A Season of Secrets (10 page)

By the time the scene was over, her uncle had tears of laughter streaming down his face and her aunt was giggling so much she had hiccups. Afterwards Rozalind and her cousins had gone down to
the kitchen, and Cook had made them mugs of hot milky cocoa and given them toasted crumpets slathered with butter.

Back home in New York she didn’t even know where the kitchen was, and the cosy, loving jollity of the previous evening was something quite unknown.

‘There’s Carrie,’ Olivia said suddenly to her. She broke into a run, shouting at the top of her voice, ‘Carrie!
Carrie!
’

A hundred yards or so away a girl who had been sitting on the river-bank rose to her feet. Even from a distance Rozalind could see that she wasn’t wearing her hair down, but in a
waist-length thick plait. As they drew nearer she couldn’t decide whether the rope of hair made her look older than her years – like Olivia, Carrie was twelve – or younger.

Close to, she saw that Carrie had a sprinkling of light freckles across the bridge of her nose and that her eyes were a clear blue and held the same kind of frank curiosity about their meeting
as she was feeling.

Carrie shot her a wide smile. ‘Hello,’ she said with disarming friendliness. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but when it was the war and you couldn’t visit I used to ride
the bicycle that was yours.’

‘Until it got too small for her,’ Olivia said, ever helpful. ‘We’ve all got new bicycles now – and so have you. We could go down to the village on them this
afternoon, if you like.’

‘Of course I don’t mind that you rode my bicycle, Carrie.’ And to Olivia she said, ‘Does the village shop still sell butterscotch?’

‘Of course it does. And it now sells sherbert lemons too. You can get a big paper cone of them for tuppence.’

‘First, though, we’re going to show you the voles.’ Thea linked her arm in Rozalind’s. ‘We’ve been watching them every summer for years now. Hal showed us
where to find them.’

As they walked towards the part of the bank where Carrie had been sitting, Rozalind said to Thea, ‘When will I get to meet Hal?’

‘Sunday probably. He has a little free time then, but not much. There’s never any free time when you live on a farm. There’s always too much work to do.’

‘And on an evening,’ Olivia said, ‘when he’s finished bringing the cows in for milking, he has lessons with Miss Calvert.’

Rosalind’s eyebrows rose questioningly.

‘She’s the village schoolmistress.’ There was a note in Thea’s voice that Carrie had never heard before. Pride on Hal’s behalf. ‘Hal could have gone to a
grammar school,’ Thea continued. ‘Miss Calvert is the village schoolmistress and she said he would easily have won a scholarship, only his father wouldn’t let him sit for one. He
said a grammar school would put fancy ideas in Hal’s head.’

‘And would it have?’ They had reached the vole spot now.

‘Not ideas that we think are fancy,’ Olivia chipped in stoutly. ‘Last week he applied for a job on the
Richmond Times
.’

They flopped down into deep grass.

‘As an office boy?’

Olivia giggled. ‘He might have to be an office boy to start with, but Hal intends to become a journalist – and after he’s worked as a journalist in Richmond he’s going to
go to London, to be a journalist on a national newspaper.’

It was such pie-in-the-sky moonshine that it took all Rozalind’s self-control not to raise her eyes to heaven again. She said drily, ‘That’s a bit of a big ambition for a
farmboy, don’t you think?’

Thea’s cat-eyes narrowed. ‘Not really, Roz. Hal’s ultimate ambition is to be not just any journalist, but a political journalist reporting on parliamentary affairs.’

Carrie sucked in her breath. If it was, he had never told her about it – and she had always assumed Hal told her everything.

For the first time it occurred to her that perhaps she wasn’t his closest friend any longer, and that perhaps now Thea was. The thought gave her an odd feeling in her tummy. Until now she
had always thought that the four of them were all friends together, with Hal perhaps being an extra bit closer to her than he was to Thea and Olivia, and that if he was a little
less
close
to anyone, that he was a little less close to Thea on account of how annoyingly bossy she could be. Now it seemed she had got things wrong – and she didn’t know how she felt about
that.

