Harriet felt as though she were suffocating. How could old Dibble work in this stewpot of a kitchen? The range emitted great belches of warmth all day long, because the Rector had to keep his strength up with good hot meals, praise the Lord. The windows and doors might be open, but that only let a fresh blast of heat in from outside. Mrs D. looked like a turkey with her thin neck red with heat sticking out from her high black collar. Greatly daring, Harriet had undone the top button of her print dress, only to have the sainted Miss Pilbeam yell at her. Now old Dibble was, judging by her expression, about to do the same thing. The Rectory, Harriet admitted grudgingly, wasn’t a bad situation, but any position in service meant long, back-breaking hours whether the sun was scorching or Jack Frost was freezing you. Perhaps she could go and work in a factory; some girls did. Or be one of them typists? She was good with her hands. She wondered vaguely how she would go about this, and when no answer was forthcoming, dismissed the idea. She could always marry Bert Wilson if things got too bad here. No, on second thoughts, she might end up with a tray on her head like his Auntie Gwen.

Old Dibble had had it in for her ever since the affair of Fred. Harriet still felt aggrieved. There had been a shadow outside the window, she was almost sure, and who could it have been if not Fred? Percy had no interest in women, only his blessed garden. How Fred and his brother and sister ever got born, beat her. Old Dibble must have lain down and covered herself with compost to lure Percy into digging in her with his dibber. No, it must have been Fred peering in, and she was righteously offended that his word had been taken against hers.

‘Did you order them raspberries, Harriet?’ Old Dibble’s querulous voice broke in upon her thoughts and her dinner.

‘Course I did,’ Harriet lied indignantly. She hadn’t exactly forgotten, but who was going to walk out to Grendel’s Farm half-way to Withyham in this weather to order raspberries? She’d been expecting to see Uncle Seb, who farmed it, in the village but must have missed him. Plenty of time. She’d see him at the flower show on Saturday.

‘White ones, mind.’ Old Dibble was looking at her suspicously.

‘If he can,’ Harriet hedged.

‘Drought.’ Mrs Dibble’s teeth clicked together after delivering this judgement. ‘You mark my words, we’ll have trouble with them raspberries. I’ll have ’em straightaway, tell ’im, if there’s any danger of ’em being finished early. I’ll do ’em up with sugar in bottles. They’ll keep ready for the ices.’

‘I’ll get them,’ Harriet said shortly, stirring her tea viciously.

‘Mind you,’ Mrs Dibble sat down gloomily. ‘I say if this weather keeps up we’ll be lucky if there’s enough ice left in the Manor ice-house to keep the butter firm, let alone keeping that there champagne cold. Seems to me I’d best get the freezing-machine out and the ices done quick and into the refrigerators. Or back in the ice-house if there’s no room. Covered, against the dust.’

Harriet grinned involuntarily. She had a sudden vision of Percy going into the old ice-house at a crouch like you had to, carrying tray after tray of ices. Mrs Lilley had arranged with Lady Hunney to use the ice-house, provided Percy did all the work. The Manor never used it now, only filled it each year from Stickleback Pond as an emergency, and sometimes stored blocks of ice from the ice-man there too. She supposed Mrs Lilley hadn’t liked to ask The Towers for the use of their freezing machines to help out, after Miss Tilda shouted out that way. Harriet hadn’t heard her, but she’d been told all about it by Myrtle, and the implication had been breathlessly discussed in whispers in Myrtle’s bedroom. Harriet didn’t know what to think; it had been pleasant to know Agnes Pilbeam’s carefully laid plans for marriage were spoiled, but if it had really been Swinford-Browne then he shouldn’t get away with it. Or should he? He couldn’t be all bad. He was going to give Ashden a cinema once they’d moved that stubborn old fool Ebenezer Thorn out of the way. Harriet had only been to the cinema twice, to see Sixty Years a Queen – who hadn’t – and later to see a funny film about the Keystone Cops. What she remembered about that most was the heady excitement of sitting in the dark next to Len Thorn, the warm sensation of his hand moving up and down her thigh – and what had come after that, in the hop-field, taking the short way home from the station. He hadn’t given her the time of day since, though, the bastard. Lucky she hadn’t had a kid in the basket as a result of that.

‘The speed everyone’s moving around this house you’d think we’d turned into snails. Time you were in your black and laying luncheon, Harriet. It’ll be me and Myrtle doing all the work at this wedding, that I can see.’

Harriet’s eyes flickered. ‘You’ll have Fred, Mrs Dibble. He’s all right, is he? Hot weather does funny things. You ought to keep your eye on him.’

‘Any more of that and I go to the Rector,’ Mrs Dibble warned.

Her inimical eyes made Harriet aware she’d stepped over the agreed line. So what? ‘I’m sure we’re all fond of Fred. Perhaps it wasn’t Fred I saw. But there was someone, Mrs Dibble. There was.’ The horror of it. She was quite sure now that the shape had been a face staring in through the window, seeing her with no clothes at all, in the bath. No one saw her like that. Not Len Thorn. Not even herself. She’d been brought up properly and always covered herself like she should. And there had been someone at the window. And Fred had meant to lurch into her in the garden that day. She didn’t make mistakes.

‘And you keep a watch on them raspberries. If this heat keeps up, we’ll all be hunting for blackberries instead.’

 

Caroline propped herself up with cushions on the rug in the garden. There was no escaping the heat inside or out (for St Swithin had obliged on July 15), but outside she could at least escape the word ‘wedding’ for a time. She pulled her sunhat firmly over her head, and rejoiced that she was alone. Phoebe had taken to riding one of the horses from the Manor, George was at school, Felicia was out with Daniel, and Isabel was as usual at Hop House or The Towers, anywhere where she would not get involved in tedious detail. Caroline regretted this, for she had looked forward to these last months when they would all be together as a family at the Rectory. Irritating though Isabel often was, she added a spice of drama to daily life, and Caroline knew she would miss her.

She picked up her books, but somehow neither Mr E. Phillips Oppenheim nor Miss Phyllis Bottome succeeded in gripping her today. She began to feel guilty at abandoning her mother to the now daily Dibble debates about The Wedding. She lay back on the cushions and decided to contemplate life – or herself. First she thought of Reggie, hugging their secret to her, then tried to think what her future would be like as the next chatelaine of Ashden Manor. That thought brought the question of Lady Hunney rushing back into her mind again, so she firmly switched back to Reggie. If she closed her eyes, this was a delightful way of passing the time, and entirely compensated for the indisputable fact that in the Rectory her sole role appeared to be as Solver of Minor Problems, Producer of Alternative Solutions and Chief Scribe and Clerk to the Grand Vizier and the Sultan of the Domain of the Wedding. If it wasn’t the wedding under discussion in one or other of its hydra heads, it was what had happened at the flower show, what would happen at the fête tomorrow, the Sunday School treat, or Phoebe’s departure to Paris, or the new curate Charles Pickering, a most humourless gentleman, whose attitude implied he was doing Ashden a great honour by joining their community.

