Lorimers at War (2 page)

‘Yes. I'm sorry about that, of course.' Brinsley sighed, but almost at once Kate heard the regret in his voice giving way to excitement. ‘But I don't really feel ready to settle down at home yet. I can't pretend that the prospect of acting as a kind of farm manager for the rest of my life is a very jolly one.'

Kate knew what he meant. Their father performed all the spiritual duties which his black congregation required of their pastor; but he was a man of great energy and ability, and early in his pastorate he had been so shocked by the poverty of the villagers that he had organized them into an agricultural labour force. Whipped on by his passionate oratory, they had reclaimed a derelict plantation next to the village, and now the efficient running of the estate had become Ralph Lorimer's chief enthusiasm. Since Brinsley had never shown any bent towards any other profession, it was taken for granted that he would return to help his father manage the plantation. Kate laughed affectionately now at her brother's lack of eagerness.

‘What would you rather do instead?' she asked.

‘Oh, nothing in particular. Anything that would leave me time to play a little cricket. I shall have to settle down to work sometime, I can see that – and I know I'm lucky to have a family business on offer. All the same, I'm in no hurry to start. A few months of adventure will be just the thing.'

Kate glanced across and saw that his eyes were alive with excitement at the prospect. For her own part, she had wanted to be a doctor for as long as she could remember. She had always known that years of hard work
would be needed to attain her ambition; and although her mother's generation had borne the brunt of the fight against prejudice and prohibition which had for so long made it impossible for women to become doctors at all, Kate had appreciated that determination as well as study would be required. Her social conscience and serious approach to life made her temperamentally the opposite of her brother, but her affection for him made it easy for her to sympathize with his light-hearted lack of ambition.

All the same, it was difficult not to wonder how ‘jolly' he would find the next few months. Kate's own vocation was to heal, and she would have been appalled if she had ever found herself expected to take life instead of preserving it. Nor was she absolutely clear why it was so necessary for England to become involved in the war at all. Who were the Serbs, and why should the assassination of an Austrian archduke be of more than local importance? Brinsley had done his best to persuade her that now the war had started it ought to be won quickly; and the best way to win it quickly was to send as many soldiers as possible to fight in France, and with the greatest possible speed. It was certainly obvious to Kate that if the finest young men were required, Brinsley was one of them; but she could not help wondering whether Brinsley himself – although ready and indeed eager to fight – had recognized that at some moment he would have to kill.

The thought worried her, but it was not appropriate to this evening of celebration. Still holding Brinsley's arm, she turned away from the river.

‘Time you were on parade at Blaize,' she suggested. ‘They won't be able to start without the guest of honour.' They began to walk slowly up the hill towards the house.

‘You really do look stunning, Kate.' Whatever Brinsley had been thinking about down by the river, it was clearly not the prospect of killing Germans. ‘It's a pity I'm not older than you.'

‘Why?'

‘Because a lot of chaps like to marry other chaps' sisters.'

‘It must be quite difficult to avoid doing so,' Kate laughed.

‘Oh, come on, you know what I mean. The sisters of their friends. But of course all my friends are too young for you. You and I should have been born the other way around.'

‘It's kind of you to offer me all your fellow-undergraduates and fellow-cricketers, even if you do promptly snatch the offer back again. But I haven't spent all these years training as a doctor just to give up without making use of my qualifications. I don't intend to marry anyone, whether older or younger.'

‘There's nothing to say you'd have to stop being a doctor just because you got married,' Brinsley protested.

‘How many of these friends of yours would allow their wives to work?' Kate asked him. ‘And how many female doctors do you know who are married?'

‘I only know three female doctors, full stop,' said Brinsley. ‘One is you, and it's you I'm trying to persuade. One is my mother, and
she's
married.'

‘Fortunately for our own reputations.' Kate was still laughing. ‘But she's married to a missionary. Missionaries' wives are a special case.'

