Dorothy Eden (13 page)

My dear Clemency,

By the time you receive this I assume you will be married, so I am addressing you by your new name. But I am waiting for your confirmation of your marriage, and may I dare to hope you will give it in more legible handwriting. It took me and my secretary a long while to decipher your last letter.

I now have the melancholy details of the coroner’s inquest, following the
Lusitania
disaster, and the proof of your poor mother’s death, so I am losing no time in filing Probate. I am the sole executor under her will, and you the sole beneficiary. You are going to be, indeed are at this moment, a rich young lady.

Mr Richard Colton, the family lawyer, will be writing to you with full details of your inheritance, and no doubt with some sensible advice. I would like to add my own advice. The two houses, on Fifth Avenue and Long Island respectively, have been closed, the servants paid and dismissed. There is no need to keep a batch of idle servants eating their heads off, but I recommend you retain both properties, even though shut up and empty, for they can only appreciate in value. It’s possible your husband won’t survive the war, and you will want to come home.
But I am home, Uncle Jonas, you insensitive old man. This is my home …
On the other hand, if he survives, he has had a very handsome settlement, and I suggest you see how your marriage wears before you make over any more funds to him. As an elderly man, and your only living relative, I feel free to speak plainly, and I can tell you I have always thought this marriage to be one of Millicent’s more flighty schemes with which you went along all too willingly. But you are a Jervis and should have a good business head, though I admit I hadn’t seen any trace of it until now. No doubt that terrible shipwreck has made you grow up more quickly than you would otherwise have done, for you did wisely mention trusts in your letter. I would strongly advise you to set these up for your children, or, supposing you have none, yourself.

Don’t let all this money, for which your grandfather laboured so hard, be eaten up by a perhaps romantic but nevertheless impoverished English estate.

Think this over, although I recommend that you don’t discuss it with your husband until you have made up your own mind. And when you have made a decision, stick to it.

I write these things to protect you. I have a troublesome heart and may not live to see what happens to you in that high-flown marriage. Seems almost that the Almighty tried to prevent it! Just develop some good hard sense, because you will need it. Seems to me the world has gone crazy. There are people here saying that after the Germans sinking the
Lusitania
with all those neutrals on board, America ought to get into the war. I don’t agree, but I’m an old man with a weak heart. I remember the agonies of the Civil War. War is agony, you can forget the glory they talk about it.

Your affec. Uncle Jonas

P.S. I’ve had enquiries about you from one or two of your friends, the Hayes girl and Amy Parsons. I’ve told them they’ll no doubt hear from you when you’re good and ready to write…

That letter definitely could not be shown to Hugo. Unless one day she wanted a weapon against him. Being financially independent was a weapon, in its way. She would follow Uncle Jonas’s advice and set up a trust for her unborn children, one of which she had a distinct conviction was already conceived. How long before she was completely sure—two weeks, three?

But she wouldn’t be writing to those giggly friends of Clemency’s, Bessie Hayes and Amy Parsons.

“Hetty, was that bad news? You look awfully glum,” Kitty was saying.

“Not exactly. Just my Uncle Jonas writing about my mother. Shutting up the houses. Things like that.”

Kitty was sympathetic.

“Then read your other letter. Perhaps that’s more cheerful.”

It wasn’t, of course. It brought that drenching shock of coldness over her again.

Dear Miss Clemency,

Pardon the liberty I take in writing to you, but I wanted to before we leave the house. Your uncle is packing us all off, though with characters and wages, of course. But I did want to know what happened to poor Hetty, I mean Brown. We never did hear a word, and wondered if you saw her drowning, or her body, even. Although, since there wasn’t a mention of her name in the list of dead, I am clinging to the hope that she is still alive somewhere. Could this be possible? She could lose her memory, couldn’t she? I was ever so fond of her, she was such a bright clever good girl.

I would be glad of a line. I’ll be with my sister at 1315 Rodmell Street, New Jersey, until I find another position.

You must be very sad about your poor mother. I wish you happiness in your marriage. You at least are lucky and have life before you.

Your obedient servant,

Myrtle Crampton (Cook)

Could Clemency be wandering about with a lost memory? Would one ever know? The prospect of months, perhaps years of suspense slid into Hetty’s consciousness and terrified her. Would she always have to be looking over her shoulder?

“You look as if you’ve seen a ghost, Hetty,” Julia said in her crisp way.

