Grace Hardie (29 page)

In the meantime, as they walked together along the promenade with his hand resting on her arm, she learned how to indicate unobtrusively when they were approaching a step or obstacle. Although she could not be glad that he needed her help, she was pleased to be able to give it.

They never discussed the future. How could he plan the rest of his life until he knew whether he would live it in darkness? Their conversation, when she was not reading
to him, was little more than badinage; and as autumn approached this became more and more difficult to sustain. Christopher, beneath the jokes, was anxious; and Grace was tired.

On top of her full-time work in the shop and the long journeys needed for each Sunday visit, she had volunteered to help in the garden. By this stage of the war food was short. The Hardies were lucky in having enough land to grow their own vegetables and fruit; but one by one the under-gardeners and journeymen had left to fight, leaving the indispensable Frith to manage the extensive acreage with only a succession of boys just out of school.

Grace, glad to spend some time each evening in the open air, willingly helped to thin vegetables or gather fruit, but at the end of every long day she went to bed exhausted. Her twenty-first birthday passed without celebration except for some family presents. With the war going so badly no one, least of all Grace herself, was in the mood for parties. She waited as anxiously as Christopher for the moment when he would be moved back to the London hospital for surgery.

That time came in September and was followed by a month of suspense. Tests were done. There was an exploratory operation, a period of rest, and then the major operation on which everything would depend.

At the time of Grace's first visit after that his eyes were still bandaged and the result not yet known. He was under orders to lie without moving his head. As she sat down, resting her hand on his, she could feel the tension he was under – and yet he could still speak in his familiar light-hearted way.

‘I've learned a way of talking without moving my muscles,' he told her, hardly opening his lips. ‘Terribly hard. Like a ventriloquist.
You
just try talking without moving your eyebrows or cheeks. If you make me laugh,
you'll be evicted at once. And I'm prepared to bet anything you like that there isn't a looking glass in the room. If the first thing I see when they take off the bandage is my own face, my screams of terror will probably tear apart whatever they've sewn up.'

‘You've got a good side and a bad side,' Grace said honestly. ‘Like an actor. Jay says every actor knows which side he likes to be photographed from.' Jay had just left school and, while awaiting his call-up papers, had joined a concert party which gave performances in convalescent hospitals and leave camps. ‘And even the bad side is far better now.'

Although the burned skin was still puckered and scarred, it had lost some of its first unpleasant shiny redness. In time, no doubt, the thick wavy hair which had been shaved for the operation would be allowed to grow and partly conceal his damaged ear; whilst the eye for which there had never been any hope could be covered by a patch. ‘I'm looking at the bad side at this moment,' she said, ‘and
‘I'm
not screaming.'

‘But women are braver than men; everyone knows that. Oh dear, I nearly smiled then, and I mustn't. Grace, they're taking the bandages off on Wednesday. The room has to stay dark for a time after that. But by next weekend we should have some idea … My parents will be here on Saturday. Will you come on Sunday again?'

‘Of course I will.' Grace's hand tightened on his as she looked down in a pity which there was no need to conceal. She understood how terrifying this week of waiting must be, and was overwhelmed by a desire to care for him. ‘And Christopher, whatever happens, I shall be with you. To be your eyes if you need me.'

Christopher's lips moved no more than they had earlier, so that it came as a shock to hear the sudden bitterness which he managed to project in his voice.

‘Can you be my eyes when I take my hunter over a hedge? Or point my gun when the grouse come over?' He made an effort to soften the effect of his questions by producing a laugh from the back of his throat. ‘But we've promised, haven't we, that we're not going to talk about that. I'll look forward to seeing you on Sunday. I'll look forward to
seeing
you.'

‘Yes, of course.' She was as frightened as he was when she said goodbye, and spent sleepless hours that week trying to see into the future. Her heart was in her mouth when, the next Sunday, she asked the ward sister how Major Bailey was.

‘Coming along nicely. We'll have him out of solitary confinement and back in the ward tomorrow.'

‘Coming along nicely!' But they said that, or something like that, every time. Cheerful news was part of the treatment rather than a statement of the truth. Grace opened Christopher's door.

Last time, whilst he was still bandaged, the room had been flooded with autumn sunshine. Today the window was curtained and dim. Grace stepped forward and Christopher turned his head slowly towards her. The silence seemed to last for ever. Then he smiled.

‘I spy, with my one little eye, Miss Grace Hardie,' he said. ‘Wearing, if I'm not mistaken, a most becoming grey dress with a white collar.'

Grace found herself sobbing with relief. ‘Christopher, is it really all right!'

‘Only half all right. I've had a chance to look at myself for the first time.'

‘That's not important. Not important at all.'

‘If you really mean that, then I have advance permission from Sister to let myself be kissed. Very gently, because I'm still fragile.'

She kissed first his good cheek and then his scarred one.
It had been the truth when she said that his appearance was unimportant. For a little while she felt too emotional to talk coherently, but listened instead while Christopher outlined his plans.

‘Two more weeks here,' he said. ‘Then the doctors reckon they can get rid of me at last. My parents came yesterday to discuss what we should do. We're all going up to Scotland to stay with my grandparents. Good air and good food up there, they say. I'm expected to go for long walks to get my muscles into shape after all these months of lying around. And I want to find out whether a one-eyed man can still shoot straight. We shall stay there for Christmas and then come home for the new year. My mother will be writing to ask you to stay as soon as we get back. We mean to have a New Year's Eve party, and I thought it would be nice if I could use the occasion to announce my engagement.'

‘I seem to remember that you broke off your engagement.' Grace spoke primly, but her eyes were sparkling. ‘Before you start making announcements, you'll have to find someone to propose marriage to again, won't you?'

