Lawren watched as a light grew deep within the pale eyes of his companion. It was as if thinking of the past had returned life and energy to him. He sat back carefully and let the old man talk.
“Your mother came to us during the war. She was just a child then; sent far aways from the London bombing like many other children in the dark days of 1940. Folks don’t care to remember it now but the capital was bombed every night except one between September 7 and November 13 in 1940. Can you imagine what a terror that must have been?
Margie says to me, ‘Dan, we ain’t got kiddies of our own. We must help those that do. We’ll take one of the little uns.’ That was the kind of woman Margie was. Always thinking of others. Always.
In those days this was a fine, big estate. I had a steady job as gardener and Margie was a cleaner who helped in the kitchens betimes. We had a tied cottage to live in where I still live on my own…… for now, at least.
The Drakes were country gentlemen and I watched young Edmund and his brother Henry grow up.
None of that there snooty London nonsense of sending the boys away to school. No, they grew up on the land and learned their lessons from a tutor with plenty spare time to see how the estate farm was run. They was always respectful of the farmhands and the workers. Your father had ever a kind word for me and helped me pick fruit in season although most of it went into his mouth, the little devil!
Young Sylvia arrived in Bradford-on–Avon station with a big luggage label attached to her coat by a safety pin. Margie took to her right away from the first minute she saw the wee lass with her pale face and her skinny little legs. She understood how strange it would be for a city girl finding herself in a big place like this far from her family in London. She just wrapped her arms around Sylvia and held her tight through the tears, and there were many tears. It was weeks before the little mite would enter the big house here. I let her sit beside me in the walled garden when I was planting or working the soil.
She was afraid of everything at the start. She would call out to me when a bumble bee got too close and she was amazed at the butterflies. It was while she was chasing a big yellow butterfly one day that she ran into your father and near knocked him down. They laughed right hard together and they were fast friends from that moment on, though two more different children you never could see. Still, they says opposites do attract, don’t they?
Years went by and Sylvia was settling down well. You would hardly recognize the lovely girl she was then, compared to the waif she had been. Her yellow hair grew long and thick and those golden eyes gleamed with health and happiness. She ran in and out of the big house and she was a pet to all, high and low.
The war still raged on in Europe but Hitler never set foot on these shores thanks to Churchill and our brave armies fighting for freedom on land and sea. It was like we was living on an island here in Wiltshire. Just far enough away from the south coast to be spared the worst of the bombs and with our own food supplies here for everyone around who needed help.
But war can damage lives even from a distance.
The letter came to our cottage from the war department and at first me and Margie didn’t know what to make of it so we kept it to ourselves.
It said Sylvia’s whole family was wiped out in March, 1943, in the Bethnal Green disaster. One hundred and seventy-three souls were killed on their way to shelter in the underground station in London’s East End after a bomb alert warned them to flee from their homes nearby. Dozens died on the stairs to the lower levels where they thought they would be safe.
Damnation take those bloody Germans!
There was only one thing to do. We never told Sylvia what had happened. We just let time go by until she had almost forgotten she had ever known another place. She called Margie ‘Mum’ first, then she called me Dad and the truth is we were as like a real mother and father to her as anyone could be.
When she was sixteen, Sylvia was taken on in the house as maid. Everyone loved her gentle ways and pretty looks; Edmund more than most. I suppose we should have known what was happening but we still kept the picture of Sylvia as a child in our hearts until it was too late.
Edmund was warned off by his father and even sent away to college for a year. That only made it worse.
He was given the choice of breaking off his romance with Sylvia or being forced to leave Hartfield Hall forever. Margie and me thought that was cruel. A blind man could see how much they loved each other.
The fights between Edmund and his father got more and more terrible until Sylvia threatened to leave the county and go away down south to bring peace back. That were the last straw for Edmund.
The two young folk, pride of their families, eloped one night with only a couple of suitcases. Edmund, your father, had made his choice and it was a hard choice I am sure. Hard for everyone.
