Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 1: Lessons in Heartbreak, Once in a Lifetime, Homecoming

‘Christ Almighty,’ Maisie said. ‘You must be a bleedin’ princess, love, ‘cos your dad would need to be a king to keep this place going.’

‘Oh, Maisie, shut up,’ snapped Diana, with an unheard-of irritability that showed Lily that she wasn’t the only one anxious about the wedding.

Maisie shut up.

When the truck deposited them at the huge front door, two elderly gentlemen appeared.

‘Daddy,’ said Diana, leaping forward to hug the shabbier of the two. At least seventy, with a few strands of silver hair on his brown, liver-spotted head, he wore a much-darned knitted waistcoat, a pale blue shirt and silk foulard, and an amiable expression on his lined, bespectacled face.

‘Maisie and Lily, this is Daddy, Sir Archibald Belton, and Wilson.’

Try as she might, Lily couldn’t bring herself to call a man older than her father by his surname without some prefix. Wilson. No, couldn’t do it.

‘Hello, Sir Archibald, how do you do, Mr Wilson,’ she said.

Sir Archibald’s face didn’t flicker but Wilson looked marginally shocked.

Oh well, thought Lily, in for a penny, in for a pound.

She picked up her small valise.

‘Wilson can take your bags, m’dear,’ said the genial Sir Archibald.

‘Not at all,’ Lily said cheerfully. ‘I’ll carry it myself.’

Beltonward might have been stripped of most of its artwork (the valuable stuff was in the enormous cellar, along with the dwindling collection of wine – Sir Archie was said to be desolate that all his precious hock was gone), but the building itself still held treasures. As Sir Archie led them inside, chatting happily to his daughter, linking arms with her, Maisie and Lily were able to look around a vestibule – far too grand to be a hall, Lily grinned to herself – with a huge staircase stretching elegantly in front of them. A few portraits still hung on the faded damask red walls. Men with long Borzoi noses like Sir Archie, and powdered and berib-boned women like poor horse-faced Sybil, stared down at them, saying Yes, we’re rich and powerful and masters of all we survey.

Plasterwork picked out in tattered gold leaf caught the light and the vast vaulted ceiling was painted with frolicking cherubs and goddesses scampering through sun-lit clouds.

Two giant cracked blue-and-white vases decorated with peeping Chinese girls stood at the turn of the stairs and Lily knew enough from Rathnaree to recognise that they were worth something.

‘Christ Almighty,’ whispered Maisie as they climbed the marble steps, ‘I was never interested in marrying a toff, but I can see the attraction now.’

‘Not if you had to clean the steps yourself, you wouldn’t,’ Lily whispered back, thinking of the yards of marble at Rathnaree and knowing that, no matter how much money she had, she’d still hate to get another human being to clean her floors.

‘Good point.’

Maisie and Lily were to share a room and when they were alone, Lily sat down on one of the twin beds. The coverlet was pure white, quilted cotton. It was the newest thing in the room. Everything else was very old and faded, including the heavy floral curtains and the threadbare carpet.

‘Gawd, not quite the Ritz up here, is it?’ Maisie said.

‘Family rooms,’ Lily explained. ‘These are where family and friends of the children stay. The proper guest suites would be better, but nothing too showy. It’s bad taste to have the place too grand.’

‘I would, if I lived here,’ Maisie sighed, opening drawers and poking around.

‘That’s why you and I would never make toffs’ wives,’ Lily laughed. ‘We’d want round-the-clock heat, silk bedspreads like Greta Garbo’s and a Rolls-Royce, and the posh boy would want old curtains, no heating, and us darning his socks rather than buy new ones. Rich people don’t need to show off the fact that they’re rich.’

‘They’re odd, that’s for sure,’ Maisie said.

They tidied themselves up to meet Diana’s mother and the other guests.

‘Mummy’s in the little drawing room,’ Diana said as the three of them headed down the massive staircase once again. ‘She can’t wait to meet you.’

