Softly Grow the Poppies (30 page)

Ned was startled but handed the reins to Sir Harry and stepped back respectfully. He watched as his master thundered out of the yard and headed for the stand of trees and then beyond to the moorland where he urged the animal up and up to the start of the lower Pennine Chain. On he rode, his face almost on the stallion’s neck, pursued by the expression on Rose’s face. He had for a moment or two been transported back to those magical days when he and Rose had been lovers. She had clung to him as eagerly as he had clung to her but there had been so much confusion. All those who relied on him turning towards him for orders. God, oh Jesus God, what was he to do? What was he to do with this love he bore her? Did she feel nothing for him? If not, then why had she been so glad to be in his arms?

Corey was beginning to flag so he reined him in, leaping from his back with the smooth movement of the splendid horseman he was. He left the animal to graze on the wide shelf of grass, flinging himself down and turning on to his back to stare at the blue bowl of the sky. His eyes closed and, relaxing at last, he fell asleep.

She found him there, the strong invisible bond that both had denied drawing her on Foxy’s back to this peaceful plateau. Quietly she dismounted as Foxy whickered a greeting to Corey. She knelt at Harry’s side and looked down at his beloved face which was gaunt, thin, the clefts chiselled beside his mouth deeper, more pronounced, his eyelashes, so long and dark any woman might have envied them. His mouth was stern, even as he slept and she noticed that the hair above his ears had white streaks in it which had not been there before the war. He must be thirty-two or thirty-three, she mused. She was twenty-nine and time was racing by at an impossible speed, a frightening speed.

He sighed and without thinking she laid her lips on his. He actually smiled in his sleep. She felt it beneath her own then his arms lifted and drew her down to him. He opened his eyes, unfocused as he woke, then he groaned.

‘Tell me I’m not dreaming,’ he murmured, his lips opening against hers. ‘I couldn’t bear it if I was.’

‘No, Harry, you’re not dreaming. I don’t know how it came about. I didn’t follow you up here. I just needed to get away from things.’

‘I did the same. Is it meant to be, d’you think? You know I love you.’

‘No, I didn’t. I only know
I love you
.’

‘Then why the hell have we been—’

Her lips stopped the words and, now that his arms were around her, she really didn’t care how it had come about. She was here where she had longed to be for months, years, and it seemed words were no longer needed. He propped himself on one elbow, his eyes drinking in the luminous, incredulous glow in hers.

‘Did you say you loved me?’

‘Yes, and did you say—’

‘I did and I do, dearest heart.’

Despite his astonishment at this moment he began to kiss her face with a somewhat feverish desperation as though he were afraid this might somehow be an illusion and he needs must make the most of it. His lips slid under her jaw and down her throat to the buttons of the usual white shirt she wore.

‘Dear God, I love you . . . want you. I need to take you before you change your mind or fate changes it for us.’

‘Please . . . oh please, let this be real. I wouldn’t want to live if you . . . if we . . .’

‘Be quiet, woman . . .
my
woman . . .’

‘Harry . . . Harry . . .’

Their lips clung together while their hands were busy with buttons, belts, until her breasts were revealed, sweet . . . sweet in his hands and lips, her nipples hard and peaked at his touch. He sucked and bit them as her body arched to his and the horses turned in bewilderment, amazed at the sound of their lovemaking. At last it came, an explosion that, because of their long wait, was rapidly over. They were both almost naked. Then it began again, slowly this time as he moved inside her, tenderly then more insistently as the love they shared and which had been denied for so long carried them to the highest peaks of climax, then gradually on to the shores of peace, acceptance, tranquillity. He rested his face on her white, rosy peaked breast, his hand stroking her belly and the glory of the auburn triangle that guarded her womanhood. It was as it should be. They loved one another. Harry and Rose. Rose and Harry.

Tim had proved to be an honest, obliging hard worker, with Charlie at his side, thankful to have found a settled place at last and Harry and Rose thanked the gods who had sent Tim Elliott to them. He and Charlie were scarcely ever apart though Tim, with an anxious apology, asked humbly if he might have a bedroom of his own. He was sensitive to Charlie’s needs but he needed privacy, he explained to Harry who understood.

