Aunt Letitia Read online

‘I never see any snaps of your old man about the place.’ Mrs Mansell’s leading question hung in the air as she belatedly set to washing the breakfast dishes.

  ‘I try to forget about him. He was a bully and a coward.’ Letitia spoke lightly, glossing over the past.

  ‘Oh, I’ve got one of those. At least, he’s more of a useless lump than a bully. I wish he was a few years younger then he could toddle off into the army and I for one wouldn’t miss him. But instead it’s my Bob who’s in the army. It does seem cruel for a young lad like that to be taken up and— Well, heaven knows what’ll happen to him. I prefer not to think. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve such a life, sure I don’t. I sometimes wonder what it’d been like if Ned had lived. But there you go. If ifs and ands were pots and pans, there’d be no trade for tinkers.’ She turned from the sink, her hands covered in soap-suds. ‘Now, what’d you like for your lunch today, Mrs Warner? Rissoles, is it?’

  The letter from Megan O’Connor had arrived completely out of the blue in 1915. It had taken Letitia some time to remember the red-haired girl who had stayed with the Lambtons thirteen years before. When she did remember, she thought it odd that the girl should be asking for news of Hugh all these years later. Rereading the letter more carefully, looking for clues, Letitia had come across the sentence: We met again by chance in London nearly three years ago…. How odd. Hugh had never mentioned it. That was most unlike Hugh.

  There had been no obvious reason why Letitia should not have replied then and there, or at least passed the letter on to Hugh; but something had held her back. She sensed that there was more to the matter than met the eye. So she had gone to see the Lambtons. They ought to know about the girl if anyone did.

  ‘Oh, that girl,’ said Connie Lambton in the blue drawing room at the Manor. ‘I’m afraid, Letty, we were most dreadfully deceived in that whole business. It was quite unforgivable. I rather fell out with Lady Mereton afterwards.’

  Letitia, sipping her tea and nibbling a piece of walnut cake that was not a patch on Annie’s, waited for Connie to continue. Connie Lambton was a tall, thin woman with a remorseless grasp on life. A widow, she sat on the chaise-longue like a spider at the centre of a web, ruling the Manor with an indefatigable iron will. Her influence extended far beyond her Georgian house and gardens. The village danced to her tune; sometimes it seemed that the whole county was under her sway. Letitia, though favoured enough to be admitted to the inner circle, none-the-less trod carefully where Connie Lambton was concerned.

  ‘What had Lady Mereton to do with it, Connie?’ Letitia prompted.

  ‘Well, it wasn’t Lady Mereton herself, to speak the truth. It was one of her maids or the housekeeper – I really can’t remember. But Lady Mereton really ought to have seen what was going on right under her nose. It was really too bad of her not to put a stop to it right away. I feel awfully aggrieved about it, even now.’

  Letitia had the patience of a saint, and needed it with Connie Lambton, who had a tendency for going all round the houses. Finally, settled with a second cup of tea and a slice of cake, Connie got to the point.

  ‘Evidently what happened was this, Letty. This particular maid of Lady Mereton’s had a daughter. I don’t know what happened to the daughter’s father, he was never mentioned. We must draw our own conclusions. Unfortunately, that type of thing is only too common amongst people of that sort. Anyway, as I was saying, this woman, the maid, could not manage the child on her own, or else she wanted to defray her expenses or some such thing: I really can’t begin to fathom her reasoning. The upshot was, she used to help herself to Lady Mereton’s headed notepaper and write letters as if she was Lady Mereton herself. We received one of those letters. It made out that the girl – the maid’s daughter – was a niece or a cousin – I can’t remember which – of the Irish branch of the Mereton family. Would we, the letter asked, be so kind as to invite the child to stay for a week or so? The company of other children would be beneficial and so on and so forth. One was only too glad to help, with Lady Mereton being unwell for so much of the time. One never dreamt it was all a hoax. One had no idea one was being most frightfully used and deceived. Nor were we the only victims of this terrible woman. With Lady Mereton never calling, and hardly ever being at home to visitors, it was only much later when it all came out. I can tell you, we were most awfully embarrassed and put out about the whole business. I really don’t like to talk of it.’

