Chapter 24
24
Olivia ran crying from the back of the house and stood on the damp lawns, not knowing what to do or where to go. She could not bring herself to take refuge in the boathouse. In fact, she didn’t think she could ever step into that building again without wanting to smash every window or put a match to the whole place. Instead, she spun back on herself and ran for the tower, the place she’d found comfort once before.
As soon as she passed through the ground-floor entrance, a calm washed over her. She climbed the spiral stairs and returned to her old room to find the furniture remained, even though her personal belongings had been moved to the main part of the house. But even in that soulless space, she felt a connection to something – a heartbeat – that enabled her to breathe again.
Walking over to the south-facing window, she watched the sun start to go down to her right. The saturated colours that filled the sky were of fire and blood, and she thought of Howard, and only Howard, from the moment the white blazing ball of the sun sunk into the vibrant orange sky, until the last thin strip of gold was tamped down by the layers of deep purple and soot grey. In the darkness, she moved to sit on the edge of the bare mattress and, now that the light had drained from the day, all that was left was a room full of shadow and memory.
Grief was exhausting and so she curled up on the bed. Not many moments later, she heard the main door open below and the anxious voice of the only surviving Fairchild son call up the stairs.
‘Olivia? Are you in here? Everyone’s worried sick.’
Slow footsteps clumped up the spiral steps, followed by a knock at the door and she rolled to face the wall, not wanting Benji to see her tears. It swung open slowly and he came to her side, perching next to her and reaching out his hand to rest on her shoulder.
Neither of them spoke. Why articulate such desperate emotions? It wouldn’t bring any of his brothers back or make either of them feel any better. If anything, to say it out loud would only make everything worse. It was almost as if speaking the truth would sever Howard from her entirely and she wouldn’t even be able to reach him in her dreams.
Eventually, Benji removed his spectacles, swung his legs up onto the bed and lay beside her, and she rolled back to face him and nestled in his arms. He wasn’t the stocky build of Howard or Clarence, but instead slender, like Louis, and much taller than her now, as she’d always predicted he would be. She found comfort in his embrace, nonetheless.
‘I told my parents that I knew where you’d be.’ It was the first thing spoken aloud for several minutes. ‘And that I would sit with you. We can be here all night, if it helps. No one expects us at dinner. To be honest, I don’t think anyone feels like eating. Mother has taken to her room and Father has shut himself in the library.’
She knew it was selfish to wallow in her grief. The three remaining Fairchilds were suffering every bit as much as her. Instead of hiding herself away, she should be with Cynthia, comforting the woman who had lost three of her four sons in unimaginably unjust circumstances. But her grief was an intensely personal thing and easiest to deal with in solitude.
‘I need to move back into the tower,’ she said. The calm of the last hour had at least given her thinking time. ‘I’ve always been happiest here.’
‘I’ll see to it.’ Benji spoke with the authority of a man, not a fifteen-year-old boy, and it occurred to her that he would one day be the master of Merriford Manor – something no one could have foreseen only five short years ago. His whole life was about to change in the most dramatic of ways, and she briefly wondered if it would see the end of his artistic ambitions.
‘But you aren’t to shut yourself away, Livvy,’ he stressed. ‘You must promise me you won’t give up.’
It wasn’t a promise she could make so instead, she closed her eyes to block out the world. She had no fight left in her. The cruelty of finding out that Howard had survived the raid, survived the war in fact, only to die from influenza was worse than any joke he ever played.
How many times was God to test her? Had she not been through enough in her short life? Had she not faced adversity with fortitude back when her parents died? But you could only repair a broken vase so many times because, if you repeatedly dropped it on the hard, stone floor, eventually, all that remained would be dust.
And now, Olivia Davenport felt all that remained of her was dust.
* * *
The new year stepped quietly over the threshold without a fuss. The photograph of them all at Haven-on-Sea disappeared from the sideboard and everything about the house that was related to the wedding was discreetly spirited away. The flag-waving, celebratory bonfires and drunken euphoria of Armistice Day seemed a lifetime ago. In many ways, the end of the war had changed very little; the dead remained dead, food shortages continued and the troops could not get home. It hadn’t taken long for the unconfined joy of victory to segue into a bleak reality. The returning men found it a struggle to settle into their old jobs, the women resented being shuffled quietly back into the kitchens, and the victorious nations found themselves just as broken as those they had defeated.
Olivia had moved back into the tower two weeks after the telegram about Howard but shut herself away, much as Benji had feared, because the world outside was of no consequence to her. She prepared for a long and lonely winter, and in all probability, a long and lonely life.
In the end, Cynthia rallied before her. Perhaps having lost two sons had hardened her to losing a third. She was lady of the manor, patron of the church and there were still injured and despairing young men at the hospital in her house who needed support. She must lead by example. Her husband and her remaining son relied on her, but Olivia had no one. Why should she rally? What was left for her now? Even the wounded men she volunteered for would soon be patched up and sent back to civilian lives. The hours that she’d spent reading to the sick, helping the blind and illiterate compose letters, knitting socks and packing up parcels, would be at an end. She had no purpose, and that was clearer to her now than it had ever been. All the while Howard had been alive, she’d anticipated a future juggling marriage and her childhood dreams and, even briefly, after Louis’s death, expecting to be mistress of Merriford Manor at some point. Now she had nothing and no one.
