That They Might Lovely Be

Medd

Preface

Writing this story has taken a long time.

Although a schoolteacher’s summer vacations are the envy of all workers, they never seemed to allow me enough time to produce anything other than fragmented narratives. So there are drafts of this story where different characters recall different episodes or write letters describing their experiences. At one time, I even toyed with letting the reader choose the order in which these were read. It was only when I took the bold step of leaving teaching that I found I had the space in my head to turn a disjointed draft into a fluent narrative. By that time, of course, I knew my characters intimately. It was relatively easy to lift them fully on to the page.

I am indebted to my aunt, Ida Medd (née Sheppard) to whom this book is dedicated. After repeated nagging, she wrote down everything she could remember about growing up in a Kent village, the daughter of the village schoolmaster, in the mid-twentieth century. One of my most prized possessions is the ninety pages or so of closely handwritten notes which she passed on to me. These provided me with an authentic social context. I also owe a great deal to the Quaker boarding school where I was educated. It was here that I first engaged in metaphysical sparring and grappled, whilst the Cold War raged, with the merits of pacifism. The early chapters of Indomitable Friend, The Life of Corder Catchpool 1883-1952 by William R. Hughes (first published by George Allen and Unwin Ltd 1956) fixed some of these ideas in the First World War. From all of this emerged a story which, I hope, leaves the reader with lots to ponder.

Because I once taught English Literature, I have relished the opportunity to craft a story where structure and pattern play their part in its telling. I hope that having read this story, you will enjoy talking about it.

I should like to record my sincere thanks to Janet Nevin for her encouragement and advice in the re-drafting process.

Any allusions to historical figures and actual places are founded on imagination rather than fact.

D.M.

August 2016

from My Song is Love Unknown

My song is love unknown,

My Saviour’s love to me,

Love to the loveless shown,

That they might lovely be.

O who am I,

That for my sake

My Lord should take

Frail flesh and die?

He came from his blest throne,

Salvation to bestow;

But men made strange, and none

The longed-for Christ would know.

But O, my friend,

My friend indeed,

Who at my need

His life did spend!

Why what hath my Lord done?

What makes this rage and spite?

He made the lame to run,

He gave the blind their sight.

Sweet injuries!

Yet they at these

Themselves displease

And ‘gainst him rise.

In life, no house, no home

My Lord on earth might have;

In death, no friendly tomb

But what a stranger gave.

What may I say?

Heaven was his home;

But mine the tomb

Wherein he lay.

Here might I stay and sing,

No story so divine;

Never was love, dear King,

Never was grief like thine.

This is my Friend,

In whose sweet praise

I all my days

Could gladly spend.

Samuel Crossman c. 1624-84

Chapter One

Monday, 12 August 1940

All day there had been dogfights high overhead. It was mid-afternoon when the rector’s wife stepped through the French windows into the garden. Bullets spattered down through the trees, ripping the turf around her feet yet leaving her unscathed. This, the second miracle of her life, turned her wits.

In the same hour, Delia Simmonds was about to wring the neck of a young cockerel ready for the pot while her father, the retired schoolmaster, was sitting on the old oak bench, resolutely ignoring the combat above the clouds. The squawking of the doomed bird was drowned out as a stricken aeroplane came screaming down from the sky toward them. They watched as it roared above the roof of their cottage, skimming the tops of the trees before ploughing straight into the South Lodge on the other side of the wood.

They heard the crash, but neither felt compelled to hurry along the lanes to see where it had hit the ground. News would reach them soon enough. They had inhabited the fringes of village life for some years now. As an accumulation of barnacles and weed gradually renders a vessel unseaworthy, so the steady accretion of gossip and suspicion, which had attached itself to the schoolmaster and his family since the tragic events ten years before, had made his position untenable. He had bought a small parcel of land in the woodlands and had a cottage built there for himself and his daughter.

As it happened, it could not have been ten minutes before a child came running up the path to the gate.

‘You’d best come, miss, sir. Plane’s crashed into the South Lodge. They’re saying your Bertie and Mrs. Cordingley’s inside but it’s all ablaze.’

For a moment, Delia froze, the limp bird in her hand, the basket for its feathers between her feet. Then she threw back her head and laughed and laughed.

