Softly Grow the Poppies Read online

  Sir Harry and Lady Summers, looking drawn, but steadfast, Lady Summers biting her lip, stood at the head of the table, shoulder to shoulder.

  Sir Harry spoke.

  ‘You will all be wondering why you have been summoned, all of you who work in these two houses of ours so to set your minds at rest let me first say no one will be dismissed.’ He smiled, or rather grinned and looked so like his brother as he once had been, they all relaxed and smiled too.

  ‘I’m not sure how much you have heard about . . . about . . .’ His face clouded and his wife rested her head momentarily on his shoulder. He bent his head and placed a kiss on her bright hair.

  ‘Well, Mr Tim, Tim Elliott, has left us and taken’ – here he was seen to gulp – ‘our Miss Alice with him.’ There was a concentrated gasp and appalled glances were exchanged and Polly began to cry. Maggie put her arms about her.

  ‘So the plan is this, Rose, my wife’ – twinkling down at her for a moment and they all smiled, even Polly through her tears – ‘and I are to live at Summer Place and you are all to come with us.’

  Another gasp and a great deal of shuffling of feet among the men. Tom took off his cap and turned it round and round between his big, work-scarred hands. His weather-beaten face took on a truculent expression but when Nessie, who had been told earlier about the plan, stood up from her chair and shot over to him, taking his hands between hers, he calmed down.

  ‘I know this will be an important decision for you all to make though you will be doing the same jobs but in a different place. Dolly and Nessie have agreed to work part-time under Mrs Philips who will be in charge and the maidservants’ – smiling his engaging smile at them – ‘will continue as they do here. There are many more rooms at Summer Place than Beechworth so more household staff will be taken on and you will all get a rise in your wages. Summer Place gardens and surrounds really need at least three more gardeners to bring them back to what they were, so Tom and Jossy with others we will employ will take over with Tom as head gardener. Mr Ambrose has indicated he wishes to retire and a cottage is waiting for him and his wife.’ He nodded at the white-haired old gardener who had loyally tried to keep up the Summer Place grounds without any help. ‘The stables which at the moment house Corey, my stallion, will easily take Pixie, Molly and Foxy.’

  Sir Harry continued. ‘There is plenty of room for all of us, people and animals, so, after some refurbishments to the house, we will move in September. Now then, has anyone anything to say?’

  He looked about the kitchen at the puzzled faces of his and Beechworth servants who, he realised, were bowled over and, naturally, worried about their plans. After much clearing of throats and exchanging overwhelmed glances, Tom spoke at last.

  ‘Er, what’s ter ’appen ter Beechworth, sir? I’ve got a grand bed of asparagus waitin’ ter be picked . . .’

  ‘Me an’ Tom ’ave allus ’ad us cottage to usselves.’ In their anxiety Nessie, as Dolly had done, reverted to the broad Lancashire accent she had almost lost.

  Harry held up his hands. ‘Married couples will have their own places. Nessie and Tom, you will have first pick of the empty cottages and Tom, you will design and plant whatever you care to in the grounds and take care of the woodlands with the other gardeners. We will employ a gamekeeper for the moorland and between you you will be in charge of outdoors and any more men you think are necessary. And as for Beechworth itself . . .’

  They all turned to Rose, for this was her home after all. ‘We are to let it as it stands to a respectable, responsible family. Only the house and gardens, of course. The farmland, woodland, moorland will remain with us. Oak Hill Farm, Ashtree and Top Bank will continue in the same hands as our tenants. Beechworth House itself and the gardens surrounding it will be in the hands of whoever rents it on a lease from my wife.’

  There was a stunned silence, no one knowing what to say or do but Harry and Rose looked at one another with the feeling that on the whole the news and the plans for the future had been well received.

  ‘Let me just say that if any one of you is not satisfied with the new arrangements they are perfectly at liberty to leave and go elsewhere with a good reference and a month’s wages. Now, Lady Summers and myself will be in the estate office until lunchtime so feel free to seek us out with any queries. And’ – here he paused, his face as kind and gentlemanly as he had always been – ‘we sincerely hope that none of you will leave us. You are part of our family. All of you.’ He turned to his wife. ‘Now, no tears, my love,’ and led her from the room.

