The White Dove

One (#u06772f86-28c4-5878-8e53-0537b25afed9)

The cedar tree was four hundred years old; as old as Chance itself. The shade beneath the cedar was more fragrant, cooler and deeper than the shade of any of the other great trees across the park. From its protective circle the family could look into the dazzle of light over the velvet grass, back to the terrace and the grey walls rearing behind it. The splash of the fountain was a deliciously cool note in the heavy heat of that long afternoon of July 1916.

Amy Lovell sat squarely at the tea-table, her chin barely level with the starched white cloth, wide eyes fixed on the sandwiches as fragile as butterflies, tiny circlets of pastry top-heavy with cream and raspberries, melting fingers of her favourite ginger sponge, and enticing dark wedges of rich fruit cake. A long time had passed since nursery lunch at twelve, and Amy was hungry. But she sat perfectly still, her hands folded in her lap, without even a rustle of her frilled petticoats. Her feet, in highly polished boots with intricate buttons and laces, did not nearly touch the grass, but she held them rigid. Only yesterday Papa had banished her from the tea-table for swinging her legs, and she had not even had a sandwich, let alone a ginger sponge finger. Amy allowed herself one sidelong glance at Isabel, six years old to her own four-and-a-bit, and saw that her sister looked as effortlessly still and composed as always.

A flutter of white cloth to the right of the table heralded the silent arrival of Mr Glass, the butler, with another, subsidiary table. This one was laden with silver tea-things.

‘I will pour out myself, Glass, thank you,’ said Amy’s mother in her special, low voice. When Amy first heard the word ‘drawling’ it pleased her, because it sounded exactly like Mama.

‘Very good, my lady.’

Mr Glass retreated across the grass, flanked by the maids with their apron and cap strings fluttering, and left them alone. Amy sighed with satisfaction. It was the best moment of the day, when she and Isabel had Mama and Papa all to themselves.

Lady Lovell stretched out her hand to the silver teapot. Her dark red hair fell in rich, natural waves, and where it was caught up at the nape of her neck beads of perspiration showed on the white skin. Her afternoon dress of pale rose silk was pleated and gathered, but it failed to disguise the ungainly bulk of the last days of pregnancy. Her hand fluttered back to rest over her stomach, and she sighed in the heat.

‘Could you, Gerald? Glass does hover so, and it is so nice to be just ourselves out here.’

‘That is his job, Adeline,’ Lord Lovell reminded her, but without the irritation he would have felt seven years ago.

He had fallen in love with his first sight of the exquisite eighteen-year-old American steel heiress dancing her way through her first London Season. And Adeline van Pelt from Pittsburgh, her head turned by her aristocratic suitor’s ancient title as much as by his formal charm, had agreed to marry him even though he was twice her age.

They had not made an easy beginning of their first months together at Chance. Lord Lovell was a widower, already the father of a twelve-year-old boy. His interests, apart from a well-bred liking for pretty girls, were horses, cards, and his estates. The new Lady Lovell came home with him at the end of the Season with only the barest understanding of what their life together would be like. It had come as an unpleasant shock, after the blaze of parties and admirers, to find herself alone much of the day while Gerald rode, or shot, or saw his farm managers. Yet at night, in her bedroom, he miraculously became everything she could have wanted. It was inexplicable to Adeline that her husband found it necessary to pretend, all day long, to be somebody he clearly wasn’t, and only to let the passion, and the laughter, out at night when they were alone.

To his concern, Gerald found that his wife was easily bored, capricious and unpredictable. She was either yawning with ennui, or filling the house with disreputable people and in a whirlwind of enthusiasm for painting the library in pink faux marble. She romped unsuitably in front of the servants, kissed him in public, and had no idea of what was expected of her as Lady Lovell.

And yet the sceptics who smiled behind their hands at the incongruous match and gave it a year to last, found themselves proved wrong. The Lovells grew happy together. Gerald unbent, and Adeline, to please him, learned to obey some of the rules of English upper-class life. Airlie Lovell, the son from his first marriage, remained Gerald’s adored heir, but the two little girls, with the look of their beautiful mother, were more important to him than he would have thought girl-children could ever be.

He smiled at Adeline now over their red-brown, ringleted heads.

‘Of course I will pour the tea, my darling. Meanwhile Glass can recline in his pantry reading Sporting Life, and all will be well with the world.’

‘Thank you,’ Adeline murmured. Her answering smile was tired. She leaned back in her padded chair and listlessly opened her little ivory fan. Gerald saw that her eyes were shadowed, and even her fan seemed too heavy to hold. Of course her condition wearied her. It would only be a few more days now, please God, and then the baby would be born. Then, soon, he would be welcome in his wife’s bedroom again. At the thought of Adeline’s long, white legs and the weight of her hair over his face Gerald shifted in his seat and put his finger to his collar.

‘Well, little girls,’ he said loudly. ‘What have you been doing with Miss May this afternoon?’

‘Handwriting,’ Amy said promptly. ‘It’s awful. “Press down on the lines, Miss Amy”…’

‘That will do,’ her father said. ‘Are these children really allowed cake before bread and butter, Adeline?’

‘Of course they are. Didn’t you prefer cake at their age?’

Amy, with one ginger sponge securely on her plate and the possibility of at least one more to come, beamed with sticky pleasure.

Then, across the smooth grass, between her mother’s rosepink shoulder and her father’s cream-jacketed arm wielding the teapot, she saw a man on a bicycle. He was riding along the west drive, which meant he had come through the west gates leading from the village. Against the bright sunlight he looked all black, perched on top of his angular black bicycle, and his spidery black legs were pumping round and round as he spun up the driveway.