Hetty steadied herself. “My life is a bit full of ghosts at present. I guess they’ll fade away in their own good time. Will you excuse me? I think I’d like to be out in the sunshine.”

“You’ve got to get over that disaster,” Julia said briskly. “People do, you know. They get over much worse things.”

How much worse? Hetty asked herself in angry misery. Julia didn’t know what she was talking about. She hadn’t heard the cries of the drowning, or seen the rows of bleached bodies. She was living safely in a comfortable country house looking after one old lady who pampered her.

And fretting for the man she loved.

She had to answer Mrs Crampton’s letter and lay that particular ghost.

Dear Mrs Crampton,

It was kind of you to write. Forgive this answer for being brief. I can still scarcely bear to think of that dreadful night. Yes, poor Brown was lost. She followed Mother and me into the lifeboat, at least we thought she did and then she was never seen again. As many others were not. Even Mr Vanderbilt. I am now married, as I expect my uncle has told you, and I thank God every day for being one of the fortunate ones. I hope you get a good position. I will tell my uncle to give you a good reference, but I expect he has done so already.

She signed the letter firmly “Clemency Hazzard” and that was done.

The letters they all wanted, of course, were ones from the front.

Kitty looked wistfully every day for one from Lionel. It was more likely that Hugo’s from France would come first, since that country was uncomfortably near. On the east coast on a still day the guns could be heard thudding across the channel. Lionel was somewhere in the blue Aegean, or more likely crouched in a shallow sun-scorched fly-ridden dugout waiting to wrest another painful yard of rocky cliff from the Turks. No one, said Kitty, had thought the Turks would be such a stubborn enemy. Gallipoli was supposed to have been a campaign that would be successfully completed in a month or so, the gateway to the Middle East and the oilfields firmly closed to the Germans. But then the Germans were supposed to have been retreating in France and Flanders, too. Those hopeful rumours hadn’t been true. The war was going on and on.

Hetty sat across the table from Mr Edmonds, the grey-haired bank manager. He had asked to see her, and once more her heart had jumped with apprehension. Why did he want to see her? Couldn’t he have trusted his head clerk to deal with such a simple matter as a specimen signature?

But it seemed he merely wanted to meet her. His gesture was part friendliness, part curiosity, part good business relations.

“It’s the first opportunity I have had to welcome you, Lady Hazzard. It’s a difficult time to be in England, but I hope you’re managing to enjoy it.”

“I enjoy being at Loburn.” Hetty made her voice animated and enthusiastic, as Clemency’s would have been. But did that matter, since Mr Edmonds had never met Clemency? “I think the house is wonderful. I even love its shabbiness, because it’s going to be great fun fixing it up. And I don’t need to beat about the bush with you, Mr Edmonds, that’s what my money is for. It would be much more fun if Hugo were home, though.”

Mr Edmonds didn’t seem in the least suspicious about either her or her plans. He smiled indulgently, as if she were exactly what he had expected her to be, a vivacious fashionable young New Yorker.

“We all hope your husband won’t be away too long, Lady Hazzard. His brother, too. You’ve met his brother?”

“No. Only his wife and little boy.”

“Pray God both young men come home safely,” Mr Edmonds said piously. “Now I believe we need a specimen signature. If you’ll sign on this line here. Then we’ll give you a cheque book and you’ll be an independent woman.”

“How do you want me to sign?” Hetty asked tensely.

“Just your usual signature. What’s your first name?”

“Clemency.”

“Then Clemency Hazzard will do. So long as you always sign cheques the same way. But I’m sure you know that.”

What she did know was that every time she spent money she would be sharply reminded that it was not hers, but Clemency’s. A dead woman’s.

She wrote in the careful upright script she had practised, and after all it was easy. Euphoria rose in her again.

“The first thing I want to do while my husband is away is have the roof at Loburn thoroughly examined, and the necessary repairs done. Kitty says there are bad leaks in some of the rooms. But I’m told that all the reliable builders are in the army.”

“Not all of them. I know just the man. Tom Grubb. In his fifties, too old to join up, and an excellent craftsman. Would you like me to get in touch with him, Lady Hazzard?”

“Oh, yes, please. That is good news. Send him up to Loburn to see me, if he will come. I do want to have achieved something for Hugo when he comes home.”

Her delight must have showed in her face, for Mr Edmonds’s gaze was admiring.

“If you look like that, Lady Hazzard—” he began and paused.

Hetty was amused by the stiff English embarrassment.

“What were you going to say, Mr Edmonds?”

