Chapter Twenty

September 1941

The dreadful party had lost its spark after her big announcement – not that it had been a very good party anyway. Even the very sight and smell of the champagne she’d once loved made her gag, which just made things one hundred times worse, really. At least nobody had noticed she had substituted the stuff for ginger ale, and thus she had avoided any awkward questions before she was ready to tell them her news.

They’d peeled away just after dinner, everybody except Helen, who had stayed with her on the terrace to wave everyone off. Helen, beautiful little Mary-Pickford-lookalike Helen, with her dark hair and her kind dark eyes, turned to Stella and said it, said the very thing Stella had been trying not to think about.

‘Have you told anyone else?’

‘By that you mean …?’ Stella raised her eyebrows quizzically, although she knew the answer.

‘Your brother. Your father. Rob’s family.’

Stella laughed shortly and shook her head. ‘God, no. I think I’m hoping it’ll disappear. I’m just a little bit pregnant, really. Maybe if I don’t think about it, it won’t happen.’

Helen shook her head. ‘Sweetheart, there’s no such thing as a little bit pregnant. It’ll happen and your tummy will all sort of pop and then you won’t be able to hide it anymore. How far along are you?’

Stella dipped her head. It was embarrassing, and she didn’t want to talk about it, but if she had to talk about it, who on earth would be better than Helen?

Rob. Rob would be better than Helen.

She quelled the thought.

‘I don’t know.’ She shrugged, thinking of the silly conversation she’d had with Leo all those years ago about Decca Mitford. Decca’s poor little baby had died and it was all so desperately sad, and Esmond was in the air force too, still flying and still in danger.

Stella shuddered. She no longer wanted to be like Decca Mitford.

‘Rob was here in May.’

‘May.’ Helen counted on her fingers. ‘We’re in September now. That’s about four months.’ She cast a glance at Stella’s figure and frowned. ‘Darling, a pencil skirt isn’t very forgiving, really. I can tell.’

Stella pulled her jersey down as far as it would go and then crossed her arms over her stomach. ‘Please. Helen. Stop it.’

Helen leaned against the balustrade and folded her own arms. ‘It was nearly me, you know,’ she said quietly. ‘I was pregnant, and it was Anthony’s. And then I lost it.’ She shrugged and stared off over Stella’s shoulder. ‘And then we lost Anthony. I wish I’d had it. I wish I had something left of him. You’re really very lucky.’

‘Oh, God, Helen! I’m so sorry. I didn’t know!’

Helen smiled sadly. ‘Nobody knew except me and Anthony. He told me he’d come back and marry me.’ She dipped her head and picked at a piece of non-existent fluff on her own skirt. ‘But he didn’t. So there you go.’

‘He might. He might come back.’ Stella sounded desperate and she knew it. ‘It might have all been a terrible mistake.’

Helen laughed and shook her head. ‘The boys were with him, darling. He won’t be coming back.’ She pushed herself away from the balustrade and turned, so she was leaning on it, gazing across the estate. Her gaze followed the path of their friends’ cars; they had driven off in a very subdued manner and who could blame them. Stella had really killed that party.

‘I thought about becoming a nurse, but now I’m not so sure. I think my talents may lie elsewhere.’ She fixed Stella with her eyes. ‘I can help you. I really think I can help you.’

‘How?’ She looked down at her stomach and grimaced. ‘Can you make it all go away?’ She hated it. She hated that burgeoning, unforgiving curve that pushed insidiously out from beneath her waistband.

‘No. But I can help you deal with it. I didn’t tell you this, either, but Leo has been writing to me. Ever since Anthony died. His letters were very sweet to start with, asking me how I was managing, expressing how sorry he was. He’s really very lovely.’ She smiled fleetingly. ‘You don’t give him enough credit, you know. He dragged you out of quite a few scrapes, the whole time we were growing up. I can remember a lot of them, actually.’

‘Quite possibly more than me,’ replied Stella wryly. ‘I suspect I was fairly lit up for many of them.’

‘Fairly lit up? Yes, you could say that. He’s carried you home on more than one occasion.’

Despite the horror of her situation, Stella couldn’t help but smile quickly at that thought. Dear Leo. Then the tears sprung to her eyes again. She had no right to smile, no right at all.

‘Anyway.’ Helen blushed and looked down. ‘The letters changed after a while. He started to tell me how he felt about me – how he’d felt about me for years. It was after you heard about Rob. He said life was too short, and he had to say something. And he felt so guilty for not being able to fight with the rest of them.’

‘His weak heart came in handy for something then.’

‘I don’t know if he quite sees it like that.’

‘Well, I do! I don’t want my brother killed like everyone else.’ And then the tears began to flow properly, and Helen moved over and hugged Stella.

Eventually, she smoothed Stella’s hair down and pulled away, and smiled. ‘I don’t want that to happen either. I started to love him, in my own way. What I had with Anthony was different and unique and I could never hope to have that again – but Leo makes me feel safe and I know he’ll look after me. And, selfishly, I know he won’t be killed like Anthony, because he won’t be out there in battle. I need something to cling onto, and he’s it. Leo wants to marry me. Do you mind?’

