Authors: Alison Stuart
Alice set the crust she had been eating around, back on the plate and looked up.
“If you’re not in a hurry, I’ve something to show the two of you.” Sarah rose to her feet and fetched a large parcel, loosely wrapped in brown paper from the sideboard. She set it down in front of Alice. The child knelt up on the chair and pulled back the wrapping to reveal a heavy old-fashioned scrapbook.
“It’s just something I’ve kept all these years,” Sarah said, collecting the breakfast plates and carrying them over to the sink.
Helen pulled her chair up beside Alice and they began to turn the pages. The scrapbook contained a history of the Morrow’s lives, chronicled in newspaper cuttings, yellowed invitation cards and photographs, beginning with the wedding of Sir Gerald Morrow and the Honorable Evelyn Vaughan. There followed birth announcements for Charlie, clipped from
The Times,
items from the social pages of the county newspaper recounting Charlie’s prowess at cricket and rugby and a photograph of Charlie playing Dick Dauntless in a school Gilbert and Sullivan production. There were newspaper photographs of Sir Gerald’s funeral, including one of the villagers turning out to line the route of the coffin to the church.
A couple of small articles mentioned the success of the Winchester First Eight, stroked by P.N. Morrow, at the Head of the River and Paul as captain of the First Eleven in their win against Harrow in the cricket.
Then the war, a brief item recounting that Captain Charles Morrow would be awarded a posthumous MC for gallantry in the face of the enemy and a couple of newspaper epitaphs, none of which Helen had seen before. She looked at the neat printed words recounting Charlie’s bravery and the nation’s collective sorrow at his death. They meant nothing to her, it was almost as though they talked about a total stranger.
Helen closed the book. “Thank you for showing that to us.”
“I want you to have it,” Sarah said. “I thought Alice may like to keep it.”
“May I?” Alice’s eyes shone and she turned the pages slowly, revisiting each one as Helen helped Sarah with the washing up.
Alice swiveled on the chair and looked across at the two women by the sink. “Mrs. Pollard, Uncle Tony said you know all about the Holdston ghosts,” she said.
Helen started and nearly dropped the cup she was drying. “Alice, we’ve talked about this before. There is no such thing as ghosts.”
“Have you ever seen any, Mrs. Pollard?” Alice persisted, ignoring Helen’s protest.
Sarah cast Helen a quick glance. “I have to disagree with you, Mrs. Morrow. There’s ghosts at Holdston right enough.”
Helen glared at Sarah. She did not need Sarah filling Alice’s head with such nonsense.
Alice’s eyes widened. “So they’re real?” Sarah frowned. “They’re not real in the sense you and I understand, Alice. There’s old Ben. You never see him but you know he’s around because you can smell his tobacco. Then there’s some civil war soldiers. There was a battle near here and they reckon they was brought here and died of their wounds.”
“Are they scary?” Alice’s eyes resembled saucers.
“No,” said Sarah. “They’re in their own place in time, love. If I know one of them is around, I say good morning. They like to be acknowledged but they’re not scary and they won’t hurt you.”
Helen rubbed her wrist and shuddered inwardly at the memory of that icy touch. If she allowed herself to believe that what happened to her in the dark corridor the previous night was indeed paranormal, then she had to disagree with the last assertion. There had been malice and an intention to hurt in that grip.
“I think that’s enough talk of ghosts,” she said firmly.
Sarah smoothed down her apron. “Mrs. Morrow, if you don’t mind, I’ve choir practice tonight. If I leave some soup for you and Miss Alice, will you be able to manage without me? There’s fresh bread and cheese in the larder.”
“Of course, Mrs. Pollard. What about the Major?”
“The Major’ll fend for himself if he wants to eat.”
Helen caught the older woman’s wry smile. “You do worry about him, don’t you?” she observed.
“Someone has to. He hasn’t got anyone else. My boy, Fred, was in his regiment and there weren’t a man who served under the Major who wouldn’t have put their trust in him.”