  No one came. The younger members of staff were excited, thrilled with anything new as the young usually are, and talked of nothing else for days to come. Nessie and Tom inspected one of the little cottages to the rear of Summer Place and agreed it was quite as good as the one they lived in at Beechworth. In fact it was bigger with a stillroom where Nessie could ‘mess about’ as Tom called it with her herbs and plants from which she made up her homely remedies for coughs and colds, boils and scratches, minor ailments with which the servants trusted her.

  The maidservants were invited to inspect the servants’ quarters where, to their delight, they were all to have a room each and with great enthusiasm they began to pack their belongings in preparation for the move.

  Beechworth, which had had more money spent on it in the past than Summer Place, had a bigger, more modern kitchen so Lady Summers with Dolly, Nessie and Mrs Philips having their say, began to put into place her plans for a brand-new, up-to-date kitchen at Summer Place.

  Everyone was happy, except Will!

  He stood with his rosy mouth hanging open when he was told that in future everyone would live at Summer Place. It was not that he disliked the Beechworth servants, he said, but he and Tim had built a tree-house on the edge of the wood nearest to Beechworth and they had all their treasures there. And anyway, where was Tim? Will hadn’t seen him for weeks, exaggerating as children do, and he demanded to be told where his friend was. He and Charlie had good times, eyeing his own father with a disdainful, airy look, but Tim was his bestest friend and wherever was he, implying that he believed they had hidden him away somewhere.

  ‘You can’t let someone else live at Beechworth, Harry,’ he said patiently.

  He glared round at the circle of grown-ups as if he couldn’t believe their stupidity. He stamped his foot and Dolly put her hand to her mouth in distress. Nessie, Rose, Harry and Charlie stood or sat about the kitchen, which already had signs that a move was to be made. Bright copper pans were stacked on the table and boxes containing packets of tea, sugar, flour, all dry goods in the one box, were strewn about. Jars held the results of pear-bottling, jam-making. Dolly and Nessie’s chairs would be the last to go. Over at Summer Place hordes of workmen were getting ready to build in the modern kitchen which the older servants such as Dolly and Nessie were rather dreading and to which the younger ones were eagerly looking forward. Hot running water from an independent domestic boiler, a gas cooker, streamlined cupboards on the walls, tall ones used as larders, smaller ones for general storage. They would, of course, retain the butler’s pantry, the stillroom and the wine cellar. The room was half-tiled and painted white to give a feeling of airiness, and had a cork floor for easy cleaning, a kitchen cabinet instead of an old dresser on which to stand glass storage jars.

  Will was concerned with none of this. He would tell everyone to stay here. Dolly would look after him, he yelled, running to put an arm round Dolly’s shoulder. She patted him and shushed him and wept quietly for the frightened child. She could not bear to see the little lad upset so she looked hopefully at Rose, despite knowing it was no good.

  ‘Well, you see, lovey, we can’t stay here. Another family is ter stay at Beechworth so—’

  ‘What!’ Will roared. ‘In our house? Don’t be ’diculous, Dolly. This is Rose’s house, our house and nobody else is going to come and live here. I don’t want to leave here until Tim comes back and if they come and try to—’

  ‘Tim’s not g
oing back,’ a voice from the far end of the kitchen said. A soft, apologetic voice, hesitant and sad. ‘He’s gone away, old chap.’

  They all, as one, turned to Charlie who was leaning against the wall. Dolly grasped Will more firmly, trying her best to get him on to her lap but he escaped her loving arms and flew across the kitchen, ready, it appeared, to thump Charlie with his small fists, shouting, ‘No, no, no, no,’ but Charlie caught him, held him close and stroked his dark curls.

  ‘You’ve still got me, Will,’ he said humbly.