“I was going to say your husband wouldn’t make the roof repairs his first priority.”

Hetty laughed, transparently delighted. She had been finding out that she had the ability to charm men, not just susceptible young ones like Donald Newman on board the
Lusitania,
but older and staider ones, like bank managers, solicitors, clergymen. It was going to be a useful talent to have. If she could extend it to women it would be even better. But Lady Flora remained cool and aloof, refusing to be won over by an American daughter-in-law. And Julia, apart from the morning riding lessons, which were a bit nerve-racking, made no overtures of friendship.

It would be a long time before she could ride with the grace and elegance of Julia. Probably she never would. But she had graduated from the slow old rocking horse, Patsy, to a lively but good-tempered grey mare, Bessie, in foal. The irony of that hadn’t escaped Hetty since every day was confirming her own hopes. She was almost certain she had heard that riding was safe in the early stages of pregnancy, and she so wanted to be adept when Hugo came home. If she were, she suspected that Julia would have lost a good deal of her power over him.

So she took a calculated risk, and resolved that if she still had symptoms of pregnancy in another two or three weeks, she would see a doctor. In the meantime she rode very carefully, at a walk or a gentle canter.

“I’ve told Hug I’m teaching you,” Julia said.

So she was writing to Hugo. Was he answering? When at last Hetty had a letter from him it was only a brief scrawled note written in a hurry because he was about to go up the line.

He addressed her as, “My dear Hetty”, not dearest, not my beloved wife. But then she hadn’t yet been able to address him as her beloved husband because some remnants of honesty in her wanted it to be true when she wrote it.

Safely back [he wrote]. The men seemed pleased to see me. Familiar faces are at a premium these days. They’ve had a bad time, but after a few days in a rest camp they have pulled themselves together and look pretty fit again. We’re in a little place with a church with a drunken steeple, and some badly knocked about houses. Only a few villagers have stayed on. I think of something like this happening to our village, but find it beyond my imagination. Hope you have settled down and got over your miserable introduction to England. Have you been to the bank and fixed things up? I’m writing to Mother. Has Kitty heard from Lionel? My leg’s fine and I’m passed as fit to go up the line. I’d a million times rather be having a good gallop over the Four Hills. Julia tells me you are coming along nicely. You can’t do better than emulate her style. No more time now. Your loving husband, Hugo.

A love letter? Hardly. She might have been a respected friend. But it was friendly enough in Hugo’s clipped fashion. Perhaps his letters to Julia were even more formal. She would never know that, for Julia was much too secretive, and always took possession of the mail bag, and the distribution of its contents, when it arrived in the morning. Although she was vocal enough when at last letters arrived from Lionel.

“Kitty! Kitty, a letter for you. One for Lady Flora, too, and one—oh, it must be for you, Hetty.”

The letter was addressed to Lady Hazzard. Which undoubtedly was her. There had been no need for Julia to pretend confusion.

“Lionel’s written to me!” she murmured with pleasure. “Why, he’s never met me.”

“He’s a literary chap, didn’t I tell you? Never happy without a pen in his hand.” And Kitty, pressing her own letter to her bosom, left her breakfast uneaten and disappeared to read it in privacy.

Something prompted Hetty to keep hers to read in privacy, too. She didn’t care for Julia’s large forlorn eyes on her. To start feeling sympathy for that young woman could be dangerous. It would let down her guard.

My dear Sister-in-law,

I hear that my son, to his disappointment, has discovered that you are not a mermaid. I was relieved to hear it. Cold slippery creatures, mermaids, singing false songs to foolish sailors. No one has told me much about you. Mother says you are neat and pretty, which makes you sound like a new parlour maid, but Mother, for various reasons, has her prejudices. Kitty, who has no prejudices, thinks you are charming, and will do old Hugo no end of good. If the present grotesque hostilities ever allow happy spouses to get together.

I am perched in a dugout two thirds up the side of a veritable mountain, high enough for the sea below to look idyllically blue and bright as stained glass. There is an occasional ambrosial scent of thyme wafting on the warm air, delicately overlaying much less pleasant smells. When the guns stop one can hear larks singing. Aegean larks, think of that. They make me feel like Zeus sitting on his mountain top, “turning his shining eyes into the distance” away from Homer’s “lamentable war”. I would I could in reality turn my eyes away.

I will tell you all about it when I come home. In the meantime, be happy, dear sister-in-law, life is short,

Lionel