Sylvia left a letter for me and Margie and, I suppose, Edmund did the same for his parents. I never read that one.
Give the girl credit, she wrote to Margie for years so that’s how we knew where she was but we were under strict orders never to tell anyone at Hartfield Hall where she and Edmund had gone or all news would stop. We knew about your birth and your early years. It was strange not to be able to celebrate your childhood successes in school and art studies but it weren’t worth the risk.
After the letters stopped we knew Sylvia had died. There was nothing we could do. In the law we had no real claim on our girl.
We never got to say goodbye. It near broke Margie’s heart.
My Margie would have loved to see you, my lad. She would have wept over your beautiful eyes, just like Sylvie’s.
Just like our lovely Sylvie’s.”
Silence fell in the room again. Lawren was lost in imagining his mother here as a child. He could not absorb everything he had heard. How much of this did his father know? Why was he hearing this for the first time?
Dan was wiping his eyes with the cuff of a shirt that hung down from his coat sleeve. Clearly, Margie was gone and the old fellow was alone.
After a few minutes, Lawren asked softly, “So what happened to Hartfield Hall?”
“Well now, Master Henry, your uncle, took over the estate when your grandfather died but he was never fitted for the work. The war years had weakened the country and things started to go wrong. Some around here said Henry gambled, but I saw no signs of it until precious heirlooms from the house began to go missing and estate staff were laid off. Soon after, parcels of land were sold. No one knew it then but a big developer was buying up every speck of land that came up for sale. When there was nowt left but a ring around the house itself, we knew it was all over.
Sir Henry and his family sold the house and took off for Australia. Australia! Can you believe it? No true Drake him! The gardens and forests fell to weeds and waste. All my decades of hard labour vanishing in a few short years.
Since then things has gone from bad to worse, as you can see, young Lawren. The developer moves in next month. Soon all this land’ll be covered with little houses as far as the eye can see and this dear place, Hartfield Hall, will be gone forever, knocked to smithereens by a wrecker’s ball.”
Into a pregnant pause, Lawren asked, “Why are you still here, Dan?”
He shook his head wearily. “Leaving this land will be the end of me. I doubt I’ll survive until there’s a new house built for me. My cottage is still there for now and I’ll be in it till they carry me out.
Too many memories to leave now. Too many memories; good and bad.
I come here most days just to keep an eye on the old place. There’s not much left, but no lad with a match is going to burn it to the ground while I’m around. I am right sorry you didn’t see it in the glory days, Master Lawren. It was magnificent then.”
An idea seemed to strike him and he slowly pushed himself up from the stool and grabbed at Lawren’s arm. “Come with me! Come along!”
Lawren was happy to move after sitting listening for so long. He followed the bent back of old Dan into the stately front hall where they had entered the house. Dan pointed upward with his stick and declared the upper levels were unsafe due to roof damage.
“The rain gets in up there now. Anything that’s still there gets ruined. My legs won’t carry me up those stairs. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
Dan sucked his teeth in frustration then, remembering he had a visitor, he nodded to Lawren.
“Look in here. It’s what’s left of the Grand Salon.”
Lawren went into the high ceilinged room with ornate fireplaces and wall sconces still in place. The tall windows were tightly shuttered but he could make out dusty carpets covering the floor and a few remaining large pieces of furniture showed what must have been an elegant room in its heyday.
Dan was roaming around pulling dust sheets over couches and sighing at signs of deterioration.
Abruptly, Lawren was transported to the dream place he had seen on the plane. He felt dizzy as the dream transposed itself over the vestiges of the salon in which he now stood. Vibrant colours sprang into life around him like a CGI effect in a movie. The room was twirling rapidly while he glimpsed a fire in the grates, silken-patterned fabrics, glittering chandeliers and crystal everywhere, and a family with two boys seated at a gaming table playing cards and laughing together.
As swiftly as the images had arrived, they disappeared in a swirl of colour and the sad, dull room was restored.
“Dan!” he gasped, holding on to the nearest chair. “Were there ever portraits on the wall here?”
