Cavendon Hall (43 page)

“And so do I,” Hugo murmured, wanting to please her, and wanting to believe he would come home.

“What I have to say now is a sort of confession. About something I never told anyone. You must promise you will keep this very confidential all of your life, Hugo.”

She spoke so solemnly and she was so tense, he knew this was the serious matter she had not wanted anyone to overhear. “I won’t betray you,” he said. “I’m ready. Tell me what you’ve been hiding from me?”

Daphne took a deep breath, and began. “When my parents knew I had been raped and was pregnant, they jumped to a conclusion. They were also fixated on Julian Torbett. Because we had been friends for so long, and also because I had been over to Havers Lodge that afternoon. He wasn’t there. He was out. And when I walked back through the bluebell woods I was attacked. The man who attacked me wore a scarf around his face. When I managed to pull it off later, I was horrified. It was Richard, Julian’s brother. He is the one who raped me. But I let my parents believe it was Julian because he was dead. And I lied to you when I said it was Julian. For the same reason.”

“Oh my God! Isn’t Torbett still alive? Daphne, you might not be safe. He could come after you again. And what about Alicia. We say she’s mine, but she’s his, and you know that.” Hugo was full of sudden apprehension.

“No, she’s not his. She is your child, and no one will ever say otherwise. Neither must you, because you are her father. The story is simple. I slept with you the first time you came to Cavendon in July, because it was a
coup de foudre.
We couldn’t resist each other. The baby was premature.”

He nodded, understanding her reasoning. Hugo Stanton knew he must back her at all cost. But he needed to know more about Torbett and where he was at this moment. “Is that horrific man still living here? Or is he in London?” he demanded.

“Neither, Hugo. Torbett joined the army about a year ago. He volunteered and he was shipped to France.”

“How do you know this, Daphne? Have you been making inquiries about him? That would be dangerous!” Hugo exclaimed.

“No, no, I haven’t. I wouldn’t do that, Hugo. But by chance Cook ran into the Torbetts’ cook, Annie Thorpe. It was Annie who told Cook that there were no Torbett sons at home these days. One dead, killed in a riding accident on Ingham land, and the other two gone off to fight the Huns, as she called them.”

“Cook told you?” he asked, looking at her oddly. She was never in the kitchen.

“No, no, she told Hanson. Who told Miss Charlotte. Who told my father, who told me … just in passing, a bit of local gossip.” Daphne took hold of his hand. “He can’t harm us.”

“I hope he catches a German bullet, and if I run across the bastard, I’ll shoot him myself.” Hugo sounded so angry, his voice shrill. Daphne wrapped her arms around him, to calm him, saying soothing things until he was himself again.

“Do you forgive me for lying to you, and keeping this awful truth a secret from you?” she asked a little later, looking at him, biting her lip nervously.

“Of course, my darling Daphne, my beautiful wife. You did what you thought was for the best. And you are right, we must put this behind us. Look to the future and believe in Genevra’s prediction.”

“There is just one other thing. I know you want to explain about your last will and testament, and your business affairs, and Jill Handelsman. Plus all your financial affairs. Papa told me he has a full understanding of everything. He said he will do as you suggested, and telephone Mrs. Handelsman every week, and look after all matters for me.”

“I’m relieved you know all about these arrangements,” Hugo said. “But I was ready to explain, if you wanted me to do so.”

“I didn’t and I don’t. Especially your will. Because you’re coming home to me, my darling. I trust Genevra, she has the sight. Put your hand here, Hugo, please.”

She took his hand and put it on her stomach. “That’s my bump. It’s the baby, our baby, your son, Hugo. Oh let’s pick a name now, so we can refer to him properly, waiting for him to be born.”

“What a lovely idea,” Hugo said, lightly moving his hand around her belly. “How does Charles sound to you? For your most loving father and my very best friend.”

“I think it’s a wonderful name, and we can tell him over breakfast.”

“And what if it happens to be a girl?” Hugo asked.

“I think she should be called Charlotte, because Miss Charlotte did so much for me.”

“But Alicia has that name,” he reminded her.

“I know, but we’ll never use it. She is Alicia, and that’s what we call her, isn’t it?”

