Chapter 34
34
‘We all thought you’d turned a corner,’ Cynthia said, her arms wrapped around Olivia as she held the pale and silent young woman close.
Benji had guided her into the main house and woken up Lady Fairchild’s personal maid, who had washed her and found a clean nightgown. Olivia had said very little but couldn’t stop her eyes from leaking. No sobs came from her mouth, no explanations; it was as if she was in a trance as she allowed herself to be tended to. And then she’d been taken to one of the guest bedrooms and instructed to sleep.
She’d woken up to find Cynthia on a low chair beside her, the older woman’s face a mixture of concern and confusion. At first, there were no words from either of them, as Lady Fairchild did what the young Titanic orphan had taught her. She moved over to the bed and embraced her so that touch could begin the healing. It was enough just to be held and they sat intertwined for quite some time before the inevitable questioning.
‘What’s going on, darling girl?’
‘Surely, you have bad days,’ she mumbled into the older woman’s shoulder. ‘Yesterday was a bad day.’
‘Of course I do. The loss of three sons is unbearable, and sometimes, I can hardly drag myself from my bed, but I don’t start demolishing buildings. You’ve destroyed a wall, Olivia… I really think a spell at a private sanatorium might do you good. Sir Hugo knows people and you would be well cared for. Howard wouldn’t have wanted to see you like this – he would want you to embrace life, be happy, find love. Please let us help you.’
The jagged blade of guilt sliced through her, leaving a raw and open wound, because her weeping had not been over the tragic death of the third Fairchild son, but instead her despair at not being able to reach the man she now loved. How could she have moved on so easily? What sort of shallow, insincere person did that? Queen Victoria had mourned the death of Albert for a lifetime. Howard had not even been dead for a year.
She allowed more tears to seep into the soft silk of Cynthia’s blouse, knowing full well they were tears of shame, not of grief, and then realised she had to compose herself. Absolutely the last thing Olivia wanted was to be shipped off somewhere. She had to be allowed to remain in the tower, and to do that, she must prove that she was well.
She pulled away from Lady Fairchild and sat up straight, wiping the last of the tears from her hot cheeks with the back of her hand.
‘I was tired and overly emotional last night. You know me: always one for drama.’ She forced out a small smile. ‘It’s not good to bottle things up; we both know that. I was angry at the world and lost my temper.’
‘But you went to the gardeners’ sheds for a sledgehammer. You love that tower – you always have – I don’t understand why you’d want to destroy it.’
She reached out for Cynthia’s pale hands and gripped them tight. ‘I can’t explain it. Everything came rushing at me like a swirling tornado. But I can promise you that if I ever feel overwhelmed like that in the future, I’ll come to you. I’m begging you to trust me when I say that it won’t happen again.’
One of the maids entered with a tray of tea and toast, bobbed a curtsey to Her Ladyship and set it down on a small table.
‘Come, eat.’
Olivia swung her legs to the floor and trailed over to the breakfast. Her mind was racing. It was imperative that the Fairchilds realised this was a minor hiccough and that everything returned to normal as quickly as possible.
‘I’ll clear up the mess.’
‘Benji has already seen to it. The housemaids are sweeping up the dust and laundering the bedding. Luckily, it is not a supporting wall, so he’s gone down to the village to enquire about getting it repaired. If it can all be done without too much fuss, I see no need to mention it to my husband when he gets back.’
‘Back?’
Lady Fairchild sighed. ‘Haven-on-Sea calls to him more and more, and I try not to mind.’
Olivia poured herself some tea and then set about eating the toast, forcing out a bright smile, as though nothing was wrong. She saw Cynthia’s shoulders relax as a consequence.
‘Please trust that it’s all out of my system. In many ways, I feel happier now than I have done since we heard of Howard’s death. I am healing. I will get through this.’
‘Very well, I won’t talk of the sanitorium again, unless you give me cause to think otherwise.’
‘And on an unrelated note,’ Olivia said, fully aware that what she was about to ask was utterly and wholly related, ‘in an effort to sort out my life, tie up the loose ends and move on from all the things that have caused me pain, I want to ask again about Tanner – the gardening lad who was moved to Cambridgeshire when I first arrived. I still carry a degree of guilt that he was uprooted when he did absolutely nothing wrong, and wondered if it might be possible to trace him? I’d like to find out if he survived the war. It will give me peace to know the ending of his story.’
Cynthia smiled, gave an understanding nod of her head and squeezed Olivia’s hand.
‘Of course, dear girl. I will see what I can find out.’
* * *
Later that day, Olivia sought solace in the Japanese gardens, as she always had. She watched a daring squirrel dash along the handrail of the bridge as she inhaled the sweet scent of the late-flowering honeysuckle. The steady trickle of water spewed from the dragon’s mouth, and its euphonious backdrop allowed her to order her thoughts. Seth had removed the physical barrier between them and still they could not be together. It made no sense – their voices passed through the wall but their bodies could not.
