Molly stood with her daughters on the tiny balcony of the room that Joseph descriptively called his “Crow’s Nest”, looking out over the wide, glittering expanse of the estuary as the late evening sun turned the calm waters into molten gold and the sky to rosy splendour. The evening air still held the warmth of the day; the slightest breath of wind drifted across the water, refreshingly cool. Beneath them, grassy slopes, known in this flat locality as the cliffs, dropped to the road and the beach. Out in the estuary a stately barge, red sails glowing in the sun, cut through the lucent waters headed upriver on the flowing tide to London. Inshore, smaller craft dipped and flew like graceful water birds, or rocked on the wash of the barge’s passing. On the beach left by the rising tide children played, their happy shouts lifting to the lofty look-out above the slap of the waves.
Meghan leaned dangerously far out over the wooden rails.
“Do be careful, Meg,” Kitty said nervously.
Meghan ignored her. “Where’s this Yacht Club place that were going to tomorrow?”
Molly pointed. “Down there. See? The building halfway up the cliff, just before the pier. The one with the flag flying. And we aren’t actually going in it, you know.” She pulled a mock-severe face and added in a deep voice, “Ladies isn’t allowed.”
“Oh, what rot. Still, a garden party should be fun.” Meghan’s restless eyes darted back and forth across the colourful scene. “What are they?” she said raising a pointing arm. “The big ships, out there beyond the pier?”
“That’s the Royal Navy. The Third Battle Squadron, Joseph said. The gentlemen of the Yacht Club have been invited aboard one of them, so I believe.” Molly suppressed firmly the feelings of misgivings that the sight of those great grey battleships, so incongruous amongst the bright sails, stirred within her. All too well she remembered John Marsden’s grim prediction about the German Navy. “Yet another function that we ladies don’t get invited to,” she added, keeping her voice bright.
Meghan grinned cheekily. “I’ll bet I could get myself invited aboard if I really tried.”
Molly did not rise to the bait. Her attention had been attracted by a big, green, open-topped car that was nosing its way through the crowded street towards the house.
“Oh, look!” Meghan had caught sight of the approaching car. “That’s Adam, isn’t it?” She leaned out above the street, waving.
“Meghan, be careful!” Molly’s voice was sharp.
The car rolled to a halt beneath them. “It is Adam, look! Oh, why doesn’t he look up?”
“Meghan, will you come back here? Not even Mr Jefferson, with all his talents, would be able to catch you if you fell.”
“It might be worth a try,” her daughter grinned irrepressibly. She watched as Adam’s foreshortened figure reached into the back of the car for a small case and then ran swiftly up the wide steps to the front door, four floors beneath them. “I do believe he’s quite the most gorgeous man I’ve ever met.”
“Meghan!” Molly said, turning to stare at her daughter. But Meghan took no notice. With her elbows on the rail she leaned her lovely chin on her spread hands and gazed out across the glittering sea, an exaggeratedly dreamy expression on her face.
“He’s so handsome, and so – so arrogant, too.”
“You’re remarkably perceptive,” Molly said tartly.
“Oh, but that’s the way he should be. The way any man should be. They aren’t worth having, are they, if they don’t put up a fight? There’s no fun in a man who lies down and lets you walk all over him.”
“There is such a thing as a happy medium,” Molly said, drily, “and honestly, Meg, I hardly think this a suitable subject for—”
“Oh, don’t be such a spoilsport, Mum dear, I was only pulling your leg. It was a joke, that’s all.”
“If your father hears you joking like that, you’ll be back home before your feet can touch the floor.”
“Oh, poof,” Meg said, and turned back to the rail.
Molly eyed her repressively but said no more.
“What are we doing tonight?” Kitty asked.
“Dinner’s at seven thirty. And then, I believe, Joseph has invited some friends in to play whist.”
“Oh, may we play?” Meg, her good humour immediately restored, moved in her swift, restless fashion back to them. “And may I wear my pale blue tonight? I’ve been dying to wear it. It looks so pretty, and I haven’t had a chance to wear it yet. And, oh please, Mum, may I put my hair up?”
“Yes you may, and yes you may, and certainly not. In that order.”
“Oh, but—” Meg took note of her mother’s expression and shrugged. “Oh, all right.”
In the street below the car door slammed. Meg leaned over to look. “That’s Mr Forrest’s chauffeur garaging Adam’s car. What a marvellous house this is! How stupid of Danny not to want to come. What on earth’s the matter with him lately?” She did not wait for an answer. “There are almost more people here to wait on you than there are people to be waited on, have you noticed? Wonderful. Kit and I have a marvellous room. We’ve our own wash-basin, with running water! And a maid runs round behind us clearing up.” She grinned engagingly at her mother’s laughter. “Come on, Kit. Let’s go and say hello to Adam.” Fair curls flew as Meg danced through the open door, followed, more staidly, by Kitty.