‘And what do you want to be when you leave school?’ Rozalind suddenly asked her, wondering if, like Hal, Carrie also had high-flown ideas as a result of her friendship with the
Fentons.

Carrie put her complicated feelings about Hal and Thea to one side and gave Rozalind a sunny smile. ‘I’m going to go into service.’

It wasn’t the answer that Rozalind had been expecting, but it certainly proved one thing. Carrie wasn’t the least bit uppity. A little later, when they had said goodbye to Carrie and
were walking back along the river-bank towards the bridge, she said to Olivia, ‘I like Carrie Thornton. I can see why you’re friends with her.’

‘Goody.’ Olivia hugged Rozalind’s arm. ‘That means we’ll be a circle of five, not four.’

Rozalind was fairly sure she wasn’t going to feel the same way about Hal as she did about Carrie, but decided that Hal was a subject she was going to leave well alone until she had met
him. Instead she said, ‘Your maths are out, kiddo. When you include Violet you already are a circle of five.’

‘We never do include Violet.’ Olivia wondered if she could start using American slang. ‘Kiddo’ would be a great word to use at St Ethelburga’s when she was with
anyone younger than herself.

She shielded her eyes, looking to where a motor car was speeding from the direction of Outhwaite towards the bridge. ‘I think that’s Dr Todd’s car,’ she said to Thea.
‘He’s going very fast, isn’t he? He must be on his way to an emergency.’

Knee-deep in buttercups, they all came to a standstill, watching to see if, after it had crossed the bridge – which it did at ferocious speed – the car would continue on the road or
turn in at the entrance to Gorton Hall.

In a cloud of dust it turned in between the pillared gates.

Rozalind sucked in her breath.

Olivia said uncertainly, ‘I expect one of the maids has had a fall and hurt herself. Or maybe one of the new gardeners has injured himself with a scythe or a billhook.’

‘But maybe they haven’t.’ Beneath her turbulent chestnut hair Thea’s face was very pale. ‘Maybe something has happened to Mama, or Papa – or to
Violet.’

For a brief second they were all frozen into immobility – and then they began to run, racing up the grassy slope that led to the bridge; pounding over the bridge’s ancient cobbles.
Then, not following the road and approaching Gorton via its long elm-lined drive, they cut across its parkland, running with wings on their heels and a premonition of fear in their hearts.

MAY 1924

The Fentons’ London town house was
en fête
with flowers sent down from Gorton. In the marble-floored hallway silver hanging baskets overflowed with frilled
white roses. Pink peonies decorated the grand staircase, weaving with heady fragrance in and out of its wrought-iron balustrades. Pale-lilac anemones with indigo hearts massed the fireplaces.
Hothouse freesias, sharply yellow, decorated beautifully laid supper tables. On every available surface were vases of wax-white orchids and bowls of carnations and lilies-of-the-valley.

Thea stood in the hall, breathing in the perfumed air, appreciative of all the effort that had been made.

‘Charlie must have had his gardeners working night and day to ensure everything was in bloom at the same time,’ Rozalind said, reading her thoughts.

Thea didn’t reply. She was thinking how much her mother would have loved the sight of the peony-festooned balustrades. ‘Mama always loved flowers,’ she said, not trusting
herself to look towards Rozalind for fear that, if their eyes met, she would no longer be able to check the tears that were threatening to fall. ‘And she would have loved presenting me at
court.’

Rozalind said nothing. For once, speech was beyond her. It was now almost five years since Blanche and the baby she had been carrying had died, and time was still not working its magic on those
who had loved her. When it had come to Thea’s presentation at court, her Aunt Hilda had presented Thea to Their Majesties, King George and Queen Mary. To say it had not been the same as if
Blanche had done so was a major understatement. Today, with the Mount Street house beautifully prepared for Thea’s coming-out ball, the prospect of Blanche not being with Gilbert and Thea at
the head of the stairs, welcoming the hundred or so guests, was a reality so monstrous that Rozalind wasn’t sure how any of them were going to cope with it.

