Summer House Read online

  THE SUMMER HOUSE

  MARY NICHOLS

  Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  By Mary Nichols

  Copyright

  Prologue

  February 1918

  HELEN SAW THE car snaking its way up the hill from her bedroom window. She had been standing there for several minutes contemplating the bleak hillside. The peaks still had snow on them and even on the lower slopes there were a few pockets where it had drifted, white against the blue-black of the hills in winter. The car disappeared for a minute behind an outcrop and then reappeared a little nearer. She knew it was her father’s Humber, even from that distance. Cars were so few and far between in the Highlands of Scotland, the arrival of one was an event. The inhabitants of the village would make a note of it, wonder who it belonged to, where it was going. It had been like that when Papa brought her here. Her great aunt, Martha, had quickly silenced gossip, let it be known that Helen was staying with her to await the birth of her baby while her husband was away fighting in France. Whether they accepted that, Helen neither knew nor cared.

  It hadn’t been too bad at the beginning. Before her bump began to show, she had been allowed to go for walks, to go shopping, to take tea with the vicar and his wife, to dream that Oliver would come and rescue her and everything would be all right again. But as the weeks went by and no letter came from him, she fell into a kind of lethargy, a feeling that it didn’t matter what she did, she could not alter anything. ‘There, what did I tell you?’ Aunt Martha said, not for the first time. ‘He’s had his fun and now he’s left you with the consequences. That’s men all over. You didn’t really believe all his lies about being in love, did you?’ The trouble was she didn’t know what to believe and her tears, so copious at the beginning, had all dried up inside her.

  No matter how often she went over what had happened, how often she recalled what they had said to each other, she and Oliver, the promises they had made, how safe, almost invulnerable, she felt when she was in his arms, how often she reiterated that Oliver loved her and would stand by her, she could not convince herself any more, let alone Papa and Mama and Great Aunt Martha. They had won.

  The car was chugging up the last steep incline now. It would be outside the house in less than a minute and her father would climb out from behind the wheel and come inside. Now her lethargy turned to apprehension. Would he be any less angry, any less obdurate, any less unforgiving than he had been when he left her there? Her father was one of the old school, steeped in class divisions, used to having servants all around him, of shooting and fishing and hunting; of owning most of the village and dictating to its inhabitants, of dictating to her. She had been educated at a girls’ boarding school and a finishing school in Switzerland, then lived at home until a suitable husband could be found for her. Getting a job or doing something useful had not even been considered; daughters of earls did not go out to work and they married young gentleman of their own kind. Looking back, it was strange how she had accepted that so easily.

  She turned and looked at the room which had been her prison and her refuge for the last six months. It was a solidly furnished room, matching the solidity of the house: an iron bedstead with brass rails, mahogany wardrobe and chest of drawers, a washstand on which stood a bowl and jug and whose cupboard housed a chamber pot. There was linoleum on the floor and a couple of mats either side of the bed. Compared to the luxury of her room at Beckbridge Hall, with its thick carpet, chintzy covers and bright curtains, it was spartan, but she supposed that was part of her punishment. On the bed lay a packed case. It wasn’t large; she hadn’t brought much with her, just a couple of dresses, underwear, stockings, nightclothes and toiletries. Her aunt had given her dresses of her own to alter to fit as she grew bigger, black and brown in scratchy wool or stiff taffeta. Apart from the one she was wearing she would not take them away with her.

  She heard her father being greeted by her great aunt and decided she had better put in an appearance and left the room. At the top of the stairs she paused and looked down. He was taking off his coat and hat. Handing them to Lisa, her aunt’s only indoor servant, he looked up and saw her. Perhaps he had not been prepared for the size of her, but he did nothing to hide the disgust on his face.

  She came downstairs slowly, hanging onto the banister and watching her feet, which had almost disappeared beneath the bump of her abdomen. At the bottom she looked up at him. He was tall, his bearing aristocratic, his suit impeccably tailored. His hair was greying at the temples and his moustache was already white. Had it been like that six months before? His grey eyes, she noted, were cold. ‘Papa. Did you have a good journey?’

  He looked her up and down. ‘It was damned tiresome. Are you ready to go?’

  ‘Yes, Papa.’ He had driven himself the whole way and she knew why. Having his chauffeur drive him up would have been easier, but servants talk and the whole object of the exercise had been secrecy. No one in Beckbridge, no one among their acquaintances, none of their relatives must ever learn of Helen’s shame.

  ‘I’ve arranged an early lunch,’ Great Aunt said, leading the way into the drawing room, where a fire burnt. The drawing room and the dining room were the only rooms allowed a fire, however cold the weather, except the kitchen, of course, which was Lisa’s domain. Helen had often woken to find a tracery of frost on the inside of her bedroom window.

  ‘Good. You will forgive me for not staying, but it is a long drive. I want to get as far as Edinburgh tonight, if I can. No sense in dawdling.’

  No sense at all, Helen thought, but wondered where he was taking her. Not home, not with that bump in front of her to advertise that she was heavily pregnant.