What was not under discussion, Caroline realised ruefully, was Caroline’s twenty-second birthday which fell in ten days’ time on the 27th. Birthdays in their sprawling family occurred so frequently that they were not major events, but some effort was usually made to signify that on the whole the rest of the family was pleased that their relation had arrived in this world. This year the Rectory seemed to be dancing furiously round a maypole on which Caroline’s string had somehow become misplaced as the music grew faster. Reggie hadn’t forgotten, of course. Caroline wriggled a toe luxuriously. They’d agreed to go boating on the river in a Henley regatta of their very own, or else to the seaside, and she was looking forward to it, especially since neither Father nor Mother had yet suggested any need for a chaperone, despite the changed relationship between herself and Reggie. Although she relished this pleasure to come, she nevertheless felt her nose to be slightly out of joint, however hard she tried to straighten it.

Perhaps now she would contemplate life, even the world. Together both presented, she decided, a set of concentric circles, spinning independently with little or no reference to each other. Closest and most precious was her own circle with Reggie, the one they’d spin in for the rest of their lives. Encircling it was that of the Rectory and Ashden, and this, although it included Reggie and her, was complete in itself. Outside it, rarely touching it directly, was a bigger circle, the world Father read about in The Times every day, a world which chillingly grew worse each day and, unlikely as it seemed, threatened civil war in Ireland. That would be terrible, and almost as if Kent and Sussex were to declare war on each other. What tragedies and problems it would bring where families were divided between Catholic and Protestant, between Ulster Volunteers and National Volunteers, both arming themselves as the Government tried to push the Home Rule Bill through with the temporary exclusion of six of the northern counties to appease the Protestants. Poor Mr Asquith seemed to be doing his best to please everybody and ending up pleasing nobody. She tried to translate this into Ashden terms, by imagining her father and the minister so bitterly divided over the parish council that they came to blows outside the Norville Arms. It would never happen, of course. Every issue could be discussed and settled, Father believed, where there was common desire for peace, and so it must in Ireland, surely. Perhaps the King could do something – though she was forced to admit he was doing his best to ignore the other big issue: women’s suffrage. There’d actually been a bomb found in the church of St John the Evangelist in London on Sunday, the fuse had even been lighted when it was found.

Outside the British Isles, there was yet another circle spinning around, that of the world outside Britain, which touched them even more rarely, only when the Empire needed help or protection. Events like the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria at Sarajevo in Bosnia the day after Reggie’s twenty-fourth birthday dance were terrible, but that circle did not collide with theirs. Their duty here was to do well by Ashden and their own path in life. But if that were so, Caroline wondered, why had that bird of freedom fluttered within her when she attended a suffragette meeting in Tunbridge Wells with Tilly and Penelope a few days ago? She had wanted to go to London and attend one of the rallies at Kensington Town Hall, but her chief interest – to see the Pankhursts – was frustrated by Mrs Pankhurst still being in Holloway, and planning, if released, to go to France to join her daughter Christabel and to recover her health. The Tunbridge Wells group, she knew from the local newspaper, was very active, very militant, and she was taken aback by the obvious pride in her aunt’s voice as she talked almost non-stop on the railway journey to Tunbridge Wells.

‘McKenna said in the House last month that the public had four suggestions as to what to do with us: let us die if we refuse to eat, deport us, treat us like lunatics – or give us the vote. That coward informed us he will do none of these, but it is obvious the country is with us – the vote it must be.’

It hadn’t been obvious to Caroline. Bravely though the speakers had addressed their audience, their reward had been a shower of rotten eggs from men and women. It was only afterwards that Penelope had casually mentioned that there was a non-militant group in the town, with some prominent members, including a novelist; Caroline resolved that she would attend one of their meetings in the Victoria Hall in Southborough. Not now, for all-important at the moment was her engagement. Much as she tried to ignore it until Reggie’s planned announcement at the wedding, it was proving impossible. It coloured everything, for in the middle of her own personal circle was a deep, deep happiness that crystallised into Reggie.

‘Caroline.’

At the unexpected voice, she sat up, blinking into the sun with surprise. It was Patricia Swinford-Browne, looking even larger than usual in a yellow muslin dress complete with mustard-coloured sunshade.

‘I expect you wonder why I’ve come skulking through the bushes,’ Patricia continued cheerfully.

‘It does seem somewhat strange.’

‘I like you,’ Patricia said unexpectedly. ‘May I sit down? The rug will do. We’ll share it.’ Patricia lowered herself cautiously to the rug and sighed. ‘I loathe this weather.’

‘Your skin doesn’t suit it, that’s all.’ Tactful and correct. Patricia had the kind of complexion that erupted eagerly into spots and rashes, and grew excited at the faintest ray of sun.

‘I don’t know why. I throw everything from pigswill to arsenic on it. I’m Mother’s despair.’

‘I suppose you want to talk about the wedding?’ Caroline enquired, since Patricia seemed hesitant to continue.

‘To escape from it would be nearer the truth. It’s a race who will drive me mad soonest, Ma with her constant wailings, Robert with his happy smile, or your sister with her “anxious-to-please” helpfulness. But in fact I came to give you a warning. Promise me you’ll never tell.’

At this childish plea, Caroline stopped feeling defensive about Isabel and began to feel rather sorry for Patricia. ‘I won’t without your permission.’

‘You won’t get that. Pa would kill me. It’s about your aunt. She’s going to burn a church down.’

What?

‘Not yours,’ Patricia reassured her. ‘Missenden in Kent, it’s near Goudhurst. The vicar is a pal of McKenna’s and he gave a sermon about the place of women in the home and how we’re all inferior beings. On Sunday he’s going to preach God’s word on what to do with lunatic females.’

‘But my aunt burn a church?’

‘They’ve burned others,’ Patricia replied. ‘It’s property, isn’t it? Anyway, the point is that Father’s found out somehow. I heard him talking to the Chief Constable. They’ll all be arrested, and your aunt will go straight back to Holloway. You did know she’d been in stir, didn’t you?’ Patricia produced her slang with relish.

