Holding On

 
 
 

 
Holding On

 

 
MARCIA WILLETT

 
 
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Copyright © 1999 Marcia Willett

 
The right of Marcia Willett to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

 
First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2012

 
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

 
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

 
eISBN : 978 0 7553 8641 3

 
This Ebook produced by Jouve Digitalisation des Informations

 
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Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

Marcia Willett was born in Somerset, the youngest of five girls. After training to become a ballet dancer, she then joined her sister's Dance Academy as ballet mistress. After marriage in 1969 to a naval officer, she moved around the naval ports of Britain and her son was born in 1970. In 1980 she was in need of a job and joined a firm of market researchers. Her very first interviewee was to become her second husband!

Rodney Willett, an author of non-fiction books, encouraged Marcia to write. The result was her brilliant debut novel, THOSE WHO SERVE, followed by THEA'S PARROT, both available from Headline.

Marcia Willett lives in Devon with her husband in a Georgian Parsonage. The River Avon runs along the bottom of her garden and she likes nothing better than a walk on the moors with her Newfoundlands, Bessie and Trubshawe.

By Marcia Willett and available from Headline
The Dipper
Hattie's Mill
Second Time Around
Holding On
Winning Through
Looking Forward
Those Who Serve
Thea's Parrot
The Courtyard
Forgotten Laughter
A Week in Winter
Starting Over

To James and Nicola

I should like to thank Father Iain Matthew OCD for his permission to use his translation of St John of The Cross's Prayer of a soul in love

George FOX (1892-) was Bertie Chadwick's Gun-layer at the Battle of Jutland. After the war he became gardener/handyman at The Keep and lives in one of the Gatehouse Cottages

 

ELLEN Makepeace (1897-) was Freddie's maid and became the housekeeper at The Keep.

 

CAROLINE James (1928-) was a friend of Prue Clarke (Caroline's elder sister being at school with Prue). She became Nanny to the Chadwick orphans.

 

Cynthia Janice Tulliver – otherwise known as SIN – shares a flat with Kit.

The lark was somewhere high above her, filling the blue air with his song. Fliss stared upwards, shielding her eyes with her hands, dazzled by the brilliant, golden light. The land was drenched in sunlight; it soaked into the rich red earth, plunged into the clear cold waters of the river and bathed the trees with vivid colour. Close to, each long blade of grass showed separately, bright, clear cut, with its own thin, sharp, black shadow; far off, the hills rose up, indigo and violet, their heads touched with gilt. Across the river, sheep with lambs still at heel nibbled lazily as they strayed across the meadow, ignored by the cows that lay in the shade of the pollarded willows at the water's edge.

Fliss stepped back into the darkness of the spinney. Here and there the sunshine penetrated the thick green roof, splashing golden coins upon the earthy floor and dripping molten fingers down rough-barked trunks and smooth grey boles. Now that the bluebells were over, very little blossomed in this dim interior. Amongst the roots of a mighty beech, the pale pink flowerets of the campion stretched hopefully on leggy stalks toward the distant light, whilst brambles encroached stealthily across a fallen branch.

As her eyes grew accustomed to the shadow, Fliss battled with a now-familiar surge of fear. She found it quite impossible to believe that in three months' time she would be in Hong Kong, about to become a mother, preparing for a two-year naval posting. She simply could not imagine either of these two events. Becoming a mother must be a sufficiently world-shattering experience without it taking place so many thousands of miles away from all that she knew and loved. She looked about her, lightly touching an overhanging spray of leaves, feeling the sappy resilience as she rolled a beech leaf between her fingers. In the past – her past – the spinney had been a symbol, a landmark, a challenge. It was her younger siblings, Mole and Susanna, who had begun it. Running round the spinney had started simply as a race to be timed by Fox, their grandmother's gardener and handyman. Watch in hand he would stand on the hill, beneath the walls of The Keep, whilst they ran round the stand of trees. Then it had been just a game. Later, for Mole it had become more significant, a symbol of achievement; to run round the spinney alone, to pass the point where he could no longer see the walls of The Keep, had demanded all his courage.

Even now, Fliss did not know why Mole had been so completely devastated by the news of their parents' and elder brother's ambush and murder by the Mau-Mau in Kenya fifteen years before. Her own grief had been agonising enough but Mole, at four years old, had been struck dumb for months and even now was sometimes unable to control the stammer which had accompanied the return of his powers of speech. He'd suffered terrible nightmares and had dreaded being left alone. Back at The Keep, however, in the care of his grandmother, Frederica Chadwick, he had gradually learned to control his terror. Now he had passed the Admiralty Interview Board and entered the Royal Navy, as generations of Chadwicks had done before him.