He must be bringing something for Cook in the kitchen, Amy thought. The butcher’s delivery boy had a bicycle like that, only his had a big basket at the front and a wide, flat tray at the back. All the bicycles from the shops had baskets like that, she remembered, and this one didn’t. So it couldn’t be a delivery. The man was riding too fast, too. And instead of wheeling away to the side of the house and then to the kitchen courtyard, he rode straight on. He disappeared from sight behind the wing that enclosed the wide, paved court at the front of the house. The man on the bicycle had gone straight to the great main door.

Amy frowned slightly, wondering. She had only ever seen carriages and cars sweeping up to the main door. Then she took another bite of her cake and looked at Isabel. It was usually safe to take a lead from Isabel, but her sister did not seem to have noticed the man on the bicycle. And Mama and Papa had not seen him either, of course, because their backs were turned to the west drive.

It couldn’t be anything interesting, then.

Amy had barely given her full attention to her tea once more when something else caught her eye. It was so unexpected that it made her stop short, with her cake halfway to her mouth.

Mr Glass had come out of the tall open doors on to the terrace again. Instead of moving at his usual stately pace, he was almost running. He was down the steps, and covering the width of lawn that separated them from the house. Amy was suddenly aware that the afternoon was almost over, and Glass’s shadow was running ahead of him like a long, black finger pointing at them under the shade of the cedar tree. Isabel was looking curiously past her, and she heard the sharp chink as her mother quickly replaced her cup in its saucer.

But her father was frozen, motionless, as he watched Glass coming over the lawn. The butler was carrying an envelope in one hand, and a silver salver in the other. He hadn’t even given himself time to put the two together. Then he reached the table under the tree.

‘A telegram, my lord,’ he said. Yet he still kept hold of it, stiff-fingered, as if he didn’t want to hand it over. In his other hand the silver salver dangled uselessly at his side.

‘Give it to me,’ Gerald Lovell said quietly.

Slowly, as if it hurt him to do it, Glass held out the buff envelope. Lord Lovell took it, tore it open, and read the message it contained.

The little girls looked from one to the other of the adult faces, mystified by the chill that had crept over the golden afternoon.

‘Thank you, Glass,’ he said quietly. Then, very slowly, he got up and stood with his back to the little group, staring away at the incongruous sun on the grey walls of Chance.

Glass bent his head, and went silently back across the grass.

‘Gerald,’ Adeline said sharply. ‘Please tell me.’

For a long moment, he didn’t move. When at last he turned around to face them again, Amy thought for a terrifying second that this wasn’t her father at all. The square, straight shoulders had sagged and the familiar, stem face had fallen into bewildered hollows and lines. Even the crisp, greying hair seemed to have whitened. But worst of all was his mouth. It was open, in a horrible square shape that was like a scream, but no sound was coming out of it.

‘Oh God,’ Amy heard her mother say. ‘Dear God. Not Airlie.’

At the sound of his son’s name Gerald stumbled forward. His shoulders heaved, and the scream came out of his mouth at last as a low, stricken moan. He dropped to his knees in front of his wife’s chair, and the moan went on and on. Amy saw Isabel put her hands up to her ears, as if to shut the sound out. Her sister’s face had gone dead white, with her eyes dark holes in the whiteness.

‘Hush, my love,’ Adeline said. ‘Oh, Gerald.’

Lord Lovell rocked forward on his knees and put his head in his wife’s lap. The telegram fell on the grass and lay face upwards to the blank sky. Isabel got down from her chair, moving like a stiff-legged little doll. She leant over it, not touching it, and read the words.

2nd Lt The Hon’ble Airlie Lovell killed in action July 1. Deepest regrets. Lt Col. A. J. S. Warren, O/c 2nd Bn Kings Own Rifles.

At last the moaning stopped. ‘My son?’ Lord Lovell said. His head reared up again and he looked into his wife’s face. His tears had left a dark, irregular stain on the rose silk of her skirts.

‘My son,’ he repeated in bewilderment. Then he put his hands on either side of the mound of Adeline’s stomach. ‘Give me a son again,’ he begged her. ‘Give me my son back again.’

Sharply, Isabel turned away. She held out her hand to Amy. ‘Come on,’ she said, and when Amy didn’t respond she whispered urgently, ‘Please come.’

Obediently, even though she was puzzled and afraid, Amy slid off her chair and with Isabel pulling her onwards the two little girls ran hand in hand across the grass to the sun-warmed steps, and into the silent house. In the cool dimness of the long drawing room Isabel hesitated, wondering where to run to next, and in that instant Amy looked back.

The picture she saw was to stay with her for ever. She saw her parents still under the cedar tree, her father almost unrecognizable on his knees with the squareness gone from his shoulders and the line of his straight back bowed and defeated. His face was buried like a child’s in the folds of rose silk and her mother’s head was bent over his, seeing nothing else.

Amy wanted to run back to them and squeeze herself between them, telling them to make everything all right again, but Isabel’s grip on her hand was firm. She mustn’t go to them. Isabel seemed to understand something about this sudden cold in the sun that she couldn’t.

But now Isabel was saying ‘Where can we go?’ in a thin voice that suddenly sounded lost. ‘It’s Nanny’s day off, do you remember? And it’s after four o’clock, so we can’t see Miss May, and Cook doesn’t like us to go in the kitchen in the afternoon …’

Her voice trailed away.