The Secret of Summerhayes

‘They did. The house was very beautiful. I didn’t realise how beautiful. I should have enjoyed it more. Now this is all I’m left with.’ She waved her hand at the sitting room and the narrow hallway beyond, while Beth jumped to her feet to rescue the tea. Undeterred, Alice went on. ‘You see, I was brought up at Amberley, and it was always Amberley where I wanted to be.’

When Beth made no reply, she said, ‘Do you know it?’

Amberley was Gilbert Fitzroy’s home. ‘I know of it. It’s the estate that adjoins Summerhayes.’

‘It belonged to my parents,’ she said fiercely, as though Beth’s description had somehow disputed its ownership. ‘And then to my brother, Henry.’

‘And now to your nephew.’

Alice looked blank. ‘Gilbert,’ Beth said gently.

‘Inheritance knows no distinction,’ she muttered.

Beth had no idea what she meant, but she was concerned that at any moment the conversation would lead back to Elizabeth. ‘Talking of Amberley, these flowers are from their greenhouse. Gilbert must have asked his gardener to pick them especially for you.’

The old lady sniffed. The subject was evidently closed. ‘Can I pour you another cup?’ She thought the pot would just about run to it, though the liquid looked more like straw than tea.

‘You make a good cup of tea, Bethany. Better than Ivy, she never managed to cope with rationing.’

‘Now that she’s married to a farmer, it will be less of a problem.’

‘But Higson isn’t a farmer. Not any longer. He sold the farm – the military paid a good price for it, I believe, and that decided him. He bought a bungalow in Devon, on the coast. A place called Solmouth, Sidton…’

‘Sidmouth?’

‘That’s it. He asked Ivy to marry him before he left. She’d been a good girl to him ever since his wife died.’

‘So a happy ending?’

It didn’t seem that happy to Alice. She gave a long sigh. ‘I miss her. She was with me for so many years. Not that I’m not glad for her. Mr Higson is some compensation. She lost her first love, you know. Poor Miller – such a tragedy. He was our chauffeur, but they found him in the garden at the bottom of the estate. Drowned.’

An uncomfortable tingle started in the nape of Beth’s neck and slowly spread the length of her spine. She had walked that way once and been startled how uneasy she’d felt. There had been a kind of darkness to the place that had sent her scurrying. Afterwards she’d scolded herself for being foolish, but was it possible that the garden still held fast to a bad memory?

‘I’m glad for her,’ Alice repeated. ‘She did well for herself. And May Lacey, too. Girls from humble families. Whereas my daughter threw herself away on an Irishman without a shirt to his back. It’s a different world these days.’

Beth agreed, but she’d been only half listening. She should go in search of Ralph. She was already beginning to regret her agreement with Gilbert. The war had closed the boy’s school last year and he was woefully behind with his studies. It might have been better if his father had looked for a full-time tutor. Teaching at the same time as caring for Alice was proving a challenge, and she’d had to cancel the last two lessons. Ralph had been happy with the chance to escape since he had far more interesting things to do than sums and composition, but she couldn’t let it happen again. Today she’d told herself that she would have at least two hours with him and here was Mrs Summer, trying for an outward calm, but still deeply upset. She could see how disturbed the old lady remained from the way she was holding her cup, rattling it badly in its saucer.

Alice had an inner toughness, Beth had discovered, and she wouldn’t like it that she’d been found crying. She was trying hard to put on a brave face, but the letters had caused damage. The first one had arrived a month back, shortly after Beth had come to Summerhayes. She’d been stunned when she’d learnt the tragic history of this otherwise unremarkable woman: a husband and son prematurely dead and a daughter who seemingly had disappeared from the face of the earth at just nineteen years old. That first letter had brought all the sadness that Alice carried struggling into the light.

The letters were anonymous, but from the beginning they’d indicated that the writer, whoever they were, was bound for Summerhayes. The first one had been postmarked Southampton, suggesting a traveller from abroad, but then the second and third had come from London. In each letter the unknown writer had claimed to be drawing nearer to Summerhayes, promising Alice a loving reunion. Until today. Today the promise had been withdrawn; hence the old lady’s cries of despair. But if the writer were honest in seeking Alice, why had they gone to London? Why not travel directly to Summerhayes from Southampton? But they weren’t honest, were they? Otherwise they would have signed the letters, along with their protestations of love, and Alice would know for sure who would call and when. For a short while, the old lady’s iron certainty that the letters came from her daughter had made Beth question if, in fact, Alice were right, and that perhaps the writer was an unstable woman, disturbed enough to contact her mother anonymously. But there was too much deliberation in the pattern of the letters; that suggested a calculating mind determined to cause the maximum pain. Alice was being played with, Beth thought, but why and to what purpose, she couldn’t tell. All she could do was try to protect the poor lady as best she could.

She rescued the rattling cup and cast around for a way to soothe her elderly charge. ‘Shall I start another illustration?’ Alice loved to watch her draw, no doubt because the lost daughter had been an artist and in some small way Beth’s sketch pad reminded her of happier days.

