the first.' Her face clouded, and Grace knew that she was not only regretting her own house-bound existence but was once more overcome by fears for her husband's safety. It was time to change the subject again.

‘How shall we entertain Mr Bailey when he comes?' she asked.

This was not a matter which need have caused them anxiety. The young lieutenant made it clear as soon as he arrived that the greatest treat he could be offered was a day of normal family life.

‘I need memories,' he said to Grace after luncheon, asking her to show him round the grounds. ‘Sitting in a trench and waiting to be shelled, or running towards a machine-gun, or tearing through barbed wire, you can't help wondering what the point of it all is. Well, there
isn't
a point. So the only thing that makes it tolerable is the hope that there'll be something to come home to in the end. An unchanged way of life. Married men have their own dreams, I suppose, but the rest of us stare out of shell craters and picture girls in white dresses walking over green lawns or picking roses.'

‘I'm sorry not to have dressed for the part,' laughed Grace. Even in summer she rarely wore white, which did not suit her pale complexion. Her dress was of a flowery blue and green muslin. ‘But roses – yes, I can offer you roses.'

‘That's the least important thing. What I want… Last time we met, Miss Hardie, you gave me permission to write to you. If you knew how many letters I'd drafted in
my head, or scribbled on scraps of paper, without daring to post more than one or two stilted efforts … What I want to ask now is whether
you
will write to
me
. To tell me about your daily doings. Little things. Just enough to keep a picture of normal life in my mind. But
your
life in particular.'

‘I work in a shop,' said Grace bluntly. ‘Compared with your experiences, mine are safe and easy, but they have little to do with the gracious way of life in your daydreams.'

‘You're a beautiful girl living in a beautiful house on the edge of a beautiful city,' said Christopher. ‘It would hardly matter what events you might choose to describe. You would be thinking of me as you wrote the letters – that's all I'd care about.'

Once before in her life Grace had been told that she was beautiful and had been warmed by the compliment although she knew it not to be true. But the speaker had abandoned her, making it hard to offer affection again in case it should again be rejected.

‘Our acquaintance is very slight, Mr Bailey,' she said.

‘And how are we to change that – if you wish to change it, that is? If things were normal my mother would write to yours. There could be visits, social occasions. But as it is … It's because I want to improve our acquaintance that I dare to suggest a correspondence. I'm not likely to write to you about gas gangrene and trench fever. I'd like to describe my home, my family, my horses, so that you begin to know a little more about me as I learn more of you. I'm not asking for anything more than your letters, your thoughts.'

There could be no doubt of the sincerity in his voice, yet Grace still hesitated for a moment. Might this – not a kiss or a touch of the hand, but a promise – be the first gesture to which her mother's warning had referred? Ought she to consider more closely before she started how she
wanted this new friendship to continue? Yes, she ought; but she did not. It was the duty of every patriotic girl to offer what comfort she could to a man who was fighting to defend his country.

Less worthy thoughts also sneaked into her mind. She was not going to have Andy feeling sorry for her and imagining that she was pining away for love of him. He had treated her disgracefully, but she must show him that she didn't care, and how better to do that than to have another admirer? ‘Yes,' she said. ‘I'll write. As long as you don't expect –'

‘I expect nothing,' Christopher assured her. After the brief spell of seriousness his grin reminded her of the light-hearted undergraduate who had burst into The House of Hardie. ‘I don't even expect any regularity in our correspondence. In fact, I'll specially ask you to be erratic. Letters addressed to the front are bound to be delayed and bunched. If I start expecting an envelope addressed in your handwriting every Wednesday, or anything like that, I shall be in constant anguish at its non-appearance. As long as I know for certain that you will write within a few days, I can wait patiently for ever. I can't tell you how happy you've made me, Miss Hardie. May I call you Grace? Will you call me Christopher? How old are you? When is your birthday? I shall leave a gift with my mother, for her to send at the right time.'

‘She'll have a long time to wait. I shan't be nineteen until next June.' Grace felt that she was being rushed, and was not sorry, when they turned back to the house, to discover that Jay was carrying out the croquet mallets for a game.

Christopher partnered Grace against Jay and Mrs Hardie and sent the opposition balls flying in all directions so that the rest of the afternoon passed in laughter. Over a strawberry tea Jay teased his sister's new friend and treated
him as a good sport, and Mrs Hardie asked questions about his home and family.