In the peaceful silence left by their going, Molly leaned on the rail and looked out to sea, breathing the clear air, narrowing her eyes against the glitter of sun off water. Beyond the long pier and the small, swooping sails, the great battleships moved with the suck and swell of the turning tide, while above them gulls wheeled, giving voice to their empty, mourning cries.
The next day dawned with sparkling promise. Breakfast at Cliff End was served in a large and airy room overlooking the sunlit sea. Molly and Jack came downstairs to discover that the girls were already halfway through a hearty breakfast. “We’re all going for a walk,” Meg announced with no ceremony as her mother and father sat down. “To Leigh. Etta says that there are sheds there where you can watch the fishermen boil cockles and things. Oh, it’s all right,” she added ingenuously, catching her mother’s eye, “she said we could call her Etta. Didn’t you?” she appealed to Etta.
Etta nodded, laughing. “I couldn’t possibly have two such grown-up young ladies call me ‘Aunt Etta’.” Her mildly malicious glance flicked to Molly and away. “It would make me feel positively ancient!”
So later that morning, at Meg’s insistence, the whole party but Joseph – who had to ready his cutter Water Baby for the afternoon’s race – set off to walk along the coast of the small village of Leigh-on-Sea.
They strolled through the holiday crowds, past beaches on which children and young people played, making sandcastles, or playing ball in the sun. Gentlemen in resplendently striped swimsuits that covered their persons, as was proper, from neck to knee, showed their prowess in the water, whilst their young ladies, the most daring clad in bloomered suits of every hue, paddled, shrieking, in the shallows. The party stopped for a moment to watch the feckless violence of a Punch and Judy show, and then from a gaily painted ice-cream cart Adam bought huge ice creams for the twins, and it seemed to Molly, presented Meg’s to her with an especial flourish. Nor did she miss her daughter’s pretty blush and fluttering lashes.
Afterwards, as Adam and Etta sauntered on ahead of the Bentons, Molly, despite herself, found herself watching them. They made a striking pair. Etta carried herself well, very straight and gracefully. One of her hands rested lightly on Adam’s arm, while in the other she carried a small parasol, coloured to match her dress of palest green, trimmed with cream. It outlined to perfection her smoothly curving hips and breasts. She walked easily, her long legs matching Adam’s still slightly uneven stride step for step. She was talking animatedly, and Adam appeared utterly absorbed in her.
Molly averted her eyes. Nearby a paperboy bawled, “Crisis in Ireland”. His placard proclaimed, “IS IT CIVIL WAR?”. She stared at the scrawled words for a moment before turning away. The warships still rode at anchor off the coast.
At Leigh they found a spot on the grassy cliff-top slopes to eat the fresh-cooked cockles and mussels they had bought. The tide was right out now, and the great stretches of mud glistened in the sunshine. Flocks of birds fed in the shallows; small boats lay on their sides, stranded, waiting for the next lift of the tide to refloat them. Adam, by accident or design, had seated himself beside Molly and lay back on his elbows, his eyes on the heat-hazed distance. Molly followed the direction of his gaze. Two of the navy ships were sailing majestically up the deep channel that led into the heart of London. He stirred, and caught her eyes upon him.
“We’re going to install some more ice-making plant,” he said unexpectedly.
Molly could see Etta watching them, and resented it fiercely. Perversely she found herself taking it out on Adam. “Whatever for? We don’t need any more. We’ve spare capacity as it is.”
His face changed subtly at the shortness of her tone, and he lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “We may not need it now, but I’ve a feeling that we may soon.” His narrowed eyes were still on the battleships. “If war comes and they stop the North Sea convoys—”
“War? What nonsense!” Etta dismissed the word with a wave of her hand. “The closest you’ll get to war, Adam darling, is the race this afternoon. Joseph is quite appallingly determined to win. And the closest we ladies will come to it,” she added, irony in her voice, “will be, I daresay, at the Commodore’s garden party—”
The garden party was held in the grounds of the Yacht Club, which was perched on steep-sloping ground overlooking the stretch of water upon which the gentlemen members were competing for the last of the week’s honours in a final day of regatta. The ladies, gloved, hatted and gowned for the occasion, despite the blazing sun, disposed themselves at small tables set on the terraced lawns and watched the afternoon’s racing fortified by weak tea and cucumber sandwiches. There was about the whole affair, Molly was surprised to discover, a kind of infectious gaiety that lightened for the moment at least the odd moodiness that had settled upon her. Her wide-brimmed straw hat, trimmed with flowers that matched exactly the delicate pinks and blues of her dress, shaded her eyes as she watched with the other ladies the racing cutters gracefully skim the shimmering water.
