The Cavendon Luck

Within seconds the two of them were sitting side by side at Alice’s desk, where her Women’s Institute papers were spread out, along with the detailed plan of the field that was going to be the communal allotment. This would be planted and tended by the women who wished to do this work.

Turning to Alice, Cecily said, ‘It is a practical idea. Food will be a problem if war comes.’

‘When it comes,’ Alice corrected.

‘Too true,’ Cecily agreed, and then said in a slightly odd tone, ‘you could just as easily have asked Miles for a field, or even your son. Harry does run the estate with Miles, you know.’

‘You’re right, I could have done that, Ceci. But I don’t think that would have been the correct thing. The Sixth Earl is still the Sixth Earl; he’s not dead yet, and it is his land. I thought it only proper to approach him, via Charlotte.’

‘I understand now, Mam,’ Cecily answered, offering Alice a warm smile.

Looking down at the large sheet of paper, she saw how cleverly the field had been designed to work as an allotment.

Each square patch was marked, and the name of the vegetable to be grown there written in. ‘Potatoes, carrots, parsnips,’ Cecily read out. ‘Onions, sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower …’ She stopped, suddenly laughing, and shook her head. ‘You’re a master planner, Mother! Harry must get his talent for gardening and landscaping from you.’

‘Goodness me, he’s much cleverer than I am,’ Alice murmured, and turned in her chair. She gave her daughter a knowing look. ‘Did you manage to speak to Harry? You know … about that … person.’

Shaking her head, Cecily replied in a low voice, ‘No, I didn’t. We were supposed to have a chat earlier this afternoon.’

‘His affair with that scandalous woman has started to leak out!’ Alice exclaimed, her tone suddenly turning angry. ‘He thinks it’s a big secret, but it isn’t, and your father now knows about it. He’s furious. You know how much His Lordship abhors scandal. And scandal is about to flare around your brother.’

‘I agree with everything you’re saying, Mother, but he is a grown man. Forty years old to be exact. He’ll tell me it’s none of my business.’

‘But you will speak to him?’ Alice sounded anxious, and there was a concerned look in her eyes.

‘I will, I promise. I’ll do it tomorrow morning,’ Cecily reassured her mother.

Alice nodded, and pursed her lips. Her voice was more even and steady when she said, ‘He ought to know better than to get involved with her. Pauline Mallard is a married woman. Furthermore, she’s an American heiress, a socialite, living the high life in London and New York. And now in Harrogate. But I suppose you know all this.’

‘Well, yes, I do, Mam.’

‘In the end she’ll make a fool of him, you’ll see. And, not only that, she’s a lot older than he is.’

‘But rather beautiful, I hear. A stunning redhead,’ Cecily interjected.

‘And rather promiscuous … that’s what I hear,’ Alice shot back, obviously wanting to have the last word.

‘After Genevra gave me the message, she said something rather odd right out of the blue. She told me not to say anything to Harry about the woman. I was really taken aback. Genevra then added that she would drop him, that she was not his destiny, some other woman was.’

Alice stared at her. ‘How could Genevra know about Pauline Mallard? Do you think he brought her here to the house? And that Genevra saw them together?’

‘No, I’m sure not. However, I was struck by the way she said it, so sure of her sight, as she calls it, her visions of the future. And then there was her use of the word “destiny”.’ Cecily’s voice was puzzled.

She cleared her throat, and went on slowly, ‘Genevra has her own particular speech pattern, Mam. It’s jerky, rather staccato, and mostly her sentences are composed of small words. So I found it curious that she even knew a word like destiny, since she doesn’t read.’

‘Oh but she does!’ Alice exclaimed.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course. I taught her.’

Cecily was so surprised she gaped at Alice. ‘When did you do that and why didn’t you ever tell me?’

‘It never occurred to me. It was just sort of … happenstance. After you’d gone off to live with Aunt Dorothy and Uncle Howard in London, I’d dropped off some of your old dresses for her. She came over to thank me, and asked about you. She was very intense, and it struck me then that she had a strong connection to you, Ceci, and was concerned about you and your wellbeing. I showed her some of those first little stories about your designs in the fashion magazines. That’s when she confessed she couldn’t read. I taught her. She learned to read at my knee.’

‘How lovely of you to do that.’ Cecily was impressed and it showed on her face.

‘She was very appreciative.’ Alice hesitated for a few moments before finally asking, ‘Did you ever feel there was this … connection between you, Cecily?’