‘Yes,’ Caroline said shortly. ‘Now tell me why you’ve come.’

Patricia was taken aback. ‘I thought you’d want to prevent her going.’

‘Yes, but why you? Are you a suffragette too?’

‘Hell’s bells, no,’ Patricia informed her elegantly, ‘much as I approve of your aunt. I hate The Towers, you see, and every so often I have to kick it. I’ll probably have to stay there. The kind of men who appreciate my charms would be seen off as a son-in-law by Pops with a boot in their rear, the kind of men who think my money would compensate for having me thrown in too I would see off with a boot in their rear, and as for true love, well, no Prince Charming’s going to come running after me with a glass slipper, is he?’

Caroline was appalled at Patricia’s matter-of-fact diagnosis of her future, and said so.

Patricia shrugged. ‘They only care about Robert. Once they saw they’d bred an ugly duckling, they left me to waddle about on my own. If you get any information on how to turn into a swan, you might let me know. I’ve tried mercolised wax on my face – Ma said I’d been let loose from Madame Tussaud’s. If I became a suffragette I’d terrify Asquith into giving us the vote.’

‘Are you sure you aren’t tempted to join them?’

‘Quite sure, thanks, Caroline. If it came to a choice between soapbox and suds at the kitchen sink, I’d choose the suds.’ She paused. ‘I hope it doesn’t, though. There must be something else I could do.’

‘Yes,’ said Caroline firmly, taken aback by Patricia’s mournfulness. ‘But you must look for it. It won’t come waltzing up The Towers’ drive looking for you.’

Patricia giggled. ‘It’s more likely to be ragtime if Ma and Pa throw me out, as I gathered happened to your aunt. You’d better hurry, by the way. Father’s already galloped off in the Daimler wielding his tomahawk.’

 

Full of anxiety about Aunt Tilly, Caroline hastily thanked her, and raced back to the house. There was no sign of her aunt though the Austin was in the garage, which relieved her greatly. Surely Tilly would have driven, not gone by train, if she were going to Goudhurst?

Nevertheless, she sought out her mother. ‘Where’s Aunt Tilly?’ she asked her mother as casually as she could.

‘She went up to London earlier to the theatre, and she’s staying overnight with a friend. Why?’

‘Nothing.’ Caroline’s heart sank. Theatre? Friend? Patricia’s story could possibly be true. Her aunt had shown no signs of knowing the Tunbridge Wells group well – in deference to the promise Father had extracted from her, Caroline supposed. Or it might be genuine; her aunt belonged to the London groups. Should she tell Father about it? No, came the answer. He couldn’t reach the church any more than she could, and the very idea of his sister burning a church would appal him. There was only one thing to be done …

 

‘If this is some wild goose chase …’ Reggie said threateningly as he cranked the Lanchester’s starting handle.

‘You’ll what?’ Caroline could have cried with thankfulness at Reggie’s reasonably unreluctant agreement, especially since he could not bring his beloved Perry, as it was only a two-seater. He had been forced to bribe the Ashden chauffeur into turning the other way while he checked the battery was charged and sneaked his parents’ motor-car out.

‘Point out your reputation is hardly going to be improved.’

‘I never thought of that.’ Caroline was amused. ‘I told Mother I was going to see you anyway, so she won’t worry.’

‘Suppose the Lanchester breaks down and I can’t return you till morning? It has been known.’

‘Oh, Reggie, what a good idea. You’ll have to marry me then, and even your mother couldn’t refuse. Do let’s break down.’

‘We’ll have your Aunt Tilly with us. That will put a stop to your dastardly plans, woman. You’ll be in the back seat, so my virtue is going to be quite safe – unfortunately.’

‘That’s better. You’re smiling.’

‘Getting your crazy aunt out of scrapes is more fun than listening to Daniel drone on about the mysteries of the East.’

It was strange to be driving so far alone with Reggie in the hot warm evening, just the two of them side by side, sailing through villages she’d heard of but never seen, passing inns and public houses full of light and noise, and the warm smells of the countryside in between as dark began to fall. She watched his long slim hands on the wheel, thought of them caressing her yesterday, his hands against the light chiffon on her dress, and wondered how anybody could be unhappy in this world with such wonders of love within it. Soon when they were married there’d be no chiffon between them, no underclothing, perhaps not even a night-dress, nothing between those hands and her skin. Perhaps too nothing between her own hands and Reggie’s body. Her chest suddenly tight, she tried to imagine it and felt herself blushing.

‘I told you you should have worn goggles.’ Reggie glanced at her. Belatedly she realised the dust on the road was sweeping into the open motor-car and stinging her face.

‘We’re here now.’

Caroline shivered as the Lanchester drew up some thirty yards from the church. It was out of sight, but their noisy arrival could hardly have gone unnoticed in this peaceful still night. The church was a little way from the village centre surrounded by yew trees. Somehow she sensed the presence of other people, though there was no one to be seen. At least there was no sign of the police – or William Swinford-Browne. Would he come? Was he here, lurking in this twilight, waiting his moment? She took a deep breath, as she jumped from the motor-car and ran to the church porch, Reggie close behind her. There were others to be saved besides Aunt Tilly, she had to remember – though that depended on how one looked at it. Perhaps all of the suffragettes would be only too glad to have the police come, to be arrested, or in Tilly’s case, be re-arrested under the Cat and Mouse Act. Their object of publicity would be achieved either way. It suddenly occurred to her that it might not be easy to persuade Aunt Tilly to come home.

Reaching the porch door, Reggie shouted: ‘Miss Lilley, come out.’

‘It’s me, Aunt Tilly.’ Caroline supported him, checking the bushes lining the approach to the church.

‘How on earth did you get here, and why?’ Tilly emerged not from the bushes, but from the church itself, flushed and very angry. She seemed a stranger. Surely this wasn’t the same woman who read Alice in Wonderland to her as a child?

‘What’s more important,’ Reggie interrupted, ‘is how you’re getting back.’

Caroline rushed to the church door. ‘All of you, wherever you are. The police are on their way.’

There were three of them. Cloaked figures emerged, unalarmed, undaunted, waiting impatiently for this situation to be resolved. Aunt Tilly was obviously the group’s leader.

‘We must hurry then,’ Tilly said grimly. ‘We should have something to show them. This for instance.’ She gestured to what one of the group was holding – a tin canister with strings and straps attached to it, and something trailing from the top. ‘Over five pounds of gunpowder,’ she added triumphantly as Reggie made an unsuccessful grab at the tin.