No one noticed the growing attachment between Alice and Tim, for they were all agog with the unexpected but wonderful preparations for Sir Harry’s wedding to Rose Beechworth. Where once Will had clung to Harry, he now would not be parted from Tim who resignedly put up with Charlie and his son. It became a familiar sight for the two men and the small boy to be seen trudging about Beechworth and Summer Place and they all – Harry more than the others – thanked whatever being they believed in, that Will had transferred his attention from him to Tim and Charlie. Another occurrence, or two actually, that escaped the household’s attention was the disappearance at odd times – at the same time – of Tim Elliott and Alice Summers.

Harry and Rose had decided on a small wedding with just the family and their servants at the church where Charlie and Alice had been married. And as soon as possible, Harry declared firmly, for his lovely glowing bride-to-be was already pregnant though nobody knew except himself and Rose. A quiet smile and a twinkle in the eyes of Dolly could be seen if anyone was looking for it, since whatever her much loved child did, it could not get past the woman who had brought her up. But Rose was not the only woman pregnant!

Dr Westmann often reflected in the year following the end of the war how many of the young soldiers had survived not only his surgery but the war itself. He supposed there must have been hundreds who had come under his knife but he had done his best for the wounded soldiers despite his loathing for war, and no man could do more. When, at the end, he had been relieved of his duties as a military doctor he had returned to Berlin, the home of his birth and to the hospital where he had learned to become a military surgeon. Many years ago, of course, because he was now in his sixtieth year.

The hospital had had many uses, since its history harked back to 1710. It had been a hospice for the destitute, a workhouse for beggars and a maternity home for unmarried mothers, and had expanded over the two hundred or so years since its construction. It was now a military hospital and infirmary as well as a training centre for future military physicians. He mostly did teaching work now. The Charite was its name and it had become second home and focus of the dedicated surgeon’s life.

So many young men, but now he also tended to females. He was looking down on one now on his operating theatre table. She was the daughter of one of Berlin’s prominent and wealthy citizens, who, knowing of Otto Westmann’s reputation, had insisted that he should operate on his only child. It had been a shooting accident at one of the local nobles’ weekend parties. A gun, carelessly aimed at flying grouse, aimed by a youngster who should not have had the weapon in the first place, and the result was the pretty young woman with her brain exposed awaiting the surgeon’s knife.

For several moments he stood, an instrument in his hand, appearing to his staff to be debating his first move but he was in fact, surprisingly, taken back several years to a day in France when he had operated on a young English soldier. He remembered him, because his wound had been similar to this one. He also remembered a very senior officer, a doctor like himself, barking at him that the bed in which the young Englishman lay could be put to much better use for a German soldier and he, Dr Westmann was to get the English soldier on his way to the prisoner-of-war camp awaiting him. Otto had argued but a direct order from his superior could not be ignored. Dr Westmann would have liked to keep the young English soldier in his care for another week or two since he was not quite convinced that he had removed all the shards of bone in Charlie’s wound. Head injuries could be problematic and needed close watching, particularly that one because the young soldier seemed confused as to his own identity. He appeared to be recovered, so with his superior at his shoulder he had reluctantly discharged the young man, making it clear he was not happy about it, to his fate in the prisoner-of-war camp. Was he still alive, that young man, and if so had his, Otto’s, own surgery given him his life? Who would ever know?

Adjusting his mask, he nodded at the young doctor he was training and who stood on the other side of the operating table and began.

The wedding, though small, for who was there to invite, was quite wonderful or so the servants from the two houses, who
were
invited, told one another. And it was, since who among them had ever seen a man and a woman more in love with one another. Sir Harry was ready to run up the aisle to hurry his bride to the altar and the kiss he gave her made the women’s hearts almost burst with emotion though it was inclined to embarrass the men. He took several steps backwards towards Rose who was on the arm of Tom, the gardener, who was giving her away. Charlie stood rigid in his place as his brother’s best man, mouthing in a trembling voice what his duties were.

