Chapter 13
13
The following morning and Olivia was just as confused. There was no way she could have created such a convincing alternative scenario by herself. Or was there the tiniest possibility that the voice was telling the truth? It was only natural that she would want to believe that her parents hadn’t perished in the icy North Atlantic Ocean but that would mean that Seth was a real person – and what? There was another version of this world somewhere in the universe, much like the world that Alice had stepped into through the looking glass in Lewis Carroll’s children’s fantasy? Was the wall somehow a bridge between them? For two years, she’d been convinced he was in her head, but could he genuinely have been the other side of the wall all this time? And then she chided herself for thinking such poppycock.
There was, she decided, only one way to put this nonsense to bed, and the following day, she persuaded Benji to spend the night in the tower with her, telling Ruth they were going to stay up all night sharing spooky stories – which was laughingly close to the truth.
‘At least when I hear voices tonight, it will be a proper conversation between you and Master Benji, rather than you talking to yourself,’ the woman said, as she made up a bed on the floor for the youngest Fairchild boy. ‘You woke me up last night with your shouting.’
Ruth was a sound sleeper and was rarely disturbed by Olivia’s conversations with Seth, so she hastily reassured the servant that the night-time chatter had just been her play-acting.
Later that evening, she and Benji climbed the spiral staircase together, carrying mugs of cocoa and a plate of Cook’s coconut biscuits.
‘Do you remember when I wondered if the tower was haunted, back when I first moved here?’ she asked him.
‘When you thought Howard was pretending to be a ghost and started asking if anyone called Seth had ever died in the tower?’
She nodded. ‘I still have that same voice talk to me from time to time.’
Not quite the wide-eyed, gullible boy of two years ago, Benji, however, still believed in spirits. She knew this because he always avoided the shrieking pits whenever possible, and had jumped at the chance to spend a night reading ghost stories – bringing his favourite book of spooky tales with him.
‘And you want me to see the spirit too?’
‘I’ve never seen him,’ she admitted. ‘I hear him. Through the wall. But yes, I think you’re the only person who will take me seriously.’
Benji smiled, puffed up that he was the one trusted to share this big secret with Olivia.
‘A real-life dead person. How thrilling!’ He clutched his book closer to his chest.
But the pair were to be disappointed. No Seth spoke to them through the wall, even though Olivia remained awake until the early hours, determined to share the secret that she’d kept to herself for so long. At one point, she’d even banged on the bricks with her fist, calling for him to answer her. But there was no response.
Benji was bitterly disappointed.
‘Honestly, Livvy, you really had me going there for a while, but you’re as bad as Howard with his silly jokes,’ he complained the next morning.
She could only conclude the voice had been in her head, after all.
* * *
A couple of days later and the situation in Europe was now on a knife-edge. Sir Hugo even cancelled one of his regular jaunts to Haven-on-Sea, such was his desire to remain near a telephone. Lady Fairchild was becoming increasingly anxious, wanting all her boys home during these uncertain times, and was relieved when Howard finally arrived back at the manor to complete the set.
Olivia hadn’t seen the third-born Fairchild son since Christmas, as he hadn’t come home at all that Easter, and had instead spent the holiday with a school chum who had a house in the south of France. He was also nearly a week later than Benji returning to Merriford Lode that summer because he’d been on a camp with the school’s Officer Training Corps – or OTC. He stepped from the motor car that sunny Saturday and visibly froze as she skipped across the driveway to greet him. She, in turn, was shocked to find he’d grown another two inches and now towered over her.
‘Gosh, Livvy,’ he said, unable to hide the frown marching across his face. ‘You’ve rather changed since I saw you last.’ She wasn’t sure if this was a compliment or a criticism. She may not have grown upwards, like him, but she would be sixteen in the autumn and knew her figure was changing; her hips were wider and her bust was filling out – even if her wild, fair, curly hair was just as untameable. Olivia knew she was on the cusp of womanhood and, even though she wasn’t as obsessed by clothes as his mother, she certainly wasn’t averse to wearing pretty dresses, especially when the butcher’s son was around.