“It is.” He kept his hand on Daphne’s belly for a short while longer as they sat together, dreaming a little about the future, when they would be reunited. Hugo held this memory in his head and his heart, and it would sustain him in the terrible times he was facing when he risked his life on the fields of France in the war to end all wars.

Fifty-five

L
ieutenant Hugo Stanton, a platoon commander in the Second Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment, sat down on the large box filled with cans of corned beef. It was their rations and the only thing that didn’t sink deep into the mud in the trench.

Finding a packet of cigarettes in his pocket, he pulled one out, and brought a match to it, took a deep drag of the nicotine.

He was really weary today. He was only thirty-six, but he felt like a hundred and five. And he had been here far too long. Eleven months too long. He had arrived to fight on the Western Front in September of 1916. It was now July of 1917, and the British and their Allies were nowhere nearer to winning this war than they had been then.

Whilst he was training at Catterick last year, he had received a telephone call from Charles. It was Charles in steely control of himself, yet nonetheless heartbroken. He had received a telegram from the War Office, informing him that his eldest son, Guy, was missing in action, presumed dead. Yet Charles was hopeful that Guy would be found in a hospital somewhere in Verdun. Or perhaps he had been taken prisoner by the Germans, Charles had suggested.

Hugo had spoken to Daphne afterward and she, too, was hopeful, praying that her brother was alive. It had been wonderful to hear her voice, and have other news of the family. But when he had hung up he had been full of sorrow.

Hugo let out a deep sigh, knowing in his heart that Guy was more than likely dead. Everyone knew the story of Verdun, and how last year the Germans had been waiting for the large British force approaching the gates of that city.

During the preliminary shelling, the Germans had been in deep underground bunkers as the guns thundered above them. They had come out unharmed to meet the British troops, who were instantly mowed down by German machine guns.

General Haig had then ordered a second assault. On the first day there were 20,000 dead and 40,000 wounded or missing, yet the British went on fighting, their losses growing daily, and in the end it was a lost cause. By mid-November that battle was over, and at an enormous cost. The Allies reported 615,000 men killed, wounded, missing in action, or taken prisoner. And perhaps Guy Ingham had been there.

The major in charge of their battalion had recounted all this to Hugo on his arrival at the front, and he had been shocked at the loss of lives, the wholesale slaughtering of men. It was barbaric. If Guy had been in that battle, there was little likelihood of him being alive.

Major Thompson had told him other hair-raising stories, and Hugo had seen enough for himself already to understand how horrific this war was. He was relieved he had not joined a cavalry regiment, as he had thought of doing, and was in the infantry instead. The horses were at risk every day from the gunfire, shelling, barbed-wire fences, diseases, and the mud.

He had only been in the Somme sector for a few days last year, when the major had taken him out to shoot three horses which were impaled on barbed wire, and to rescue several others drowning in the mud.

Having grown up with horses at his father’s stud, and having been around them all of his life, it was heartbreaking for him to witness these horrendous scenes. But he had shot the horses willingly, knowing he was releasing them from agonizing pain. Their stomachs were torn open by the barbed wire and they were bleeding to death. A bullet in the head was quick and painless.

There had been British victories which had given Hugo hope. In April of this year, the Canadian Corps, the right wing of the British First Army, had captured Vimy Ridge near Arras, held until then by the Germans.

It had been a courageous assault by the Canadians, and at least there had been a reason to cheer for once. But Hugo had been genuinely troubled for the last few weeks. Major Thompson had told him the French cabinet had called a halt to the fighting in the Somme region in May, because there had been outbreaks of mutiny in many of the French units. The major had explained that a lot of French soldiers had reached a breaking point, and that their spirits were low.

“It’s now up to us,” the major had said to Hugo and his platoon last night. “We seem to have been left to shoulder the burden of this war. We British will have to defend the Western Front by ourselves.”

And now here he was, sitting in a trench full of mud with his rifle on his knee on the outskirts of Ypres. In June, General Herbert Plumer, leading the Second Army, attacked Messines Ridge, a German stronghold. After exploding more than five hundred tons of TNT beneath the ridge, Plumer’s nine divisions took the ridge, much to Hugo’s relief. But he couldn’t help thinking that there would eventually be retaliation, and he wondered what would hit them next.

