Songs of Spring (16 page)

‘Go to your father, darling. I’m so worried about him,’ Elizabeth asked quietly.

Caroline found him not in his study, but sitting in the garden, surveying the produce growing on what had once been their tennis court. He was reading, but as she greeted
him he rose to his feet in pleasure. He, like Mother, looked years older, and his face was drawn.

‘My dear.’

Caroline had the same feeling as with her mother when he embraced her, and blamed herself once again for her hesitation in coming home.

‘You’re reading that new Conan Doyle book,
The New Revelation
. Why – ah’ – Caroline understood immediately – ‘Mrs Dibble.’

‘How could I not take her seriously? She was kind enough to lend me
Raymond
and I decided to go to Tunbridge Wells to buy this.’

‘That doesn’t mean you take all that stuff about whisky and sodas in heaven seriously too, does it?’ Caroline could not believe it.
Father
of all people?

‘No, but now we have our own immense grief, I understand how many might gain comfort from it. After all, Sir Arthur’s interest in the subject was kindled by someone within his own household who had lost brothers on the Western Front. I am impressed enough at this outspoken tract to take it seriously, as you put it. And I confess, my love, that late in the evening and at night, when one does not see matters as clearly as during the day, I have wished I
could
believe totally in
Raymond
. After all, I believe in the afterlife; it is but a small step to reason that at times it has methods of communicating with us, and if the image that it manifests is akin to earthly matters, such as your whisky and sodas, that may simply be to strengthen that communication by putting things in earthly terms.’

He was looking at her almost with hope, and Caroline was horrified.

‘No, Father,’ she managed to reply. ‘To
believe
in Isabel’s happiness in the next life is one thing, for you to dwell so much on it, which is what spiritualism encourages, is quite another. Isabel would not want that.’

Caroline realised hopelessly that she had no idea what Isabel would have thought. Isabel had always been here, and there had been no need for such discussions. If only she could talk her worries over with Felicia, but she had already left for London.

George was at dinner, a more sombre brother than she recalled, but it wasn’t until late that evening that she had a chance to talk to him privately. She had left her bedroom door open, in the time-honoured Rectory tradition of signifying one was open to visits from her siblings, but George had never participated so much as his sisters. Today the silent invitation had not been taken up, and she had to beard him in his own room.

‘I’m worried about Father,’ she told him bluntly. ‘Do you think he is going to steer the same path as Mrs Dibble?’

George lolled back on the bed. ‘He may be a dabbler, but he’s not a Dibbler.’

‘Be serious.’

‘I am. And, even if he is going to take up spiritualism, it’s far too early to try to talk him out of it. It’s only just a month since Isabel died.’

It seemed a lifetime, it seemed yesterday, but Caroline admitted George might have a point. Common sense
seemed to have deserted her recently. ‘How much longer are you here for?’

‘Another two weeks, the doc says. I shall be off sooner, maybe.’

‘For the right reasons, I hope.’

‘Does it matter?’

Caroline plunged. ‘It matters if you’re still blaming yourself for living when Isabel died. Are you?’

‘Yes, as a matter of fact.’

‘Then you must think instead of what you originally went into the war to do, think of what our parents need – think of—’ She broke off, not wanting to trespass too far.

‘You?’ He misunderstood. ‘You have Yves, for the moment at least.’

‘I was going to say think of Kate.’

George looked startled, then the glimmer of a smile came to his lips. ‘Kate wouldn’t understand.’

‘From what I remember of her, you might find she does, only she has practical ways of showing it.’

George grinned. ‘You mean well, Caroline, but keep out of it. Look after your own love life.’

‘Ouch.’

George groaned. ‘Sorry.’

There was something else she wanted to discuss with Father while she was here, but it was not until Father had returned from early communion on Sunday that she had the opportunity to do so. Once Sunday breakfast had been a formal occasion, but no longer. The dishes were still kept on hot plates, but whereas they would have been devoured after family prayers at one go, now one was
lucky to have a companion. The Rectory clock had run down, and would it ever be rewound? Today, however, both her parents were here.

‘Do you think the cinema will be rebuilt, Father?’ It seemed important to her that it was, for it had been Isabel’s great achievement.

‘I doubt if Swinford-Browne will do so, and you know yourself that he’s been wanting to close it for a long time. A great pity, in my opinion.’