‘So have you.’ The pair studied each other in silence but neither could think of a sensible thing to say and eventually, Benji appeared and dragged Howard inside to see the watercolour of the boathouse he’d been working on that morning. They were all hurtling towards adulthood and Olivia had the strong sense that things would never be the same again. Even Benji was finding his own way. That evening, Sir Hugo begrudgingly admitted that the boy had talent, indulging his talk of one day studying art somewhere, like The Slade. Clarence’s face was thunderous – Cambridge had been decided for him – but he said nothing.
Benji and Olivia, who had always enjoyed bicycling around the lush landscape of Merriford Lode together, crept out early one morning, before the family had risen, to escape into the endless fields ripe with grains, under the cloudless, blue skies. Nature, she generally found, nicely offset her worries – be they real or imagined.
Meadow browns and orange tips danced from flower to flower and the dusty smell of baked earth filled the air. The day promised to be pleasant, and she sat at the base of a huge sycamore, leaning back on the scaly trunk, as Benji peered through his spectacles and sketched the picturesque valley below. A colourful tapestry of emeralds, golds and umbers began to emerge as the sun rose over the gentle contours of the Norfolk skyline.
Olivia wrestled with all that had happened in the tower that past week. She hadn’t heard Seth’s voice since the night of their Titanic quarrel and she had to wonder if she’d simply come up with the fanciful notion of a looking-glass world, where her parents were alive, to counter all the bad things that were going on in the newspapers.
Their companionable silence lasted a couple of hours. Olivia closed her eyes and let her mind play out the adventures she might have abroad, should she be brave enough to travel when she was of age, until she heard the thunder of racing feet and felt the cool of a shadow fall across her face.
‘Benji, Livvy, you’re not going to believe this.’
Howard stood before them both, gasping for breath, his hands on his knees and his freckled cheeks red from the exertion of running.
‘You two must have been up with the larks. No one knew where you were, but the most dreadful thing has happened: we’ve declared war on Germany!’
She gave him a disbelieving look. He had form when it came to telling tall tales to get a rise out of others.
‘I wouldn’t joke about something like this, Livvy.’ He looked disappointed that she doubted him.
‘No,’ she acknowledged.
‘It happened last night but is all over the newspapers this morning. It’s an absolute shocker but Father is trying to convince Mother not to panic, and that it will all be over by Christmas. Louis is in the OTC and of fighting age, and Clarence used to be when he was at Cambridge, so chances are, if they’re keen, they can get out there pretty darn quickly.’
‘I can’t bear to think of them caught up in this, even if it’s a short-lived skirmish,’ she said.
Her heart was beating wildly and she studied Howard’s face, raising her hand to shield the sun from her eyes. He was only a few weeks off turning seventeen and all but a man. The sunlight caught the auburn hairs across his top lip and she could see now how his face had changed since he’d been away – his jaw was more prominent, his cheekbones more defined, and his face had lost the roundness of youth. How had this happened so quickly?
‘Does that mean, one day, I might get to fight the Hun?’ Benji said, closing his sketchpad and sliding his pad and pencils into his satchel.
‘Unlikely.’ Howard put out his hand, offering to help Olivia to her feet. ‘Father says we won’t need many men to wrap this whole thing up. We’re the most powerful empire in the world, and we all know that Britannia rules the waves. The good old British Army will do its job in no time and put the jumped-up kaiser back in his place.’
‘If it turns out to be another Hundred Years War, like when we tried to take the French throne, then we’ll all have to fight eventually,’ Benji said. ‘Although, technically, that one lasted a hundred and sixteen years.’ He gave an earnest nod as he delivered this fact. It wasn’t difficult to guess what he’d been doing in his history lessons.
But as Benji’s words filtered into Olivia’s mind, she considered the possibility, however remote, that this conflict might last longer than anyone anticipated. As she was pulled upright, she locked eyes with Howard and recognised he was as uneasy as she was. He didn’t immediately let her hand drop, and she felt something that she couldn’t quite pin down pass between them. The slightest whisper of doubt floated in the air and her stomach gave a bilious flip.