Chapter 1 #2
Daisy had visited Edge Manor several times during her school days.
She and Gwen had never been particularly intimate friends, but her own childhood home, Fairacres, was less than twenty miles away across country.
She knew Gwen’s family had owned the land hereabouts since the Wars of the Roses.
The Tyndalls had accommodated themselves over the centuries to the whims of history, having managed to remain inconspicuous but always on the right side at the decisive moment, like the Vicar of Bray.
Edge Manor, built and periodically rebuilt with local limestone, had likewise accommodated itself over the centuries to the whims of its owners and the exigencies of its situation halfway up a steep hillside.
The south front, before which the Triumph drew up, was taller and narrower than most small country houses.
To the right of the cobbled forecourt stretched a row of garages, once carriage houses, more usually tucked away somewhere out of view of residents and visitors.
Beyond the facade, the building stretched northward with, as Daisy recalled, a great many inconvenient flights of two or three or half a dozen steps here and there to adjust to the terrain.
But to compensate, the long west side provided a spectacular view of the terraced gardens and the village and across the Vale of Evesham, where most of the Tyndall acres lay.
“Leave your camera and typewriter in the car, Daisy,” said Gwen. “Someone will fetch them. You boys can carry the rest in.”
She ushered Daisy into the house, followed by her subdued nephews struggling with the luggage.
The wide entrance hall, two stories high, was floored with polished oak.
Apart from a couple of antique chests, it was furnished as a sitting room, with sofas and chairs grouped on a large rug around a blaze in the fireplace opposite the front door.
The late-afternoon sun poured in through tall south and west windows, each graced with a vase of golden beech leaves, crimson-berried hawthorn, and pink and orange spindle.
This inviting scene was marred by the two angry men in the middle of the room.
One was an imposing figure, whose voluminous plus fours and shooting jacket with baggy pockets made him appear even larger than his already-impressive size.
Daisy recognized Sir Harold Tyndall. His girth had grown and his hairline had receded since last she saw him, but his reddish moustache bristled as fiercely as ever.
A tall, bull-necked bear of a man, to mix a few metaphors, he was roaring like a lion: “What the devil made you suppose the bounder would be welcome at Edge Manor?”
“Miller is not a bounder, sir!” The boyish young man confronting him, bursting with indignation, was an inch or two taller and equally large-boned.
However, his frame had not yet filled out and he was loose-limbed, lanky, in his light blue blazer with a Cambridge college crest on the pocket and wide-legged “Oxford bags.” “He’s a—”
“Pshaw! He’s aiding and abetting this nonsense of yours, and he’s got his eye on your sister, or I’m a Dutchman.”
“Gwen?” The youth must be Jack Tyndall, Daisy realized. She saw that Gwen was very pink-cheeked, whether embarrassed by an unwarranted assertion or dismayed by its accuracy. Jack, obviously astonished, continued, “I don’t think—”
“That’s the trouble, my boy, you don’t think! Tyndalls have run this estate for centuries, passed directly from father to son, and my son is not going to break that trust for some footling, short-lived fad.”
“Aeronautics is not a—”
“Father, Jack,” Gwen interrupted, “here’s Mrs. Fletcher.”
The combatants swung round. Sir Harold advanced to shake hands.
“Ah yes, Dalrymple’s daughter. We’re delighted to have you come and write about our festivities, Mrs. Fletcher.
The Tyndalls have held a Guy Fawkes fête nearly every year since 1606, even during the Commonwealth.
Oddly enough, Bonfire Night was the only traditional festivity allowed by the Puritans, though it celebrates the foiling of a plot against the monarchy. ”
“Cromwell should have been grateful to the plotters for their attempt to blow up James the First, which might have saved the Puritans the trouble of beheading Charles the First,” said Jack. “How do you do, Mrs. Fletcher.”
“You remember my brother, Daisy? He must have been twelve or thirteen when you last met.”