You can’t stay. You’ll be arrested. And you can’t, you can’t let that thing off.’ Caroline was appalled.

‘Why do you think I’ve come? To give up now?’ Tilly snapped.

‘But this is a church.’

‘And you told the police?’

‘No!’ Caroline felt outrage.

Tilly said impatiently, perhaps an apology in her own way, ‘For all I know your feelings on churches outweigh those towards an aunt.’

‘Or yours to a brother.’

‘If so forced. And I am.’

Surely this could not be her beloved Aunt Tilly, saying these terrible things? Caroline tried again, while Reggie argued with the rest of the group.

‘You must come with us, Aunt Tilly. It’s Swinford-Browne who has arranged for you to be re-arrested. He might even come himself. Do you want to be humiliated before him?’

Tilly paused for a moment, taken aback. ‘The cause is more important. What is one more prison sentence? Mrs Pankhurst has been imprisoned countless times, myself only thrice.’

‘Because it would mean Swinford-Browne winning.’ Caroline was getting desperate. ‘It would be defeat for you, not victory. He’d have got what he wanted. You can’t want that to happen.’ For a moment she thought she’d convinced her aunt, but she was wrong. Tilly ran back into the church to join her fellows.

‘Have you any thought for Caroline and what she’s risking by coming here?’ Reggie shouted angrily after her.

‘It is of less importance than the cause,’ Tilly shouted. ‘I’m going to light a fire that all will see.’

‘You blasted well won’t,’ Reggie yelled at her, then turning to Caroline: ‘Crank up the Lanc.’

She stood bemused for a second, then ran for the motor-car, aware of a scuffle behind her. She turned briefly to see Reggie gripping a struggling Aunt Tilly firmly by the arm and slamming the church door behind him in the face of would-be rescuers. He then picked up Aunt Tilly bodily – no mean feat for she was a tall, strong-boned woman – and stumbled after Caroline towards the Lanchester. Like an automaton Caroline seized the starting handle, cranking furiously. She’d never done it before, and could only pray that the gods that ruled motor-cars would smile on her. Reggie tumbled Aunt Tilly into the passenger seat – fortunately without the bomb – but once he had taken his hand away from her mouth, the noise and struggles began. Mercifully the engine responded, and somehow Caroline managed to scramble into the back seat as the Lanchester began to roar down the lane. It was some few minutes before they passed a police van and a Daimler on the Goudhurst road speeding in the opposite direction, and Caroline shrank down out of sight. Turning back, she could see a thin spire of smoke above the trees, and a little later a fire engine chugged purposefully past them.

‘You can remove your arm, Caroline. I am not foolish enough to leap from a moving motor-car,’ Tilly remarked drily. Caroline obeyed; she had not been aware that her hand was gripping her aunt’s arm so tightly still.

‘I take it you approve of your future husband’s masterful habits?’

‘I will not have Caroline –’ Reggie began.

‘Caroline does have a voice of her own, does she not?’ Tilly interrupted. ‘Or are you proposing to control her mind as well as body when you marry her?’

Before Reggie could reply, Caroline said clearly, ‘I believe Reggie was right to have brought you away.’

‘I am sad that you think it right to frustrate the cause of woman’s advancement, Caroline. I had expected more of you.’

‘And I of you, Aunt Tilly. You are blind to every moral standard save that in which you choose to believe. How could you burn God’s house?’

‘It ceases to be the house of God, and turns into mere bricks and mortar when it is misused.’

‘In your mind, perhaps,’ Reggie said. ‘How about the people who have worshipped there for years, who were baptised in its font, were married before its altar, and whose loved ones lie buried there? Is it mere bricks and mortar to them?’

‘When men and women are seen as equal, we can build anew.’

‘And what about your family in the meanwhile?’ Reggie enquired.

‘Unfortunately sometimes the individual must be sacrificed for the greater good.’

‘What about Father, and your mother?’ cried Caroline. ‘Do they mean nothing?’

‘My mother?’ Tilly turned angrily round. ‘My mother has always cared only for her own wishes. She seeks to impose her views on everyone; she can hardly complain if now her daughter follows her example – especially as she has made it clear I no longer am her daughter in any but the legal sense and that, too, she is trying to circumvent. Very well, then she is no longer my mother. Her actions, as yours,’ Tilly looked scornfully at Reggie, ‘render her unworthy of respect from anyone.’

‘I disagree,’ Reggie said calmly. ‘You expect your views to be respected, if not shared. Your mother is entitled to the same treatment.’

‘You are wrong. I do not expect my views to be respected. Those who intend to change society cannot bother with such niceties. Caroline, I blame myself for failing to make you understand. I know you felt you had to act as you did tonight, but I am sorry for it.’

Caroline was not.

 

William Swinford-Browne had the last laugh. Caroline woke late the next day, for it had been midnight when she arrived home, and she and Reggie, to his tight-lipped fury, had to face Father and Mother, who remained unconvinced by stories of punctures. Tilly had unwillingly agreed at Caroline’s pleading to slip in through the drawing-room window. Now Caroline realised to her dismay she had probably missed breakfast, and calculated the chances of appealing to Mrs Dibble’s heart. The hot water in her jug had long since grown cold. It was not a good start to the day and she knew it was going to get worse as soon as she emerged from her room to go downstairs.

She could see Father below her in the entrance hall talking in a low tone to Mother. Felicia was hovering at their side, and she had obviously been crying. She looked up, and, seeing Caroline, hurried up the stairs towards her. ‘Something terrible’s happened,’ she cried. ‘Mr Ifield and two more policemen came, and they’ve arrested Aunt Tilly. They say – oh, how stupid, that she’s a suffragette and that she’s already been in prison several times. How can they be right? Oh, poor Aunt Tilly.’

Caroline’s heart plummeted. All their efforts had been to no avail. William Swinford-Browne had won and Aunt Tilly had been taken from them to face yet more forcible feeding in prison. What would it do to her health this time? She had barely recovered from the last onslaught. She felt torn apart between her old love for her aunt, her horror at Aunt Tilly’s militancy, and the knowledge that somewhere, in between, lay a reconciliation. As yet, it was a reconciliation whose nature she could not grasp or even define.

Her first task was to explain to her sisters and George that Aunt Tilly was neither martyr nor monster, and that would be difficult – save, perhaps, she suspected, with George who since the tennis match had idolised her aunt and might see this latest development as another feather in her hat. And, indeed, Caroline reminded herself, Aunt Tilly herself might see it that way.

