Where Earth Meets Sky (49 page)

When he drew back, there were tears in her eyes.

‘I long to love again,’ she said. ‘To feel something beautiful and true.’

To his surprise, Sam felt a lump rise in his throat, and he nodded.

‘Of course you must come – I wouldn’t dream of going without you, darling!’

For several days now, Lily and Piers Larstonbury had been discussing the invitation from Cosmo to go and stay at the Cranbourne estate. This time it was very late, a hot August night, with a night breeze stirring the lacy curtains, and they were once more lying together in Lily’s bed.

‘But what about Virginia . . .’ Lily protested, as she so often did.

‘Virginia is scarcely ever here,’ Piers said, adding bitterly, ‘do you seriously think Virginia ever concerns herself with what I do?’

Lily had realized some time ago that Virginia Larstonbury had taken a lover herself and was completely preoccupied, what with that and with her strange spiritual friends. Lily had seen a burly fellow with a beard and colourful, dashing clothes arrive at the house on several occasions and realized that all the hours they spent shut away together upstairs did not consist of praying or whatever it was theosophists did. But she did not know whether Piers knew about his wife’s infidelity. Virginia would appear in the evenings looking pink and sated and unusually good-tempered.

‘Oh, my little darlings, come and play with your mama!’ she would greet Hubert and Christabel, flinging her arms round them extravagantly and playing with them for much longer than the normal time allotted. With her long red hair hanging loose, kneeling on the floor with the children pretending to be a witch or a bear, since she was good at pretend games, she looked like a large child herself and Lily could feel almost affectionate towards her. She often wondered whether Virginia had any idea of Piers’s affair with her. Certainly she never showed the least sign of it and he was ever discreet. Lily had come to realize just how deep was Virginia’s indifference to her husband, so perhaps even if she had known she would not much have cared.

‘What about the children?’ Lily said.

‘Bring them as well,’ Piers said. He laid his hand on her stomach, stroking her. ‘Oh, my beauty, how lovely you are.’

‘Could we bring them? It would do them good to be out in the country.’

Piers raised himself on one elbow and looked down at her seriously.

‘You are more of a mother to them than Virginia ever has been.’

‘I’m very fond of them.’ It was true, she was fond of timid, sweet-natured little Hubert and fiery Christabel and had become attached to them.

‘We can motor up on Saturday morning, have an early start. And Ironside and Marks are coming with our Flyer with her brand-new engine!’ Piers immediately sounded keen and boyish as he always did when he talked about the car.

Lily’s heart thumped painfully hard for a moment. Sam would be there! She longed to go and see her beloved Cosmo, to look at the estate where he had spent so much of his boyhood and to be out in the country with the children, but if Sam was to be there too . . . However much she made herself angry with him, it didn’t make it any better. Seeing him filled her with so many emotions, most of them painful.

‘I should stay behind,’ she tried to suggest. ‘I’ll be in the way – me and the children.’

‘Not at all! I want you by my side. I know none of them say anything because they’re too polite and so on – and they can’t do without me, of course – but they must all realize what you mean to me by now. It’s one place we can go and feel comfortable, not worry about what people think. What is it, darling? You look anxious.’

She stared past him, up at the ceiling. It was her own fault that she and Sam kept being thrown together like this. She had made it happen, hadn’t she? And she also knew that, as so often in her life, when she had occupied this strange social territory, somewhere between servant and confidante as she now did again with Piers Larstonbury, that in the end she never had any choice but to do as she was asked.

Forcing her lips into a smile, she said, ‘Nothing, dear. I’m quite all right. Of course we’ll go.’ It was for Cosmo, all of it, wasn’t it? If there was one thing she could do it was to see him set on a path to success. Of course – it was all for Cosmo.

They were up at dawn, carrying the children out to the car into a hazy morning which promised to turn into the hottest of August days. The journey reminded Lily of taking Eustace Bartlett to his people in Leamington Spa and she wondered how he was getting on. What a handful he had been! She looked fondly down at Hubert beside her. No child had ever replaced Cosmo in her affections, but she did have a very soft spot for little Hubert.

