Grace Hardie (20 page)

Even to himself it didn't make sense that a small incident so far in his past should have had such an effect. How then could he ever have hoped to convince those hostile interrogators?

Was the major right? Would fear, extreme fear, break down the inhibitions grounded in boyhood? Certainly, as he was escorted past the men who were still waiting for their own fate to be decided, Kenneth was afraid. From now on he would be surrounded by enemies; and not all of them would be German.

In July 1916 the world seemed to come to a standstill. It was as though the earth had stopped spinning. No clouds moved; no breeze blew. Thunder gathered itself together in the air without ever quite coming to a head. In the oppressive atmosphere people walked slowly and spoke almost in whispers, but their apparent lethargy was caused by more than the heat of the glaring sun. Everyone was waiting for the news from France.

A massive offensive had been opened. The communiqué had been printed in the newspapers and the brief details were at once augmented by word of mouth. The sound of artillery was said to have been heard as far inland as London. At other times such a claim might have been dismissed as fanciful, but now it was accepted without question. According to rumour, casualties were so heavy that the newspapers had been asked to print only short sections of the lists of dead and wounded. Since what they did print covered many columns in the smallest type, this suggestion added to the prevailing horror. There was hardly anyone in England without a loved one at the Front, and every breakfast table became a place of silent anxiety as the casualty lists were scrutinized.

Mrs Hardie was as anxious a reader as any. Kenneth's forcible conscription had taken place only three weeks earlier, so he would still be at a training camp in England; but she had two other sons at risk. Grace, waiting for the sigh of relief which would, if all were well, mark the end of a second reading, knew that her mother would look out for Christopher Bailey's name as well as those of Frank
and Philip. It was less certain that her eyes would be alert for mention of Andy Frith. But if anything terrible were to happen to him, they would learn of it from his parents.

On this Saturday morning all was well. Mrs Hardie was able to smile as Grace kissed her goodbye before cycling off to work.

The tension which had gripped the whole country was as strong in Oxford as anywhere else. The city was stiflingly hot and there was less activity than usual in the High now that the university term had ended. The bow windows of The House of Hardie did not open, and even when the doors to the rear yard were left ajar there was no breeze to cool Grace as she waited for customers who did not come.

It was frustrating to waste time in the city when she could have been enjoying the fresh air of the garden on the hill. Fortunately, though, her duties ended at one o'clock on Saturdays, and she hurried home with as much energy as the heat allowed.

Her mother surprised her with a piece of news. ‘Your aunt has come for the weekend.'

‘In term time?' Although the university year was over, schools were still hard at work and it was unusual for Aunt Midge to visit Greystones before the holidays began.

‘She said she was feeling tired and needed a rest. She went straight upstairs. Asked me to tell you that she'll see you at breakfast tomorrow.'

Grace wondered what could be wrong. She had never seen her aunt anything but brisk and cheerful. But it would be inconsiderate to disturb her rest. She put the puzzle of the unexpected arrival out of her mind as she sat in the rose garden, enjoying its perfumes while knitting yet another khaki sock.

Next morning, awakening in the energetic mood which the prospect of a day at leisure always induced, she looked
forward to her aunt's company for a walk before church. Midge, however, did not appear for breakfast.

‘I'll see if she'd like a tray in her room.' Grace ran upstairs and tapped lightly on the door. When there was no answer she hesitated for a moment, not wishing to disturb her aunt if perhaps she had only just fallen asleep after a bad night. But uneasiness prevailed. Quietly she opened the door.

Midge was sitting on a chair, looking out of the window. She wore one of the dark costumes which she was accustomed to describe laughingly as her school uniform and which she never as a rule brought to Greystones. Her hair was plaited and coiled into its usual severe style and her back was as straight as ever. Yet beneath the rigidity of her body, Grace was immediately aware of a despair of spirit. ‘What is it, Aunt Midge?'

