Inherit the Skies Page 10

  As for the bedroom, that was very much Blanche’s domain now. She had added frills and furbelows to the decor and furnishings and a permanent haze of perfume hung in the air, even wafting in to invade his dressing-room so that he no longer felt that was his own. And it was not only her perfume that made the invasion but her voice, slightly nasal with that faint Transatlantic drawl he had found so fetching in the days when he had first met her, the well-bred English widow of a wealthy American banker, returned home for a visit with her young son. She had captivated him then for he too was lonely after the loss of Rose, his first wife, who had died giving birth to young James, and Blanche was the very opposite to what Rose had been – a gregarious and social butterfly where Rose had been happiest in a quiet home environment, yet with a sharp and enquiring mind and an interest in politics, business and economics that was totally unusual in a woman and might have been unseemly had it not been for her considerable charm and grace. When he had first met her Gilbert had considered Blanche an extraordinary woman and she had so fascinated him that he had counted himself the luckiest man alive to win her favour; now, three years later, Gilbert was less certain exactly who had been the victor.

  In any event the study was his retreat, the one room where none of them, not even the slippery James would dare to intrude, and it was here in this typically masculine domain that Gilbert came to be alone with his thoughts.

  He strode now from desk to window and back again, hands in pockets, head bent, so that he looked slightly less than his five feet ten inches, an immaculately dressed, compactly built man whose dark hair had greyed into attractive wings at the temples and whose clipped moustache added a certain rakishness to his handsome face. Beneath the neat moustache his mouth was full and verging on the sensuous and his blue eyes were capable of the most wicked twinkle. This morning however they were clouded with thought. It was barely seven o’clock but Gilbert had been awake for an hour or more and rather than disturb Blanche he had risen, dressed and come downstairs to the study in order to allow himself freedom to think. Yet even here in the study with no interruptions and no diversions of any sort he found his mind chasing in indeterminate circles.

  The inability to define a clear line of thought and get to grips with the problem irritated Gilbert and disconcerted him. He thrived on problems. His capacity for taking a problem which had seemed insoluble to everyone else and turning it to his own advantage had been one of the hallmarks of his success both in the City and at Morse Engines – where his father had ridden hurdles and managed to surmount them with a combination of flexibility and sound technical knowledge Gilbert, by employing his own particular brand of intuition, was able to positively soar over them.

  But this was not a business porism. It concerned Sarah, and Sarah was a much more complex problem.

  Early sunshine soft and golden with none of the harsh glare that would come later in the day began to flood the study and Gilbert crossed to open the window. A faint cool breeze whispered in and with it a teasing whiff of the honeysuckle that clung to the grey stone walls on this corner of the house. It was a fresh scent, bearing the newness of the morning, and Gilbert breathed it in as he pondered the question of the orphaned daughter of his wife’s seamstress.

  When he first suggested to the Pughs that they should take her in it had seemed an ideal soluton. The Pughs were honest hardworking folk with no family of their own and the farm was close enough to the village for Sarah to be able to maintain her friendships and continue with her schooling without the upheaval of having to settle into a completely different routine. At least there would be some continuity in the shattered pattern of her life, he had thought.

  But since his unannounced visit to the farm some two weeks ago when he had happened upon a fracas of some sort he had begun to have serious doubts. It was inevitable there would be teething problems in the arrangement of course, but how regularly did scenes of this kind occur? It had been serious, Gilbert was certain and he was unable to allay the suspicion that Bertha had been beating Sarah. Perhaps, he thought, it had not been so wise after all to expect her to accept a young girl into her home. Perhaps he had been so anxious to avoid Sarah being taken away to the Union that he had made light of the difficulties and deceived himself into believing the arrangement could work.

  Then there was the matter of Sarah’s schooling. After their conversation he had been to see Miss Keevil to ask why she had found it necessary to detain Sarah after school hours. Miss Keevil had told him with a malicious glint in her eye that it was because Sarah was now persistently late, but when he had pressed her she had admitted the child seemed constantly tired these days and was not achieving the results she had done previously. Remembering how Bertha Pugh had said she expected Sarah to ‘do her bit’ and having noticed on his last visit how red and puffy her hands had looked, Gilbert had begun to put two and two together. It was not outside the realms of possibility that Bertha was making the child get up early to do the chores before leaving for school – and chastising her if they were not done to her satisfaction.

  Gilbert had begun to suspect there might be another side to Bertha Pugh – a dark side which she painstakingly hid from the world – and a slow anger had begun to burn in him. Hadn’t the child suffered enough? Surely she was deserving of a little compassion to help her to come to terms with her loss, not the sort of treatment meted out to poor children in the dark days before modern enlightenment. With a growing sense of unease Gilbert had found himself remembering how eagerly she had cited The Water Babies as a favourite book. Could it be that she was identifying with Tom, the little chimney sweep? In this day and age, surely not. And yet …

  He had failed her, he thought – and worse he had failed Rachel, her mother. For a moment it seemed she was there in the room with him, looking just as she had when he had first set eyes on her, a young apprentice dressmaker come to the house to sew a wardrobe for Rose, his first wife.