  They went into the dining room and Lisa brought in the dishes. Helen ate for the sake of her baby, but the food had no taste. She was glad when the silent meal was over and it was time to put on her hat and a cloak, which concealed her bulging figure better than a coat. Her father took her case from Lisa and put it in the boot. She turned to her great aunt. ‘Goodbye, Aunt Martha. Thank you for having me.’

  ‘Goodbye, child.’ She pecked Helen’s cheek. ‘Now you remember what I said. When it is over, put it behind you and be a dutiful daughter. Think of your poor Mama and your husband. Pray God, this dreadful war will be over soon and we can all go back to life as it used to be.’

  ‘Yes, Aunt.’ As she settled herself in the passenger seat, she knew life would never be as it used to be. And she had been a dutiful daughter. That was half the trouble. She had even obediently married the man her parents had chosen for her. It wasn’t that she hadn’t wanted to marry Richard; she had simply been too ignorant to know any better.

  Her father settled himself behind the wheel and they set off southwards. ‘Where are we going, Papa?’

  ‘To London.’

  ‘London?’ She was astonished.

  ‘Yes. There is a clinic there where you can have your child. They are known to be discreet. Your baby will be looked after and placed—’

  ‘Placed! Oh, Papa!’ He hadn’t changed. He was still implacable. She must give up her child. At the beginning she had argued strongly against it, but Aunt Martha had worked on her every day, nagging at her that she must think of what her poor mother was going through because of her wickedness. She could have more babies. What was
so terrible about giving one away to a good home, to someone who really wanted a child? It went on and on, like a dripping tap. She would not have given in if she had heard from Oliver, but there was nothing, not a word.

  ‘Don’t “Papa” me. You may thank your mother you haven’t been thrown out, disowned. That a child of mine should… If Brandon had lived…’ He stopped and shut his mouth tight. Mentioning her brother always put him in a strange mood. Helen had loved her brother and mourned his death as keenly as her parents, but they had never considered that. Immersed in their own grief, they had no time for hers. But Richard had.

  It was Brendan’s death that had brought Richard to Beckbridge Hall. He felt he ought to tell her parents of their son’s last heroic fight; the official notification that he had been killed in action didn’t tell them very much. In spite of the sadness of the occasion Richard had impressed not only Helen but her parents with his confident manner and ready smile. They had invited him to stay. He was charming and sympathetic and Helen had liked him, liked the way he turned to her, drawing her into the conversation when her parents might have excluded her. They went riding and walking and talked about anything except the war.

  ‘Will you write to me?’ he had asked before leaving and she had agreed. Their courtship had been conducted by correspondence, until he had returned to England on much-needed leave and they met again and he proposed. Her parents had been keen on him, telling her she would never find a better husband: brave, handsome, wealthy, such a charming man and quite a catch. She had believed them. Somehow he managed to get an extension to his leave and they had been married straight away. He had returned to France after a two-day honeymoon and all they were left with were letters. How could you make love by correspondence? She had accepted that, looked forward to each rather impersonal missive and the time when they would be together again. And in the meantime she had continued to live at home.

  She had helped her mother run the house with its depleted number of servants, coped with shortages of everything including food, alcohol and coal, not to mention her father’s increasingly irascible temper. It was frustration, she realised; he was an ex-soldier and wanted to be out there in the front line, doing his bit, but he was too old and unfit. He was intensely patriotic and would entertain young officers from all the services, offering them baths and meals and often a bed, which would have been all very well in their affluent days before the war, but like everyone else they were having to pull in their belts and such largesse was a struggle to maintain.

  ‘Louise, I am an earl,’ he said, when her mother protested. ‘We have standards to maintain. Offering hospitality to our boys in uniform is the least I can do, since they won’t let me put one on myself.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that,’ her mother said. ‘But finding extra food is not exactly easy and finding coal to heat the water for constant baths is a problem.’

  ‘So it may be, but I hope I shall never be accused of meanness.’

  And so her mother, under his thumb as she always had been and always expected to be, continued to welcome officers based in the area. They would stand on the thick Axminster carpet of the drawing room, listening to her father holding forth about how he would conduct the war, sipping gin cocktails and marvelling at everything they could see, from silver goblets to delicate porcelain, bronze busts to portraits of Hardingham ancestors going back generations. Helen would be politely friendly to them all, treating them all alike. Until she met Oliver.

  Sitting beside her grim and silent father, the only noise the hum of a well-tuned engine, she allowed herself to drift back to the previous spring. The war was already three years old and the casualties had been horrendous. Even in the quiet backwater of a Norfolk village they could not remain untouched. Besides Brandon there had been others, some killed, some wounded so badly they would never work again, and some whose minds had been turned by the horror. But in spite of that the daffodils still bloomed, the apple trees in the orchard were covered in pink blossom as they were every year, the migrating birds returned. Had they seen the hell that was Flanders? Some of the men who called at the Hall talked about it. Some were silent, too silent. Helen tried to be cheerful, to make everything as normal as possible, but sometimes she needed to escape. At such times she retreated to the summer house.