The child fled.

‘Pull yourself together, Delia. Have some self-control,’ snapped her father. ‘Get your coat. You’ll have to see what’s happened.’

‘I’ll pluck the bird whilst it’s warm. There’ll be nothing I can do.’

A plane has come screaming out of the sky like some vengeful angel and passed over us to strike at Anstace and Bertie. If this is retribution, laughter is the only response, she thought. She ripped out the bird’s feathers in handfuls.

‘We ought to find out if anything’s happened to Bertie,’ her father said some minutes later.

‘Ought we? Very well. I’ll go. I shall go.’ She took the fowl into the kitchen and left it, ready for drawing, in a large earthenware crock. She washed her hands and threw a fawn-coloured cardigan over her shoulders before leaving the cottage and cutting through the woods toward the South Lodge, on the edge of the estate. She would not have expected to hear much birdsong during the heat of the afternoon but even so the woods seemed particularly, eerily quiet. As she neared the scene, though still muffled by the swaying canopy of leaves, she was able to hear the calling and sounds of urgency. Then the spit and crackle of the flames became audible and she saw the smoke billowing, grey and yellow. Its acrid scent caught the back of her throat.

There was a far larger crowd than she had expected. A detachment of soldiers from those billeted in the grounds of the Big House had arrived and an officer was taking control. Someone had found a pump and hose and valiant efforts were being made to quench the flames whilst the wreckage of the plane was perched above the structure like some ridiculously incongruous decoration challenging the pre-eminence of the Elizabethan chimneys; remarkably, they remained intact.

People began to notice her now, and although some of the village women stood back awkwardly, most gathered around her. They want to draw out the drama, Delia thought. They want to milk this bit of war on their doorstep for all its worth. The ghoulish urgency to their speech was at odds with any sympathy they might try to convey.

‘Pilot’s dead that’s for sure. Poor lad. Some mother’s son shot down by bloody Jerry. But were they … would you know if there was anyone in the Lodge?’

‘I’d heard they’d gone away for a few days.’

‘The Sergeant says it’s not safe to go in while it’s still burning but he would if there was a chance…’

‘There’s been no screams or cries for help and people were here as soon the plane hit.’

Delia just shook her head, refusing to engage and watched the men fight the fire as best they could. Someone pressed a mug of tea into her hand. Others grew more solicitous, taking her silence as shock and grief. Whatever the hostility which Delia and her family felt toward Mrs. Cordingley (that was common knowledge throughout the village), for all the gossip that had stuck to them since the suicide — and some of it really nasty, if truth be told — and it had cost Mr. Simmonds his job, in the end, make no mistake—the lad, after all, was still their kin. It would be unnatural to feel nothing.

‘It’s a shock to us all,’ said one. ‘It could’ve come down on anyone, blown the whole village to smithereens like as not. It’s a blessing if the lodge was empty.’

‘Act of God, that’s what.’

‘We’ll see what the rector says.’

‘Mrs. Jackman thinks it’s a miracle. She’s out in her garden now singing hymns on her hands and knees.’

‘Even more doolally than before then.’

And so it went on. The purposeless chatter barely registered with Delia as she waited, watching her neighbours and the squaddies from the camp subdue the fire as best they could. In the end, an engine from Faversham arrived and the fire officers took over.

The priority seemed to be the dead pilot and identifying him. He was the only certain casualty. She was told that they’d assess the situation in the morning, when the building would still be smouldering but safe enough to investigate. If there had been anyone inside, they would not have survived; that seemed clear. They said she’d be better off going home and getting some rest. The army would guard the site, she was told. There’d be no looting, if that was a worry. They had to protect the plane from kids scrambling about for souvenirs, apart from anything else.

Delia did not take the most direct route back to her father. There was nothing urgent about inconclusive information.

She could not help wondering whether, even in death (if she had indeed been killed in the Lodge), Anstace had not also stolen some advantage. How fortunate to meet oblivion, swallowed whole by death in one great gulp, than slowly to be licked away, sucked dry in life’s terrible maw. Such, she thought, was likely to be her own lot: left with her father, eking out a threadbare existence on his meagre pension in the same village where she had always lived, where every familiar hedge, every ancient wall hemmed her in with disappointment and loss. Had there been happier times? Of course. But her memory of them had no more power to move her than a box of faded sepia snaps, to be glanced at and turned over.