It was the first Helen had heard about Sarah’s son and she sensed the answer even before she asked, “And your son? Where is he now?”
Sarah stiffened. “He was killed ten days before Armistice,” she replied. “If the Major’d still been with the regiment he’d have seen Fred through to the end.”
“Oh Sarah,” Helen’s voice broke. “I’m so sorry.”
Sarah shook herself. “We’re just two of many women in this country, Mrs. Morrow. Mothers, wives, daughters, sisters. We’ve all got someone to mourn but the Major came home, lost and silent just like he was when he first came to this house when he was eight years old.”
“Eight?”
“Aye, motherless and fatherless, for all his father was still alive. I don’t think there’d been much room in his folks’ lives for him even before his mother died.” Sarah heaved a theatrical sigh. “Her ladyship tried her best but he wasn’t an easy child to love. Some children aren’t, but here in the kitchen with me and the staff he was a different boy. So yes, I worry about the Major.”
Helen looked at the door as if she expected Paul Morrow to reappear through it. She rose to her feet and tapped her daughter on the shoulder. Alice, still absorbed in the scrapbook didn’t move.
“Would Miss Alice like to help me with the baking this morning?” Sarah asked.
Alice brightened and looked from Sarah to her mother. Helen relented. It suited her to have Alice gainfully employed. She had other plans.
* * * *
Paul ran his hand through his hair and contemplated the paper-strewn table, his gaze coming to rest on the Remington. He needed to start typing up the report, but the thought of tying himself to the ancient machine with his laborious two fingered typing did not thrill him. He turned his head at a knock on the library door. Helen stepped into the room, her hands thrust into the pockets of her cardigan.
“I thought if you didn’t mind, that perhaps I could help you?” she said.
“Help me?”
She looked past him at the disorganized mess on the table. “I will die of boredom if I don’t find something useful to do. Is there any typing or filing I can do?”
“I won’t say no to the offer of help with the typing,” Paul admitted. “As your daughter has already observed, I’m no typist.”
Helen walked over to the table and picked up the pile of photographs of the recent dig. “This is extraordinary. Who is that man?” She pointed to a figure in one of the photographs.
Paul stood up and joined her at the table. “Woolley, Leonard Woolley. He believes he has found the ancient Sumerian city of Ur.”
Helen looked up at him, the wonder shining from her face. “The Ur that is mentioned in the Bible?”
“The same.”
She drew an awed breath and replaced the photographs back on the table. “What is your role on these digs?” she asked.
“Officially, I do what the army trained me to do. I organize things. An archaeological dig is no different from a military operation. People have to be fed, watered, housed, moved around, so that’s what I do. But I have some aptitude with ancient language and I do help out with this sort of thing.” He swept a hand at the tablets in their padded boxes. “I leave the digging work to the others.”
He made a pretence of shuffling some of the papers on the table to avoid her eyes. While part of him yearned to join the dig, he could not bring himself to descend into the diggings. Woolley had tried to persuade him to join in but he had stood on the edge of the trenches and broken out in a sweat.
“As interesting as Woolley’s work is, I have no particular passion for ancient Babylonian history.”
“What is your passion?” She cocked her head and looked at him with a smile.
“Ancient Greek,” he said without hesitation and then without really knowing why he said it, he added, “In my spare moments in the trenches, I worked on a translation of Homer’s
Iliad
.”
As soon as he said it, he regretted the confidence. She looked at him with large gray eyes that invited his trust in a way no one else had for a long time.
“Tony said you never went to university?”
Paul felt the old grievance shift on his shoulders. “I’d won a scholarship to Magdalen in Oxford but my uncle insisted that it was my father’s dying wish that I follow him into the regiment. So off to Sandhurst, I went.” He wondered if she could hear the bitterness in his voice.