“Where’s Water Baby?” Etta sank elegantly into the chair beside Molly, fanning herself gently with the folded copy of the day’s events. “It’s the one with the white stripe – ah, there. Gracious,” she said, her voice mildly surprised, “don’t tell me they’re winning! Good Lord, I do hope not. We’ll never hear the last of it.”
“Now Etta,” scolded a plump young woman sitting at an adjacent table, “you know you don’t mean that!”
“Don’t I?” Etta tapped the woman’s arm sharply with the rolled up paper. “Don’t be too sure, Mary my dear.”
From the verandah of the clubhouse came a rousing cheer as Joseph’s Water Baby passed the finishing line ahead of the other boats.
“There goes any chance of a decent conversation at the dinner tonight—” Etta said, putting her hand to her head in mock despair as Water Baby sailed into her mooring, Joseph’s stocky figure, obviously jubilant, at the tiller. Jack had a smaller boat waiting for them there and after Joseph and Adam had climbed into it, he rowed to the shore, where the watching women lost sight of them in the enthusiastic crowds.
“Ah, well,” Etta said, standing up with a sigh, “I suppose I’d better go and garland them with roses or something?” And with no suggestion that Molly should join her she started slowly and gracefully down the uncertain steps that led down towards the road and the shore.
Molly sipped her tea and watched. She saw the back-slapping crowds part to let Etta’s tall figure through, watched as she kissed first Joseph, then Adam. Adam appeared to say something. Etta pointed. Both Adam and Jack waved up to where Molly sat. She waved back, aware at last, in that instant, of the cause of her wretchedness. Even from this distance, the sight of the slight figure in his white shirt and flannels, his hair blown wild by the wind, stirred in her emotions that she did not want to analyze. She despised herself for it, refused to accept that she could not, in the end, defeat it. Love, said a mocking voice in her head. The first taste, the first touch, and you are in danger of addiction.
Addiction? Very carefully she put the small cup and saucer on the table before her, straightened her back, lifted her chin. Etta, Adam, Joseph and Jack were coming up the steps towards her, laughing, Joseph beaming with pride, Adam’s hair still wet with spray. She smiled brightly and went to meet them.
That evening they dined, the guests of the Yacht Club, at the Palace Hotel, a marvellously gilded wedding cake of a building whose tiers of long windows glittered in the evening light. As they sipped their aperitifs in the comfortable lounge before going in to dinner, Adam cornered her.
“Am I imagining it, or are you avoiding me?”
“You’re imagining it.”
His eyebrows lifted. “I’m surprised. I never give myself credit for much imagination.”
She sipped her drink.
He ignored her silence. “I heard an interesting story last evening,” he said, his voice lightly conversational, his eyes very sharp on her face.
“Oh?”
“It seems that a friend of mine had a crop of prime West Indian pineapples snapped from under his nose. Apparently someone discovered his agreed price – he admits that he’s had a good thing going for some years – and topped it, behind his back. The deal was signed and sealed before he knew what was happening. He was – a little irate about it.”
“Perhaps your friend should try getting up a little earlier in the morning?”
“Perhaps he should. I’ll mention it to him next time I see him. If I ever do, that is. For the odd thing is that he seems to have the idea that I had something to do with his lost pineapples.”
She looked at him with unclouded eyes. “That’s possibly because I used your name. It was expedient.”
He smiled at the word.
“These colonial planters can be very old-fashioned, I’m afraid. Not all of them are ready to deal with a woman,” Molly said.
“Perhaps they find men more straightforward?”
Her eyes on his face, she let a small silence develop before she said, “I doubt it.”
“Can we afford your cleverness? It might be a good crop, but it seemed to me that the price you paid was high.”
“There’s blight on two of the islands. This crop is prime and healthy. When news of the disease gets through the price will rocket. Yes, Adam, we can afford it.”
From the impressive double doors, dinner was announced. Joseph appeared at Molly’s elbow. “May I, my dear? Adam, Jack has claimed Etta – I should be grateful if you would escort our two charming younger guests in?” A short distance away the twins stood, both their faces bright with the excitement of their first grown-up occasion.
Adam put down his glass with grace. “Of course.” As he turned away he paused, looking at Molly with real curiosity. “How did you find out what he was offering? And about the blight? I haven’t heard a word.”