When, amid the rolling Warwickshire countryside, they turned off the road into the gates of Cranbourne House, Piers and Lily exclaimed with astonishment.

‘My goodness me!’ Piers Larstonbury cried. ‘I wasn’t expecting it to be as imposing as this! Young Fairford has always given the impression of it all being a rather crumbling, unmanageable sort of place that’s descending into chaos.’

‘It’s absolutely beautiful,’ Lily said, feeling a great swell of pride. All this would be Cosmo’s one day since his Uncle William was unmarried. To think her boy would be the master of a place like this!

The house, at the end of a curving drive, was a foursquare and symmetrically proportioned brick Regency manor, its grand front door flanked by white columns. In front of the house Lily saw a garden laid out with rose bushes and small shrubs and flowers.

‘What a lovely
parterre
!’ Piers exclaimed.

Lily smiled. ‘Yes, isn’t it.’ She had never heard the word
parterre
before. The shaped grass cut round the flowers reminded her of a doily.

‘And what a house – no wonder young Fairford was keen for me to see it!’

But Hubert was jumping with excitement for another reason. ‘Look!’ he cried, leaning across Lily’s lap to see better. ‘Aeroplane – an aeroplane!’

In the distance, on a bright sward of grass, was an aeroplane, tilted to one side and white and delicate as a resting insect.

‘Is it going to fly?’ Hubert was asking, when from round the side of the house they saw Cosmo appear with a slow, languorous walk, dressed in white flannel trousers and a red and white checked shirt. His golden hair fell, curling over one eye, and he tossed his head back and raised an arm in greeting, squinting in the bright sunlight.

As Piers braked in front of the house, Cosmo leaned down to the window and Lily beamed with joy at the sight of him. He was so lovely, so tall and handsome!

‘Well, you’ve made good time,’ he drawled, not looking at Lily and she felt a stab of rejection. It was as if he could never acknowledge her properly or show how much he needed her, especially if there was any other company about. But she knew it was just his way.

‘Hello, Cosmo, dear,’ she said.

‘Oh, hello, Lily,’ he said offhandedly. ‘I’ll get our man to show you all where your quarters are. There’s an attic where you can go with the children. Mother wired to say she’s on her way up. And you must come and meet Uncle William.’

William Fairford was about as different from his young brother Charles as it would have been possible to imagine. Lily and Piers were introduced to a short, rotund man dressed in very tightly fitting tweeds, his belly thrusting out dangerously hard at the buttons of his waistcoat. He had a red, jowly face and a great many whiskers protruding from his nose and ears. From under a tweed hat he looked at them with narrowed, sludgy-coloured eyes and said, ‘Hmmm. I didn’t know there were going to be children. Cosmo – you must inform Mrs Rainbow at once.
She
likes children. And don’t think I want to know anything about anything because I don’t. Good day to you!’ He touched the brim of his cap and sauntered off, tapping the floor with a silver-topped walking cane. ‘See you at dinner time!’ he called over his shoulder.

Lily watched him in astonishment. Was this really the man Cosmo had spent all his school holidays cared for, or rather ignored, by? He seemed most peculiar and certainly not interested in anyone else around him. How could he be Charles Fairford’s brother? But then Susan Fairford had told her that he had suffered with his nerves as a young man, that he had taken after his peculiar uncle. She still felt indignant on Cosmo’s behalf and exchanged a look with Piers. But then they heard a woman’s voice approaching, talking non-stop before she had even come into view.

‘. . . there’s a room up to the right and you’ll find it’s very comfortable and I don’t know how many of you there are and of course we’re not used to visitors here, him being the way he is and no one ever tells me a thing, of course, not a thing . . . Hello, dears – oh, and little ones as well! He never said there’d be children coming! Oh, my word. Well, that’s a treat for us!’

All this from a very stout woman as she appeared panting in the doorway. She wore an enormous white apron and a startled expression in her watery grey eyes.

‘Deary me, it’s a warm one today!’ Her cheeks were very red and she was fanning herself with one hand. ‘I’m Mrs Rainbow and no doubt Cosmo hasn’t done the first thing to make you comfortable, let alone
him
.’ She flicked her head in the direction of the departed Uncle William, not even trying to disguise her exasperation.