The old man turned in surprise. “Indeed there was. You can just make out the outlines where the huge frames lay against the wall for many, many years. Some was painted by a Drake of bygone times, I think, but most were more recent paintings of Drake families. Some of the best ones went to museums in Wiltshire, if you should want to see them, and one is in the British Museum, or so I’m told.”
The portraits I saw in the dream were once in this room! What just happened to me? Was the dream a warning not to come here?
Lawren was shaken by the vision he had seen. He felt the need to escape from this place and integrate the overwhelming new information he had received into his former life picture. His entire family experience in Canada was changed forever. He now had a completely new perspective on his parents, their origins, and their choices.
This is overwhelming! I feel shattered!
He reached inside himself for a reality check and it came with a glance at his watch. Hours had passed since he had found the way to Hartfield Hall. He must leave soon. He looked over at the old man shuffling around in his past life and mumbling to himself.
How sad to be the last person to remember the glory days. When everything you loved has gone there’s nothing left to live for.
“Dan, I have to leave now. I can’t thank you enough for telling me about this place. I will speak to my father when I get back to Canada and tell him what you have said. I know he will be immensely grateful to you for all you have done, both in the old days, and especially now.”
Tears sprang into the faded blue eyes and the wrinkled mouth drew into a line that showed how hard it was for Dan to hold back his emotions. He managed to force out a few words before closing up the doors to the salon and heading back to his small room and his dying fire.
“Master Lawren, tell him I am grateful that he loved our Sylvie so well and sent you back to see me this once before I go.”
Lawren swallowed his own deep emotions and reached out to pat the old man, slipping a twenty-pound note into his trembling hand. He turned and fled at once through the outer door. He felt he might collapse in grief if he stayed one more minute.
The promised rain must have started to fall when he was inside the house. It was a light, persistent rain that took a while to penetrate but still managed to soak through clothing nonetheless.
Lifting up the bicycle, he took one last look at Hartfield Hall and saw a faded stone shield high above his head on a pediment that surmounted the front entrance. It had a simple pattern of a diagonal line with a circle, or perhaps a star, on either side. It was difficult to make out anything more in the fading light of the afternoon.
I meant to take photographs of this place for my father. I can’t do that now. Better that he keeps whatever good memories still exist for him.
The problem of what to tell his father was added to the list of problems he was now accumulating but his first priority was to concentrate on the road back to Bradford-on-Avon. Darkness was falling swiftly and he was acutely aware of the dangers on these wet and busy English roads. His heart thumped with a combination of fear and dread that he might never get back to safety. He began to realize that safety meant Anna and home.
There was something alien in this society where the class system could intervene in the lives of young people in love. He determined to learn from this experience. He would waste no more time establishing a viable life with Anna. She had always asserted that finances were not a crucial component in any relationship between them. She was so right.
The bicycle sped downhill faster and faster but Lawren Drake scanned every inch of the road ahead of him for possible hazards. Fortunately the hired bike had both lights and brakes that functioned reasonably well. He was annoyed with himself that he had not had the sense to check this out before leaving town but he could not have known what this day held for him.
Nothing now would be allowed to impede his journey back to The Sailor’s Rest.
It seemed like hours of travel in darkness before he saw the lights of the town. He was shaking with cold from the chilly wet wind on his face. His hands on the handlebars were frozen into a deathlike grip.
He noticed that most shops on the high street were closed for the night so he bypassed the garage. Albert’s pub grub should be available at this hour and his mouth watered at the thought of hot food and a warm fire to thaw out his body. Thawing out the shocks to his mind was another thing entirely. He could only think that talking today’s events over with Anna tonight might help that dilemma. A wave of longing swept over him. Anna would soon be waiting for him in Glasgow.
Anna.
Her very name sounded like home to him.
There was one more urgent need before he left Wiltshire. There were drawings pushing restlessly against his mind. He must take the time to record his impressions on paper. It was the only safe way to relieve his mental stress, or at least some of it.
What a day! What a strange and unsettling day.