Molly took Joseph’s arm. “Don’t worry, Adam. I didn’t use your name for that. I have perfectly good ears of my own.”
“I think I’ll tell the War Office about you,” Adam said, laughing. “We ought to be using you on the Kaiser!”
During the meal Molly found herself almost monopolized by Joseph, who relived a dozen times his triumph of the afternoon.
“—warned old Bodger that I was going to do it this year, and by Jove I’ve done it! She’s a queen, my Water Baby…” He paused, regarding Molly with twinkling eyes. “I’ve said that before this evening, haven’t I?”
Molly smiled. Her eyes were on Meghan, across the table, who was thoroughly absorbed in openly flirting with Adam, who appeared to be enjoying every moment of it.
“Must have bored you to tears, my dear.”
She shook her head. “Of course not.”
He patted her hand. “You’re very kind.”
“I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve never met yachting people before.”
“Ah well, my dear, like everything else the club has changed since the days when the old King sailed in the estuary. It’s to be expected of course, and believe me, in most cases I’m all in favour of widening the membership. To be honest with you, we were a stuffy lot, before.”
“Oh, surely not?” She was barely listening, was watching Adam’s head bent attentively to Meghan, his expressive hands moving rapidly as he talked.
Joseph leaned towards her, and, lowering his voice, said, “But I must say that in some cases it seems to me that the committee has gone too far. Take the man at the corner table. John Cribben made his money from the sweatshops, so they say. And other things, so it’s whispered. But he puts his hand in his pocket for repairs to the clubhouse, or presents a new solid silver trophy, and it’s amazing how respectable he can become overnight. I must say I never thought I’d see the day I’d sit at table with the likes of Mr Cribben, even with the width of the room between us.”
The name had jolted her. She turned her head sharply to look at the man that Joseph had spoken of. He sat at a corner table beyond a group of naval officers. Riveted, she stared at him. The big frame had become corpulent, the handsome face was blurred with the flesh of good living; but for one dreadful moment she felt those brutal hands upon her. The man lifted a hand and mopped his face with a spotless white handkerchief. She caught the spark of diamonds from his fingers.
She turned away. “What an unpleasant-looking man. Do you know him well?” Amazingly, her voice sounded perfectly normal.
“Good Lord, no, my dear. We don’t move in the same circles at all.” He wagged a knowing finger. “It’s the railway, you see. Direct from the East End. It brings the workers on their trips and it brings—” he glanced at Johnny Cribben again “—others, less savoury. Still, I suppose were all entitled to our breath of sea air, eh?” He laughed in his jovial way. “Now, brandy, I think? Or would you prefer a port—?”
Molly shifted in her chair slightly, setting her back to the room.
“Brandy,” she said a little breathlessly. “Please.”
That solitary, shaking glimpse of Johnny Cribben somehow epitomized for Molly a weekend that should, she knew, have been very pleasant but that at every turn seemed to conspire against her, though, in honesty, she recognized that the true cause of her restless ill humour lay not with others, but within herself. She had to admit that after Adam’s long absence she found it intolerable to be so close to him in such circumstances. During the past week her worry over Danny had already stretched her nerves, and now Adam’s mere presence was enough to scrape them raw.
It was Sunday afternoon and the weather was very warm. Most of the occupants of the house were resting in anticipation of an early dinner and the trip home, but Molly, unable to relax, wandered into the large and quiet garden in search of air. By a tiny pond she found a small summerhouse overhung with trees and shrubs. She sauntered towards it; from beyond the high hedge came the sounds of the beach, overhead a seabird curled, calling, into the blue sky. The door to the little house stood open and she entered; the interior was dark after the brilliance of the sun. She stood for a moment, blinded, before the rustle of paper told her, too late, that the haven was already occupied.
“Well,” Adam said, smiling as he laid aside the newspaper he had been reading. “Hello.”
“I – hello” She was completely at a loss for words. “I’m sorry – I didn’t realize you were here…”
It was not well expressed. His silence was pensive. “You mean you wouldn’t have come in if you had known?” he quietly asked at last.
She did not answer.
He leaned back in his wicker armchair and watched her with a faintly puzzled frown on his face. “I must confess,” he said when it became obvious that she was not going to speak, “to being utterly confused. And by a woman, by Christ,” he added mildly. “I never thought I’d see the day. I have to tell you, Mrs Benton, that you are by far the most unpredictable, the most—” he spread helpless hands, half-laughing still, “—the most perverse woman whom I have ever met. You advance, you retreat, you’re fierce as a tiger one minute, soft as a kitten the next. Does it have something to do with being Irish?”