Her heart lurched with something a little like joy. ‘Mind? Of course I don’t.’ Stella was astonished, wondering how Helen could even think it any of her business to mind or not mind. ‘But I don’t understand. I’m happy for you.’ She hugged her as if to prove a point. ‘But why are you telling me all this? I’m just a complication in it all and really nothing to do with you or Leo.’

‘I disagree. We have to tell him about you, and then ask if he can help us. If the absolute worst happens and he won’t, then I’ll tell him I won’t marry him, and I’ll come away with you. We can pretend you’re a widow and get you a ring. We’ll manage. Then we’ll worry about afterwards when you’ve had the baby. My parents are gone, it hardly matters to me. I have no family who would pry.’

‘Helen! You simply can’t jeopardise your future for me. God! It just won’t happen. It can’t happen.’ She shook her head, feeling that the tenuous carpet she had been standing on as a way out of this mess had just been pulled out from under her feet. She was back at the beginning with no hope of redemption. ‘No. I absolutely refuse to let you throw your life away on me and my problems. I’ll have to think of something on my own.’

She looked down at her stomach and saw again the tell-tale curve that Helen had commented on. Her sweater had ruched up, settling above the tiny bump, as if the baby was already starting to demand that everyone knew about it. Tentatively she forced herself to touch it and felt the firmness beneath her fingertips.

‘Don’t be silly. It would work.’ Helen was serious. ‘But we have to tell Leo. Gosh – maybe if I marry him, very quietly, and I stay away from the Hall for a while, we can pretend we got married much, much earlier and your baby is ours.’ She was trying to make a joke of it, and Stella loved her for it.

Stella’s hand was still flat against her stomach, and for the first time, she felt something other than panic or horror. She suddenly felt a tiny surge of excitement and of hope. This was part of Rob. This tiny life they had created was part of him. It was proof of their love, and proof that they had been brought together again, even after that awful letter and everything that had happened afterwards.

She tried to make a joke back. ‘How do you even think my father would believe that? Or that Leo would fall in with that plan? The baby could have bright red hair and Rob’s attitude and you’d never pass it off as your own.’

Helen moved towards her and took her hand. ‘Perhaps not. But we need to speak to Leo before we think too far ahead. Can you do that?’

‘If you do it with me. But I can’t tell my father.’

‘You don’t have to tell him yet,’ said Helen, and Stella was reassured, however briefly.

‘Stella! Dear God!’ Leo stared at her in horror and ran his fingers through his hair so it all stood up on end. He shook his head. ‘How? How in God’s name?’

Stella’s cheeks burned and she swiftly wiped the easy tears from her eyes. ‘How? Well – it’s like this. When a boy and a girl love each other very much, they do something called sex—’

‘Stella!’ That was Helen. ‘Being flippant is not going to help.’ Helen’s cheeks were as scarlet as Stella imagined her own were.

‘No, it won’t help. Nothing will help. It’s bloody hopeless. I might as well go off and drown myself in the river, or pull the trigger on one of the pistols in the Long Gallery and put a bullet in my brain. I might as well—’

‘Estella Aldrich! Shut the hell up!’

Despite herself, Stella snapped her lips shut and stared at her brother. He hardly ever raised his voice to her. His face was white and pinched, and his lips were pale and compressed. His hand strayed quickly to his jacket pocket, right over his heart. Sitting down, he laid his hands deliberately out on the desk and closed his eyes. Stella flicked an anxious glance to Helen, who was at his side in an instant. She would have made a lovely nurse.

‘I’m all right,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s just the shock.’

Helen turned and looked at Stella. ‘Stella, we’re trying to help you. Leo just needs to take it in. There’s no need to be silly about it. You’re making things worse.’

Stella didn’t think she’d ever felt so small in her life. Similarly, she didn’t think she’d ever heard Helen use that tone of voice before, and it brought fresh tears.

‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ She sat down and covered her face with her hands. ‘I – we – couldn’t help it. It was when he had the twenty-four hours leave, and we hadn’t seen each other for ever so long. He wanted to marry me and I was horrid about it. He didn’t think I wanted to marry him, but I did. I do. I wish I’d … I wish—’

Leo’s voice was steel. ‘He may yet come back. The main problem for now, though, is, of course, what we can do for you.’ He shook his head in despair. ‘I hoped this wouldn’t happen. I really hoped I would never have to deal with something like this. I hoped you would be careful. It was too much to hope that you would be able to control yourself, I suppose.’

‘We were careful, every other time. Even the first time.’ She flushed, remembering the River Hartsford by moonlight that long-ago summer night, and wished she could take the words back. Her brother didn’t need to know any of that.

‘Oh, God.’ He closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘Please don’t tell me any more.’ He opened his eyes and stared at her. ‘The way I see it, we have only one option – it gets adopted.’ His eyes drilled into hers. ‘That’s bearing in mind the fact that you are one hundred percent certain you’re pregnant and beyond any – danger.’