  ‘I don’t want you! Want Tim. Stay here . . .’

  It took over an hour to calm the small, distraught boy and then only because Rose slipped a soothing powder into the milk he consented to drink. When he was finally in a deep sleep in his bed there were more than a few tears shed in Beechworth House.

  21

  Charlie and Will crouched between the huge, tangled roots of an oak tree in the woodland at the back of Summer Place. They were two small boys, despite one being twenty-five years older than the other. They were watching a squirrel, a beautiful red squirrel struggling across the clearing with an acorn between its small paws.

  It was October and the woodland trees were fast losing their leaves which lay in a soggy carpet across the clearing. There had been a lot of rain in the last few weeks and a pool had formed in its centre across which bright golden rays of sunlight fell. The squirrel delicately skirted the pool, careful not to drop the acorn which, Charlie whispered in Will’s ear, it would add to its hoard for the coming winter, and the two lads, as Dolly called them, remained very still in order not to disturb the wildlife. Reflected in the water of the pool were the misted shapes of beech and oak trees and now and again a shrivelled russet leaf spiralled slowly from branch to ground. Beyond the oak wood lay a swathe of conifers and in the space where they had been cut on the orders of the new gamekeeper at Summer Place, grew grasses, bracken and wild flowers. Charlie told Will that at Christmas they would choose one of the conifers to take home and place in the wide hallway or the drawing room and decorate it with candles, coloured baubles and on the very top would be an angel. It was something that lay secretly in his damaged brain. Something from the past that he had suddenly remembered.

  It was three months since Tim and Alice had vanished and Rose and Harry had made no attempt to find them. Charlie, since his injury during the war, had imperceptibly slowed down. Not only in his mind and whatever memories – if any – he had but in his speech and his movements. They had all learned to wait patiently as he trawled from deep within himself an answer to a question. His physical health was good. He ate all Mrs Philips’s superbly cooked food that was set before him and was strong and bronzed, spending all his time outdoors with his growing son. He had not at first recognised the boy as his but he now loved him just the same and all he remembered as a boy about his surroundings, about the wildlife that teemed on the hundreds of acres was passed on to Will. Beechworth estate, added on to Summer Place, was an ideal and vast school in which teacher and pupil ranged.

  But the boy’s education must include more than outdoor pursuits since Will was five years old. Though he could stumble through young children’s books, thanks to Rose, and add one number to another up to twenty, thanks, strangely, to the vanished Tim, he needed more than that to progress in the world and make a career for himself. Harry wanted to send him to the same public school that he and Charlie had attended.

  When it became apparent that Alice had gone for good and Charlie was in no state to decide what his son should do, it was up to Rose and Harry to see he received a good grounding in basic subjects in order for him to be accepted into a preparatory school, perhaps later go on to university. And so a tutor must be found for him.

  But where to start? Again, like Tim, the tutor was one of the army of ex-servicemen, who still tramped this country fit for heroes, in which they all were, looking for work. Mark Newton, Sergeant Mark Newton, aged thirty-five, was at the back of the queue even of these unfortunates because he had lost a leg in the last month of the war and, since he was forced to walk miles every day, it was not healing as it should. He was clever, well educated and had the added attribute of having been a teacher before the war. Those who did need a labourer, a gardener, an odd-job man, would not however employ a man with only one leg. His wife and children had lost their lives in an air raid, killed when a bomb dropped from a Zeppelin on to their home. He was a sad man, numbed by what had happened to him and was on the point of doing away with himself when he knocked on the back door of Summer Place.

  Harry said he would give him a try. As children are, Will was fascinated with anything unusual, even gruesome, and was won over at once when Sergeant Mark, as he was for ever to be called, showed him his half-healed stump which had been amputated just above the knee where shrapnel had sliced it. He explained to Will – and the horrified maidservants who watched – how the prosthesis was removed, fastened back on and the workings of what would have been his own knee. He walked with Will, ran with him and even played kick-ball though it caused him agony.

