The print blurred before her eyes and Lily was finally driven to redirect her gaze to Selene’s smirking face. ‘What did you say?’
‘My darling brother. He’s taken quite a fancy to a certain house on Fossburn Street. Bertie always did love to slum it.’
It was as though Selene had hit her full in the face. Nan. A mistress was one thing but
Nan?
Dear God, no. Bertie as a customer of Rose’s mother seemed somehow beyond endurance. With commendable control, Lily got to her feet, folded the newspaper with excessive care, and without even a glance in Selene’s direction, walked from the summer house across the garden and into the house.
Later, when she tackled Bertie on the subject, he did not trouble to deny it.
‘You ain’t the fun you were, old thing,’ he said with genuine regret in his voice. ‘Doesn’t signify that I love you any the less. But a chap needs his fun. Absolutely essential. You’re wrong about one thing though.’ He laughed then, as if it were all some merry schoolboy jape. ‘T’aint Nan I call on, but Rose. Dashed fine gel she is too.’
Somehow it was the final straw.
That night Lily moved out of his bedroom, and the very next day she went in search of Nathan.
For the remainder of that cold winter and well into spring, Lily experienced love as she had never known it before. Pride was of no consequence. It mattered only that she was with the man she loved.
Nathan had welcomed her without any sign of triumph, or even surprise. When she’d appeared on his doorstep that first evening, he’d simply held open the door and without a word from either of them, she’d stepped inside.
For a long moment he’d looked at her, then put his hands to either side of her face and kissed her brow: so chaste, so innocent, and yet the very softness of his touch had ignited her passion. The intensity of his expression had made her knees shake so that Lily thought she might crumple.
His love-making had been everything she desired - slow and tender, swiftly rising to a tide of passion that left them both exhausted. It was as if she had waited her whole life for this moment.
Later, as Lily lay with her cheek against his bare chest, there was no guilt, only complete harmony and deep satisfaction. She told herself that she’d never claimed to love Bertie, sweet and kind though he’d always been to her, and as enthusiastic and generous a lover as a wife could wish for. Yet their coupling had been nothing in comparison with this. She had never yearned for Bertie, never shivered with desire at the merest butterfly kiss on her brow. Loving Nathan was entirely different. It consumed her.
Yet she learned that embarking upon a passionate affair was not a comfortable experience. Constantly looking over her shoulder, she took risks, once even borrowing the gig without permission. She left it standing in the street, and someone came knocking on Nathan’s door to tease him about his newly acquired wealth. That taught her to be more discreet. But as winter clung fast to the hills and valleys of Lakeland, where else could they go to be alone?
After that she went on foot. She would call for the ferry, trying to avoid the curiosity in old Bob’s eyes as he transported her twice-weekly without a single question asked.
Nathan gave her a key to his house on the corner of Drake Road. He’d bought the property from his landlady and, save for a housekeeper who came and went like a ghost, lived in it alone. Which was exactly as he liked it. No prying neighbours, no one to tell him when to eat, or get up, or go to bed. So long as Lily took care to enter unobserved, preferably under cover of darkness, it offered complete privacy for their meetings.
Sometimes she would tell herself that she wouldn’t go again. But as the appointed hour drew near, she’d shake with nerves, desperate to escape her responsibilities at Barwick House. Sometimes she’d cry off with a headache from whatever function Margot was planning and hurry to Nathan’s side. But there were times when this was impossible, and she’d have to wait till the guests had departed before daring to sneak across the shingle and ring the bell.
On these occasions Ferryman Bob’s efficiency seemed to vanish and he would cross the lake as slowly as a snail, complaining his working days grew longer and more tiring the older he got.
Lily would sit in the prow of the boat and speak not a word. What could she say? Her nerves were too tightly strung with worrying whether Nathan would have had the patience to wait for her.