She would return to the South Lodge in the morning when the firemen would start picking over the ruins. They would, of course, salvage what they could. Perhaps they would make a pile of rescued items and stack them under the torn magnolia tree. Some Cordingley relation would be found to pore over them, sifting for anything of value before sending what remained to be knocked down under the hammer at some third-rate auction.

Perhaps it would be Anstace herself who would sort the debris. Perhaps she would rise from the ashes. Perhaps she was still alive.

Delia’s slow return to her cottage took her past the rectory. There, on her knees, not praying but searching apparently for something in the grass, was Hetty Jackman, the rector’s wife. She was paying no heed to either her husband or the doctor’s wife who were both trying to encourage her to leave off her desperate business and go inside. She kept pulling free as they tried to get her to stand, and began scrabbling anew. Delia paused momentarily, allowing a smile to warp her lips.

If Hetty Jackman were to suffer that too would indicate some justice. So much responsibility for the unravelling lay at her door. Had hers been foolish interference or gross presumption? Delia did not really care now. There was no point in raking it all up again. But she would certainly feel no pity if Hetty Jackman had indeed turned ‘even more doolally than before’.

Thursday, 22 August 1940

It was on the third day that Frederick Simmonds received a telephone call from Kingsnorth and Kingsnorth, Canterbury solicitors, to inform him that his son, Bertie, and Anstace Cordingley were alive. Most fortuitously, he was told, they had not been at home when the South Lodge was hit and, if Mr. Simmonds could be at home on an afternoon during the following week, Mr. Kingsnorth believed that a meeting would be in order. There were some matters of importance to discuss.

Delia was preparing to bottle the summer fruit when she answered the door to the solicitor. She left the preserving jars ranged in rows along the table, hanging her apron on the back of the door; it was a job which she could easily return to.

‘Mr. Kingsnorth. I believe we met once before, years ago.’

‘Good afternoon, Miss Simmonds. Yes, Robert Kingsnorth. Is your father, is Mr. Simmonds at home?’

‘Why would he not be?’

‘Indeed.’

She took his hat and overcoat, thinking him ridiculously overdressed for August, and led him into the back room with its view of the vegetable garden and fruit cage. It was where her father would invariably sit when he was not outside working the plot. She gestured to the solicitor to sit in the only other upholstered seat but drew up a ladderback chair for herself and waited. Outside, the dog, chained to its kennel, continued to bark intermittently.

Though now he had to be in his late seventies, Frederick Simmonds still struck Robert Kingsnorth as essentially a man in his prime. Tall, well-built, he seemed to have lost none of his strength with the passing of the years. He did not sit low in his chair but filled it, his shoulders snug within the wings of the chairback. Conscious of his own flabbiness, and the stretch of his waistcoat, Kingsnorth noted that there was no paunch or any suggestion of incipient corpulence about this old man.

‘Good afternoon, Mr. Simmonds. Thank you for seeing me.’ And then, when there was seemingly no reaction, ‘You have a fine allotment here, I see. Very productive, I’m sure.’

Frederick Simmonds turned his head slowly and then rose to his feet to shake the solicitor’s proffered hand.

So there has been some aging, thought Kingsnorth. He had expected the old man to have moved with more confident ease. His eyes too lacked the dark energy which had made such an impression those years before. It was as if this man were now powered by a weaker, smaller engine, which lacked the capacity to mobilise fully body and mind.

‘You have something to discuss.’

‘I do, Mr. Simmonds. I do. I am not sure if you are cognisant of … are aware of what I have to tell you.’ He paused. There was silence.

It was Delia who broke it.

‘Neither are we, Mr. Kingsnorth, until you explain.’

‘Indeed. The matter is this, quite simply this: they are married. Mrs. Cordingley … your son … married.’