  Harry had been impressed by his patience with the child and, more importantly, how he held Will’s interest during his month’s trial. Knowing Will’s stubborn nature, his absolute refusal to stay in one place for any length of time, his wilfulness and defiance of authority, Harry saw that Sergeant Mark seemed to have a knack of controlling the boy and keeping him every morning for three hours.

  ‘Did you know that Sergeant Mark’s grandfather was at the well at Cawnpore? That’s in India by the way.’ Their horrified faces were frozen round the kitchen. ‘It was filled, the well, I mean, with dead ladies and children. The Indians did it.’

  ‘Will,’ gasped Rose but Harry silenced her and later told her that most little boys were bloodthirsty monsters but grew out of it and though it was a terrible time in British history – his own grandfather had fought there – Mark had taught Will not only history, but geography too. He had captured the boy’s interest and gradually the pair of them spent their three hours without recourse to such horrors as the Indian Mutiny.

  ‘Are you cold, Rose?’ Will asked her on one occasion. It was a bitter winter afternoon after he and Charlie had been out on one of their forays, riding this time, and were drinking hot chocolate in the kitchen. ‘Shall I fermer la fenêtre, madame?’ then turned and beamed.

  ‘I didn’t know you spoke French, darling,’ Rose said, trying to keep the tremor of laughter out of her voice.

  ‘Mais oui. Mark taught me, an’ me an’ Charlie often “parlez”, don’t we, Charlie?’

  They all waited for Charlie to answer. It took nearly a minute but they had become accustomed to him.

  He smiled his slow, sweet smile. ‘Mais oui, bien sûr.’

  ‘There,’ said Will triumphantly and Rose thanked the gods who, in the guise of Mark Newton, had sent this blessing on them. Between them, Charlie and Mark, both damaged themselves, were turning this little savage, as he once had been, into a cheerful, normal child. He still had his tantrums, of course, but usually a word from Mark calmed him down.

  The servants had settled into their new places. Tom, Jossy and Wilbur – one more of the army’s tramping outcasts and who was the new gardener’s boy – were preparing the three acres of garden for the coming spring, Tom tutting over the neglect of a once splendid garden. Harry and Charlie’s grandmother had been a keen amateur gardener and the polite and genteel society in which she and the then Sir Walter Summers had mixed had been delighted to receive invitations to their home and beautiful gardens. There had been garden parties, tennis parties, shooting parties, all gone now but the present owner and his hugely pregnant wife were determined to restore it to its former glory, thanks to the wealth Lady Summers had brought to the marriage.

  Indoors Dolly and Nessie were happy to take tea in the housekeeper’s sitting room while Mrs Philips, who was a good deal younger, supervised her half a dozen maidservants and trained up a new kitchen maid by the name of Pe
ggy, turning out splendid meals with a little help – when they felt up to it – from Dolly and Nessie. It was grand, Dolly confessed to Nessie – since she had begun to feel her age – to sit back but be there if their combined experience was needed. All the girls slept at the top of the house in their newly decorated rooms, one to each room and the men, except Tom who shared a cottage with his Nessie, were housed in the comfortable and perfectly adequate rooms above the stable block.

  Only Mark had his own room in the house. At each of the four corners of Summer Place was a turret reached by a winding staircase and in one of them he slept and kept the endless books he bought with his own more than adequate salary. He was a reclusive man and could it be wondered at, Rose said to Harry as she fidgeted in their bed, doing her best to find a comfortable position with the burden she carried. Harry fidgeted with her, doing his best to help her since she was very near her time. So near that when Harry was fast asleep she clasped his arm in such a relentless grip she nearly pushed him out of bed.

  ‘What the devil . . .’ he spluttered, but was alert at once, for Rose had heaved herself on to her feet and begun to roam about the room.

  ‘The baby?’ he asked tentatively.

  ‘Of course it’s the baby, you great idiot.’

  ‘What shall I do?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, go and get Dolly.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you rather lie down, my darling?’ Harry was pulling on his quilted dressing gown, bought for him by his wife at Christmas.