  You could have fooled me, thought Letitia waiting to get a word in edgeways. She was always uncertain whether Connie used the royal we, or whether she spoke for her sons as well as herself – or maybe even the whole household.

  ‘The whole sorry business makes me feel quite ill even now. I wouldn’t have mentioned it – one does not like to advertise the fact that one was made a fool of – only you so obviously must have heard something, Letty.’

  Letitia, who had not suspected anything at the time of the girl’s visit and had hardly thought about her since, merely smiled. ‘What happened to the woman, the housemaid?’

  ‘Given the boot, as my dear Arthur would have said. Even Lady Mereton was not so foolish as to keep her on after that sort of scandal. It’s the nerve of the woman – the maid – that makes me so cross. Had she no conscience? Of course, at the time one thought there was something a little odd about that child. She did not seem quite to fit – I’m sure you noticed it too, Letty; but one put it down to her being Irish.’

  ‘And what became of the Irish girl? Was anything ever heard of her again?’ In her mind’s eye, Letitia could see the letter from Megan lying in her bureau at home. She decided, then and there, not to mention it to Connie Lambton. The less Connie knew of one’s business, the better.

  ‘Ah, well, now that is the strangest part of the whole story, and it only goes to prove that people of that sort are simply not cut out to lead our sort of life. For as I’m sure you would expect of us, we treated that girl like one of the family. I believe it was the same in the other houses she stayed at. And what good did it do her?’

  There was a hiatus in the story at this point whilst Connie pawed at the bell rope. With her long scrawny neck, beady eyes and hooked nose, she looked rather like a vulture. But that was unkind, Letitia rebuked herself. After all, her own neck was nothing to write home about these days, sagging and wrinkled. They were all getting old. There was no getting away from it.

  A girl came in to clear away the tea things. Letitia turned away, not holding with the idea that servants needed to be watched all the time. Connie Lambton took the opposite view: one had to watch them to make sure they were doing things properly.

  Looking out past the curtains and the leaves of the giant pot plants, Letitia saw the croquet lawn and recalled a spring afternoon thirteen years before when she had watched Hugh and Megan and the Lambton boys playing on the grass. She had been sitting in this very same chair. The french windows had been open. The sound of childish laughter had carried clearly. It had been such a comfort to see poor little Hugh smile. And now that one came to think of it, the girl had been rather protective of Hugh, shielding him from the boisterous Lambtons.

  The servant clattered crockery, knives, spoons on the tray as Connie watched hawk-like. Catching Letitia’s eye, she said, ‘Elle est un peu retardé.’ The hawk eyes swivelled back to the poor maid. ‘You are so lucky, having Annie.’

  ‘She is indispensable,’ agreed Letitia, adding silently: and not available for you to poach.

  When the coast was clear, Connie resumed her tale, speaking of Julian, her eldest son, who had been called to the bar in 1913. ‘When he was down here on a visit some time ago, he told me that he had seen the blessed girl in court – the very same girl who had stayed here. This was before the war, of course.’ Connie leaned forward, as if imparting important and confidential information. ‘I said to him, “Don’t be absurd, Julian, how could you possibly know it was the same girl?” But he was adamant. He would have known her anywhere, he said.’

  ‘The b
oys were rather taken with her, it is true.’ Captivated would be a more apt word, thought Letitia, remembering how Hugh and the Lambtons had been drawn to Megan like satellites round a planet.

  ‘I can’t think why.’ Connie sniffed, tossing her head. ‘Red hair, and Irish. Not exactly promising. Anyway, as I was saying, the girl came to no good in the end. When Julian saw her, she was in court. I can’t remember the details now. Some tomfoolery to do with those dreadful suffragettes, breaking windows, chaining themselves to railings, invading the House of Commons: dreadful, unnatural women.’

  Letitia had always had a sneaking admiration for the suffragettes. She admired the way they stood up for themselves. Of course, her father would have heartily disapproved of them; but that was one more point in their favour. Letitia was wise enough, however, not to say any of this to Connie Lambton.