The devastation of the South Lodge, and the news that they had escaped, were neither as explosive as this. Delia felt the room contract around her as if everything had suddenly shrunk and was squeezing her, sucking the air from her lungs and compressing every joint in her body. She found herself repeating what Kingsnorth had told them. Was she doing so aloud? She could not tell. She reiterated the words but they might have been alien phonemes from another tongue; they had sense, undoubtedly, but they carried no meaning. What could this mean? What further aberration was this?

Mrs. Cordingley. Your son. Married. Anstace. Bertie. Married. Simply.

‘Simply?’ she said. ‘Simply? How can it be that? After everything, how can it be that?’ She was shouting now. She saw Kingsnorth flinch. She also saw something in his face—was it satisfaction?—as he watched her react to his news. She felt herself grow ugly as the rage and bile began to build up inside her, twisting her features. She thought she was going to be sick. She would be sick if this man continued to stare at her. She wanted to be sick.

Frederick Simmonds spoke and drew Kingsnorth’s attention.

‘I do not think of him as my son.’

‘Nevertheless.’

‘You have told me nothing which you could not have told me over the telephone.’

‘I thought the shock…’

‘There is no shock.’ As Simmonds started to speak, Kingsnorth permitted himself to indicate Delia sitting, clenched, catatonic even, to his left.

‘I have experienced no shock,’ continued Simmonds, ‘because there is no consequence of any moment. I told you this before. You dabble around trying to find meaning, joining together this and that in your legalistic mind, trying to impose on others a system and a structure. One thing leads to another. Of course it does: cause, effect, cause, effect. But there is no meaning there. Small minds, Mr. Kingsnorth, small minds try to impose order to give everything meaning because they cannot accommodate chaos. Whilst I have learned to embrace it. I cannot speak for my daughter. She will take things as they come in her own way. But for me, though I may be interested in news of this and that, I am not moved. You can tell me nothing of Bertie or Anstace Catchpool—’

‘I have always known her by her married name of Cordingley, although I suppose she is Mrs. Simmonds now.’

Kingsnorth realised he had betrayed himself with this spiteful aside for the daughter broke in, preventing her father from continuing. Although her face was sweaty and a red mottling played upon her throat, his quip had jolted her out of her temporary debility. There was a tremor in her voice but it would not, he knew, stem from any weakness but from the sheer effort of suppressing a dangerous fury. When she smiled at him, and her words were squeezed through this mockery of pleasantness, he knew she had seen through his professional veneer.

‘You have an interest, do you not, Mr. Kingsnorth? I am right, am I not, that your wife is the late Mr. Cordingley’s cousin? I am right, am I not, that your wife’s family has never accepted the terms of his mother, Lady Margery Cordingley’s will? And no doubt I am also right that Cordingleys and Kingnorths are rejoicing in a development which they think might give substance to whatever claim they are hatching to appropriate the estate.’

‘Miss Simmonds, I can assure you—’

‘No, Mr. Kingsnorth, you can assure us of nothing. You are compromised. But even if you weren’t, understand this: my father and I have no interest in Bertie’s legacy. We are not involved. We never have been. Ever. Never. We made that clear before. And I think, therefore, that your only purpose in coming here this afternoon is to malign.’

She had risen from her chair and taken a step forward so that, even had he not still been sitting, he would have felt threatened. As he stood and tried to muster some advantage (holding onto his lapels as if to emphasise his sombre, professional attire, lifting his chin from the starched constrictions of his wing-collar), he knew that nothing he could say would have the slightest effect. I have crossed a dangerous woman, he thought. I doubt she is entirely sane.

‘Sit down, man,’ said Simmonds. ‘You came out here presumably to tell us more than this. You would have expected us to hear of this—this marriage—in due course, without having to set yourself up as the bearer of the news. So out with it. Sit down and out with it.’

Simmonds is ignoring his daughter. He has no more control over her, thought Kingsnorth, than over a wild thing; and to think that he once was a schoolmaster with every child in the neighbourhood obedient to his instruction.

Delia had turned aside and was standing away from them. One hand was on her throat, trying to assuage the burning sensation she was experiencing. The other, Kingsnorth saw, hung by her side, the fingers splayed rigid, immobile, but ready, it seemed, to snatch or grab at any weapon for attack or defence. Her lack of any femininity, any graciousness, repelled him and this was licence enough for him to wipe from his mind the humiliating fear for his person which, for a moment, she had induced in him. He turned toward the elderly schoolmaster. He did not care if his face registered the contempt with which he now defended himself.