‘I suppose you're right. I think I could slot it in at about eleven o'clock on New Year's Eve. Would you be kind enough to keep that hour free, Miss Hardie, and meet me in the conservatory as the clock strikes eleven?'

‘I'll enter it in my diary,' Grace agreed solemnly, and then burst out laughing. ‘Oh Christopher, I'm so happy! How shall I ever be able to wait for the year to be over?'

The end of hostilities in November 1918 was celebrated in London with bonfires and dancing and inebriation, but at Greystones only with tears of relief and exhaustion. The past four years had cost the Hardies dear, ending Frank's life and wrecking Philip's and Kenneth's. But at least the Armistice had come in time to save Jay from conscription; while David had no further fear of being snatched from his desk in the War Office as medical standards were lowered.

The coming of peace did nothing to resolve one uncertainty. Since the war started there had been no news of the head of the household. Grace could understand how reluctant her mother must be to give up hope. It came as a shock, all the same, when in the middle of the Christmas celebrations Lucy made an announcement.

‘I'm going to China.'

For a moment they were all silenced by amazement. Midge had only time to venture a mild ‘Lucy, dear …' before David sprang to his feet.

‘You can't be serious, Mother. It's impossible.'

‘Not impossible at all. You forget that I've made the journey once already.'

‘But so many years ago! And you had Father as a companion then. For a woman to travel thousands of miles into a barbarous country, without even knowing where to look –'

‘I don't propose to travel alone. That's to say, I shall make the voyage to Shanghai unaccompanied; but on a British ship, where I shall be perfectly safe. I shall ask
Kenneth to meet me at Shanghai. The ship he's working on at the moment is in Far Eastern waters, and he only signs on for one voyage at a time. I'm sure he'll escort me on the overland journey.'

This statement caused a different kind of surprise. Except for Grace's secret glimpse of him at Greystones, the younger members of the family had had no contact with their brother since his desertion from the army. They had assumed that he must have escaped abroad, but this was the first intimation that he had been in touch with their mother. Grace and Jay began to ask questions about him, but were waved aside as David pressed his objections.

‘Even with Kenneth to help you, how can you hope to trace Father after so long, and in such a huge country?'

‘Anyone who has seen him will remember him. I know where he planned to start. If he changed his mind, he would have told his agent, whose advice I shall take. You won't be able to dissuade me, David dear. I realize perfectly well that I can't hope –' For the first time her voice faltered, and she needed a moment in which to compose herself. ‘I've written so many letters, and had so many disappointing answers. I can't just sit at home, don't you see, not knowing what has happened and doing nothing to find out.'

She smiled round the table with a firmness which made it clear that there should be no further discussion of her plans. Only later that night, when she found herself alone with Grace, did she make one further comment.

‘It will take a little time to confirm my plans with Kenneth, so I shan't leave England before March. We can arrange for you to have your wedding before I go.'

Grace flushed. After receiving a written invitation from Mrs Bailey to spend a week at their house in Leicestershire, she had confided to her mother that she expected
Christopher to renew his proposal of marriage then. But it seemed forward to take this for granted.

‘Won't that be too soon?'

‘In view of the fact that you've been engaged – or at least had an understanding – for a year already, I don't see why you should delay. Say a month after he asks you again, to give me time to order your trousseau and make plans for a reception and invite the guests.'

Grace felt hustled, but reminded herself that the month had not yet started to run. A more immediate problem was that of choosing clothes for her stay with the Baileys. Would there be only members of the family present, or might there be a house party at the weekend? The New Year's Eve party which Christopher had mentioned might prove to be a dance, or even a ball. At the time when Christopher first suggested the visit, there had been no sign that the war would ever end, and so no thought of frivolous behaviour. Even now she did not feel frivolous, but it was to be expected that social life would quickly return to normal. The problem was that Grace had been too young before the war to know what was normal.

Christopher came to collect her for the visit. His sight was good enough for him to drive himself down in a new motor car, with the chauffeur sitting beside him, ready to take over on the journey back. Grace found herself shy of holding hands with someone who seemed almost a stranger. For the past three months, while they were apart, she had remembered him as he was in hospital, lying in bed or walking cautiously. But his stay in Scotland had restored his health and energy. His hair had grown again and he had devised for himself something that was more than a patch although less than a bandage. It covered not just his blind eye but also the most severely damaged skin below and the top of the ear which the surgeons were unable to save.

‘It comes in four colours,' he announced cheerfully when he noticed her studying it. ‘Black for business or dramatic effect. Lovat green for shooting. A sort of beige flesh colour for loafing around at home. And pink for hunting, just for a joke. We're hunting tomorrow. The meet's at our house.'

‘You know I don't ride?'

‘Don't ride? Everybody rides!'

‘I did tell you, right at the beginning. The time you came to Greystones.' But perhaps it was his father she had told; she could no longer remember.

‘Father breeds hunters, you know. He's got a steady mare waiting for you. No need for you to ride to hounds if you don't feel up to it. Lots of people just follow the hunt at a distance, in a gentle kind of way.'

‘No, I mean I don't ride at all. It's not that I'm frightened of jumping.' As a small girl, with a pony of her own, Grace had been as great a dare-devil as her brothers, giving the recreation up only when it was discovered to trigger her fits of breathlessness. ‘It's just that horses seem to make me ill.'

‘Bad luck. But you won't ask me to sit at home with you, will you? I don't think I could bear to hear the horn and watch them all canter away without me.'

‘No, of course not.' There was only the fleetest of moments in which Grace wondered, as she had wondered in the past, exactly how she and Christopher would spend their lives after they were married.

On her arrival it was taken for granted that she would be tired after a long journey in an unfamiliar means of transport. Although Mr Bailey offered to show her round his stables as soon as she was rested, he did not seem put out when she shook her head.