  ‘Julian made some enquiries, afterwards. A very meticulous boy, Julian. It seems the girl was involved in all those sorts of nefarious activities. To put no finer point on it, she was no better than she ought to be.’

  ‘I thought even Mrs Pankhurst drew a line at girls of that sort.’

  ‘Oh, she wasn’t one of Mrs Pankhurst’s lot. Julian said she belonged to a sort of breakaway group. He looked into it, made quite a study of it, I believe. Meticulous, as I said. Of course, the breakaway group was made up of all manner of undesirables: criminals and so on – socialists too, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  Meticulous did not do justice, Letitia thought, as she waited with infinite patience for Connie to go on with the story. ‘And the court case? What did that concern?’

  ‘I forget now; Julian was rather vague about that part of the story. I rather think the girl went to prison. Or was it her brother? She ought to have gone to prison, anyway, though how long she would have stayed there is another matter. Cat and Mouse Act my eye! Let them starve to death, I say, and see how they like that!’

  Somehow, Letitia could not picture Megan as a suffragette, a criminal or a woman of loose virtue; but then she could not really picture her as anything other than a seven year old girl playing with Hugh and the Lambtons on the croquet lawn. She must be a different person now, thought Letitia: I probably wouldn’t even recognize her. Just think how much Hugh has changed: five then, now eighteen and a soldier. The Lambton boys had grown up too, left the village of Binley, headed off into the world. Where were they now? It was only polite to ask, and Connie was never backward in coming forward when it came to her sons.

  Julian, a captain in the Guards, was in France, Connie said. Rupert and Justin were both in the Warwickshire Regiment, second lieutenants, in training camps for the moment, safe in England.

  ‘Goodness knows why it takes so long to train them, Letty. Shooting Germans cannot be all that different from shooting partridges. We need our armies at the front, not gallivanting all over England. The sooner we put paid to those frightful Germans the better. Did you hear – I’m sure you must have heard – about those poor Belgian nuns. They are Catholics, I know, but even so…. And the babies! Those poor innocent babies speared on the gleaming points of the Huns’ bayonets.’

  Connie not only believed atrocity stories, she also embellished them for effect; but this was more than Letitia could bear. The war was ghastly enough without embellishment. Why Connie should be so keen to pack Rupert and Justin off to France was incomprehensible. For her part, Letitia hoped Hugh would remain in England as long as possible. With any luck, the war would be over before he ever got to the front. But just when would the end come? It had already gone on longer than anyone had expected. Christmas had come and gone with no sniff of a victory. But surely it could not be long now?

  Walking back to The Firs, passing the church with its square tower of grey stone, crossing the village green, circling the duck pond, Letitia debated what to do about Megan’s letter. Connie’s information had shed new light on the matter; and whatever reason Megan had for writing, it could not be very important. She and Hugh had met only twice: once, briefly, when they were children; and once in London three years ago. This second meeting troubled Letitia. The fact that Hugh had never mentioned it was unsettling. But was she simply being oversensitive? She hummed and hawed as she passed the post office and the blacksmith’s. Turning right into the lane with the tiny farm labourers’ cottages, she found that her mind was made up. She would throw the letter away. Hugh need never know.

  Walking up her drive, the fitful sunshine making the fir trees glow green, Letitia felt sure she was doing the right thing.

  In the end, Letitia had kept the letter but did not send a reply. She never told Hugh about it.

  The war had dragged on and on. Christmases came and went. Tidying her bureau one day to distract her thoughts from the latest offensive, she had come across the letter again. It was then that the pangs of guilt had started. The world was a different place in 1917 to what it had been in 1915. Her ideas had changed too. She had told herself that she ought at least to have replied. It was only good manners. And was it not up to Hugh to decide who his friends were? If he was old enough to fight for his country, then he was old enough to know his own mind.

  Letitia had written to Megan, sending her Hugh’s address. After a few weeks, the letter had come back, the envelope marked ADDRESSEE UNKNOWN. There had seemed no point in telling Hugh anything about the matter after that; but the feelings of guilt remained, buried deep, only to resurface years later as she sheltered from bombs in her kitchen with Hugh himself.