He sat down and, maintaining a stiff posture, spoke to the old man. His tone was coldly professional but he could give himself no credit for influencing the temperature of the interview. Frederick Simmonds was glacial. It was not a question of being ‘unmoved’, he did not even appear interested. I might, thought Kingsnorth, be talking about the state of the roads or the length of the queue at the butcher’s. There was nothing, not even a twitch in the jaw muscle or a narrowing of the eyes, to suggest the slightest concern. Kingsnorth persisted; he spelled out, in as much detail as he could, the situation. He hoped that he might bait them into some response.

He was aware of the woman behind him shifting her position. He would have preferred to have her in his sight but better that she was present than not. He realised that she was more likely, being more emotionally charged than her father, to give him what he wanted.

‘It is now ten years since Lady Margery Cordingley willed practically everything to your son, Bertie Simmonds, in the belief that he was not your son but the illegitimate child of her own late son, Geoffrey Cordingley. She was perfectly entitled to do this although there was an expectation that Lady Margery, now childless, would honour the spirit of her late husband’s will and bequeath the estate to her husband’s nieces. And yes, Miss Simmonds, I am married to one of them. However, as you know, in the spring of 1930, Lady Margery suddenly revoked her earlier will and left everything to Hubert Frederick Simmonds.’

‘Oh, call him Bertie for God’s sake. We never called him Hubert.’

‘Very well, Miss Simmonds. Lady Margery’s will explained that she regarded Hubert Frederick Simmonds, or Bertie, as her grandson. The question then arose as to whether Bertie was indeed the illegitimate son of Geoffrey Cordingley. And, if he were, who was his mother?’

‘None of this is new. I have been hounded by malicious gossip and innuendo ever since that sick woman made her will. You yourself pestered us with innumerable letters and, in the end, my father and I signed affidavits swearing that Bertie was who we had always said he was. What more could be done? We do not need this tedious reiteration from you.’

Kingsnorth was delighted. His words had begun to sting. He swiveled around in his chair so he could observe the woman’s reaction. But she had composed herself so that her expression was now as stoney as her father’s. They reminded him of some of the less savoury clients he had dealt with early in his career who, clearly guilty of all with which they had been charged, retreated into a stronghold of silence, when under interrogation, in the misguided belief that it lent them some nobility. The Simmonds’ emotionless demeanour did not fool him. It was camouflage.

If Bertie was who they said he was, how could they be unmoved? He had been a child with arrested mental development, marked ten years before, not only by that bizarre Easter phenomenon but also by Lady Margery’s peculiar favour. His life—Simmonds’ and his daughter’s lives — had changed irrevocably. To feign this carelessness was disingenuous.

As he continued, Kingsnorth hoped his tone conveyed the right balance of righteous irritation and superior moral perspective.

‘You mention the affidavits, Miss Simmonds, but you know perfectly well that it was only much later, when you yourselves had begun to feel the pressure of public opprobrium, that you agreed to sign them. At the time, you merely referred me to his birth certificate as I sought to bring some clarity to an extremely murky situation.

‘However. I am happy to leave that to one side. The fact is, three things have now occurred. First, Bertie Simmonds has come of age. Secondly, as a result of this, the Trust set up to manage his inheritance has folded. Thirdly, extraordinarily, he has married Anstace Cordingley. You therefore need to know that my clients, Lady Margery’s nieces, will be filing a legal challenge to Lady Margery’s will and the circumstances surrounding her making of it. You are both likely to be called as witnesses at any proceedings which follow.’ That was it. That dart should penetrate. He felt like jabbing the old man in the chest to make the point even more emphatically.

Kingsnorth waited but Frederick Simmonds merely let his eyes meet Kingsnorth’s. His straight gaze was unwavering, blind to anything which might cause his eyes to register, by even the smallest muscular contraction, any emotion. There was nothing for the solicitor to read there, neither fear, nor resentment, nor even weary resignation.