Grace found the interrogation embarrassing, but listened to the answers with interest. Christopher's father owned a large country estate in Leicestershire on which he bred hunters. His only son shared his enthusiasm for horses. Grace made a mental note to mention that she did not like to ride, since contact with horses made her ill. Yet this fact could not be of the slightest importance unless there was a possibility that she might marry Christopher, and of course nothing was further from her mind than that! So she did not say anything after all.

The Baileys, it was clear, were of a higher social status than the Hardies, but this did not seem to bother Christopher. Grace remembered Frank's comment that Greystones was a large house for a mere vintner to own. Although Christopher came of a county family, his home might be no grander than hers. But she was sure that he was not a snob.

Only as he was leaving at the end of the day did he mention her father. ‘I didn't like to ask the question in front of your mother, for fear of upsetting her,' he said quietly. ‘But I couldn't help noticing the lack of any reference to Mr Hardie. He's not, I hope …'

‘He's abroad,' Grace explained. She described her father's enthusiasm for plant-hunting and the nature of his present expedition. ‘It's so long since we had any news that my mother becomes distraught when she thinks of what may have happened. We try to persuade her that the problem must only be one of communication, and that he'll return next year as he planned. But …'

Christopher tutted with annoyance at the tactlessness of his question. ‘Now I've upset you, and I want you to remember every moment of our day together as being full of happiness and laughter.' He set himself to bring the
sparkle back to her eyes before he said goodbye. She could tell that he wanted to kiss her, but was pleased that he did not.

So it was with a feeling of satisfaction that she turned back into the house. But later, as she lay in bed in the tower room and re-lived the events of the day, all her happiness was suddenly banished by the memory of Christopher's question.

What, indeed, had happened to her father?

Left, right, left, right. Gordon Hardie was marching on the spot, lifting each knee in turn high so that his full weight would shift from one leg to the other. A systematic programme of exercise was essential if he were ever to get away from this remote eyrie in the Himalayas, for the size of the cell in which he was confined did not permit him to take more than two paces in any direction.

It was a monastic cell, not a prison cell, but the difference was only one of words; he saw no hope of escape from it. The lamas had brought him back from death's door, but they were not going to let him pass through their own.

Every morning, as he awoke to a new day of confinement, Gordon cursed the impulse which had carried him so far into Tibet. The temptation had been irresistible for, at the time of his earlier expeditions, Tibet had been a closed country and Lhasa a forbidden city. Any foreigner found trespassing was thrown into the nearest river. More to the point – because it meant that no guides could be procured – any Tibetan who gave help to a foreigner in those days was beheaded.

But between his last trip and the present one, much had changed. A British expeditionary force had reached Lhasa and negotiated a treaty after defeating an army of Tibetans who believed that a mantra written on a scrap of paper would render each of them invulnerable. Had Gordon been a map-maker or mountain-measurer he could almost certainly have obtained permission to enter the country through Sikkim. But he was a plant-hunter, and travelled
first to China because he had been successful before in that country's mountainous western region.

The frontier was unmarked on the land and differently drawn on every map he possessed. Only several days after crossing it did he realize that he must have strayed on to Tibetan territory. Almost without thinking he allowed one high pass to lead him to another. A new treasure appeared round every corner – a gentian, a primula, a lily, a rhododendron and, on one never-to-be-forgotten day, a brilliant blue poppy, unlike anything ever seen in Europe. He was climbing to higher altitudes than any botanist before him, hoping to make new studies of plants which could survive such conditions.

His Tibetan guides conferred anxiously when he announced his intention of travelling further into the country, but he had taught himself enough of their language to understand that they were anxious lest the spirits of the mountains should be disturbed. A promise that he would not kill any living creature was sufficient to resolve that difficulty, although it confined the party to a monotonous diet of boiled barley flour. Onward and upward they pressed, until the day of the disaster.

Trouble might have come from any direction, for the hazards of travel were many. Mountain rivers, fierce and icy, could be crossed only by low bridges which were liable to be swept away in floods, or on insecure contraptions of rope and bamboo slung across the tops of steep gorges. Mountain paths, hacked from the precipitous cliffs, were so narrow that an unexpected encounter with another mule train could lead to hours of delay and argument before one party at last agreed to retreat to some passing place. Rocks tumbled in avalanches from above. Sections of the track crumbled and fell away down the cliff.

But it was none of these natural hazards which brought his expedition to an end. He had known before leaving
England of the Chinese expulsion from Lhasa, which they had occupied by force three years earlier. As reported in the columns of
The Times
, the country seemed to be settled when the Dalai Lama returned from exile, but the real situation was different. The Tibetans were intent on preventing any new invasion, while the Chinese marauders who for centuries had raided villages near the frontier saw no reason to change their habits.