“A horrible, cheeky pest of a schoolboy.” Jack had a charming grin.
“Not half as pestilent as—”
Daisy nudged Gwen to remind her she had promised not to tell her father of his grandsons’ misdeeds. The boys themselves had vanished.
Jack pulled an expressive grimace. “What have they done now?” he asked.
But Sir Harold had not noticed the byplay, intent as he was on urging Daisy over to the windows so that he could point out the site of the fireworks display and the beginnings of the bonfire.
“You see, down there on the meadow below the terraces? My gardeners and tenants have been piling up brush for weeks.”
As her host maundered on, telling how the fireworks had begun as a demonstration of loyalty to the first Stuart king and continued as a much anticipated local event, Daisy grew increasingly desperate.
The baby had decided to bash her in the bladder, over and over again, as if bouncing a ball off a wall.
She might be a modern, emancipated, working woman, but explaining her situation to the baronet was more than she could face.
To her relief, Lady Tyndall came to the rescue.
A faded, delicate, anxious-looking woman, she inserted herself between her husband and her guest and said almost pleadingly, “Harold, I’m sure Mrs. Fletcher will be interested in your stories later, but first she wants to wash off the grime of the journey and put her feet up for a while before tea. ”
Though Sir Harold looked offended, he made no objection. “I’ll see you at teatime, Mrs. Fletcher,” he said, and stamped off.
“The downstairs cloakroom is over there, as I expect you remember,” said Lady Tyndall, pointing.
Daisy fled.
When she emerged, feeling much better, Gwen was waiting for her.
“Mother said she took one look at you and knew what you needed. I saw you were desperate, but I thought it was just my father. He often makes me feel that way. I didn’t dare interrupt when he was on his hobbyhorse. Sorry I didn’t realize what was wrong, but I’ve never been pregnant.”
“The little brute was kicking me like mad, in a sensitive spot. It’s a very strange sensation. You’ve no idea.”
“I can’t imagine! Come on up to your room. Your stuff’s been taken up. I had Jack fetch the typewriter and camera because I knew you were concerned about them. You’re all right on the stairs, aren’t you?”
“Perfectly all right.”
“I must say you look positively fit as a fiddle. Addie used to fuss like anything when she was pregnant, and Mother cosseted her.”
At an easy pace, Gwen led the way up the superbly carved Jacobean oak staircase. Following, Daisy asked, “Has Adelaide come back to live at Edge Manor? Her husband was killed in the War, wasn’t he?”
“No and yes. She married a neighbour and lives with her mother-in-law just down the lane, between here and the village. Stephen was killed in ’15, when she was pregnant with Adrian.”
“Widowed at twenty, with two young sons!”
“I know it’s hard, but Addie really manages to make the worst of things.
She never stops moaning and groaning, and she spoils the children abominably when she’s not complaining about their mischief.
I’m afraid Mrs. Yarborough encourages her to spend most of her time here in the bosom of her family. ”
For all her brave words, Daisy was tired from the train journey and glad to reach the top of the stairs. “At least the boys are old enough to go away to prep school, aren’t they?” she asked as they crossed the landing, a gallery open to the hall below.
“Yes, but she won’t send them. They go to a day school in Eve-sham, where the discipline appears to be nonexistent. And she intends them to go on to Prince Harold’s Grammar in Evesham, so there’s no relief in sight. She claims she can’t afford a Public School.”
“Wouldn’t Sir Harold . . .?”
“He might, if he could be persuaded that it’s his own idea.
The trouble is, Reggie and Adrian are scared to death of him, so they behave themselves when he’s around.
One really can’t go talebearing, and they’re beginning to realize it, so threats don’t work very well any longer.
I’m not sure he’d really cane them anyway.
He was so proud of Addie when she produced two boys so quickly, he’s inclined to think they can do no wrong. ”
“Pity!”