  It stood in the grounds facing the lake; a wooden building with windows on three sides and a small veranda at the front. When they were children – she and Brandon and her cousin Kathy – they would use it as a changing room to put on costumes before going swimming. It had a padded bench along the rear wall in which they kept a croquet set, a couple of cricket bats and some stumps and bails. Now, sitting beside her father, whose concentration on the road before him was absolute, her mind went back there.

  She saw again the young man seated on the bench, propped against the corner smoking a cigarette. He was in the uniform of a Canadian captain. Seeing her, he scrambled to his feet and pinched out the cigarette. He was exceptionally tall, but not gangly. His hair appeared dark brown at first, until a shaft of sunlight coming through the window revealed the auburn streaks. He had crinkly, humorous eyes and, unlike so many of the officers who came to the house, he had no moustache. His smile revealed even, white teeth. ‘Lady Barstairs. Am I trespassing? Perhaps I should not be here.’

  ‘No, it is perfectly all right. Do sit down again.’

  Being polite, he would not sit while she stood, so she sat down on the bench and he resumed his seat beside her.

  ‘I assume you are one of Daddy’s guests.’

  ‘Yes, I came with a pal, who introduced me to Lord Hardingham. He welcomed me, offered me a cup of tea and a bun.’

  ‘He likes to do that. He calls it “doing his bit”.’

  ‘And so he is. Makes us feel at home.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘It’s so peaceful here,’ he said, looking out towards the lake. A pair of swans swam majestically in the middle surrounded by half a dozen mallards. ‘You would never know there was a war.’

  ‘Have you been out in France?’

  ‘I was in the attack on the Somme last year. Took some shrapnel in the thigh and got shipped back here to recuperate.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Does that mean you’ll be sent home?’

  ‘No. The job’s not finished yet, is it?’

  ‘You are very brave.’

  ‘Not brave, Lady Barstairs.’ He laughed lightly. ‘Obstinate perhaps.’

  ‘You think we can win?’

  ‘We have to, don’t we?’

  ‘You sound like my husband.’

  ‘He’s out there?’

  ‘In the Flying Corps.’

  ‘Now there’s a brave man! You wouldn’t get me up in one of those machines for a king’s ransom.’

  ‘Tell me about yourself,’ she prompted.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Oh, everything.’ Why she said that she did not know. She didn’t even know his name, nor what kind of man he was, and her parents would certainly not approve of her sitting alone with a man to whom she had not been introduced. They were sticklers for things like that. ‘Start with your name.’

  ‘Oliver Donovan.’

  She offered him her hand. ‘How do you do, Mr Donovan. I’m Helen Barstairs, but you know that already.’

  ‘Yes. I saw you up at the house, talking to an English officer. My pal said you were the Earl’s daughter. Say, what’s the difference between an earl and a lord? I’ve heard him called both.’

  She laughed. ‘A lord is really a baron, a viscount is one step up from that, and from viscount you go up to earl and marquis and then duke, which is the highest. All except the duke are addressed as “my lord”. The duke is “your grace” or “my lord duke”.

  ‘Oh, I see. And is your husband a lord or something?’

  ‘No, but as an earl’s daughter I am allowed to keep my title, even if my husband doesn’t have one. Strictly speaking I am Lady Helen. How did we come to be talki
ng about the British aristocracy? You were telling me about yourself. Donovan is an Irish name, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. It was once O’Donovan. My great grandfather went to Canada during the famine of 1846 to start a new life with his family and he dropped the O. He found work on a farm near Ontario, where my grandfather was born. Grandpa grew up and married the daughter of an Englishman, and by the time Pa was born he had a farm of his own. Pa inherited it. He married Mom and that’s when I came along. My folks worked hard to give me a good education and when I left school, I was apprenticed to a motor engineer. I just got through that and was working at the local garage when the war started, so I volunteered. My company looks after the regiment’s vehicles.’

  ‘What will you do when the war is over?’

  ‘Go back to it. One day I plan to set up a business selling and servicing motor cars. Believe me, they are the transport of the future.’

  ‘Are you married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you do have a girlfriend?’

  He had looked at her a little sideways at that and she found herself blushing. ‘No. That’s something for the future.’

  ‘You sound optimistic.’

  ‘Best way to be. Aren’t you?’

  ‘Sometimes I wonder. There doesn’t seem to be much good news, does there?’

  ‘Not from the front. When did you last see your husband?’

  ‘Nearly a year ago now.’

  ‘You must have been childhood sweethearts.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘You look so young. You can’t have been married very long.’

  ‘Less than a year. And I’ll be twenty-one later this year.’

  ‘A whirlwind romance.’

  ‘I suppose you could say that. We had only known each other a few weeks when he proposed, but Richard’s father was known to my father and both families were in favour of the match. I hardly had time to get to know him before he went back to France. Sometimes I can’t even remember what he looks like.’ This had been an extraordinary admission and she had no idea why she made it to a perfect stranger, except he did not seem like a stranger. Talking to him was like talking to someone she had known all her life, from whom she had no secrets. She felt she could tell him anything and he would not judge her.