  How lovely she had been! She had captivated him with her laughing eyes, her rich brown hair and her effervescent carefree youth, making him feel young again so that he had thrown caution and propriety to the winds, position and responsibilities forgotten in a fever of desire. He had loved her as he had never loved either of his wives, pale gentle Rose and worldly domineering Blanche, and that love reached out now across the years making him ache for what he had known for such a tantalisingly brief interlude.

  Oh Rachel, Rachel … But those lovely eyes were not laughing now. Instead they reproached him. What had he ever done for Rachel beyond the barest financial support she had deigned to accept from him? What was he doing now for her child … for their child?

  Gilbert straighened, removing his hands from his pockets and brushing the lick of dark hair just flecked with silver from his high forehead.

  He could not remove Sarah from the care of the Pughs now. He had no plausible reason for doing so and in any case there was nowhere else that she could go. But there was one thing he could do for her. Blanche would probably oppose the plan, Alicia might resent it – but they could scarcely object too strenuously without showing themselves in a totally uncharitable light. And in any case, Gilbert was still very much master in his own house.

  Across the valley the church clock chimed the half hour. With the breeze in this direction the sound floated through the open window of the study along with the scent of honeysuckle, faint yet melodious and somehow evocative of other summer mornings, long since past. Gilbert drew out his fob watch, checking it with the chimes.

  Half past seven. Time, perhaps, for a stroll around the gardens before breakfast. And then, when they were all gathered together, he would inform them of his decision.

  Breakfast was, for the Morse family, a sacred and carefully observed ceremony.

  At lunch time Gilbert was usually out either at the works or his city office, while tea was a nursery meal for the younger members of the family who were then in bed before their elders gathered for dinner. At breakfast however there was no exc
use for any one of them to be absent and Gilbert, always an early riser himself, would accept none. Even illness had to be dire in order to qualify for since Gilbert was scarcely ever ill himself he was impatient of what he looked on as a sign of either weakness or deliberate perversity in others. Little James, who suffered from bilious attacks, sometimes sat ashen faced and silent after a sleepless night with his head bent over the basin, and Alicia had presented herself one morning without making a single reference to the peppering of spots which had later been diagnosed as chicken pox. Only Blanche refused to pander to Gilbert’s idealism; if she was unwell she did not hesitate to say so but then Blanche rarely refrained from speaking her mind, Gilbert thought ruefully.

  When he entered the morning-room after his stroll around the gardens he found her already seated at the foot of the table, an elegant woman whose dark green silk morning dress perfectly complemented the gingery brown of her hair and somehow managed to turn it from a nondescript shade to her undoubted crowning glory. Her skin was pale too; the dress made it appear creamy, and on closer inspection it could be noticed it was the exact same colour as her eyes.

  When she saw Gilbert she smiled, but it was a smile without warmth, and her eyes retained the look of chips of green glass.

  ‘Good morning, my dear,’ Gilbert greeted her. ‘You slept well, I trust?’

  ‘Very well.’

  He turned to the two boys, fifteen and thirteen years old respectively, who were also seated on opposite sides of the table.

  ‘Good morning, Lawrence. Good morning, Hugh.’

  ‘Good morning, Father.’

  At first sight they were as alike as peas in a pod, more like twins than brothers whose birthdays were separated by thirteen months. Both had Gilbert’s lean, straight build and his dark good looks. Both were neatly dressed in white shirts with deep turned down collars and knickerbockers. But the resemblance was superficial only. Whilst Lawrence, the elder, was so serious and conscientious that Gilbert sometimes feared that what little sense of humour he had been born with had been totally subjugated by his desire to do well at school and the seriousness with which he took his position as heir to the Chewton Leigh estates and the Morse Engine Works, Hugh was a merry lad whose razor-sharp intelligence and ready sense of fun was apparent in every shade of expression so that the same blue eyes that so often narrowed with anxiety in Lawrence’s humourless face twinkled wickedly behind Hugh’s thick fringe of dark lashes and his smile could be wide or mischievous rather than strangely anxious as Lawrence’s tended to be. Already Hugh had attracted the attention of most of the girls in Chewton Leigh; in church on Sundays when he was home for the holidays Gilbert had noticed them eyeing him when they thought their parents were not looking and nudging one another and whispering.

  It was a great pity Hugh did not put as much effort into his schooling as he did into enjoying himself, Gilbert sometimes thought, and it was a malicious trick of nature that whilst Lawrence was possessed of the ambition to do well it was Hugh who had the ability. He would have liked both of them to get a University education before embarking on their chosen careers but somehow he doubted that Lawrence would achieve good enough results to be offered a place and Hugh expressed a desire only to leave school as soon as he was able and put learning behind him. His heart was set on a military career and he had been following the fortunes of the war in South Africa with a jingoism which Gilbert found faintly alarming since he himself had every sympathy with the Boers who were, after all, only fighting for their own land.