Fliss leaned against the beech tree and closed her eyes. How far they had come since that day of desolation in Kenya. Mole – a naval cadet; Susanna – about to leave school to train as a graphic artist; and she, Fliss – married to a naval officer, pregnant with her first child and soon to leave the safety of familiar surroundings for Hong Kong. Her husband, Miles, had no idea of the depth of her fear. It seemed perfectly natural to him that she should pack and follow wherever the Navy should send him, and she was unable to share her anxieties with him. Fifteen years older than she, he was so adult, so much more experienced, so determined . . .

Fliss thought: He has no family, no roots and he is so confident, so
sure
. . .

She sighed a little, pressing back her fear, remembering how she had come through the anguish of the death of her parents and her beloved big brother, Jamie. From the shadow of the spinney she looked out across the fields to the hills, breathing deeply until a measure of courage returned. If Mole could batten down his weakness and his terror then so could she. She stared up at the trees, whose long shadows stretched out towards The Keep, remembering how much she had worried about him, how frightened she had been for him. No need to worry about either of them now. Mole was settled at Dartmouth and Susanna still had the happy confidence which had been her birthright; there was no reason why she, Fliss, could not go out to Hong Kong quite free from anxiety.

Fliss thought: But there're still Grandmother and Uncle Theo. And Fox and Ellen. They're getting old . . .

These two first years of marriage had been fun, with Miles based at Devonport in a shore job, and their little house in Dartmouth barely half an hour's drive from The Keep, but Hong Kong was such a long way away and her baby would be nearly two years old when she returned home. Two years old: the same age as Susanna when they'd first arrived from Kenya. She could remember how alone and frightened she'd felt until Grandmother had arrived at the station, bundled them into the car and driven them home to The Keep: home to Ellen, the housekeeper, and Fox, and the dogs . . . She simply mustn't let them see that she was nervous, they would worry so. No, she must show them that she saw it as great fun, a huge adventure.

Squaring her shoulders Fliss moved out into the sunlight and, without glancing back at the spinney, she began to climb the path that led to the green door in the high stone wall.

 

Her grandmother was waiting for her in the big, cool hall. By tradition tea was always eaten here. In the winter a log fire burned in the huge granite fireplace but today the front door was open wide to the courtyard, to the drifting scent of the Albertine and to the birdsong. On either side of the fireplace two high-backed sofas faced each other across a long, low table. A third chair had been placed at the end of the table making a little room within the vaster spaces of the hall. The rubbed and faded chintz, the fat cushions and worn tartan rugs gave it a homely, comfortable air, and the tea, brought in by Caroline, the children's nanny, a few moments earlier and set out upon the table, completed the picture.

Frederica Chadwick was thinking about Fliss. It had been such fun to have her living so close during these last two years. She was a regular visitor to The Keep and it was clear to see that she was enjoying her new life with Miles, relishing her married status. How proud she was to welcome them all to the house in Dartmouth, doing the honours and showing off her new home. Occasionally she'd drop Miles off at the dockyard and spend the whole day with them at The Keep and, during the holidays, Susanna and Mole had spent days at a time with her in Dartmouth, although not both together, the little house wasn't big enough to boast two spare bedrooms and Miles was unhappy about bodies in sleeping bags on the drawing-room floor. He was a stickler for tidiness and good manners, of which Freddy thoroughly approved, but she often felt that he was much more of her own generation than that of her grandchildren. The truth of it was, of course, that he belonged to the generation in between and it had to be said that he was often rather more like a father to Fliss and her siblings than husband and brother-in-law.

Freddy stirred restlessly. If only it were possible to send Caroline out to Hong Kong with Fliss, just until she'd had the baby; to settle her in and make certain that all was well. Miles had pooh-poohed the idea when she'd tentatively suggested it. It was quite normal now, he said, for wives to manage without the entourage of nanny and staff which had moved around with naval families of the officer class in Freddy's day. He'd assured her that Fliss would be well cared for in the British Military Hospital, that she would have an amah to help her look after the baby, that a fellow officer, already out in Hong Kong, was organising accommodation. There had been nothing else for her to do but to trust him. Freddy knew that she was fussing, being mother hen-ish, but Fliss was so very special. They were all going to miss her terribly . . .