Without turning towards her, Midge shook her head.

‘Please tell me.' Grace hurried across the room and went down on her knees beside her aunt's feet.

‘Can't talk without crying.' Midge's voice was unnaturally thick and abrupt, and she still would not allow Grace to see her face. ‘Well, that's why I've come here. To cry. With no one looking. Just let me alone. I'll be all right directly.' But even as she spoke she broke down, burying her head in her hands and gasping for breath as she attempted to control her sobs. ‘Go away, dear.'

‘Not till you've told me what's wrong. There must be something I can do.'

‘No, nothing. Nothing to do, nothing to say. When someone dies, that's final. There's no comfort anywhere.'

‘Well, talk about it, please. Who is it who's died?'

There was a long silence before Midge slowly turned her head. There would have been no need for her to say in words that she had come to Greystones to cry; her face, red and swollen with tears, spoke for her.

She made no other movement, and yet Grace recognized that by an effort of will she was bringing her emotions under control, as though the headmistress in her was telling the snivelling schoolgirl which for a moment she had become to pull herself together. Giving a single deep sigh, she spoke with a voice which was almost recognizable as her own.

‘No one you know. Although, as a matter of fact, he knew about you, in a way. He was the architect who designed Greystones.'

‘Mr Faraday?'

Astonishment flashed light into Midge's dead eyes. ‘How –?'

‘I met him at your house once. Don't you remember?'

Grace had never forgotten. It was because of Mr Faraday that she had been forced to do all her lessons with Miss Sefton in the schoolroom instead of being invited to stay in London and enjoy the excitements and companionship of school life. She had never quite forgiven him for appearing to remind her aunt that a headmistress's secret life must remain secret. But this was not a time to express resentment.

‘You told me who he was,' she said, ‘and afterwards you showed me some of his plans.'

‘Yes, I remember now.' Again she fell silent, and Grace did not know what questions to ask.

‘It was here that we first met,' Midge said at last. ‘On the land here, before the house was built. We liked each other at that first meeting. He looked me up in London. He'd let me know when he was coming to Oxford for discussions with your father, or to supervise the building work, and I would try to plan my visits for the same time. Just as though I were a moonstruck seventeen-year-old. Then, later on, when it was decided to extend the school, I managed to get him chosen as the architect. He's – he
was – a very good architect. He always believed in spending a lot of time with his clients, to find out exactly what was wanted. The governors dealt with the money, of course, but I was the one who could tell him all the small things – how much space there should be between the desks, how wide a corridor needs to be, what kind of windows are best. There were so many details to discuss.'

‘Didn't anyone ever suspect?'

‘There was nothing to suspect then, except that we took pleasure in each other's company. After the extension was finished, that was when it became difficult. We had to make rules. Never to meet in term time.'

‘But you went on holiday together.' Grace remembered how Patrick Faraday had painted a picture from the terrace of her aunt's hotel.

‘Not together. But to the same place.'

‘Did you want to marry him?'

‘It was never possible. He was married already. Not that it was much of a marriage. His wife ran off with another man and took the children with her.' Midge stood up and began to walk restlessly about the room, leaving Grace seated on the floor. ‘The other man died, or else abandoned her, I don't remember which. Patrick would have taken her back for the sake of the one child who was his own. But she went to live with her family in Ireland.'

‘Couldn't he have divorced her if she ran away from him?'

‘I don't know about these things,' said Midge. ‘The only cases I ever heard about, it was always the gentleman who pretended to be at fault, even when the wife was really to blame. But we didn't even talk about it. I could never have married a divorced man. In fact, I couldn't marry anyone at all if I wanted to go on teaching. I've always known that. When I wasn't much older than you are now, someone asked me to marry him. I said no. I was already sure what
I wanted to do with my life, and I knew that marriage would be an obstacle. I didn't love Will enough to make that worth while. I
liked
him, but that was all.'