‘I did. I still do. She told me twenty-five years ago that Swann will rule. So yes, there is this connection between us.’

‘What did she actually say twenty-five years ago?’ Alice asked, filled with curiosity.

‘It wasn’t actually what she said … I ran into her one day on the dirt road. She took a long twig and drew a square with a bird perched on top of it in the dirt. I asked her what it meant, and she wouldn’t tell me. Then she said it was nowt, nothing, and skipped off.’

‘And today she told you what it meant?’

‘No, she didn’t. I sort of figured it out years ago. The square represented Cavendon Hall and the bird a swan. What she was saying in the drawing was that the Swanns and the Inghams would link up.’

Alice did not respond for a moment and then murmured quietly, ‘She couldn’t have known then that your life would turn out the way it did. That you, a Swann, would marry the son of an earl. So there must be something to her claim to have the sight, to have the ability to foresee the future. You believe her predictions, don’t you?’

‘Yes. I have always believed them, and I always will.’ Cecily took hold of her mother’s hand. ‘She’s proved it to me. She gave us a piece of paper at our wedding. Swann Rules, it said, with the drawing next to it.’

After Cecily left, Alice went out to the garden, carrying her watering can. As she moved around the beds, giving the flowers water, her thoughts remained on the Swanns and Inghams.

Blood. It was her three grandchildren who had the mixed blood: Ingham and Swann. Like Cecily, she sometimes wondered if there really had been other members of the two families who had produced an offspring. Or maybe two. She had no idea.

Only Charlotte Swann Ingham would know that. She had the record books that dated back for centuries, locked up in a safe, a safe now at Cavendon Hall. It was in her dressing room. After telling her this, Charlotte had handed her a sealed envelope, and told her the new code for the safe was inside. ‘Please give it to Cecily and tell her to lock it up,’ Charlotte had then instructed her, and this Alice had done.

Putting the watering can down, lowering herself on to the garden seat, Alice sat for a moment or two looking out towards the moors. It was the end of July on Sunday, the first day of August on Monday. That was when the heather would start to bloom; within a week or two the moors would look like a rolling sea of lavender.

David, Cecily’s first son, had eyes the colour of the moors, the lavender eyes so unique to the Swanns. Otherwise, he was the spitting image of his father, Miles, with his features. Walter had them too, but he had also inherited Cecily’s colouring and her chiselled features. As for five-year-old Venetia, she was a true Ingham through and through, with her golden hair and bright blue eyes. Alice smiled to herself, thinking how much Venetia resembled Lady Dulcie when she had been the same age.

Grandchildren. They were very precious, and she would love to have more. Harry wanted a family. He had said that a few months ago. He would like to be married, he had confided, so he could have a child – several children, in fact.

He had the makings of a good father; there was no doubt in her mind about that. But Pauline Mallard, believed to be forty-eight, was certainly past the child-bearing age. A spurt of anger erupted in Alice. Instantly, she pushed it away. She wasn’t going to dwell on that woman.

Within a few seconds her natural compassion overcame her anxiety about Harry, and her annoyance with him. She suddenly felt a rush of sympathy for her son.

FOUR (#ulink_0c21333a-9658-5232-8e2d-099ab02af9bf)

Greta Chalmers put the receiver down and let her hand rest on it for a moment. She felt as if she had a tight band around her chest and tears brimmed in her green eyes. She swallowed them back and blinked a few times.

She had never heard her father sounding so despairing and morose, and she knew the reason why. He saw no way out of his predicament, no solution to his dilemma. At the end of their conversation he said, ‘I’m trapped. We’re trapped. There’s nothing anybody can do, liebling.’ After telling her he loved her, that they all loved her, he had hung up.

And she loved them: her father, her stepmother, Heddy, her half-sister, Elise, and half-brother, Kurt. They lived in Berlin but, being Jewish, they had now come to realize that they must leave as soon as possible, escape the dangers of the monstrous Third Reich. They wanted to come to England; they knew they had a home with her until they found a place of their own. They had passports but no visas, no travel papers. They were stuck, as her father had just said.

Greta’s mind raced. So many ideas were jostling around for prominence. She glanced at her watch. It was now almost three thirty and Cecily would be coming back into the office at any moment. Taking control of herself as best she could, Greta let go of the phone, sat up straighter, arranged the collar of her cotton dress, and smoothed one hand over her dark brown hair.