Kingsnorth felt himself thwarted. He had never forgiven this pair for the haughty disdain with which they had always treated him. Who did these country nobodies think they were? They were entangled, one way or another, in this fraudulent appropriation of the Cordingley estate, yet still they refused to acknowledge his professional role and status.

He would have his revenge and he told them what it would be: to force a court appearance and have them thrown back into the public eye. They continued to sit, stonily impassive, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing a new wound opening. He felt his throat tighten with impotent fury. He swallowed hard and continued, his words level and pointed; he wanted every syllable to be a barb.

As he spoke, Delia moved around the room until she stood behind her father. She was silhouetted against the window so he could not read her expression. Was he deluding himself or had her ferocity grown brittle? Was there something about the way she held herself which had sagged?

‘Yes, my clients have instructed me to renew their challenge to Lady Margery’s will because this marriage raises two important questions. Perhaps you have already realised what these are. Significantly, Anstace Cordingley is now in a position to inherit or at the very least enjoy the Cordingley estate at Mount Benjamin; therefore, someone other than Bertie Simmonds is now clearly gaining from Lady Margery’s will. Additionally, Anstace Cordingley’s marriage to Bertie means that he cannot be her late husband Geoffrey’s son for such a relationship would be an impediment to marriage. You see, there is much to be picked apart in the courts. There may have been a conspiracy to disinherit Lady Margery’s nieces, her lawful heirs, and appropriate a fortune.’

Kingsnorth was at his sternest. He intended to convey that behind him sat the full weight of England’s judiciary. He demanded to be taken seriously. He would force some acknowledgement. At last, by rising to his feet, Frederick Simmonds seemed to accept the challenge. But he merely gestured to the door.

‘Delia, could you show our visitor out?’

‘Mr. Simmonds, I could save you and your daughter a considerable amount of time and relieve your distress if—’

‘Do I appeared distressed? You can save me nothing.’

‘You cannot hide from this. I must make that clear. You cannot pretend things can stay as they are. Bertie Simmonds (whoever he is) and Anstace Simmonds (as we must now call her) are part of your life. They—’

‘They are not. They have no more substance than a wraith, a ghost. Some people might believe in such things just as some people believe in angels, but I do not. Nothing you have said holds any interest for me. The blackcurrants and gooseberries in the garden interest me as do, at present, the spitfires in the skies, but you and what you deal in do not.’

Kingsnorth felt the physical presence of the man, taller than he was, broad chested and trim in the body. Whether it was the fact that he was being confronted by a schoolmaster or some other trigger, he did not know but Kingsnorth suddenly experienced those same raw feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy which he associated with his early schooldays. He felt bullied and intimidated and the resources which he had acquired over his professional career to counter those feelings now simply evaporated. He was a pathetic thirteen-year-old again and the dry legal processes, which he now peddled, were inadequate; they were no substitute for a heroic temperament. But even at thirteen, bruised and humiliated from some sordid mistreatment at the hands of older boys, he had never been wholly cowed. That same resilience now surfaced. He would beat Simmonds in the end; the law would run its relentless course and it would be something to see the light of defiance finally die in the other man’s eyes.

In the meantime, however, there was nothing further that he could say which could have any effect against such obdurate disinterest.

On leaving, Kingsnorth could only snatch a bleak consolation from Simmonds’ sneering, parting words. The fact that he felt compelled to assert his utter lack of engagement was an indication, surely, that some nerve had been laid open, that he— Robert Kingsnorth—had some potency.

Delia handed the solicitor his hat and coat. She had wanted to look him in the eye and skewer him in the way that her father had but she found she did not have that same cold strength. She said nothing to him and so the only acknowledgement he gave her was a curt nod as he settled his hat. She leaned with her back to the door and listened to his footsteps as he walked away from the cottage. The dog started barking again, challenging the grumbling of the engine as he started up his motor to drive back to Canterbury.

‘Oh, be quiet,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Quiet.’ The word was more of a description of her craving than an imperative.

She returned to her father who was staring out into the garden. The light had shifted with the late afternoon and the heavier woodland, bordering the vegetable plot to the west, now threw much of the garden into shade.

‘Have you tuned in the wireless?’ he asked her.