Within moments they were being shown into rooms where the beds had been made up most efficiently and Mrs Rainbow swiftly settled them in.

‘I’ve six of my own, all grown and gone now,’ she said wistfully. ‘And my Herb passed on six years ago . . . Time of your life when your children are young – you never get it back.’ For a moment she looked watery and woeful, but then beamed at Hubert, and Christabel, who was lying on her bed kicking her chubby legs in the air. ‘Oh, and look at you two. Oh, I’m going to like having you here!’

Lily had been given a room at the opposite end of the house to Piers Larstonbury, a relief as she was glad of a break from his attentions, but she tried to look disappointed when he mentioned it later.

‘Never mind, my love, I’ll be with you!’ he whispered to her, and she gave him a smile.

‘Has Mrs Rainbow been here for a long time?’ Lily asked Cosmo when they joined him downstairs in the drawing room, from where there came a strong smell of coffee. On a silver tray were laid a coffee pot and cups and a plate of biscuits and iced cakes decorated with diamonds of angelica.

‘No – only five or six years,’ Cosmo said, eyeing Hubert and Christabel as they stormed the corridors at high speed in ecstasy at being released from the car. Cosmo looked a bit irritated, but Lily sensed that he also envied them. ‘Before that, when I was at school, it was Mrs Saxsby, and she was an
ogre
.’

‘Oh yes,’ Lily laughed at the face he pulled. ‘I remember now. You wrote about her.’

‘Mrs Rainbow will love you being here,’ Cosmo said. He nodded at the cakes. ‘She likes feeding people. That’s why Uncle’s so stout. Oh!’ He looked out, roused by the engine and sound of gravel crunching outside. ‘Here’s Ironside!’

Lily found every nerve in her body suddenly on alert, her heart pounding. Any moment, once again, she would have to greet Sam! And now she knew what he thought of her, his anger and disgust with her. Oh, why had she let Piers talk her into coming here?

They all went out into the sunshine from the cool of the house, to find Sam and Loz pulling up outside, the streamlined silver body of the Heath Flyer looking magnificent on the trailer behind the car. Both Sam and Loz were obviously hot, but they grinned broadly at the sign of the reception party. Cosmo ran forward to meet them, excited as a child.

And amid all the greetings, Lily stood to one side with the children while Sam worked his way through the handshakes. Mrs Rainbow had appeared again and was exclaiming over the car, and her mouth ran away with her when she saw Sam as well.

‘Ooh, aren’t you a good-looking one!’ she said and Lily saw Sam’s smile in reply.

‘I’m glad somebody thinks so,’ he quipped.

At last, very formally, he came forward to shake Lily’s hand.

‘How d’you do, Miss Waters?’ he said, his voice cooler than if she had been a stranger he had never met before.

And while, for the seconds his hand was in hers, she couldn’t help remembering how that same hand had moved lovingly over her bare skin and, aching for the tenderness of it, she said equally coolly, ‘Good morning, Mr Ironside.’

While Sam and Loz took the motor from the trailer and made some adjustments to her, Cosmo said he would give Piers, Lily and the children a tour of the estate in Uncle William’s spacious Morris Cowley.

‘That’s awfully kind of you, old chap,’ Piers said, ‘but I think I’d like to stay and watch our Flyer being unloaded. I’m most intrigued by the whole thing and I haven’t managed to get down to Brooklands to see her in progress nearly as much as I’d hoped lately. And I can be here to greet your mother when she arrives. Why don’t you take Lily? She’s very keen to see your home.’

Lily sat in the front beside Cosmo, awed by the sheer size of the estate, which seemed to go on and on across the Warwickshire countryside. She felt so proud sitting next to him, looking at the fields of wheat turning golden in the August sunlight, the gardens and farm cottages and the orchards to one side of the house. What Cosmo most wanted to show her, however, was the driving circuit. The dusty track snaked round a wide area at the far end of the estate, cutting along the side of a hill on a sharp incline.