The idea that Will Witney had once been in love with her aunt was not new to Grace, who made no comment. Midge, for her part, seemed to be considering what she had just said. She sat down again by the window.

‘Perhaps that means that I didn't love Patrick enough either,' she said. ‘But it felt …' Her voice trailed away for a moment before recovering some of its more usual firmness.

‘I'll tell you what really hurts, Grace,' she said. ‘I have no right to mourn him. All over London – all over England – bereaved women are weeping over the loss of their husbands and sons and fathers, and society weeps with them. Patrick leaves a widow who hasn't spoken to him for ten years and a son to whom he's a stranger.
They
can dress in black and expect consolation. But I … That's why I came here. So that I could be sad for a while in secret. And angry, as well. He was forty-four. Too old to be a soldier. No one expected, there was no need – it was such a waste. Oh!' Rage and grief and frustration shuddered out of her body through the single syllable and left her trembling but calm.

Grace stood up quietly. ‘Let's go out,' she said. ‘I'll take you to the boulders.'

Midge emptied her jug of cold water into the washbasin and pressed a wet cloth against her swollen eyes. ‘What are the boulders?' she asked.

‘I'll show you.' Grace waited until her aunt was ready and then led the way downstairs, out of the house, through the gardens and down the hill.

As they plunged into the wood Midge looked curiously around her. She must often have walked beside the stream where it splashed and sparkled along its rocky bed; but
here it ran silently into a deep pool, falling away from it at a lower level without disturbing the surface. The crowns of tall trees touched overhead to give a dappled shade in which no birds chose to sing. There had always been something eerie about the silence of this spot. Grace came to a halt in front of the two huge stones and kept very quiet, wondering whether her aunt would prove sensitive to the atmosphere.

‘I've never been here,' said Midge. ‘And yet I've been for so many walks through the grounds.'

‘No one ever comes here except me. Well, Andy used to as well. The boys played all over the wood when they were younger, so they must have seen the boulders; but they never seemed to notice anything special about them. Can you feel it, Aunt Midge?'

‘I'm not sure. What is it that's so special?'

For a moment Grace felt almost hurt. The soothing effect of this place on her own spirits, whenever they were troubled, was so intense that she thought of it as being almost magical.

‘It's their shape,' she said. ‘The bigness and the roundness.' Put like that, it sounded babyish. ‘You need to touch them.'

Midge stretched out first one hand and then the other. They moved downwards, feeling the texture which she would find to be rough and yet smooth at the same time. Her shoulders tensed as she pressed firmly, passionately, against the hard surface – as though she were giving her lover a last embrace. She cried out once and then dropped her head, leaning her forehead against the grey stones.

‘I'll leave you to find your own way back,' Grace said. Instead of returning directly to the house herself, she walked along the edge of the stream until she came to the place where Pepper had been buried. Covered with fallen leaves, it was marked only by two pointed ears of slate:
sharp-edged, spiky stones, not comforting like the boulders, but disturbing.

That had been her own first bereavement, and her last. When she thought about her father, she felt anxious in case he was dead, but that was not the same as the terrible certainty of knowing that she would never see him again.

The effect of Pepper's murder on Grace had been quite the opposite to the effect of Mr Faraday's on Aunt Midge. She could remember how rage and misery had left her unable to speak or cry or even breathe. She had hated her brothers at that moment, and something of the hatred lingered in the air above the grave. Men called themselves hunters and soldiers, but they were murderers at heart. Patrick Faraday had been murdered by Germans; while Frank and Philip and Andy and Christopher were doing their best to murder Germans, and all for no reason that Grace could understand.

Turning away, she emerged from the wood to find her aunt staring up the hill at Greystones.

‘It's his memorial,' Midge said. ‘This house, and all the other buildings he designed. It means that he won't just disappear. I remember something you said once, dear. About not liking to cook because you couldn't bear your work to vanish. You wanted to make things that would last. Patrick did that.'