‘Not since we finished luncheon. I doubt that there’ll be any more news. Just that guarded optimism now that the skies have stayed clear and the standard warnings about enemy pilots bailing out.’

‘Perhaps an invasion really has been averted. But if it hasn’t, I’d not run, Delia. If the Germans came up through Kent, as they would, bound for London, I’d stay here whatever the outcome. I’d expect you to decide for yourself what to do.’

She knew better than to dissuade him or even to discuss the issue. If the Germans crossed the Channel or dropped thousands of airborne soldiers into Kent, the situation would be critical— literally a matter of life or death—but even that, she knew, would fail to move him. She could imagine others remaining resolutely in their homes, as the invaders fought their way toward the capital, because they would be driven by a stubborn resolve to defend what was theirs, however high the odds were stacked against them. Her father’s immobility, however, was not inspired; there was no moral agency behind his passivity.

If it had been his intention, by raising the topic of an invasion, to distract her from the business dropped upon them by the solicitor, Delia was not to be so easily diverted. If there were anyone other than her father to whom she could talk, she would have done so, leaving her father to his own thoughts. But there was only one other person alive who understood anything of her family’s real circumstances and that person, Anstace, was the last person Delia could ever approach. So it was to her father that Delia posed her question.

‘Why do you think she’s done it?’ she asked. It was the same question she had asked herself, on different occasions, over more than twenty years. Why? What was it that drove Anstace, with her implacable calm, to intrude upon—no, it was far deeper than mere intrusion; ‘invade’ or ‘devastate’ would be more apt—their lives?

‘It will have been convenient. Why else would anyone do anything?’

‘Spite.’

‘Do you really see Anstace as some malevolent force turned against you?’ Frederick Simmonds turned to face his daughter. He raised his eyebrows quizzically; it was the most visible display of emotion he had shown all afternoon.

‘What other explanation? Why does she persist… ?’

‘She took Bertie ten years ago. Was that spiteful? I remain profoundly grateful to her. You should be too. We have had a much quieter time than we should otherwise.’

‘Quieter. Yes.’

‘And this marriage … no doubt there has been a ceremony of sorts. It will be legal. But I shall not concern myself with the detail. People marry for many reasons. As I say, it will be convenient.’

‘But the talk.’

‘There will always be talk. You know that. I told you when you prevailed upon me to swear that affidavit that it would not be the end of it. Now there’ll be more talk. The question is whether you listen to it.’

We have nothing in common, she thought. We never have. He has never taken the trouble to understand me. He was never particularly interested in me as a child and it is no different now. People might look in on our domestic situation, observing the unremarkable sameness of our routines, perhaps even commending some filial loyalty, and think that father and daughter are no doubt a comfort to one another (for had there not been trouble in the past, some family tragedy?). They would be wrong.

Temperamentally, she thought, we face in opposite directions. Our history binds us together with just enough slack to give each of us the illusion of free movement until something gives us a jolt. Then, we start up and immediately pull apart, straining against the ropes which shackle us together until they scour their way deep into our flesh.

Every disturbance confirms his abhorrence of society. It would be monastic if there were any creed sustaining him. It is not misanthropy because there is no anger or bitterness. He could be far out at sea staring over the grey, swelling waves, with nothing at the four points of the compass to break the horizon. Or he could be deep in the desert with dune upon dune of sand, unrelieved by any movement except the pattern of their own slowly shifting shadows, as the sun takes its daily course. In either situation, his expression will remain impassive, unperturbed. It is only in places such as these that he could come close to a sort of serenity.

Whereas I … What would content me? It’s despicable that after everything, the thing I dream of most is still that view from the lawns of the Big House at Mount Benjamin, with the village to the east and its farms rolling away to the south, beyond the ha-ha. Such a thing never came to pass. I shall no doubt end my days in this cottage on the edge of the woods.

But knowing this does not mean that I can simply settle to my fate in surrender. I have been driven to it but I am not, God knows, at heart, a solitary creature.

When one’s existence is as thin as mine has become, she thought, anything which steals those fragile courtesies (the casual greeting by a neighbour, the touching of a cap in passing, the nod exchanged with a slight acquaintance met by chance in town) leaves devastation. It is not in my nature to shrink away. I have never been cowed. But that does not mean I can shrug off disdain, or disregard, or even pity as easily as Father turns to the thinning of his carrots.