With legs that felt suddenly weak, she crossed the hall and sat down on one of the staircase’s lower treads, the sheer suddenness of her Aunt Blanche’s death jackknifing through her
once again.

It had been such a lovely morning the day her aunt had died. Blanche hadn’t been down for breakfast, but that was nothing unusual, for she always had breakfast in bed. Her Uncle Gilbert
had been at the breakfast table, though, and breakfast had been the happily noisy occasion it usually was, when she had just arrived at Gorton for a long vacation and there was so much news for
them all to catch up on.

When her Uncle Gilbert had finally risen from the table he’d said teasingly, ‘I can see the only way I’m going to find peace and quiet today is by taking the dogs for a long
moorland ramble.’

Then, his hands in his pockets and whistling for Caesar and Pluto, he’d left the room, unaware that within hours his life would change irrevocably.

Rozalind’s plans for the day had already been made, for almost the first thing Thea had said to her when she arrived at Gorton the previous evening was that she simply had to meet Carrie.
First, though, they had started off the morning as they always did, by haring up the stairs and running along the corridor to her Aunt Blanche’s bedroom.

The minute they had tumbled into the room Blanche had set what looked to be a still untouched breakfast tray aside, so that the three of them could perch on her wide bed with its coronet of
delicate muslin drapery.

‘What are the three of you going to do today?’ Blanche had asked, her flawless ivory complexion unusually flushed. ‘Is it going to be a day on ponies or a day on
bicycles?’

‘Neither.’ As usual Thea had answered before anyone else could. ‘We’re going to walk down to the river, where we’re meeting with Carrie. Then I’m not sure
what we’re going to do.’

‘Then off you go, darlings. And don’t kiss me goodbye. I’ve got a headache and I’m beginning to feel shivery. A summer cold, I expect.’

They had left her and had walked in hot sunshine down to the river-bank and had spent the next few hours with Carrie. Then, on their way home, they had seen Dr Todd’s car speeding towards
Gorton Hall. Premonition, well founded, had seized them.

‘Shortly after you left the house this morning her ladyship’s ear began bleeding,’ a white-faced Heaton had said to them when they had arrived at Gorton, breathless and
alarmed. ‘It’s a major first symptom of Spanish flu, and the minute I was told of it I telephoned for the doctor.’

‘Can we see Mama? Where’s Papa? And where’s Violet? Mama is going to be all right, isn’t she?’ Thea, who never, ever cried, had looked close to tears.

‘Dr Todd has quarantined your mama in her bedroom. Your papa is with her, as is her maid and Dr Todd, but no one else is to be allowed in the room until the worst is over and your mama is
on the road to recovery. Miss Cumberbatch has taken Miss Violet to Richmond for the day. A house of sickness is no place for a young child.’

At the words ‘the road to recovery’ Olivia had looked reassured.

Rozalind hadn’t been reassured, though, and she doubted that Thea was. The death rate from Spanish flu was viciously high. Whole communities, worldwide, had been wiped out by it. In the
last days of the previous year more soldiers had died from it than they had from the carnage of the war. It killed with mind-numbing swiftness; victims who were healthy in the morning were often
dead by the evening.

All through the autumn of the previous year, when the pandemic had been at its height, Outhwaite had been spared. In the early spring, when the pandemic had peaked, there had still been no
deaths from it in their part of the Dales, and by the summer the pandemic had seemed to be over. That being the case, how had her aunt fallen victim to it?

‘She visited Effie Mellor’s mother,’ Cook had said grimly when, not knowing where else to go or what to do, they had made their way to the kitchen. ‘She suffers terrible
with arthritis, and her ladyship likes to keep an eye on her and take her a basket of whatever there’s a glut of at the Home Farm. When Dr Todd asked Heaton who her ladyship had been in
contact with over the last ten days or so, he told him about her visit to old mother Mellor. It turns out that Effie’s sister, who lives in Manchester, was visiting. She’s gone back
there now, but Manchester was still recording deaths from influenza right up until the end of April. Dr Todd told Heaton he reckoned Effie’s sister was carrying the infection.’