Chapter 35
35
Olivia returned to the tower a week after destroying the wall, but over the next few nights, her calls for Seth were in vain. With her ear pressed to the newly laid bricks, she was repeatedly met with nothing but silence, and she wondered what sort of trouble he’d landed in over the sledgehammered wall. She had members of the Fairchild family on her side, able to order the damage to be fixed and willing to overlook her mental collapse. He could easily have been fired for his actions and that uncomfortable thought nestled beside her on the pillow as she settled down to sleep. If he didn’t return, she’d get no resolution – never find out any more about his life, or even her other life for that matter. She realised now that she hadn’t asked enough questions about his Miss Davenport, swanning about with both her parents and never having lost a fiancé in the war – although she couldn’t be absolutely certain a young man hadn’t come into her life at Windy Acres. The point was, she would never know.
Refusing to give up hope, she was confident that he would find a way of returning to the tower, if at all possible. It was beyond cruel to suppose that he’d be taken from her too, so whilst she awaited his return, she channelled her restless energies into her writing. The novel was coming along nicely – a tragic tale of a young woman who loses her beau in the war. It wasn’t autobiographical, in that the two main characters were nothing like herself or Howard, but she was drawing on her experiences and those of people she knew. She poured her heart into the prose, often crying as she worked, and mindful not to let her tears smudge the ink. If I am moved, an editor will be moved , she decided.
Exactly two weeks after Seth had smashed through the wall to try and reach her, Olivia heard noises she knew were not coming from her dressing room. She sat upright, even though seconds before, she had been dancing around the edges of sleep. Everything inside her willed it to be Seth because, apart from her desperate desire not to lose him, she had some exciting news.
‘Olivia?’ His voice was anxious.
‘Oh, thank the Lord.’ She was now sitting on her bed with her face turned to the bricks. He was back. How long would she have continued to wait for him had he not returned? Years, probably. ‘What happened?’
‘Sir Hugo was all for firing me, but Mr Rowe spoke up on my behalf. He appealed to Lady Fairchild as a woman who had lost sons in the war, and who had seen the mental state of those at the convalescent hospital. Even Master Benjamin put in a good word before he left, I believe. But the upshot of the whole episode is that I’m on a warning. The cost of the repairs are to be deducted from my wages which, considering half my wage packet goes to my mother, means we’ll both be short for a while. But something like this cannot be allowed to happen again or I’m out on my ear for good.’
‘And they let you return to the tower?’
‘I told them that I talk in my sleep and often have nightmares since the war, so it was likely that I’d disturb the others in the bothy and, much like before, they felt sorry for me.’
‘Is that why they allowed you to have it in the first place? Because they felt bad when your father died?’ she clarified, wondering if he would also admit his heart had been broken by young Annie Taylor.
He hesitated a fraction too long. ‘Yes.’
It seemed he would never open up to her about his former sweetheart and, in a way, she understood. She was keeping the truth of Tanner’s dismissal from him, after all. It wasn’t something he needed to know about – her childish infatuation – and he might not want to speak of a first love to someone he had all but proposed to.
‘I heard Benji’s voice on the day you smashed down the wall, telling you that you needed help,’ he said. The change of topic did not go unnoticed by her.
This link through the wall was bigger than just them, she realised, but Benji hadn’t said anything to her about hearing the voice.
‘Did you speak to him? Make your presence known?’
‘I thought about it, but I rather like that it’s our secret.’
She didn’t comment because she knew exactly what he meant.
‘How did you explain the destruction your side?’ he asked.
‘Considering I was found with the sledgehammer in my hands, there wasn’t much I could say. I certainly couldn’t pin the blame on anyone else. Lady Fairchild was all but ready to cart me off to a sanatorium…’
And she told him how she, too, had manipulated her way back into the tower by using her childhood trauma to justify her actions and elicit sympathy. She still didn’t mention Howard, who had been her trump card.
‘I have news,’ Olivia said, now keen to change the subject herself. ‘You’ll be glad to know that you aren’t dead.’
‘I’m fully aware of that,’ the voice came back. ‘I can hear my beating heart and see the rise and fall of my ribcage as we speak.’
‘Not you, silly, the you that is here.’
‘You’ve seen me?’ Seth’s voice was suddenly excited. ‘Although now I’m downright jealous of myself.’
‘No,’ she admitted. ‘Lady Fairchild contacted Sir Hugo’s cousin and we have been told that you are living somewhere in deepest, darkest Cambridgeshire. Would you like me to investigate further, visit Tanner and find out how he is?’ She still thought of Seth and Tanner as two separate men.
‘About that,’ he said. ‘With everything that has happened in the last few days, and the obvious futility of our situation now apparent, I’ve been thinking…’
Olivia’s heart rate slowed to a wary amble. Why did she suspect she wasn’t going to like what he was about to say?
‘Your world and mine clearly overlap, like two sheets of paper lying on top of each other. What if our voices were like the wet ink, the imprint of which can transfer across from one page to the other, leaving a mark, but we’re the words themselves, written on the page? We can’t leave the paper, Olivia.’
His analogy made sense.
‘As much as this destroys me to admit, I don’t think we can ever be together. How can I enter your world when I am already there – living somewhere in Cambridge? It’s a biological impossibility. And, if that’s the case, we must look to lead fulfilling lives without each other, and accept that this link we have, however precious, can’t go on forever.’
‘Don’t say that.’ This couldn’t be snatched from her as well. She was teetering at the edge of the pit she’d clambered out of after Howard’s death. One gentle push and she’d plummet to the bottom again. ‘Surely, the world somehow replicating itself is impossible, yet it’s happened,’ she pointed out. ‘There must be a way. And, even if there isn’t, I’ll happily see out my days as a spinster, living in this tower, writing ridiculous books that will probably never get published, but don’t tell me that we have to part.’