‘The police are right, Felicia. Aunt Tilly is a suffragette, and has been for some years. It’s what she passionately believes in, darling, so don’t be too upset. She isn’t – for she sees it as another step towards the vote. She wants it this way.’

‘But Aunt Tilly of all people.’ Felicia looked dismayed.

‘Yes. We never really knew her, did we? We took her for granted.’

‘We’ll see her again, won’t we?’ Felicia cried in alarm, swinging round to her parents. ‘She’ll come back here.’

Laurence waited for Elizabeth to answer, and she did. ‘Of course. This is her home now.’

As the days passed, the ruffled waters of the Rectory seemed to smooth over Tilly’s departure. Perhaps she would be out again in time for the wedding was Mother’s invariable response. Isabel, on the other hand, made it quite clear that she hoped nothing of the kind; she was only too relieved that such a potential source of danger to her plans had been removed from the household, though full of lamentations as to how the scandal of a suffragette aunt in prison might affect her plans as a future Hop House hostess. Disgusted for once, rather than amused by her sister’s self-centredness, Caroline questioned her father closely. He would only say that Aunt Tilly had returned to Holloway to serve out her eighteen-month sentence, of which thirteen months still remained.

‘But, Father, I read in the newspaper that fewer and fewer suffragettes are re-arrested under the Act now because forcible feeding is horrifying the public so much. Why is Aunt Tilly an exception?’

‘I fear, Caroline, though as yet without proof, that Mr Swinford-Browne could answer that question for us. We can but pray for her. I shall speak in Church on Sunday.’ Would he get proof, he wondered. Should he get proof? As so often, the man shouted yes, the servant of God must debate.

Would he pray for her if he knew how narrowly Aunt Tilly had avoided being one of the group who set fire to Missenden Church? Knowing Father, in some ways more than he did himself, Caroline knew the answer was yes.

 

‘Take your stockings off, Aggie. Paddle your feet with me.’

‘No, thank you.’ She instinctively shrank from such intimacy. ‘Anyway, Jamie, it’s time we had the picnic.’ She hurriedly began unpacking the basket on to the rug, making great show of chasing away an early wasp, and ignoring Jamie as he removed his bare feet from the Medway and rolled down his trouser legs. She was aware that he was watching her, as she unwrapped the sandwiches she’d made that morning under Mrs Dibble’s scathing eye. Everybody thought she was a fool for still seeing Jamie. Everybody’s eye followed her in the village. Everybody knew he was still refusing to marry Ruth. And everybody thought he was no better than his brother, and using her, Agnes, as an excuse to get out of either paying support to Ruth’s child or marrying her. What did she think, though? Aggie just didn’t know.

It would have been nice in this heat to feel the cool water trickling over her toes, but to do that she’d have to pull up her skirts in front of him to take her stockings off, or go behind a tree and have him think … No, it wasn’t worth it.

‘Would you like a sandwich? It’s fish paste.’

He took one in silence and proceeded to munch his way through four of them, together with a tomato and an apple.

‘What’s the matter, Aggie?’ he pleaded. ‘You’re doubting me again, surely.’

No, no, she wanted to cry, but it wouldn’t be true. ‘I saw Ruth,’ she managed to blurt out at last. She saw him flinch. Why, if he had nothing to hide? Her heart suddenly pained her.

‘She’s going to sue me, she says, for breach of promise.’ His face was full of misery.

‘How can she if she’s no proof?’ Agnes struggled to be practical, but inside she was being torn to bits.

‘I don’t know, and she don’t need me or money now anyway. Old Swinford-Browne’s going to give her a cottage, so Rector says, and set her up as a laundress. I reckon he’s the father, that I do. Folks are saying –’

‘He’s not the father.’

‘How do you know?’ He was taken aback.

‘I told you, I saw her. She says it’s you.’ Agnes could hear the water trickling, trickling, cool. Not like the trickling sweat down her back making her dress cling to her.

‘And you believe her?’ His voice rose.

‘She says – things.’

‘What things?’ She saw the fear in his eyes. Why, if he had nothing to hide? She could smell fear, like a hedgehog standing rigid waiting for danger to pass by.

‘Things she could only know if – personal things.’

There was a silence. He should be asking: what things, and how did Agnes know they were right? But he didn’t. Instead he began to shout at her. He’d never done that before.

‘If you don’t believe me, Aggie, I’d best marry Ruth. You said you’d believe me, you said you loved me, but you wouldn’t let me touch you, not like I wanted to, not before we were married. So you don’t love me, not like I loved you. Well, I don’t love you any more, because you’ve betrayed me. You don’t love me at all or you wouldn’t have wanted to wait.’

She began to sob, her tears falling on to the slice of cake he wouldn’t eat. He just stomped off and left her alone with the picnic basket. She felt numb, dead really. All she could register was that he hadn’t put his stockings back on. They lay there, two brown symbols of her rejection. Him of her. Or was it her of him? She could have said nothing mattered but him. She could have said she’d do what he wanted, here and now in the warm grass. Only that would be lowering herself to be like Ruth. Besides, what if she saw a scar? Ah, what then, what then? Trust in the Lord, the Rector said. Sometimes it was easier to trust in a God you couldn’t see, than a man you could.

 

‘Well, Miss Harriet Mutter, who d’yer think I ran into this morning in Tunbridge Wells? Your Uncle Seb, him of Grendel’s Farm, and you know what he told me?’ Retribution faced her, with its arms akimbo, and the turkey neck poked forward for the final peck. ‘He told me you ain’t never ordered no raspberries.’

‘He’s forgotten. He always does.’

‘T’ain’t him that’s forgotten,’ Mrs Dibble snapped. ‘If we don’t have any raspberries for our wedding, it’ll all be your fault, Harriet, that Miss Isabel’s day is ruined.’

‘I’ll get your silly old raspberries.’

‘Don’t you talk to me like that, miss. You Mutters are all the same. All lip, no work and lazy as spit water. And no raspberries either, unless we’re lucky. No chance of the whites now. They’ll be reds and we can be thankful for them.’

‘At least I baint dinlow,’ Harriet retorted spitefully and unwisely. ‘Good job your Fred can’t climb trees. He’d be staring in and frightening Miss Felicia or Miss Caroline, afore we knew where we were.’

Mrs Dibble turned red with rage. ‘That’s a disgusting thing to say. You made it all up and you know it.’