It seemed to him that he had been in so many battles in the last eight months he had lost track, and he was bone tired.

Even in his sleep he heard the sound of metal hitting metal with precision, as a strong voice yelled, “Fix bayonets,” and instantly they went out to do hand-to-hand fighting with the Germans. Echoes of the thundering cannon reverberated in his brain even when they were not being fired.

Hugo leaned back against the trench wall and closed his eyes, shutting out the war, focusing on his memories. He pictured Daphne sitting in the rose garden at Cavendon in her rose-pink frock. She had looked very beautiful that day, and he could almost feel the sleek satin of her dress under his hands, remembering when she had told him to feel the baby. And he had, and now their little bump had arrived, had been born in December. It was a boy who was now seven months old. He felt a rush of warmth as he saw Charles Hugo Ian Ingham Stanton in his mind’s eye.

He chuckled to himself. Another little baby with a very long name. But that was the tradition, the way of their world, the world he and Daphne had been born into.

For as long as he was alive, Hugo knew that this particular morning in June, a year ago, would live on in his mind and heart. She had been so loving and lovely, and he had filled with enormous fury when she had told him about Richard Torbett, and how he had frightened her into silence after he had raped her. He had threatened her, and said he would have her mother and little Dulcie killed if she revealed what he had done to her. Even now, as he thought of that bastard Torbett, he felt the anger rising inside him like bitter bile in his mouth.

Dropping the cigarette end in the mud beneath his boots, Hugo ground it down, then grimaced at the awful stench that immediately rose up, making him gag. The mud wasn’t merely mud. It was mud mixed with the blood of men and horses, and some poor sod’s guts, and horse manure and excrement, and the effluvium rising off this foul mixture was vile. He began to cough.

“It’s the bleeding mud, Lieutenant,” Private Robby Layton said, as he hove into view in the trench. “If a bullet don’t kill us, the frigging mud will. Here, sir, I’ve brought yer a cuppa.”

“Thanks, Layton,” Hugo said, and gratefully accepted the tin mug of tea. He was in need of it. It was hot, strong, and sweet, and very welcome.

“Have yer noticed summat, sir?”

Hugo looked at Layton and frowned. “No, what are you referring to? What do you mean?”

He glanced around; it was late morning, cloudy and warm.

“The bleeding guns have stopped, Lieutenant. The Jerries are suddenly silent.”

“By Jove, Layton, you’re right!” Hugo grinned at the private. “I was a bit preoccupied; I didn’t even notice the silence.”

“Thinking of yer lady, was yer, sir?”

“I was indeed. By the way, where is Sergeant Crocker? I haven’t seen him for an hour or so.”

“I don’t know, sir, but I’ll go have a look for him, if yer wants.”

Hugo shook his head. “No, it’s all right. I don’t need him right now. Seen Major Thompson at all?”

“No, sir. I think he was at headquarters. There’s been a lull, yer knows.”

“I hope to God it’s not the lull before the storm,” Hugo muttered, and stood up.

At that moment it started. A barrage of guns. Cannons going off. Bombs exploding. Bursts of machine-gun fire. Everywhere. And German soldiers were now running through no-man’s-land, crossing the stretch of open land between them.

“Holy Christ!” the private shouted as he and Hugo looked over the top of their trench. “The frigging Huns are up our arses.”

“More like down our throats,” Hugo responded, and shouted to his men running down the trench toward him, “Fix bayonets!” Then he yelled, “And over the top, lads. Stand fast to the end.”

Hugo was up and out of the trench, his platoon following him. Instantly, they were in the middle of the fighting, engulfed by German troops, also with fixed bayonets.

The fighting was deadly, hand-to-hand combat of the most frightening kind. Men were falling all around him, their blood splashing onto his uniform. British and German troops died together, their screams of agony strident on the warm summer air.

And the bombing and explosions continued, were unending. Hugo was well aware the enemy was almost undefeatable with the huge manpower and armaments they had. They were weak against this powerful onslaught.

He fought on valiantly. His total focus was on defending himself and staying alive. Hugo prayed to God his men were doing the same, the way he had taught them. Think of nothing but surviving, he had drilled into them.