He always did, if sometimes he grumbled at her lateness. Lily would try to explain how difficult it was for her to get away, the risks she took for him and the way Margot watched her with eagle eyes. Nathan would shrug those massive shoulders of his and smile, as if he were perfectly certain she would come to him at whatever cost.
When once Lily dared to ask him what they were about, and where this would all lead, he said, ‘Don’t think of the future. Be happy as we are. You know that I’m not a man who likes commitment.’
‘Selene seems to think you are. She imagines you are well worth pursuing as a husband.’
He cast her a sideways look which said everything, and told her nothing. ‘Jealous?’
Somehow this made her feel cheap and tawdry, but her twice-weekly visits continued. Nothing would keep her away. His love healed her, brought her back to life, though were it not for the very real and shuddering passion that consumed him when he made love to her, Lily might have believed Nathan didn’t care for her at all. But he did, she knew it. A man of independence, ambition and pride, he didn’t care to admit quite how much.
And throughout it all, Lily and Bertie continued to be perfect friends.
Margot’s social calendar continued as usual and Lily played her part in it with increased assurance. If she bloomed with a more brilliant radiance, wore her gowns with a more bewitching grace, nobody questioned it. They imagined she had finally overcome the worst of her grief and homesickness for a life long gone; that she’d finally settled to her new responsibilities.
‘How that girl has blossomed,’ they would say.
‘Not a girl any more but a beautiful, elegant woman.’
‘A lady.’
Lily laughed when she heard them, remembering how she’d once quarrelled with the Clermont-Reads over this very point. Perhaps she had got her revenge, after all, in a most unexpected way.
Only once did Bertie suggest she return to his bed. ‘I’ll give Rose up if you want me to, Lily?’
She made no comment. She certainly had no wish to restore marital relations, so what Bertie did with his time was of no concern to her now.
If she stopped to think on it the wound was still raw. But perhaps that was only hurt pride. She’d not seen Rose from the moment she’d learned of the liaison. Not so naïve as the child she had once been when they’d first met, Lily now fully understood the nature of Rose’s ‘friendship’ with Dick, as well as with Bertie.
Perhaps their dual misfortune was that while Rose seemed set to follow in the path of her mother, Lily had no hope of emulating hers, with not even one child to love.
At one time that might not have troubled her. Now Lily viewed Hannah from a different perspective. She saw that her mother had been, and still was, loved by a good and faithful man, had enjoyed the fulfilment of being loved and respected by a brood of healthy children. What more could a woman ask for? Lily, childless and torn between two men and two worlds, who once had set little store by such things, would have given anything now for such riches.
Lily told herself she couldn’t expect to have everything in life. Nor must she ask for it. She had Nathan, didn’t she? At least as much of him as he was prepared to give. Lily marvelled now at how she could ever have hated him, ever have thought him a cruel bully.
Oh, but he was no angel. He gambled furiously, often all night. On these occasions he’d go straight into his office at the Steamship Company, without troubling to go to bed at all. But he never allowed these sessions to clash with Lily’s visits so she happily accepted them as a part of his nature, no real threat to their relationship.
The cold uncertain days of spring gave way to the warmth of early-summer. The rhododendrons and azaleas came into bloom, and the clumps of yellow globe flowers, wild hyacinth and garlic flowers that clustered all along the shoreline. The sun brought colour to Lily’s winter-pale cheeks, her hair glowed with a rich chestnut sheen, and her hazel eyes positively danced with delight at the slightest provocation. She looked as she felt, shiny with love. It seemed a miracle that no one ever commented upon it.
Despite all her insecurities, the pain she had suffered, and the subterfuge she was forced to endure, Lily was happier than she had ever been. So long as she could be with Nathan, what more did she need? She had learned to be discreet. The least she could do for Bertie was to ensure that she did not embarrass him, and he extended the same courtesy to her. They lived separate lives while remaining the best of friends. It was an arrangement which worked well enough and Lily couldn’t see why it shouldn’t continue.
Then three things happened in quick succession, and everything changed.