‘If by danger you mean losing it, I think it’s pretty much decided to stay. Despite my hurling myself around the bloody Home Farm and digging for sodding victory.’ She flicked a gaze up at Helen, and her cheeks coloured again as the other girl looked away. ‘Sorry.’ Leo would hopefully think she was apologising for being flippant again, but inside she cringed. ‘Yes. Adopted.’ She looked up at Leo and tried a watery smile. ‘Do you want to adopt it?’ Leo just glared at her. ‘Sorry.’ She lowered her eyes again, then rubbed her face with her palms. ‘I don’t know what I’m saying, I really don’t. I just wish Rob was here.’

‘He’s not here, at least not at the moment. So we have to be strong and deal with it until he is.’

‘Could we not help Stella to keep the baby?’ Helen asked, tentatively. ‘She does have a point. If we took care of it, then it wouldn’t be so bad for her, would it?’

Leo looked at Helen and his eyes softened, full of love for this girl whom he had won through the most terrible of circumstances. ‘Now, how would that work?’ he asked, half-teasing. ‘We’d have to have been married, oh, four, five months ago at the very latest? Nobody around here is going to believe that we had a baby five months into our marriage and it was a bouncing six or seven pounds odd!’

‘No, that’s true. But we maybe have two ways around it – we all move away, and then we pretend Stella is widowed. Then, we move again, where nobody knows us at all and we could have been married five years, never mind five months.’ She cast a glance at Stella, who was quick enough to realise Helen was assessing her treacherous stomach again. She tried to suck it in, as if the bulge was the result of too many puddings, but of course that didn’t work and her cheeks burned again. ‘We then tell everyone in the new place that it’s ours – because nobody will have seen Stella pregnant. Or, because I know how very much Hartsford means to you, Stella moves away on her own.’ Helen looked at her sympathetically. ‘One of our friends is sure to be able to help find you somewhere if we can’t. Stella pretends she’s widowed again, has the baby, then you and I, Leo, go on a trip somewhere. Maybe to London? And we find a poor little abandoned baby whose parents died in the Blitz, and we bring it home and sort of adopt it.’

‘The Blitz ended in May. It wouldn’t even be born yet.’ Leo stared out of the window. ‘But who’s to say somebody didn’t find themselves in the same situation as my sister. The country is full of starry-eyed girls and soldiers taking liberties.’

‘Rob didn’t take any liberties.’

‘I didn’t say he did.’ Leo returned his glance to her. ‘I think Helen’s suggestions make sense. How much longer do you think you can hide it for?’

He looked uncomfortable and Stella tugged at her sweater again. ‘Not long.’ Her voice was almost a whisper.

‘Very well. Helen – would you consider marrying sooner rather than later? Then we can get Stella away from here before the tongues start to wag.’

Helen smiled and wrapped her arms around Leo. ‘I’m ready whenever you are. I didn’t really want to wait anyway. Life is too short. We all know that now.’

‘Sadly, it’s true. I know I’ll never compare to Anthony, but I’ve always loved you, Helen. I don’t want to wait, either, but I certainly don’t want to rush you into anything you’ll regret.’

‘Leo, I love you. Don’t be silly. I’m not going to lie. You know Anthony was – is – will always be my first love, but you are different. I love you in a different way. You’re my rock – you’ve kept me from crumbling in ways I can’t even explain. It’s another sort of love, but it’s no less of a love. You’re the person I want to spend the rest of my life with.’

Leo reached up and covered her hand with his and Stella felt the tears spring back into her eyes. Was it even possible to fall for someone else; to settle for someone else when the love of your life had been ripped away from you? She couldn’t see how really, but it was obviously working for Helen.

‘You don’t need to bring anything forward on my behalf.’ Stella said. ‘I can just go somewhere, and you can meet me whenever you get there.’

‘Ezzy, I’m not going to abandon you like that. Not when I can help you.’

Stella bit her lip. Her brother’s voice was so kind, and she realised, perhaps for the first time, how much she had relied on him without even appreciating him.

‘God, Leo, I’m so sorry. I’ve never been the best sister to you. I’ve never really thanked you at all. For anything.’

Leo coloured and looked down. ‘It’s just part of my job, Ezzy. I do the best I can, under the circumstances.’

Helen moved over to her and knelt down in front of her. She took Stella’s face in her hands and smiled that beautiful, film-star smile at her. ‘I’ll need a maid of honour. We’ll do it quite quietly, neither of us wants a fuss. Is that all right? We’ll get you a nice dress to wear.’

Stella couldn’t help but laugh, a little bitterly. ‘I think the days when a new dress was the most important thing in my life – as well as a good, dry champagne – have passed. I don’t think they’ll ever come back. But I appreciate the sentiment. Thank you, Helen. Thank you. And Leo, I do love you. I know I don’t show it, but I do.’

Leo just smiled. ‘We’ll manage somehow.’ He cast a glance over to the closed library door. ‘We just need to make sure Father never finds out, or we’ll both be in trouble then.’