Softly Grow the Poppies Read online

  ‘You must pardon me, Mr Hopkins. My brother and I were very close.’ Again he hesitated, doing his best to keep his emotions in check. ‘He and Will, perhaps not surprisingly, became friends, though Charlie could never be a real father to Will . . .’

  ‘Yes, Sir Harry?’

  ‘I sometimes think that their closeness was . . . oh, I’m sorry, Mr Hopkins. Charlie was beaten to death in Will’s presence and Will was kidnapped and though we can’t prove it we believe it was Arthur Weatherly, the boy’s grandfather, who was behind it. He came to our home on the pretext of finding Alice, his daughter. We don’t believe him. We are convinced he had Will for six months. The boy managed to escape him, but by God, if you’d seen the difference in him. He was spoiled, I admit, but he was very lovable. A cheerful, endearing child who was so abused that he is now afraid to go out of the garden. He was with us, playing with our daughters, when Weatherly walked into the room and at the sight of him Will was almost paralysed with terror.’

  Harry stopped and turned again to his wife as though for comfort but he could not go on.

  ‘We want to keep him with us,’ his wife continued. ‘We want to return him, if possible, to the boy he was. He screams in the night about a “grey lady” who struck him. We think Mr Weatherly wants to take him so can we legally adopt him? We cannot expect a young boy to be restricted to the house and garden. He used to play with the children on the farms. He had a pony and was afraid of nothing; we loved him – we still do – and he had a happy upbringing. He has a tutor, a clever young man who lost his leg in the trenches and Will is recovering from his ordeal – or was – until he saw Weatherly. We have informed the police and they are doing their best to find evidence. His servants, Weatherly’s, I mean, will, I’m sure confirm that a child was kept in the nursery at the top of Weatherly House so this means that if Weatherly took him it will link him to Charlie’s murder. He was murdered, Mr Hopkins, and he should be made to pay for his crime. Don’t you agree?’

  Mr Hopkins was a professional man but Lady Summers’s tone of voice, her obvious distress touched him.

  ‘First I must tell you that there is no legal way to adopt a child in this country. It’s difficult to describe or explain. Some countries, like the United States and many Commonwealth countries, have a legalised adoption system. What you could do, though, is to go to court and Sir Harry could apply to become the boy’s guardian.’

  ‘Very well, can we ask you to set the wheels in motion?’

  ‘To make yourself your brother’s child’s legal guardian.’

  ‘If there is no alternative, yes.’

  It was a week before Sir Thomas Fowler called on Sir Harry Summers. Will was curled up on Rose’s lap with the two little girls doing their best to join him, his thumb in his mouth. The sight of Arthur Weatherly in his home where he had felt safe had put him back months so that even on such a lovely day, the sun shining from a cloudless blue sky, he could not be coaxed outside. Rose was reading them a story and Harry brooded over his copy of The Times and it seemed that the whole household was holding its breath in fear of what Weatherly would do next.

  ‘Ah, Sir Thomas, have you news about . . . let’s go to the study,’ nodding his head towards the children, even the little girls subdued by the atmosphere.

  ‘Well,’ Fowler began when he was comfortably seated. ‘We have interviewed every member of staff at Weatherly House but they had nothing to say that might incriminate their master in the death of your brother.’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Harry exploded, ‘where did they think the boy had come from?’

  ‘They were told he was Weatherly’s grandchild, the son of Weatherly’s daughter but they were not to spread gossip about it. Who were they to question an important gentleman like their master? They were just servants and they knew nothing about the boy’s father who, they were told, had died of wounds incurred in the war.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but there seems to be no connection between Mr Weatherly and your brother’s death.’

  ‘God in heaven!’

  ‘Sir Harry, I must tell you Mr Weatherly is taking your kidnapping of his grandson to court and you will be summoned—’

  ‘The bastard, the bloody bastard. I wouldn’t let him have custody of my dogs – he is a monster. My nephew is at this moment on my wife’s lap with his thumb in his mouth. He is terrified, and has regressed to his babyhood. If the justices could see him . . . Jesus, I’ll swing for that man, Inspector.’

  ‘Calm down, sir, you must fight in the courts for the boy and any sign of intemperate behaviour will go against you. You have exactly the sort of household in which to bring up the boy. Mother and father figures who love him and whom he trusts. Two other children and servants who are devoted to the boy, whereas Weatherly is known as a hard man.’

  ‘Will talks of a grey lady who hit him.’

  ‘Believe me, she will be found. The hearing should be soon. I gather your solicitor has put in a claim for you to become the boy’s legal guardian.’

  ‘Even if we get what we want, how can we ever know peace? How will our boy ever be as he was?’

  Harry’s voice was bitter and even Rose’s loving arms in their bed at night could not demolish his fears. Afterwards he slept with his head on her breast while she re-lived that day when Alice, dear Alice who started all this, trembled at their kitchen door. Where was she? Where had she and Tim Elliott gone?

  The atmosphere was tense in the courtroom. Everyone who was acquainted with the Summers family and Arthur Weatherly were crammed into it, peering and whispering, wondering if the boy in question would be there. Weatherly sat on a bench, obviously longing to get up on the stand and tell the world about his claim to his own daughter’s son. His grandson who, when this charade was over, would at once be re-named William Weatherly.

  The judge had just taken his seat when there was a stir at the door. There was barely room to accommodate a mouse but the woman who thrust her way through the mass was so heavily pregnant that out of respect they let her through.

  Rose stood up and without a word opened her arms and Alice Weatherly – or Alice Elliott as she now was – walked into them. ‘Rose, darling, I read about it and if they think I would let them take my son, your son, and give him to that man, they must be off their heads.’ She turned to Harry and after a moment’s hesitation, for this woman had caused more chaos in his family than . . . but she was here for them. She had been through hell herself. She had known and seen what every soldier in the land had, searching for her husband, Harry’s brother.

  Further along the bench Arthur Weatherly stood up, ready to leave, because he knew he had lost. His face was ghastly and his mouth opened and closed but no words came and as the silent crowd watched he shouted her name.

  ‘Alice!’

  ‘Go to hell,’ said Alice contemptuously, and watched with no emotion as he fell, his face smashing the floor as his heart, taxed beyond its capacity by his rage, stopped beating.

  Summer Place was in an uproar of joy as Miss Alice and her husband greeted old friends and new but the one who all the fuss was about tumbled off Dolly’s knee and rushed to meet his old friend. Tim got down on his knees and took the boy in his arms. Will gabbled telling Tim that Harry and Rose were his mother and father now, wanting to drag him out to the paddock where the ponies were and did Tim know he had two sisters now and here they were and did Tim like them? They certainly liked him when he lifted them up and put them on his shoulder and they giggled in his ear. Without even saying goodbye to Dolly Will galloped along beside Tim and that was the last they saw of them, but they were having a great time by the sound of the childish laughter.

  Rose and Alice exchanged loving glances which said, how could they have known all those years ago that that chance meeting should lead to this?

  Dolly rocked in her chair with Nessie opposite her.

  ‘Put kettle on, Maggie, there’s a good lass.’

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  Audrey Howard, Softly Grow the Poppies