‘Made it up? When his face was leering in at me, staring at me. Like that?’ Harriet shuddered theatrically, telling herself she hadn’t felt right about having a bath since. ‘A young girl ain’t safe in this house, not with him around.’

‘What is all this noise about?’ Elizabeth Lilley materialised, deducing the noise level was not going to abate.

‘It’s just the heat, Mrs Lilley,’ Mrs Dibble replied promptly. St Swithin had answered her prayers only too well. ‘Tempers are a little frayed.’ She cast Harriet a filthy look. ‘Aren’t they, Harriet dear?’

‘Yes, Mrs Dibble,’ Harriet answered sullenly. ‘That’s what it is. The heat.’

Even so, she polished the brass more vigorously than usual as she puzzled as to why old Dibble didn’t split on her. Then the answer came to her in a burst of triumph. She knew Harriet was right about Fred, that’s why.

 

‘I don’t see how it could be hotter than this even in Greece, do you?’ Daniel lay on his back on the grass in one of the open stretches of the Forest, and thoughtfully chewed a long piece of grass.

At his side, Felicia clasped her knees through the light voile gown, trying to imagine Greece. ‘Father thinks there might be trouble out there,’ she said.

‘In Greece?’

‘Near there. In Serbia.’

‘Oh, that will all blow over. The Serbs have apologised to His Great and Imperial Majesty in Vienna for that Sarajevo business. Anyway, Austria would simply march into Serbia and it would surrender overnight. You’ll see. Why,’ he stretched out a lazy hand and placed it in the small of her back, ‘are you worrying about me? You needn’t. I’ll turn up again. It will take more than a few Serbs to stop me seeing the world.’

‘Isn’t Russia in alliance with Serbia, though? You talked of going to St Petersburg.’

‘You do know a lot. I thought they only taught girls about Harold burning the cakes. Or was that Canute?’

‘Or possibly King Alfred.’ Felicia smiled. ‘They teach us to respect our minds, too.’

‘Like your redoubtable Aunt Tilly? I don’t see you as a suffragette somehow. And I certainly wouldn’t like to see you behind bars.’

‘What do you see me as?’

He considered. ‘A princess in an ivory tower waiting –’ He broke off in case she thought he meant for him. That would be pointless, wouldn’t it. He’d set his heart on conquering the world, not Felicia. True, he was fascinated by her, and not just by her beauty. There was something about her that was unusual in the women he knew, something indefinable. Perhaps it was that he sensed she already knew her way, sure-footed, through life. Faith should be her name, not Felicia. Still, he knew what he wanted too. They had that in common. He rolled over and drew her down to him, kissing her lightly, gently – for both their sakes. Hers, because he was leaving Ashden, and didn’t want to mislead her; his because the body was unpredictable, warmth distanced tomorrows, and the seemingly impossible might prove temptingly possible.

‘Shall you marry me, Daniel?’

Had he heard right? He sat up quickly, snatching at another piece of grass to cover his shock and thinking to shield her embarrassment. When she sat up too and laid her hand on his arm, there was no embarrassment on her face, however. Merely enquiry.

‘Shall or will?’ he managed to joke.

‘Shall. Will has too much freedom of choice in it, so I would not ask you that. Shall is merely what is written in the book of fate.’

Daniel laughed, though uneasily, for he was for once completely nonplussed. He’d thought, after Reggie’s birthday, that the two weeks’ OTC camp training at Aldershot would banish all thoughts of Felicia from his mind. Once back he found it hadn’t. Now he desperately calculated how long it was before he could leave again; should he go now, without waiting for Isabel’s wedding as he had promised? He knew he would not, however. That meant some kind of doubt was still claiming him. And Felicia was waiting for her answer. ‘How can I answer that? We none of us know what’s to come. That book of fate can twist, turn and lead you back or on at its command.’ He was getting as serious as her, but there was no help for it. ‘But if fate did lead me back, and for good, there could be no lovelier bride it could choose for me.’

She dismissed the compliment impatiently, and he felt rebuked, rather to his annoyance. ‘I did not mean –’

He interrupted her. ‘Fate usually takes one on, not back.’ He had tried to warn her – and perhaps also himself. Had he succeeded? Was there any way of reaching Felicia when she retreated as she had now? Not, he realised, in confusion, but in a certainty, so fixed it did not need help. Fleetingly he wished he could follow her, change his own path and stay. But the wish was born of a summer moment, and it vanished with the setting of the sun.

 

‘You’ve come then, Miss Phoebe.’

Len Thorn perched a foot indolently on the anvil. Phoebe knew he was doing it on purpose to provoke her, but all the same the smell of the sweat pouring off him and the sight of his body rippling in the light of the forge fire took her aback, solidifying in flesh the formless shape that had haunted her nightmares. Dark shapes, as she tossed and turned in the warm nights, had climactically resolved themselves into the devil’s head of a grinning Len Thorn. Now that head had a body too, and it was displaying itself before her.

‘Only to ask you from the Rector if you could shoe Poppy tomorrow.’

‘I might.’

‘Can you or can you not?’ Phoebe was outwardly calm. She was after all the Rector’s daughter, and Len Thorn could not read her dreams.

‘Yes.’ He seemed disconcerted, she noticed with relief, for that meant she was winning the game. ‘I’ll be up tomorrow for Miss Poppy. I’ll be seeing you then. Ten-thirty.’

‘I shan’t be there.’ She spoke too quickly, and he sensed victory.

‘Afraid of me then?’

Phoebe rushed away in confusion, aware she was wrong. She wasn’t winning, and she wouldn’t be anywhere near the stables tomorrow. She’d go to Tunbridge Wells – or would it be better to face her fears? She’d see how she felt tomorrow.

 

‘Where do I put this ham, Mrs D?’ Harriet wiped the sweat from her eye and picked up the ham in one continuous movement.

‘In the larder, miss. Where do you think?’ Mrs Dibble called from her stillroom, as she liked to call it. Old cupboard was more like it in Harriet’s view. ‘And I thought I told you to do them dustbins out with paraffin and soft soap again. Them flies is tedious busy.’

‘I’m a housemaid, not a kitchen skivvy.’

‘This week you’re a kitchen slave like we all are, Miss Hoity-Toity. Mrs Lilley told you that.’

The wedding was only a week away now, and the tempo and the temperature were both increasing.

‘I’ve a job for you, if you don’t like kitchens.’

‘What?’ Harriet was suspicious of jobs.