‘You wouldn’t have said so once.’ Father had been vehemently opposed to the cinema when it was opened in 1914.

‘Times change, even for me,’ Laurence sighed. ‘There is no doubt it has become a popular meeting place for the village, but even apart from business considerations, Swinford-Browne has taken Isabel’s death very hard, and I imagine he’s all too happy to walk away from the problem.’

‘Suppose I talk to him?’ Caroline offered. ‘Why don’t we invite them to lunch today?’

‘I couldn’t, Caroline,’ Elizabeth said immediately. ‘Not yet.’

Caroline understood. She remembered the first time the Swinford-Brownes had ever come to lunch, on Easter Sunday 1914. That was the day when Isabel’s engagement to Robert had been announced. Caroline had hated the Swinford-Brownes ever since. Now such dislike seemed irrelevant and even misplaced. ‘I’ll go to the Mountain tomorrow morning,’ she said resignedly, ‘if he’ll see me.’

After leaving Ashden, the Swinford-Brownes, having moved to East Grinstead, had chosen a home even
ghastlier than The Towers. Caroline began to regret her impulsive gesture to come here once more a-pleading at the Swinford-Brownes’ feet.

It was Edith who awaited her in the morning room, and stripped by grief of all the pretensions she usually assumed, she had a dignity that had been lacking in her previous bearing.

‘How nice of you to come, Caroline.’ She appeared to mean it, and guiltily Caroline was aware that she would never have
dreamt
of visiting them if it hadn’t been for the cinema.

‘Has Robert been told?’ she asked quietly.

‘We didn’t know
what
to do, my dear. We thought, if we told him, he might give up hope for himself, yet if we didn’t that he’d hate us for not telling him. Patricia took care of it, and consulted the Red Cross. I believe he now knows, for she had a brief letter of acknowledgement.’

Edith’s face was forlorn and no wonder. Robert’s relations with his parents had been strained to say the least after he decided to volunteer for action. ‘I don’t suppose we’ll have any grandchildren now,’ Edith continued. ‘I don’t see Patricia marrying.’

Nor did Caroline. Patricia Swinford-Browne was strident and bossy, if good-hearted; the women’s police force suited her down to the ground, and she could not see Patricia forfeiting power for marriage.

At that moment William Swinford-Browne arrived to join them. His bulky shape, which had led to the Lilley girls nicknaming him the William Pear, had given way to a very shrivelled pear since she had last seen him at the funeral.

‘Good of you to visit us, Caroline,’ he greeted her gruffly.

Her guilt increased, and she spent a long time talking generally with them before she introduced the subject she had come to discuss. ‘What shall you do about the cinema, Mr Swinford-Browne?’ They had never progressed beyond this formality. Caroline hadn’t the slightest inclination to address him as Uncle William, and neither did she feel warm enough towards him – or had ever been invited – to call him by his Christian name.

‘I don’t want to go near the place. I’ll sell up when the war’s over.’

‘That may be a long time. Won’t you consider rebuilding?’

Edith burst into tears, and William glared at her. ‘That’s a trifle on the callous side, isn’t it?’

‘No. I’ve thought about it a lot,’ Caroline said earnestly. ‘I know we were against the cinema when you first built it, but now it’s a great force for good. People will need it again once the shock wears off.’

‘Maybe they will. I won’t though. I couldn’t bear to look at the place,’ William grunted.

‘How can you think of people laughing at Charlie Chaplin right where your own sister died?’ Edith moaned.

Caroline flushed, then steeled herself. She had never thought this would be easy. ‘It’s just that Isabel put so much love and enthusiasm into building up the cinema. If it closes, it would look as if her work had come to nothing. By allowing her to run it, you were the making of Isabel, Mr Swinford-Browne. It gave her much happiness for she felt she was accomplishing something worthwhile.
She would have hated to see it all go for nothing.’

‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ William admitted grudgingly. ‘It doesn’t change my mind though.’

‘If it were rebuilt, a memorial to Isabel in the foyer could be a permanent tribute. Otherwise her work would seem to have been pointless.’

‘Oh, William. Caroline’s right.’ Edith rapidly changed sides.

He glared at her too, but deliberated for a moment. At last he said, ‘All right, Caroline. Get it fixed up as and when you can. And cheaply. Don’t splash my money about. You’ll have to find someone local to run it too. Can’t offer them much.’