Even her writing was something she no longer took any pleasure in. Why had she been so convinced that escaping into other worlds was the answer? Her prize-winning story hadn’t brought Major Turrell back, and no amount of fanciful fiction, however uplifting, would give her or Howard the happy ending they so deserved. What a na?ve little fool she’d been to believe that her imagination could make everything better. To allow herself a fleeting dream of Howard lying amongst the bluebells after they’d made love in the woods, or to compose a story where they went on wild adventures in foreign lands, was only good for the few minutes it lasted. When reality returned, Howard was still dead and the body that she had so willingly and completely shared hers with was now far away, a decomposing mass of tissue and bone. This was the harsh fact that she could never run away from.
January.
February.
March.
April.
What did she care for the month when all her days were the same? Her only solace was found in the company of Cynthia, because she understood. They did not speak of the boys; they barely spoke at all, but they often embraced or reached for each other’s hand. Olivia wasn’t living; she was existing. She couldn’t even rouse herself to say goodbye to the last of the patients when the hospital was closed and Merriford Manor was returned to what was left of the Fairchild family.
Benji found her sitting at the edge of the lake on a blanket that Easter. She would never step in the boathouse again, but being near the water was calming and she enjoyed watching the waterfowl.
‘Benji?’ Her mood lifted when she realised he was home. She was certain he was another inch taller and was trying to grow something across his top lip, but she made no mention of it.
‘It’s Benjamin, not Benji,’ he corrected. ‘You must appreciate that I am almost a man now.’ At sixteen, he might have the physical presence of one, but Olivia recognised he still had a lot of growing up to do.
He flicked the tails of his jacket away and sat gingerly beside her.
‘Mother says you really aren’t the ticket – that you are drifting about like a ghost. I want the springy, unstoppable you back. The one I so looked up to in my childhood.’
‘I’m fine, Benji… Benjamin, but the time for fairy tales has passed. I’m thinking about returning to Windy Acres. Merriford has been one phase of my life. I’ll be twenty-one before the year is out and it is time to move on to the next.’
‘That’s rubbish, Livvy. This is your home, and there is always a place for fairy tales – you taught me that. The Grimm brothers made a living from them. I hate to see this quiet and withdrawn version of you. It’s so wrong. You’re our sunshine and without it, this family will wither and die.’
Olivia felt resentful. It wasn’t her job to keep everyone going.
‘You don’t understand. I lost my parents, Clarence, Louis and then the man I loved. Who cares if I rot in my tower now?’
‘Mother, Father… me. So many people care about you. We can’t pretend that the war hasn’t changed us. I don’t know of one family who hasn’t lost someone, or isn’t struggling with the return of a soldier who will never be the same again. Even those who look fine on the outside hide wounds on the inside. One of my school chums said his big brother still suffers from shell shock. He doesn’t speak much, cries an awful lot, and has violent flares of temper over the smallest things. He hit his own mother, apparently. Scary stuff.’
‘But he’s alive and with people who love him. God took three members of this family away – it’s not fair.’
But it was Benji’s turn to get cross.
‘Life isn’t fair, Liv, we all know that, but for you, of all people, to give up is absolutely crushing. My whole education these last few years has been tailored towards the expectation that I would be an infantry officer upon leaving education. And now I bear the shame that I never shall. I feel like shutting down, snapping every paintbrush I ever owned in half and running away, but I can’t. I finally understand Clarence so much better because my life, like his, is mapped out for me now and I just have to get on with it. You have so many options, so many choices, and if you don’t take them, I shall be unspeakably angry with you.’
His words made her feel guilty but she remained silent.
They sat together watching the coots and moorhens paddle about at the edge of the lake. After a while, a concerned Benjamin reached out his arm and pulled Olivia to him. She allowed her head, which barely reached his shoulder, to rest against him as he nervously cleared his throat.
‘I can sleep in the tower with you again, if you like? You know, help you to feel safe?’
‘No, it’s fine. I can manage.’
There was a pause.
‘Then start managing because, from what I can gather, you’re doing a frankly dreadful job, old thing. Sort yourself out, Liv. Your parents, and Howard come to that, would be so very disappointed in you.’
And she wondered when he had suddenly become the grown-up.
* * *
That night, Olivia stared hard at the ceiling, knowing that Benji’s words, as harsh as they were, were valid. But knowing a thing and doing something about it were two very different beasts and she had no idea if she had the strength to pull herself from the mire. Finally, she allowed the familiar tears to build, knowing that if she didn’t let them out, she would suffocate under the weight of them. How foolish she’d been to think that life was like fiction – that as the heroine of her own story she would ultimately triumph, even if she’d had to undergo great adversity along the way. There was no triumph to be had.
She cried for the loss of her loved ones, but also the ensuing loss of herself. She rolled to her side, facing the deep red of the bricks and wanting nothing more in that moment than to smash her head against them and make the world go away.
Eventually, she stopped for air, and in that brief moment of silence, the voice of someone she had not heard from for years, came through the wall.
‘Cordelia?’ The voice was clear, questioning and familiar.
Seth was back.