Helen’s gaze lingered on his face for a few moments before she squared her shoulders and picked up some papers with his scrawled notes. She squinted at the papers in her hand. “Your writing is atrocious but I am used to my father’s scrawl so it shouldn’t take me too long to decipher this.”
“Your father?”
“Yes, I work for my father,” she said. “When I’m not doing the paperwork for Terrala, I type out his speeches for parliament. The boys went to university, I went to secretarial college. Father deemed that a far more useful skill for a woman.”
He heard the irony in her voice and smiled. “And you would have rather done something else?”
“I don’t see why I couldn’t have gone to university. They’re taking women now. I could have studied medicine.” He raised his eyebrows and she smiled. “Although it is far more probable I would have ended up a school teacher so maybe secretarial college wasn’t such a bad idea.”
“This is the administrative report for the season,” he said. “Very boring and unromantic but if Woolley wants the money to continue digging, it must be done. To keep myself amused, I also do some of the more tedious translation work which is why I have these tablets.” He picked up one of the tablets from its box and handed it to her.
She turned it over, her eyes widening. “How old is this?”
He shrugged. “Probably older than the stones on the hill.”
She handed it back to him. “I’d hate to drop it,” she said. “What does that one say?”
He smiled. “It’s a household inventory.”
Her face fell. “How dull.”
“I suppose it is, but at the same time it is like a photograph of their way of life.”
Helen looked at the Remington. “Well, then let’s get to work,” she said.
He passed her a stack of handwritten pages and she rifled through them, pulling a face. Paul gave her a rueful smile. “I’m sorry. Just tell me if there is something you can’t read.”
Helen sat down at the Remington, took two pieces of plain paper and carbon and began to type with a speed and dexterity that left him staring at her in amazement. At this rate the report would be finished in no time.
With a few stops to decipher his atrocious handwriting, after typing for an hour Helen pushed back her chair and stood up, stretching her arms above her head. She walked over to the enormous mahogany bookcases that flanked the old fireplace and surveyed the books for a moment before pulling one out.
“Whose crest is this?” she asked pointing to a regal coat of arms on the bookplate.
Paul shook his head. “No idea. It’s not the Morrow crest. I suspect you’ll find that most of the books have the same bookplate. One of my illustrious ancestors would have purchased the library as a job lot.”
Helen replaced the book and pulled out another one. “The pages on this one haven’t even been cut,” she exclaimed.
“Evelyn’s brother has looked over the books. He seems to think as a collection it’s worth quite a sum these days,” Paul said, sitting back in his chair and tapping his nose with the end of his pencil.
“Will you sell it?”
Paul shrugged. “Evelyn has suggested that and I have no great affection for it. It will buy us some time.”
“Time for what?”
He sighed. “I suppose you should know, Helen. The estate barely makes ends meet. This house alone,” he looked up at the ceiling, “costs us a fortune. Did you wonder why we live only in a few rooms with two staff? As well as the house, we have eight farms to run and maintain. We need to improve the way we farm but there is no money for new equipment and hardly enough to make running repairs to the farm buildings.” He gave a rueful smile. “Sorry. None of this is your concern.”
“But it is isn’t it? I’m a Morrow too and I’m only too aware of the difficulties of running a large estate. Is there anything I can do to help?”
He looked at her. She was involved in the affairs of her father’s property so, yes, she would understand his difficulties but he wouldn’t ask her for help. The trust Charlie had left was for her and the child and he knew little of Helen’s family situation. Holdston was his problem. His alone.“The rents haven’t been raised in twenty years and I can’t do so now, not while the buildings are in such poor condition so that’s why I work. The museum pays me quite well. Enough to keep body and soul and this house together, but we can’t go on this way.”
“What will you do?”
He met her gaze. “I want to sell Holdston.”
Her eyes rested on him for a moment. “Would Charlie have come back and saved Holdston?” she asked.
Paul shook his head. “No. He told me he had every intention of settling in Australia after the war, and even if he’d wanted to, Holdston is beyond saving. My aunt and uncle lived in another world.”