‘Go down to the village and speak nice to Mrs Lettice.’

‘Why?’

Mrs Dibble delivered her broadside. ‘Because we ain’t got no raspberries, that’s why, thanks to you. They’re all gone. He couldn’t keep ’em back in this hot weather. Shrivelled and turned.’ There was complacent gloom in Mrs Dibble’s voice. ‘If you’d ordered them when I said –’

‘I did. He forgot.’

‘Get down to Mrs Lettice, girl. It’s eight o’clock already. She’ll be closing. Her brother out at Hartfield does raspberries. Happen he’ll have some left. He’d better, for your sake, Harriet.’

Smarting with injustice, Harriet crammed her old straw hat on, determined to get her own back somehow. The chance presented itself as she saw Mary Tunstall passing the Rectory gate, she who did for the Miss Norvilles, poor simple soul. ‘Hallo, Mary. My you’re brave.’

‘Why’s that?’ Mary was unaccustomed to girls as smart as Harriet speaking to her.

‘Walking back this time o’ night with him around.’

‘Who?’ Mary gaped.

‘That awk Fred Dibble. Ain’t you seen him hiding in the bushes when girls go by? He’ll jump out one day, you’ll see.’

‘Whatever for?’ Mary was bewildered.

‘Ain’t your mother ever told you? He likes to see girls,’ she whispered in Mary’s ear, ‘without anything on. Nothing at all. He looked in at me once. You want to be careful.’

Mary thought about this. ‘I don’t walk around with nothing on.’

Harriet forgot about patience with poor Mary. ‘He’ll tear ’em off you, like he does to others,’ she shouted. ‘Ain’t he ever even touched you? Can’t you sense him watching when you walk up that long lonely path to the Castle?’

 

Beware the beast, flee the bear, don’t face it.

‘I just came,’ Phoebe announced airily to a remote corner of the stable, ‘to tell you Poppy’s not very well, so Father says –’

‘Father says stay away from men, eh? That it, Miss Phoebe?’ Len Thorn spoke very softly. ‘Pity. A lovely girl like you is just waiting to be kissed. You must be fifteen now, I’ll be bound. Won’t be long to wait now.’

‘I’m seventeen.’ Phoebe was indignant.

‘Is that so? You’re a woman, I see, now I look further.’ His eyes travelled down slowly, then up again. ‘Did you ever wonder, Miss Phoebe, what life is like outside this Rectory here?’

‘Of course. I’m going to finishing school in September.’

‘Will they teach you to finish this?’

Face the formless bear. She had no choice. He stretched out his arms for her, kissed her, not like the curate, but taking her breath away and forcing her mouth open, sucking greedily, surrounding her with hot breath. She seemed to be clamped to his chest, yet she was certain she could feel his hand on her leg. How could it be, for it seemed to be her stockinged leg, and then before she could react, it was clamping her between her legs, and a pain, well, not a pain but something, shot right through her. What was he doing now? Whatever it was, she was quite certain she didn’t want him to do it, and moreover he shouldn’t be doing it. Then suddenly she was free, her skirts falling back.

‘There now, Miss Phoebe,’ he said hoarsely, ‘you’re too pretty, that’s the trouble.’ He stared at her and she knew she should run away or cry out, but she seemed curiously immobile. He ran one hand over her chest, almost absently, and bent forward to kiss her again. She knew she should move, but she didn’t. This time he didn’t try to force his tongue into her mouth but kissed her quite gently, and the feel of his lips on hers was rather nice. This time that pain, or whatever it was, was exciting as it travelled down her. ‘Pretty, pretty, Miss Phoebe.’ His tawny eyes seemed to be searing into her; he released her, and this time she did move away.

‘Will you tell your father, Miss Phoebe?’ The note of cocky defiance wasn’t in his voice any more, but she couldn’t seem to take advantage of it.

‘No. If you don’t do it again.’

‘Not unless you provoke me, Miss Phoebe.’ His nonchalance was coming back now, and he whacked Poppy on her side, as if to reiterate his point.

His face haunted her dreams that night, not so terrifyingly as before. The formless blank shape came curiously, excitingly, but insidiously, creeping towards her, around her, into her, merging in the black shadows that were dancing outside the Rectory windows.

 

Next day a deeply troubled Mary told her mother about the shape in the bushes who would jump out and tear off her clothes; the mother told her neighbour, who warned her daughter, who giggled about it with her friend, who was so scared that Mary had been stripped mother-naked on her way to the Castle that she told her sister, who told her brother, who told … and pretty soon even Joe Ifield knew Fred Dibble was up to his nasty tricks again.

 

She hadn’t seen Jamie. Agnes tossed and turned in her bed; counting sheep, counting pies, nothing worked. He hadn’t been at the gate in Silly Lane as he usually was on her half-day off, and pride had kept her from marching up to the ironmongery to seek him out. What if she’d sent him straight into Ruth Horner’s arms again, what then? Had she cleaned the slicing machine? One dark thought after another chased through her mind. A drumming inside her began to beat insistently, growing louder and louder. Bang, she’d lost him, bang, he’d marry Ruth, bang, he’d kill himself – it wasn’t inside her. It was outside, an insistent beating, men’s voices, women’s too. Outside the Norville Arms, was it? She lay there rigid, unable to be sure this was not another nightmare. Then she was sure; it came nearer. They must be in the High Street, banging, shouting, clapping – not a drunken rabble, though. She sat up in bed, rigid with fear. This was far more sinister: determined, menacing, organised threat with the sound of marching feet. Then it stopped for a moment as though it were gathering strength. It was a little further away now, further up the High Street, by the ironmongery. And then she knew: Jamie.

It was as if the whole of her insides were turned into one gigantic silent scream. Rough music. Her ma used to tell her about it, how it hadn’t been done for many a long year, how all the villagers turned out of their homes to gather in front of someone’s door to show their disapproval by banging anything they could lay their hands on, then attacking the cottage itself with brooms, tin pails, anything. It were worse, so ma said, than anything the village policeman might do. It hadn’t died out, though, for tonight they were doing it to her Jamie.

She moaned to herself, her arms clasped round her, rocking to and fro in agony. When that didn’t help she drew the sheets over her head, to distance the noise, but nothing could extinguish the sound of Jamie’s voice in her ear crying, Are you one of them, Aggie, are you?