‘But it’s not realistic, or fair, on either of us. It’s a kindness that the Fairchilds let me sleep here, especially after I smashed down the wall, but they could ask me to move out at any point. We both have dreams and we owe it to ourselves to at least try and achieve them. Besides, Sir Hugo won’t be the master of Merriford Manor forever.’
She knew there would inevitably come a day when Benji would inherit and who knew what plans he had for the place. In both her world and Seth’s, there were so many scenarios out of their control.
‘You always told me that you wanted to travel,’ he reasoned. ‘You’ll soon have the money and no commitments. The world is slowly opening up again, now we are at peace. Go to the fjords of Norway and the jungles of Brazil.’
She was reminded how similar their existences were. Germany had still lost the war and Spanish flu had swept the world, regardless or not of whether an ocean liner bound for America had sunk seven years ago. The differences were much smaller, and it was only with time that what seemed insignificant now had the potential to make their worlds diverge on a more dramatic scale. Vincent Astor, for example, had inherited astounding wealth after his father had gone down with the Titanic , and it remained to be seen what he would do with it, but what was Jacob Astor, the American business magnate, doing in Seth’s world with that money? And what ripples would two different uses of that wealth have in their different worlds?
‘I can’t leave you and gallivant around the world, Seth. You’re my voice of reason, the person who brings me the most happiness. The man I love.’
‘Yes you can. I left you to fight the war and I came back, and I’ll be here when you return from your travels. All I’m saying is we don’t know how long this will continue, and we can’t rely on always being in contact. I love you, too. God only knows how I love you, but we have to face reality.’
‘Not a strength of mine,’ she acknowledged.
‘Nonsense, your wild and vivid imagination is part of your charm. But one of us needs to be sensible about this?—’
‘And it’s going to be you,’ she finished for him. She looked down to find she’d crossed her arms without even realising.
‘Yes, because I realised something else when I was holed up in the bothy waiting for the tower to be fixed – there’s a way we could be happy. And your news makes me think it might be possible…’
She knew what he was going to say before his words drifted through the wall.
‘I can find happiness with Olivia Davenport and you can be with Seth Tanner. We can find each other in our own worlds. I know it’s a huge risk, with only a small chance of success, but it’s an adventure, and you taught me that life is an adventure, waiting to be had.’
Silence.
‘Are you sulking?’ His soft chuckle broke her heart a tiny bit more.
‘Tanner doesn’t love me like you do and I doubt he’s thought of me in seven years. And the other Olivia Davenport, as lovely as she may be, will not consider the romantic advances of a gardener she barely knows.’
‘Won’t she?’ he questioned. ‘The young girl who believed in fairy tales, challenging the rules and true love overcoming all the odds? Perhaps if we dint know much about the people whose hearts we hope to capture, we might not stand a chance, but we’ve got each other as guides. Navigating through stormy waters without a compass is madness, but I’m your compass, and you’re mine. We can steer each other true.’
He was suggesting that there would be tricks they could employ, tactics they could use which would give them an advantage, but she remained unconvinced.
‘I’m not in love with Tanner. I’m in love with you .’ She inadvertently snorted her indignation.
‘He’s still me, he just doesn’t have the memories that we share or the benefit of befriending a happy-go-lucky, overdramatic young girl in his youth who gave him a more positive outlook on the world. He’s lived a different life, away from Merriford and without you, but he’s the same man inside. I’m not saying it will be easy, but I know me, and you know you, and I’m certain that your Seth Tanner will welcome your sunshine into his life as much as I have.’ He paused. ‘But maybe the reality is you don’t want to settle for a servant… someone who?—’
‘That’s not it at all. You know that if it were possible, I would marry you in a heartbeat. Windy Acres may not be Merriford Manor, but it will shortly be mine to do with as I wish. It’s a place you could make your mark, grow your favourite plants and write articles for the Gardener’s Chronicle to your heart’s content. And if we were shunned by society, we’d simply move to America, start again, and have a whole other adventure.’
‘That sounds more like the Olivia I know,’ he said. ‘And there’s a version of her at Windy Acres as we speak, to my knowledge not leading a particularly adventurous life and waiting for someone who understands her, supports her and is happy to indulge her whimsical nature.’
She snorted. ‘And somewhere in Cambridgeshire is the man who will treat me like an equal, encourage my dreams and make my heart sing?’
‘Maybe.’
‘But what if you’re married, Seth? What if?—’
‘What if you’d never lost your parents and insisted on sleeping in the east tower? What if one of the other gardeners had been asked to guard the orchids. What if I’d been killed in the war? And that’s the one that really makes me grateful, because there were times when I dint think I’d make it, but I promised myself if I did, I’d live my best life. So, shouldn’t we at least try?’
Olivia wondered when he’d become the optimist. The adventurer. The one who leapt over obstacles like they were mere scratched lines in the dirt between them. And she realised that she had been the turning point for him and how he thought about life, as much as he had enabled her to move on from the utter desolation she felt at losing Howard.
She looked over to the small south window, a scattering of stars across the black like a handful of pale seeds tossed onto a patch of freshly ploughed earth, and wondered if there really was an Olivia out there who hadn’t been through what she had. Who’d never cried herself to sleep or spent four months hiding herself away in a tower wholeheartedly wishing she were dead. Without the encouragement from Seth and Benji, had that Miss Davenport even put pen to paper? And, equally, was there a grumpy undergardener in her world, still wallowing in his unhappiness, content to see out his days on a couple of pounds a week, pining over a lost love and struggling with the horrific death of his father?
Seth was right. They had to at least try.