It began innocently enough, on a warm day in June like any other. Lily had woken with a feeling of suppressed excitement that she really oughtn’t to feel. Yet it fizzed inside her, nudging away all sense of what was right and proper.
She ran downstairs on light feet, humming softly to herself. This evening she and Nathan would meet secretly, as arranged, in Carreck Woods. It didn’t get dark till quite late at this time of year, and they’d taken to meeting there whenever he could get away from his duties at the Steamship Company.
Not that she’d seen much of him recently, and Lily had frequently complained that his boss worked him too hard.
‘I’ve my living to earn, my life to lead, as have you, Lily,’ he’d replied, and she’d learned to be satisfied with that. She daren’t quarrel with him too much or he would punish her by staying away for nights on end, leaving her pacing back and forth in the empty wood, railing silently at her own folly.
‘It’s only that I love you so much,’ she would say, and then he would kiss her, as he always did, pushing her down into the green undergrowth and making love to her till her fears were silenced, until the next time.
This morning Lily’s fears and dreams seemed suddenly of no account as Edward’s newspaper told of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Having survived one attempt on his life, he now lay dead in Sarajevo and the spectre of war loomed large.
In the little parlour later that day, Margot seemed more concerned with whether her guests preferred China or Earl Grey tea. The tea was poured, delicate pastries handed round, and the room positively hummed - though more with social tittle-tattle than talk of foreign affairs.
Lily sat with Dora, the pair sitting in a private corner where they shared a plate of smoked salmon sandwiches and exchanged nostalgic memories of their time in The Cobbles.
‘I do miss it in an odd way, you know,’ Dora said. ‘The challenge of getting all those children clean very nearly defeated me. Mind you, I learned to bathe three at a time - that way they could help each other with all the scrubbing.’
Both girls laughed. Lily liked Dora. Their friendship had blossomed during those hard months, and she now saw her earlier dismissal of her erstwhile rival as another middle-class female seeking a husband as incorrect. Or rather, Bertie’s assessment of her, which she’d accepted, had proved to be entirely wrong. Dora wasn’t simply a well-meaning do-gooder. She had hidden depths. In addition, she possessed a surprisingly strong stomach, unflappable good sense and a wry sense of humour.
Her homely face grew quite serious as she reached for a second sandwich. ‘It opened my eyes, I don’t mind telling you, Lily. There were children there actually stitched into their clothes, would you believe? For warmth, they told me. Yet how were they ever to be washed, I asked them? They simply looked at me with those blank accepting stares, as if I were speaking a foreign language.’
‘It’s another world,’ Lily softly reminded her. ‘One of survival, where cold is more likely to kill you than a bit of muck. Or so they think.’
Dora brushed her hands together, sending a shower of crumbs from her skirt all over the Persian rug and cast an anxious glance in Margot’s direction to check if she’d been noticed. ‘It’s changed me, Lily. I can’t go back to being a simpering miss after something as
real
as that. Mama wants me to marry, of course.’ She pulled a face. ‘But this war will put paid to that idea.’
Lily laughed. ‘Of course you will marry. No talk of war, I forbid it.’
There was a pause as Betty refilled their cups. ‘I shall do something terribly useful. Certainly not sit at home and sip tea.’ She scowled at one of Margot’s best Dresden cups and saucers on the small table before her, as if it were demanding she did exactly that.
‘War.’ Lily spoke in a voice hushed with fear. ‘I can’t bear to think of it.’ Would Bertie join up? Would Nathan?
‘You’ll have to think of it. It’s going to come. Nothing’s more certain. Pops was saying only the other day that there are probably some funds left over from the South African War Comforts Appeal. The committee who managed it are planning to reform and provide medical care for the wives and children of those called up. I shall present myself as a volunteer at their very first meeting.’ She nodded her head so vigorously that a hair pin fell on to the plate on her lap. Dora left it there. ‘Why don’t you come too?’