She heard a door slam. That would be the Rector going out to calm them down. Tensely she waited, counted each step he must be taking, calculating the time it would take him to reach the crowd and shame them into silence. It took fifteen minutes longer than she had thought before the dull roar became a low rumble, and then nothing, as the protesters slipped away into the darkness and at last she fell into a troubled sleep.

 

‘No, Laurence, I fear you are wrong, sadly wrong. My department looks not to Ireland for the dogs of war, but to Europe.’ Sir John paced up and down his study, his brandy and soda as yet untouched, which was a sure sign of his agitation, the Rector realised.

‘But even if Russia mobilises in support of Serbia, how are we affected?’

‘If Russia fights, Germany joins Austria. It will follow, as the night the day.’

‘And if so?’

‘France has a treaty with Russia, and moreover may welcome the chance to regain what she regards as her honour, lost in 1870.’

The Rector stared at the Squire. He was tired after his interrupted night. When the troubles of Ashden were so time-consuming, he lacked the energy to grapple with those of the outside world, especially those that could not affect England. Nevertheless he tried. ‘And because we are morally bound to France by a mutual understanding, we may be drawn in? Surely not. It is a European war. France would not be so foolish as to expect it, and even if she were, she will realise we cannot support her, because of Ireland. And even if there were no Irish problem, there would be no public support to ally ourselves with France in this present difficulty. No, all this is mere sabre-rattling.’

‘The Kaiser has wanted to rattle a sabre at England for many a long year.’

‘But not to take on our Empire. He is foolhardy, but not foolish, surely.’

‘Foolish? If he believes that England faces the other way, faces Ireland not France, he might well wish to take his chance to humiliate her, or, worse, count on our neutrality to pursue his own plans of Empire. When he is master of Russia and France, he might reason, he can pick off England at will.’

‘Your theory is just that. It can have no realistic basis.’

‘At the moment the Cabinet agrees with you. I trust with all my heart you and they are right, Laurence.’

 

‘Caroline.’ Isabel hurtled through the door. ‘Come and help me.’

It was an order. Reluctantly, Caroline left Cicely Hamilton’s Marriage as a Trade. She had escaped to her room only five minutes ago, creeping out of a tense discussion between her mother and Mrs Dibble over, of course, the likelihood of rain on the day, as the weather had perversely grown cool and close, and the worrying rise of a shilling per sack of flour in Liverpool because of the current uncertainty. When the talk turned to raspberries, she had fled to her book.

Her aunt had spoken of Miss Hamilton with disgust, as a renegade to the militant cause, since she had left the WSPU to join Mrs Despard’s Women’s Freedom league. Nevertheless she had lent Caroline her book and that was shocking enough. Marriage, in Cicely Hamilton’s view – and, Caroline supposed, Aunt Tilly’s – was no better than prostitution in that women were forced into it for economic reasons. As Ruth Horner had just avoided, Caroline was bound to agree. Not herself, though. Never. With Reggie, it would be an equal marriage. For Isabel …

‘Smell this.’ Isabel marched her to her own room where she had set up her home-made perfume apparatus, a glass funnel suspended between two supports over a glass bowl. The Rectory’s best blooms stood wilting in a jug (naturally Isabel had forgotten to give them water). ‘It doesn’t smell at all. It’s all Percy’s fault. He wouldn’t get me the pure alcohol I wanted. No one cares. I hate being poor.’ She sat on the bed sulkily while Caroline sniffed cautiously at the results.

She glanced at Isabel. ‘It’s not the perfume that worries you, is it?’

Isabel bit her lip. ‘No. I’ve decided I’m scared,’ she announced dolefully.

‘Of what? Robert?’ Caroline could not take her seriously, and was inclined to be impatient. Compared with poor Agnes’s problems, Isabel’s were slight indeed – and entirely of her own making. Did she even know, Caroline wondered, what had been going on in the village this week, and would she care? Guilt overcame Caroline for she was all too well aware that the dark shadows over the village, much as she sympathised with Agnes and Jamie, were failing to touch her as they should, such was her own happiness.

‘Of marriage. But I do want to get married, don’t I?’ Isabel burst into tears, and, alarmed at this proof of sincerity, Caroline went to comfort her.

‘I can’t answer that, darling, because I’m not in your head, in your heart or in your shoes. Perhaps you’re a little worried about sharing a bed with someone?’

‘Perhaps,’ Isabel muttered, then loftily, ‘of course, you wouldn’t understand.’

Caroline would. She felt caught up in a web of mystery and excitement about her own wedding bed which filled her with strange feelings. Even the words ‘wedding bed’ sent a happy shiver of anticipation through her. But what if her guess was right and Isabel didn’t really love Robert? Then she could well understand how Isabel might dread it as an ordeal. ‘Robert will be kind and gentle, I’m sure.’

‘That may be the trouble,’ Isabel said under her breath, covering it quickly with, ‘He’s wonderful of course.’

‘Suppose you play a game and imagine these aren’t just normal fears but real. How would you feel in two weeks’ time if you were still here and not in Paris, if there were no wedding because you’d changed your mind?’

Isabel considered this, then brightened up. ‘I do feel a little better. You’re a dear, Caroline, you really are. I hope you’re as happy as me one day.’

I am now, Caroline thought to herself. Much happier, in fact. She was surprised it was not written all over her face: ‘I love Reggie.’

 

In those final days before the wedding, Caroline’s concentric circles spun furiously and independently. The King’s intervention to break the Irish deadlock had failed, and the bitter episode of the gun-running Asgard and the Dublin Shootings poised the country on the brink of civil war, Father told them gravely. Meanwhile, Austria disregarded Serbia’s apology and seized the excuse to mobilise and invade; Russia snarled and the Kaiser snarled back. Goodwood took place in stifling heat without the King’s presence, but society floated on in chiffon, satin and top hats waiting for the date when it could thankfully retire to the seaside. Her birthday passed with scant Rectory attention – unsurprisingly since she chose to spend the day on a picnic with Reggie, her excuse for being alone with him all day being that she would feel selfish dragging her family away from the Rectory at such a vital time. Eleanor dutifully failed to put in her ‘offered’ appearance as chaperone. The Rectory larders groaned, the refrigerators and ice-house filled with raspberry ices (red, not white, though, Mrs Dibble snapped), bridesmaids’ dresses were fitted and pressed, the bridal gown allotted a room of its own. Now the wedding fever had gripped Caroline too, quite apart from her own reasons for looking forward to it. Within her there lay a deep nugget of joy, as, bursting with excitement, she waited for Saturday when Friday’s grey skies would lift and the long hot summer would reach its climax.