Return to Fourwinds by Elisabeth Gifford

Author:Elisabeth Gifford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books Ltd

CHAPTER 18

Buxton, 1941

When Alice came downstairs she saw the brown cardboard box on the hallstand with the black cursive writing: Garrets Haberdasher’s. She carried it through to the morning room, lifting the cardboard lid. Inside, two grey shirts and a neatly folded blazer with the badge of Peter’s school.

She wanted to shout, ‘It’s not his fault. He shouldn’t have to pay for this.’ But instead she held her cold elbows and stared at the box.

Mother came in. ‘It will have to go back,’ she said. She sat down and took a slice of toast, began to pour tea into a china cup. Alice sat opposite her, the sound of mother’s knife scraping the butter on the dry bread too loud. Alice pushed back her chair and went out into the garden. She climbed up to the top lawn; the sky washed empty of everything except the thinnest blue. For the first time there was a hint that summer would end. The air felt sad and quiet, unable to reach the energy of a full summer’s day again.

Soon Ralph would move on to his last training camp, and then he’d be sent to fight. She couldn’t bear to think about it. She looked down at the house. Figures moving in the kitchen. Peter helping Maudey with the dishes.

So far, no one had told him.

She wanted to scream. But scream what exactly? Why did she have the feeling that somewhere in the house, in the next room, Richard’s mother was there, waiting with her opinion? The last word.

There’d been a conversation she’d overheard at Amforth, in the high-ceilinged drawing room that looked out over the park. Gossip about some girl she didn’t know. It wasn’t that she was eavesdropping, but she couldn’t stop listening to the woman’s clear, matriarchal tones. ‘But darling, the father had a mistress in London. Parents getting divorced. Well, I told him he had to drop the girl, like father like daughter, don’t you know. No concept of discretion. Everyone knew about it. She was quite out of the question after that. Now? He’s engaged to a lovely creature from Windermere.’

Hidden behind the chair’s high back Alice had sat and felt safe and unassailable, thankful that she was not that girl. Thankful that her parents were solid and dependable and boringly respectable.

Even as Alice had shouted at her mother, demanded that they keep Peter at his school, it was really the memory of that voice that made her understand that the battle was already lost. Her mother was implacable, adamant that Peter should now go to a different family, in another town: if Peter had told Alice then whom else might he tell?

As Alice ranted her mother became deeply, deeply calm. She had finally turned to Alice, her face set.

‘You are behaving like a naive child. How do you suppose we will live if people know? The boys and you too, Alice, it will affect you. People can be dismissed from their employment for something like this. Your father is sorry, and now I don’t want to talk about it ever again.

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