I have been worn thin, she thought, struggling against a foe too subtle to grapple with: Anstace.

It is Anstace who provoked the talk. How could Father feel any gratitude to her for taking Bertie on? It had been she, with her interfering indulgence of the boy, who had provoked that first torrent of talk, rumour, gossip and speculation in the papers which had such a terrible outcome. We had kept Bertie as good as mute before Anstace worked on him.

Until then, we had managed, as so many others had also managed, to re-order our lives and rectify all that had grown warped and crooked because of the War. When Anstace got Bertie talking, it was like an eruption. Everyone started talking. Mrs. Jackman proclaimed it was a miracle! And then Lady Margery twisted it further.

It is absurd for Father to claim that it is merely a question of whether one chooses to listen to the talk or not.

‘Sometimes there’s no choice; one has to listen,’ Delia said aloud. The real question, she thought, was how one reacted to what one heard. But she was not prepared to argue the point.

She returned to the kitchen and the summer’s fruit. It would need preserving before the end of the day, whilst it was still freshly picked. Through the rhythms of her work, Delia’s mind replayed the events around that Easter, ten years before. There was nothing she could now undo but had she done right? Should they have sent Bertie away? It had hardly been a considered decision and, given all that they had endured, perhaps it had been a capitulation, something done in weakness for which they were now being called to account.

She sat at the long, deal table carefully picking the blackcurrants from the stems her father had cut from the bushes. The leaves had begun to wilt a little but they still released a pungent, woody scent from their bruising. Her fingers worked deftly, nipping the flower-end and stalk clean from each currant. She put to one side any damaged fruit; they would have it stewed or in a crumble over the next day or two. There was plenty left and she filled jar after jar, knocking each one on the table to settle the fruit before topping them up and placing them in the cooling oven for an hour or so to allow the fruit to ‘run’. Over by the back door, there were several trugs laden with ripe damsons. A dozen or so wasps circled lazily, drawn to the fruit where the skin was broken and the juices seeped. She looked at her hands where the cuticles and the new skin beneath the nails were now stained like a butcher’s.

‘Mellow fruitfulness,’ said Delia to herself, and she wondered at the irony of this rich harvest, at the ephemeral glory of fresh produce from the garden against the obligation to boil or salt it down before decay set in, in order to sustain them in the months to come.

This, she supposed, is the purpose of memory. We boil and sugar, we pickle, salt, and smoke our experiences, laying them down for future consumption. How does it work then? Is it the quality of the experience or the skill of remembering which creates a solid memory, a memory to get one’s teeth in to? For I seem only to have barren memories, shrivelled things good for nothing.

And what, she wondered, would be the abiding memories from this harvest time? Would it be the long summer evenings, stretching into a golden autumn, with the currant branches laid out for stripping and the damsons ready to fall when one shakes the branches, the apples and pears ripening along their cordons: a glut of fruit scenting the path along the old brick wall? Or would it be the destruction of the South Lodge, the smell of the charred timbers, and the sight of Anstace’s precious garden trampled flat under a blue sky pocked by the smoke from aeroplanes in deadly combat?

The weapons of war, she thought, are more likely to gather in the skies than any of Keats’ twittering swallows.

Talk

‘Dear ladies, so good of you to sit with my poor wife. But now, if you will excuse me … when the girl brings in the tea, would you, Mrs. Furnival, be so kind as to pour? Hetty, I fear, is in too nervous a state to coordinate pot and strainer.’

‘And you will not want hot water dribbled onto the mahogany.’

‘Quite so. Hetty, Mrs. Furnival will be mother. I shall leave you now to her kind ministrations. It is a full week, ladies, since her little scare but I hope that if, by chance, she speaks at all out of turn, you will not set anything by it. Little she says has any import. I shall slip away.’

‘Nor, to be perfectly frank, Mrs. Perch, has it ever. I see no reason to lower my voice because she takes nothing in these days. Just sits by the window wrapped up in her own odd thoughts. I daresay I shall go over and give her a little shake now and again just to make sure she does not drift