She’d changed from her travelling clothes and looked younger somehow in a pair of old jodhpurs and a light jersey. Lily felt as if she were seeing a new side to her friend now that she was at home. Again, she thought of her own home in Tamarin. She imagined taking Diana and Maisie there and showing them all the places she’d played as a child. The woods where she and Tommy played hide-and-seek, the stream where they’d lain on their bellies, dangling fingers in the cool water. She thought of introducing them to her mother, how they’d take to her instantly. Everyone loved Mam; she was so warm, so kind. Except, her mother would be different with Diana because Di was one of them. Why did it matter?

The small drawing room was on the left side of the house, where the family lived, as opposed to the east wing, which was currently occupied by the sanatorium.

Diana’s mother got to her feet and held out her arms as soon as she saw them.

‘How wonderful!’ she cried, with genuine delight. She was the image of Diana, only an older version, with the same sweet face, dancing smile and hair dotted with grey.

‘Hello, Lady Belton,’ said Lily formally.

‘I do feel as though I know you, girls,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard so much about you, and how kind you’ve been to Diana. I can never thank you enough.’ She beamed at them with such warmth that Lily finally felt herself relax. Perhaps it was going to be all right, after all.

Sir Archie, for all his amiability, was very much an old-style gentleman: charming, yes, but no doubt fully aware of his rank. But Lady Belton was much more in Diana’s style: kind to all, irrespective of background. Lady Irene would not have liked her one little bit, Lily thought with amusement.

Dinner was ‘just the family’, as Diana guilelessly put it. Lily, Maisie, Diana, Lady Evangeline and Sir Archie were joined by Sybil and her fiancé, the firm-jawed, largely silent Captain Philip Stanhope.

Sybil, two years younger than Diana, and a million years away from her sister in terms of temperament, only wanted to talk about her wedding the next day, and fretted about her dress, the flowers and how awful it was that they couldn’t have a proper society wedding because of the horrid old war.

Lily thought of the people who’d really experienced the horrid old war – people like Maisie, who’d lost her mother, and the young men in the other part of the house, battered inside and out by what they’d seen on the front line. Here in the idyllic world of Beltonward, the war seemed a long way away. Sybil worked with the local Land Army, and Lily couldn’t help wondering how Sybil went about supervising homesick nineteen-year-old land girls who’d signed up to help the war effort and found themselves miles from home, getting up at five to milk cows or drive a tractor.

‘You come from a farm. You should join the land girls,’ Sybil said sharply to Lily, as if she’d been able to see into her head.

‘Bit of a waste of my training, though,’ Lily said evenly.

‘Yes, but you started in Ireland,’ Sybil said, as if that in itself rendered the training useless.

Lily felt the familiar flare of anger inside her. She dampened it down.

‘I didn’t, actually,’ she said. ‘I didn’t nurse in Ireland at all. I worked for a local doctor.’

‘Sibs! Lily’s a better nurse than I am,’ Diana said.

‘If you say so,’ Sybil muttered, staring down her long nose at Lily.

‘Where did you say you came from again, m’dear?’ Sir Archie enquired.

Lily felt herself stiffen. She’d die, just die if he knew the Lochravens. She couldn’t bear a conversation about them, one that could only end with the realisation that Lily had worked as a lady’s maid at Rathnaree.

‘Waterford,’ she said, which was correct, after a fact. Tamarin was in the county of Waterford.

‘Oh, right,’ Sir Archie said.

After dinner, they all retired to the small drawing room where Lady Evangeline sat beside the unlit fire to work on a tapestry of a unicorn in a verdant wood, and Diana, Sybil, Sir Archie and Philip played cards. Maisie and Lily, neither of whom liked cards – Lily had only said it because she was sure the games she’d played at home weren’t the sort Sybil had in mind – sat on the window seat and talked as they looked out over the grounds.

Wilson, Philip and Sir Archie had assembled all the garden chairs on the small terrace beside the rose garden for the wedding party. The plan was to open the terrace doors so the guests could wander in and out at will. Sybil was still sulking because the convalescents hadn’t been cleared out of the ballroom for her big day.