They had turned up another three steps into a passage and passed several doors. Now Gwen announced, “Here’s your room. Mind the steps down. Two of them.”
The warning came just in time as Gwen opened the door on a dazzling flood of golden evening light.
Descending the steps with care, Daisy had an impression of comfortable blue furnishings, but her attention was on the view across the Vale to the Malvern Hills, so near her own childhood home.
“Oh, lovely! I do envy you your view. There are advantages to living in St. John’s Wood, so close to central London, but views aren’t one of them. ”
“Mother told me to give you the best spare room, not stuck away up on the second floor with the rest of us like when you were a mere school friend. It doesn’t run to its own bathroom, though, I’m afraid.
You’ll share with the parents, but there’s plenty of hot water.
That’s their rooms we passed on this side, bathroom, et cetera, opposite, and Father’s den at the end. ”
“Are you still up at the top?”
“Yes, Babs and Jack and I, and Jack’s friend who’s visiting.
” A faint pink rose in Gwen’s cheeks as she mentioned her brother’s friend.
Miller, Daisy recalled, the bounder who was encouraging Jack in his aeronautical nonsense and might—or might not—have his eye on Gwen.
“I expect you remember what a strange layout this house has.”
“Vaguely.” Daisy took off her hat and coat and went over to the washstand, waving Gwen to a chair.
“We live on the west side and the servants get the east side, facing the hill. Difficult as it is to get servants since the War, I keep expecting such as remain to rebel one of these days and demand a decent share of light and air. On the other hand—I don’t expect you remember our butler, Jennings? ”
“I have a vague impression of an ancient personage in rusty black.”
“He’s even more ancient now, but he refuses to retire to a nice comfy cottage, and to give up that coat. He can’t manage the stairs anymore and he only appears at dinner. Most of his time seems to be spent doing the silver, but he still rules the staff with a rod of iron.”
“Another reason for them to quit en masse, I’d think, besides the dark rooms.”
“At least they have electricity now. When Father put in the generator, he had the servants’ side electrified as well as the rest.”
“Anything that makes things easier for the servants must make things easier for your mother. I thought she looked . . . not very well.”
“She’s been ‘not very well’ as long as I can remember.
I suppose we never thought twice about it when we were children, but looking back, I can see she was always fragile.
But she hasn’t had to run the house since the end of the War.
As soon as Babs and I were demobbed from the Land Army, I took over. ”
“Babs still works on the land, though?”
“She found she really enjoyed farming, and she needed something to keep her occupied. We both lost fiancés in the War, you know. Three unlucky sisters—it sounds like one of the grimmer fairy stories, doesn’t it?” Gwen fell silent, a faraway look in her eyes.
Daisy nearly told her that she, too, had lost her fiancé.
But Michael had been a conscientious objector, a Quaker pacifist who had been blown up driving a Friends’ Ambulance Unit.
Though he had been at the front, he had not fought, and the prejudice against “conchies” remained strong.
Besides, though her first love would always have a place in her heart, she had found a second, whereas the Tyndall sisters had not.
Or was there something going on between Gwen and the unknown Miller? Before Daisy could come up with a delicate way to probe, Gwen sighed and went on.
“But your brother was killed, wasn’t he?
We’re lucky that Jack’s the baby of the family by several years and was too young to join up.
It would have killed Mother to lose him.
I just wish he hadn’t invited . . . But I mustn’t trouble you with our squabbles.
” She stood up, with an effortful smile.
“The Guy Fawkes fête always makes Father feel frightfully Lord-of-the-Manorish and he’s thrilled that you’ve come to write about it, so he jolly well ought to be in a good temper.
I’ll leave you in peace now. I’ve got to go and try to persuade Addie to punish those blasted boys.
Tea in half an hour in the drawing room, if you feel up to coming down. ”
“I’m eating for two, remember. I’ll be there,” Daisy promised, hoping the bounder Miller, sower of dissension, would be present. She was dying to meet him.