‘And there's Aunt Margaret. She was married as well.'

‘Aunt Margaret is another special case.' Kate was silent for a moment, thinking affectionately of their father's elder sister, who had provided a home for Brinsley and herself when they each in turn left Jamaica for England. Dr Margaret Scott was as dear to both the young Lorimers as their own mother, but no one could pretend that her life had followed the normal pattern of a Victorian woman.

‘She didn't marry when she first qualified,' Kate pointed out now. ‘She worked as a doctor until she was in
her mid-thirties. And when she did marry, she stopped working.'

‘That was so that she could have a baby.'

‘She stopped working,' repeated Kate. ‘The only reason why she went back to being a doctor was because her husband died and she had to support the baby. She wasn't married for more than a few months out of the whole of her life. You can't argue from Aunt Margaret. And if I may say so, it's very
arrogant
of men to think that the only thing in life a woman wants is a husband.'

‘It may be arrogant, but you have to admit that it's very often true.'

‘Well, perhaps I can understand it being true of other women, because they can all long to get their hands on a gorgeous creature called Brinsley Lorimer. But since I'm disqualified from that privilege, I hope you'll allow me to get quietly on with my doctoring.'

They stepped out of the woodland as they spoke, and paused for a moment to stare in admiration at Blaize. The two wings which had been added to the old house in the reign of William and Mary provided the more comfortable rooms for normal living, but the Tudor structure in the centre of the mansion was the perfect setting for any grand occasion. As soon as it became clear that Brinsley would not be returning to Jamaica for his coming-of-age, Margaret Scott had offered him a party in her small London house; but his other aunt, Alexa, had swept the suggestion aside. She had never behaved as warmly as Margaret to her niece and nephew, but when it came to giving a dance, she would allow no one to consider any alternative to the Glanville country house. At this very moment, as the clock on the stable tower struck the hour for which the guests had been invited, the wide entrance doors were flung open and the carriage approach was flooded with a warm and welcoming light.

‘How very thoughtful it was of Aunt Alexa to make sure
that the ballroom windows were blacked out!' exclaimed Kate. But there was no trace of anxiety in her laughing voice. In its peaceful country setting, Blaize could surely never be touched by the dangers of war.

‘There'll be no Zeppelins tonight,' said Brinsley. ‘It's my birthday, and everyone knows that I was born while Lady Luck was smiling. Only good things can happen on my birthday.'

They had been walking arm-in-arm, but now Kate moved her hand to rest lightly and formally on her brother's arm. They stepped forward into the light and progressed with dignity up the stone steps and into the house. But if they had hoped that the staff would be caught out by the arrival of an apparently over-punctual pair of guests, they were disappointed. Two lines of footmen wearing the Glanville livery stood ready to receive them, and the butler's silver tray awaited the first card which would tell him whom to announce. From the ballroom, a little way away, could be heard the last faint scrapings of sound as the orchestra tuned their instruments. There were a few seconds of silence and then, as though the ballroom were already crowded instead of completely deserted, the house was flooded with music as warmly as with light.

It was time for the ball to begin.

Even in portraiture the English nobility was not prepared to mix with trade. The Tudor long gallery on the highest floor of Blaize displayed a row of aristocrats with high foreheads and long noses. They were all descended from one of William the Conqueror's companions-at-arms, and they were all ancestors of Piers Glanville, the present holder of the title. But Alexa's father, who had once
owned a shipping company and a bank in Bristol, had not been invited to join their company.

Instead, the portrait of John Junius Lorimer hung alone in the screened balcony above one end of the ballroom. The picture showed an old man, heavily built and dressed in sombre black. His long hair and beard and profuse side whiskers were white, but his bushy eyebrows had been painted bright chestnut. Margaret Scott, who climbed the steps to the balcony shortly before midnight, had once had hair as bright as those eyebrows; for, like Alexa, she was the daughter of John Junius Lorimer. But she was twenty years older than her half-sister and now, at the age of fifty-seven, the colour was fading and her forehead showed the lines of past sorrow and present responsibility.