Rose Beechworth, soon to be Rose Summers, was not conventionally pretty but her strong face was radiant. Her hair shone copper and gold in the sunlight that poured through the leaded windows of the ancient church. It was short, curling about her head like a halo. Her eyes, golden as a bright new sovereign, were directed at her groom with a glow of enchantment and at the corner of her mouth the dimple deepened as she smiled, first at Harry then round the church at her people. All the people who had stood steadfastly beside her in so many crises. Not for her the downcast, modest gaze of the conventional bride. She was tall, almost as tall as her groom, with a magnificent shapely figure which did not as yet reveal her pregnancy. She had been brought to the church in the Summers’s old, open carriage, the one that had carried Alice to her nuptials, cleaned and painted, repairs to the leather seats achieved with great fervour by Ned, Tom and Jossy, Tom on his dignity since he was to ride in the carriage when he gave the woman away. And why not? Had he not known the glorious bride since the day she was born?

She carried flowers, rosebuds of pink and cream twined with white satin ribbon and walked on flowers too, for the local children had strewn the path with buttercups, daisies and poppies. The church itself had been transformed into a garden with flowers arranged artfully at the end of each pew and draped from the old beams. Alice’s doing, Rose knew, looking round for her friend, but not for longer than a fraction of a moment because now Harry claimed her attention and her hand.

Her gown was of white satin, a simple fitted sheath, the hem edged with white lace which was repeated on the cuff of the long sleeve and at the neck. Surprisingly she wore no veil but a tiny Juliet cap made up of white rosebuds nestled in her curls.

She had begged Harry to wear his uniform but he had refused quite brusquely, saying he wanted no reminders of the past to impinge on this long-awaited day. Dolly and Nessie cried as did most of the female congregation but it was soon over with the bride and groom kissing one another with great fervour. The register was signed and then the dash in a shower of confetti and rice to the carriage that would take them to Beechworth. This was a country wedding and the guests were made up of grooms, dairymaids, cowmen and their wives, farmers and their families, enough to fill the small church twice over. Their lives had been so fraught with difficulties and terrible sorrows. The bride and groom looked at one another with a certain astonishment that it had ended with this joy. At last! They had shared a bed for several weeks before this day and their child grew in Rose’s belly.

The home-made cheeses, syllabub, jellies, fruit tarts and custards and the magnificent wedding cake, made and decorated by Nessie, were all eaten by the guests as the bride and groom lay in their bed, arms about one another. They did not make love for which lack Harry apologised saying he was too knackered and Rose pondered out loud, asking him if he had seen Alice that day.

‘No,’ he mumbled into her deep breast, unconcerned it appeared as to the whereabouts of Alice. His beloved was in his arms. He fell asleep. His wife smiled, utterly content, just the same. She would speak to her husband tomorrow, sighing into a deep joyful sleep with his arms about her.

R
ose Beechworth, or should they call her
Lady
Rose Summers was, by the standards of the polite society of the district, decidedly odd. There were no other words to describe her, for heaven’s sake. She had chosen her own
gardener
to give her away on her wedding day so what could they deduce from that? She had relatives on her mother’s side though none, as far as they knew, came visiting. She seemed to prefer the company of farmers and gamekeepers, those who worked her land, hedgers and ditchers, farm labourers,
working
with them in the fields, on the moorland and woodland, the stables and, it was said, before she married sat down in the kitchen to eat with them. Mind you, to give her her due, she had done more for the wounded soldiers than anyone in the county.

Rose neither knew nor cared what her neighbours thought and never had. Since her mother died her father had become something of a recluse, making a companion of his only child and she was quite content to work among her people. She had no friends, no woman friend until she met Alice. And there was another one! Alice Weatherly. The only daughter, the only child of Arthur Weatherly whose great wealth came from his shipping ventures; an arrogant man with a great belief in his own worth. He had his toe in the door of society and meant to get himself firmly inside. He did not want to lose his position among the great and the good. It had been an anathema to him – which was putting it mildly – when Alice got herself pregnant while still unmarried. She had only just managed to avoid the shame –
his
– by marrying that nincompoop Summers lad who, it was said, was now a dribbling idiot. At first he had been prepared to forgive her but she had vanished in that daft way of hers in the battlefields of France and after she and the idiot returned home it was too late. He had refused to have anything to do with her since.