With an effort, the old lady agreed. ‘That would be nice, my dear. What is it to be?’ She pulled herself upright and arranged her face to appear interested.

‘Let me see… we’d reached the point where Izzy is lost.’ Beth brought her companion up to date with the progress of the story. ‘If you remember, she escaped from the cottage when she was told to stay there, and now she can’t find her way out of the Tangled Wood.’ Izzy was the naughty heroine who one day, Beth hoped, would entrance a young audience. She found her pad and a handful of sharp pencils, and settled herself in the chair opposite. A forest scene would make an interesting subject. For a while, the only sound in the room was the slight scratching of pencil on paper. Then Alice spoke into the silence. ‘You do know we have an artist’s studio here? It’s in one of the attics, so the military won’t have taken it over.’

Sometimes Alice’s mind was as sharp as it must have been twenty years before. She was aware of the army’s presence in the building, aware of how much space they occupied. Beth hoped she wasn’t aware of the damage several changes of military personnel had caused to the splendid house she had once called home.

‘I know about the studio, Mrs Summer, but a sketch pad and pencil is all I need. I’m not a genuine artist – just a writer and illustrator. It’s a hobby for me.’ But one day, it might not be. One day, it might be a serious undertaking and earn sufficient money to bring her true independence. In the meantime, it was useful in deflecting Alice from her obsession. Though apparently it wasn’t going to deflect her today.

‘Elizabeth was an artist,’ she announced. ‘I have the pictures she painted – somewhere.’

‘There’s one in your bedroom, I think. And very good it is, too.’

The old lady looked gratified. ‘There are others. Lots of them. Maybe in the old studio?’

Beth had been there once and found it a chaotic jumble of mouldering furniture and broken boxes. She’d had to push past thick, furry cobwebs to get into the room and when she did, had seen immediately that part of the roof must have lost tiles because a steady drip of water had found its way through and was pooling the floorboards. She’d got Mr Ripley to fetch a bucket and asked him to remember to empty it whenever it rained. But she’d said nothing to Alice of the state in which she’d found the place. Fortunately, the old lady never went further than her own few rooms – a sitting room, a bedroom and a bathroom. Beth herself slept in what at a stretch could be described as a box room and Mr Ripley bravely inhabited one of the spare attics.

‘Let me see.’ Alice leant forward. ‘The trees are beautiful.’ She pointed to the tall, slender columns of birch that Beth had drawn, fingering their outline on the page. Their delicate leaves shadowed the winding path that the small girl would tread. ‘It is such a pity that you don’t paint. Colour would bring the image to life.’

She feared the mention of paint and colour would bring Elizabeth into the conversation once more. ‘Shall I draw Izzy into the picture? I think she’ll be happy on her adventure – to begin with at least.’

‘Yes, do that.’ Alice’s voice was weary now, her eyes heavy-lidded, and before Beth had finished the illustration, the old lady was breathing heavily. She fetched a blanket from the bedroom and tucked it around the sleeping woman. She should just have sufficient time to find Ralph and haul him up the stairs for his lesson. He was bound to be in the grounds somewhere, though finding him amid the mayhem of a military arrival could prove difficult. But if she knew the boy, he would most likely be sitting on the largest tank or questioning the gun crew on their stock of ammunition. She edged the front door shut and sped down the stairs.

Chapter Four (#ulink_be5787a2-ae77-50f4-b8ae-68c5bd9e900f)

The small boy had emerged from the thicket of grass, but he was inches away before Jos could see his entire person: his hair a thatch of light brown, his smile engaging, and his bare knees scratched and muddied.

‘I’m Ralph.’ He held out his hand.

‘Jos Kerrigan.’ They exchanged a solemn handshake. ‘You seem to know your way around this wilderness,’ Jos said. ‘Do you live here?’

‘Not here but next door – at Amberley. It’s much more fun here though. We don’t have any soldiers at Amberley.’

‘So can you show me how to get out of this darn place? Or is it all like this?’

Ralph considered the question judiciously. ‘This is the worst bit, I think, but the whole estate is pretty run down.’ That seemed an understatement to Jos. ‘I can take you to the main camp, if you like?’

‘I’d like that fine. Do you spend a lot of time there?’

‘When I’m allowed to,’ the boy said simply. ‘There’s been a camp for ages, but this week there’s been loads going on. And I’ve made a special friend.’

He was intrigued. ‘And who’s that?’

‘His name is Eddie. Eddie Rich.’

‘Is that so? He just happens to be my special friend, too.’

Ralph’s grin spread across his face. ‘He’s the bee’s knees, isn’t he?’

Jos’s deep blue eyes lit with amusement. ‘He sure is.’

‘It’s getting hot out here.’ The boy patted several stalks of grass away from his face. ‘Shall I take you to him?’

‘I’d appreciate that, Ralph.’

‘C’mon then.’ He turned round and traced a path along what Jos thought must be the thinnest line of flattened grass he’d ever seen, just wide enough for a nine year old’s feet but way too narrow for his own size twelves.