Her irritation at the world in general boiled suddenly into fury at him. “Don’t laugh at me! Don’t dare!” She turned towards the door but he was there before her, barring the way, a familiar anger beginning to smoulder in his eyes.
“Is there some kind of law against it?”
“Of course not,” she said, a bitter brightness in her eyes. “If there were I guess half the population would be in gaol, and that would never do.” She made to pass him but he did not move. “Adam, please let me pass.”
He shook his head. “No. At any rate not until you explain to me how it is that we’re standing here glaring at each other like wildcats again. How it is that you can dance like an angel on New Year’s Eve and act like a stranger the very next time we meet? How two people who have been—” his eyes forced her to look at him “—as close as we have can so constantly misunderstand one another? Why we can’t at least be friends?”
She stared at him miserably – Because I love you, the unutterable words rose raw and clear in her mind – because I have discovered that I truly love you. And I hate you for it. I can’t stand what you are, what you will always be. I can’t stand to look at Jack and to wish he were you. And I’d cut out my tongue before I told you so—
She looked at him expressionlessly, her blue-grey eyes silvered in the gleam of sunshine that struck like a lance through the open door. Dust danced, glittering, in the beam of light.
He shrugged, irritated. “Well, for Christ’s sake, if you won’t even answer me?”
“There’s nothing to say. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her voice was perfectly composed. “But there is just one thing.”
“Yes?”
“I wish that you wouldn’t encourage Meghan to be so – forward. I have enough trouble with the child without your attentions going to her head. She’s at a very impressionable age.”
“Now you’re being ridiculous.” Faint colour was rising beneath the brown skin. “You know as well as I do – as well as Meghan does – that it’s just a game. What has it to do with us? With you and me?”
“Nothing at all.” Molly tried to brush past him.
Very fast, he put an arm up before her, physically preventing her from leaving. He studied her face for a long slow moment “And Etta?” he asked finally, a sudden and merciless understanding in his voice. “Aren’t you going to lecture me about her?”
“She’s none of my business,” Molly said coldly. “Meghan is.”
He brought his other arm up behind her, trapping her between himself and the doorjamb; then, with aggressive deliberation he bent his head and kissed her, harshly and with clear intent to hurt. She tried to pull away. With no effort he held her. “You’re jealous,” he said softly, as he lifted his head at last.
She stepped away from him. “And you’re a barbarian!” she snapped, beside herself with rage. “Beneath all that urbanity, all those wonderful good manners of yours, you are an absolute savage!” She hurled the word like a stone.
The expression on his face barely altered as he stepped back from the doorway. She stormed past him into the sunshine.
From a small copse of trees by the garden hedge a pair of narrowed, thoughtful eyes followed her as she fled to the house.
They hardly spoke for weeks, except when absolutely essential in the course of business, and then their mutual politeness was frigid. But events, finally, overtook them. No personal quarrel could override the sudden and frightening surge towards violence that began on the day that the Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria, and his wife were murdered by a fanatical young Serbian student and ended in the bloody sacrifice of millions.
In England the assassination was at first overshadowed by renewed threat of civil war in Ireland. The punitive Austrian ultimatum that followed the murders inevitably meant that irrevocable lines were being drawn between friend and foe; but when war was declared between Serbia and Austria it still seemed in Britain less menacing than the fact that the gunmen and the soldiers were once more out on the Irish streets. Hidden behind the smokescreen of Britain’s domestic troubles the frontiers of Europe had begun to smoulder. When, however, at the beginning of August Germany declared war on France and demanded the right to march through tiny, defenceless, neutral Belgium in order to launch her attack, Britain in honour could do nothing but stand by her guarantee of Belgian neutrality. Three days later the German armies marched – and amidst an unprecedented wave of jingoistic patriotism, Britain found herself at war.
As an iron hand clamped down upon Ireland, and trade unions and suffragettes alike declared immediate truce and called their workers to the flag, the problem of supplying and feeding a nation at war became paramount. On the day that Jack Benton, like a million of his fellows, donned the drab khaki that was already appearing in every home and on every street, the first escorted convoys steamed upriver to the docks of London, and Molly and Adam found that they had a war of their own on their hands: while at the recruitment centres men queued and jostled fervently praying that the game would not be over before they had fairly joined it, Molly and Adam worked feverishly to set the cold store on a wartime footing and to turn it over from luxuries to essential foodstuffs. Any other consideration seemed for the moment outrageously irrelevant.
The atmosphere in those first days of August was heady. The brutalizing concept of total war had not yet touched the minds of ordinary people, even now, as the machine that was to grind and crush a whole generation came into being.
It would all be over by Christmas, and the boys would be back home. Everybody said so. And everybody, surely, could not be wrong?