They’d talked of marriage but she recognised now that it was impossible. Perhaps it would be better that she should remain a spinster, because if she couldn’t be with Seth, then she didn’t want to be with anyone. Even she could not fall in love so completely a third time. And she wouldn’t marry without love. As long as she could still communicate with him at night, she would happily see out her days finding other things to fill the void a marriage might have plugged. She was already earnestly pursuing her writing, and that would keep her busy enough.
It then occurred to her that Seth might one day fall in love with someone else – someone he could hold in his arms. And how long could she remain in the tower anyway? Especially when Benji inherited the manor. And with Seth aspiring to head gardener, and Rowe hurtling towards retirement, would he still be able to access his old room if he moved into the cottage?
Benji interrupted her thoughts by striding over the bridge and waving at her.
‘What ho! Thought I might find you here.’ He came to her side and studied her face. ‘Mother says we’re not to worry about you and that it was just a temporary aberration.’ Bless her, Cynthia had her back. ‘She says you’re keen to move back in. Give it a few days for the mortar to set but there’s a chap from Merriford Lode bricking up the hole as we speak. I know you’ve always had an affinity with that place, even if I don’t understand it, but what I’m struggling with is why you should try to destroy it.’ He tipped his head to one side. ‘Is it still connected to this nonsense about ghostly voices coming through the wall?’
Before the war, she would have welcomed Benji being in on her secret. The only Fairchild with an imagination to match hers, he would have been as much in awe of the situation as she was. But things had changed. She was in love with Seth, and Benji professed to be in love with her. She could not have the two men talking to each other. It wouldn’t be fair on either of them.
‘I’m fine,’ she reassured her concerned companion. ‘But you must stop creeping around the tower at night.’
‘I’m keeping a concerned eye on the girl I love,’ he defended. ‘No one really likes the idea of you out there alone, and we both know that you talk to yourself more than is healthy.’
She leaned towards him, trying to express her sincerity. ‘What each of us do in our own bedrooms should be private. I doubt that you would want me to stand sentry outside your door at night, listening in. I merely ask for the same consideration.’
He coloured and dropped his eyes. Young lads of sixteen certainly did not want eavesdroppers loitering nearby when they thought themselves alone.
‘And you aren’t in love with me, Benji – not really. I know that you care for me, as I care for you, but it’s not romantic love. One day, someone will come along who makes you feel as though you are the most important thing in their universe, and you will wonder how you can even breathe without them.’
‘I do love you, Livvy. I always have. And I’ll happily wait until you realise what I say is true.’ His jaw was set with the determination of one who was about to conquer an unconquerable mountain.
There was no point in arguing with an adamant adolescent. She’d been one herself not that long ago. Let him discover the truth of her words over time, she decided. Instead, she turned the conversation to other things. He was returning to school the following day and she said she would miss him. In response, he encouraged her to hurry up and finish writing her book – which she said she would.
Resigned now to the fact that being with her Seth was not possible, she also told him of her wish to track down Tanner and he agreed that he should also like to know what became of the chap. And so Olivia decided to focus her energies on finding out about their former gardener’s past and establishing that he had at least survived the war.
* * *
Later that week, Olivia tracked Freda down to the still room, where she was making jam. The housemaid had married at the start of the war, but her husband had been killed on the Somme. Struggling to find household staff, the Fairchilds had been only too happy to take her back. Olivia asked her about Annie Taylor, something she’d been putting off because she now realised that she was jealous of the girl who Tanner had fallen for.
‘She was my best friend at school,’ the woman confirmed. ‘I was always sore that she disappeared and never thought to drop me a line and let me know she was all right.’
‘Did you know anything about the man she was seeing?’
Freda shrugged. ‘She never would give me a name, so I wondered if he was married, because something wasn’t right. P’raps she was worried that I’d set my brother on him, because she knew I weren’t happy about how she was treating the Tanner lad.’ She shook her head as if to confirm Annie’s behaviour was not acceptable in her eyes. ‘He didn’t deserve to be cheated on, and I know for a fact she did things with this man that she’d never done with young Seth.
‘Maybe that was the problem,’ she continued. ‘Seth was old-fashioned and honourable, and Annie, well, her parents were very strict and I guess she was seeking adventure and thrills. Turns out those thrills came back to bite her. You ain’t going on no adventures with a babe on the way. To be honest, I think it’s the only reason she finally told me when she did. She was in the sort of trouble you can’t hide for long and she knew it.’
‘She was expecting?’ There had been talk of a child, so was Freda confirming it?
‘Expecting a babe and hoping for a ring on her finger. To my mind, she either eloped or the man in question paid to set her up somewhere – nice little cottage where she could pretend to be a widow and he could still visit if the fancy took him.’ Freda almost sounded jealous of the scenario. ‘Last time I saw her, she was in a right state because Seth had proposed. She told me, she may have done a stupid thing but she weren’t out to trick a good man. Turned him down flat, gave no reason and then disappeared.’
Freda clearly didn’t have much time for the actions of her former school friend, and Olivia couldn’t say she blamed her. But she did know this: if Seth had proposed marriage, then he really had loved this girl. Whether she’d deserved his love or not was irrelevant.