Caroline was well aware of that, for Isabel had frequently complained of the pittance she received. She’d take one problem at a time though. First catch your turtle …

She was pleased with her victory, for it seemed something she had done for Isabel, and hurried home, hoping to talk it over with her mother. She had expected to find her in the glory-hole where she did her agricultural rota work, but there was no sign of her. Defeated, she went back to the kitchen to ask Mrs Dibble where she was.

‘Gone over to the Dower House about a Rat and Sparrow Club,’ she said.

‘A
what
? And why Lady Hunney?’ Caroline was incredulous. Mother loathed Maudie as she was not so affectionately known. Her mother’s work on the County Executive Committee was increasing all the time, with the campaign to find yet more land to plough more intense than ever before, and the harvest rotas needing constant
juggling. Nevertheless, in the old days Maudie would be last on the list to call for help.

‘She goes over there quite often to see her ladyship now. She gets on with her better than with her ladyship upstairs.’

Anyone would, Caroline thought, amused. It was odd to think of her mother and Lady Hunney drawn closer together through common bereavement. That tennis party of 1914 seemed so long ago; there had been but little thought of war, save for a tiny cloud on a distant horizon. She and Reggie had become engaged that day and Isabel was planning her wedding. The tennis balls pit-patted in the warm sunshine, she could hear them now echoing in her ears. So long ago, but those happy voices were still clear: Isabel’s, Felicia’s, George’s, Tilly’s, her own ‘Because I’m going to marry you,’ followed by Reggie’s ‘You’ll never cry again, Caroline. I promise, I promise.’

Caroline got up quickly from the kitchen table as Agnes came in carrying the tea tray. She looked white with exhaustion. ‘Oh, Agnes, let me help you.’

‘I’m all right, Miss Caroline.’ She let her take the tray from her all the same. ‘I’ve been overdoing it a bit. The baby’s due on the 29th, and Jamie’s coming home tonight on leave. That’s bad timing, isn’t it? Oh, Miss Caroline, it doesn’t seem right me being here, having a baby, and poor Mrs Lilley losing her grandchild. I offered to go, but she said no, but I do feel awful.’

Late that night, not long after Jamie arrived, his second child decided to arrive a week early. Caroline was awoken by the commotion as Jamie thundered down the stairs for
Mrs Dibble, Mrs Dibble telephoned to Mrs Hay, and in due course, with the whole house roused, Mrs Hay sent for Dr Ryde because Agnes was having such a difficult time.

Caroline joined her parents in the kitchen where Mrs Dibble had ordered Myrtle to make cocoa and tea to see them through the night. Her mother looked as if she were about to cry, and Caroline searched desperately for something to take her mind off Isabel’s baby.

‘What, Mother, is a Rat and Sparrow Club?’ she asked brightly.

It was not the most sensible of questions for two o’clock in the morning, and her mother stared at her blankly.

‘Like a cockfight?’ George slouched sleepily in for his mug of cocoa.

It was Percy who answered in the end. ‘Club set up to do away with vermin. They arrange shoots.’

‘But sparrows aren’t vermin.’

‘When they eat my crops, they are. I don’t plough up tennis courts to feed them.’

‘At the front,’ George said quietly, ‘a sparrow’s chirp is a precious thing.’

Caroline said no more.

They returned to their bedrooms to try to sleep, but renewed commotion towards dawn sent Caroline scuttling up to Agnes’s room in her dressing gown to see what was going on.

Jamie, as white as a sheet, was in the doorway of Agnes’s bedroom, but he was grinning.

‘A boy?’

‘It’s a girl, and I’m glad, Miss Caroline. That I am. Boys go to war, so my little ones will be safe.’

Safe? There was no guarantee of that, but she said nothing save to congratulate him, and since she was leaving early to return to the office, asked if she might see the baby. She found her mother already in the bedroom. ‘Poor Agnes is very weak, Caroline. She’s had a bad time. What are you going to call her, Jamie?’

Agnes roused herself. ‘Jamie and me – if you’ve no objection – well, we’d like to call her Isabel. If it’s not presumptuous. If it won’t upset you.’

‘I can’t think—’ Elizabeth tried again. ‘I can’t think of anything nicer.’ She burst into tears, and Caroline bent over to kiss Agnes’s forehead.