  In 1940, remembering that visit to Connie Lambton twenty-five years earlier, Letitia’s most vivid recollection was of the girl clearing away the tea tray, small and frightened in her outsized maid’s uniform. Elle est un peu retardé, Connie had said. Had others once made similar remarks about poor Angelica? Had they spoken in French so she would not understand, forgetting that their eyes betrayed them? Thinking of her sister, Letitia felt sad, angry, impotent. The off-the-cuff remark heard so recently in Selfridge’s still haunted her. And she now feared that Angelica’s life had been even more tragic than she had ever guessed.

  Chapter Four

  ‘OH THAT DRATTED siren!’

  With an almighty effort, Letitia forced herself out of bed. She checked the blackout, turned on the light, got dressed. Already she could hear the drone of the nightly visitors.

  Bombs began falling as she went down to the basement: first the incendiaries, then the high explosives. Tonight’s raid was a heavy one, by the sound of it. It would not be over any time soon.

  In the kitchen, her sights were set on the whisky bottle on the dresser until she suddenly remembered the expression on Hugh’s face as they sheltered here on his last visit. He had gaped at her over his cocoa as if she was an old soak.

  Perhaps tea, then. Just this once.

  ‘Goodness, that wasn’t far off!’

  Waiting for the kettle to boil, Letitia was shaken from her sang-froid by a sudden colossal explosion that sounded far too close for comfort. The noise outside was now intense, rapidly rising in a discordant crescendo. From the recesses of her mind, fear came knocking.

  As Letitia warmed the pot and then spooned in tea, she was quite unprepared for what came next.

  The noise was deafening, enough to stun her by itself. Several things happened at once. The windows shattered. The air was full of flying shards of glass. It felt as if the building itself had leapt into the air. Knocked off her feet, as she fell she glimpsed the tea pot, kettle, mug, tea caddy and milk bottle being swept off the worktop as if by an invisible hand. A single thought flitted through her mind: so this is it, the end; ninety-one and out.

  And then even her thoughts were swept away. All she could do was cling on, clawing at the flagstones as if hanging from the face of a cliff. She could feel her clothes being ripped away, her eyeballs being sucked out of their sockets. Glass and scalding water rained down on her.

  She was not certain how long this terrible maelstrom lasted. Suddenly it was over. It seemed eerily quiet after t
he thunderous noise of the explosion. The usual night-time sounds of throbbing aircraft engines, anti-aircraft guns and the crump of falling bombs was like returning to some primeval peace.

  Shaking, Letitia raised herself onto her hands and knees behind the heavy kitchen table where she’d fallen. She expected blood and broken bones, but as she took stock she realized she had come through relatively unscathed. Her clothes were torn and she was covered in plaster dust, but the table had protected her from the worst of the flying glass. She paused, gasping for breath, unable for the moment to find the strength to get up.

  The electric light flickered. Crouched on the floor, she stared up at the glowing bulb in wonder. The light shade had vanished but the bulb had survived: it seemed remarkable in the midst of the shattered kitchen.

  But then she noticed that the blackout had been torn down. She would get into trouble for showing a light.

  This apprehension galvanized her. She found from somewhere the energy to clamber to her feet, pulling herself up against the table. She switched off the light and the kitchen was plunged into darkness. A red glow lit the area outside. It glinted on the jagged remains of the windows.

  Letitia leant against the table, found that she was shivering violently. Her shoulder was sore, her hip pained her, but it was nothing to what she had expected. It seemed a miracle. Like the light bulb, she too had survived.

  Slowly she straightened up. She was not dead. It was pointless skulking here in the basement. Skulking, she told herself firmly, was not in her nature.

  She climbed the area steps one by one, staring upwards. A man ran past. He was wearing a helmet. His face was stained red from the light of the fire. From her vantage point halfway up, clinging to the rail, Letitia had the impression she was looking into another world: a world of flames and destruction where impossibly tall men battled hopelessly to stave off Armageddon. She had an overwhelming urge to see that world for herself. Skulking would not do.