  At least Lawrence, however, displayed a gratifying enthusiasm for the family firm. Even as a little boy he had been fascinated by all things mechanical. He had striven to build a working model of a stationary steam engine and whenever he was missing for any length of time he could be sure to be found in the outbuilding which housed the engine, dynamo and accumulators which provided electricity for Chewton Leigh House. Now during the school holidays his greatest pleasure was to visit Morse Motors where he would attach himself to Frank Raisey, the General Manager, whenever he toured the works, dallying to watch the assembly of the intricate workings and pouring over the shoulders of the men in the drawing office.

  ‘Are you going to the Works today, Father?’ he asked eagerly as Gilbert took his place at the head of the table.

  ‘I wasn’t planning to,’ Gilbert admitted. ‘Frank Raisey has everything under control there and I have a great deal to do at my office.’ Then, as he saw the boy’s face fall, he smiled. ‘ I dare say I could drop you off there before I go into town if you’d like me to.’

  Blanche sniffed. ‘On a beautiful day like this I would have thought you would have been better off spending some time in the fresh air rather than in those stuffy workshops,’ she commented.

  ‘But aren’t they working on a new engine for a motor bicycle?’ Lawrence persisted. ‘I’d really like to see that. In fact I was thinking if I could get hold of a bicycle frame I might be able to build one myself. It’s the transmission that’s bothering me. I’ve been thinking about it and …’

  ‘Do we have to talk about engines and motor bicycles at breakfast?’ Blanche enquired lightly. ‘Evans is waiting to serve us and everything will be getting cold.’

  She glanced at Evans, the butler, who was hovering beside the array of chafing dishes laid out on the sideboard. ‘ Please begin, Evans. We won’t wait for the children. They will be here very soon, I am sure.’

  ‘Where are they?’ Gilbert demanded a trifle imperiously and almost as if waiting for their cue the morning-room door burst open and the three youngest members of the family came in led by Alicia.

  She crossed to her father, a tall slender child of eleven whose hair was every bit as dark as his and whose classic finely chiselled features appeared slightly too mature for her years. In time Alicia would be a beauty, at present she looked a little too old, a little too sedate, and her sharp eyes, though missing nothing, gave nothing away either.

  ‘Good morning, Father.’ She kissed him on the forehead and moved to her place.

  Behind her came the two boys, Leo, Blanche’s son, who was just a year younger than she, a scowling boy with his mother’s aristocratic nose and a mouth that was oddly epicene, and six-year-old James. As Alicia had kissed her father so Leo dutifully dropped a peck on his mother’s cheek before taking his place at the table. But James hung back in the doorway then scooted for his own place, his eyes shooting quick nervous messages at the assembled family.

  ‘James!’ Blanche’s voice arrested him before he could slip into his chair. ‘You have not kissed your father! It’s bad enough that you should be late for breakfast without trying to slip in in the hope that no-one will notice you.’

  James crept towards his father and Gilbert did his best to conceal the irritation he could not help feeling for his youngest son. What was the matter with the boy? He was like a little shadow, slippery and without substance. Perhaps it was because his mother had died when he was born, Gilbert thought. But the very fact that this timid child had cost the robust Rose her life seemed incongruous.

  ‘It’s all right, James,’ he said hastily, for the boy’s very proximity made him shudder inwardly. ‘You may sit down. And make up your mind what you want for breakfast today before Evans serves you. I don’t want to see a plateful of good food going back to the kitchens again. There are plenty of children who would be only too glad of the chance to eat what you allow to go to waste.’

  Evans began serving mounds of fluffy scrambled egg, lean rashers of bacon and small succulent kidneys, moving around the table with the inconspicuous grace which had been perfected through a lifetime of service at Chewton Leigh House. Evans came from a long line of highly skilled butlers, he had learned his business at his father’s knee and when his turn had come to take on the exacting role he had been ready for it.

  ‘I hear the Thomas child is settling in well at Home Farm,’ Blanche said, beginning on her minuscule portion of scrambled eggs. ‘It was extremely generous
of the Pughs to take her in, I think. Her mother was an excellent seamstress of course. It could be Bertha Pugh thinks Sarah will develop the same talent.’

  Gilbert, who had been glancing at the headlines of The Times, neatly folded as always beside his place, looked up. He had not intended to broach the subject of Sarah so early in the proceedings but now that Blanche had mentioned her he realised the moment had come.

  ‘I believe it falls to all of us to adopt a Christian attitude towards Sarah,’ he said, nodding to Evans to indicate that he should proceed with serving him. ‘When a child is orphaned in such tragic circumstances it seems only right that we should do our best to rally round.’ He saw Blanche’s light eyebrows raise a fraction and continued: ‘I have been doing some thinking about Sarah myself. She is a clever child and very willing and I believe her education is suffering as a result of all her misfortunes. Not that the village school has a great deal to offer in any case for although all children get at least a rudimentary education free since Salisbury introduced his government grant, a great many of them have no wish to be there and their parents resent them having to attend. No, I believe Sarah is worth more than that. I have decided to invite her here, to the house, to share her lessons with our children.’