In London, Margaret was a professional woman held in high esteem. Like her best friend Lydia, the mother of Kate and Brinsley, she had been a member of the first generation of women who had succeeded in qualifying as doctors in England, and now she was not only in charge of the gynaecological department of one of the great London teaching hospitals but was also responsible for the welfare of all the female students who trained there. But tonight her role was not that of a doctor but of an aunt and mother. This was a family occasion.

There were chairs in the balcony, but Margaret was a small woman and found that if she sat down she could not see above the solid lower section of the screen. Instead she stood, looking through the lattice at the picturesque scene below. Alexa, tonight's hostess, had been an opera singer in her youth, and when she married Piers Glanville he had encouraged her to convert a tithe barn on his estate into a small opera house. So she had the contacts to turn any party into a production if she chose, and the designer whose more usual responsibility was to create Count Almaviva's house or Don Giovanni's palace on the stage had been given a new challenge for
this special occasion. He had transformed the ballroom into a tropical forest, through which the women in their beautiful dresses dipped and swirled like exotic butterflies. Many of the young girls wore white, but Alexa had invited friends of her own generation as well as those on Brinsley's list, and above their rich silks and brocades sparkled the jewels of a wealthy and secure society.

The girls in their debutante season were pretty enough, but it seemed to Margaret that none of them could rival their hostess. Alexa Glanville at the age of thirty-seven was as beautiful as Alexa Lorimer had been at seventeen. Tall and slender, she brought elegance to any gown she wore, and to honour this evening's celebration her reddish-gold hair was coiled on her head like a crown in which delicate sprays of diamonds glittered, half-hidden.

Margaret looked for her son, Robert, and saw that he was partnering Kate. It was surprising how well they were dancing – for Robert did not attend many functions of this kind, while Kate's tall, sturdy body did not suggest that she would be graceful. But she had a musical ear, and her medical training had ensured that she was never clumsy. Certainly the two cousins seemed to be in perfect accord as they circled the floor – although Margaret noticed that Robert looked unusually thoughtful. Perhaps he was needing to concentrate on the steps, for there was no sign of the cheerful grin which had hardly changed since he was a little boy – although the carroty curls which he had inherited from his mother and grandfather had sprung up again from his attempts earlier in the evening to discipline them, and this tousled confusion made him look younger than his twenty years. Margaret felt her heart swelling with pride and love as she watched him. Robert was her only child, born after the death of his father, and her whole happiness was bound up in him.

The wooden treads of the stair to the balcony gave noisy warning that someone was coming to join her. Margaret turned away from the dancers and found that it
was one of her many nephews. Arthur Lorimer was the son of Margaret's elder brother, who had died some years before. Although Arthur was a younger son, he had inherited his family's dock and shipping business, because his brother Matthew had abandoned the offices of the Lorimer Line to become an artist. Arthur himself, now in his thirties, found the world of business completely congenial and was never happier than when he was absorbed in his accounts. He lived in the Bristol mansion which had once belonged to John Junius Lorimer and devoted himself to making money. Although his business associates and competitors thought of him as a hard and cold-natured man, he had a strong family feeling, and had welcomed the invitation to join in Brinsley's celebrations.

They chatted now for a few moments, but Arthur's concentration was not on the conversation. ‘Have you seen Kate?' he asked abruptly. ‘She gave me the supper dance, but she seems to have disappeared.'

‘She was dancing with Robert only a moment ago.' Margaret turned back to look over the screen, and found that the couple had left the floor, although the orchestra was still playing. ‘Well, she's hardly likely to go without supper. And she's not the sort of girl who would stand you up.'

Arthur nodded his agreement. For a moment he seemed on the point of saying something else; but after looking down once more to check that Kate was not hidden anywhere in the jungle below he changed his mind and went down the steps without speaking.