In the first week of May the Sandersons went to London. Anne had long been a lover of opera, and she was keen to see the new season at Covent Garden. Andrew agreed, thinking everyone could do with an outing, and Katherine was still in search of the elusive lace for her wedding gown.
Eleanor did not think she would particularly enjoy the opera, although she’d never been to it before, but she was looking forward to being in London. She had not gone since before the war. The journey was six hours by train and had been even longer during the war, when troop trains took over the rails, causing passenger trains to be endlessly delayed.
Despite her excitement at travelling to London, she was a bit reluctant to leave Goswell – and Jack Taylor. He’d barely spoken to her since that afternoon when she’d played croquet and then cried; in fact, Eleanor had the distinct impression that he was avoiding her. She’d come out several times to give him a drink of water, and he’d taken the glass with a murmured thanks before turning rather quickly away. Eleanor had not been able to think of a reason to stay and talk, although she’d wanted to.
Part of her was ashamed and embarrassed that Jack had seen her so undone, in tears, her shoulders shaking with sobs. But another part of her was fiercely glad; she’d cried, and he had comforted her. It felt, in a strange way, like the most intimate of communications, and had created more of a connection with him than she’d felt with anyone else in a long time.
And so she boarded the train to London with some reluctance, despite all the amusements the city was sure to offer.
“You’ve gone rather quiet, Eleanor,” Anne remarked as they settled themselves in their carriage. “I hope you’re not unwell.”
“You do look a little pale,” Andrew added as he sat across from his wife. “Thank heaven this dreaded ’flu is coming to an end. The government says the worst is over.”
“How many times have they told us that?” Katherine interjected. She turned to look out the window, her lips pursed. “I don’t think anyone can ever know if the worst is over.”
Eleanor didn’t answer any of them. She was too busy staring out the window as the train pulled away from the platform; as it left the station she could just glimpse the bottom of the vicarage garden, past the sheep pasture. She could see the blurred spots of pink that were the first rosebuds; she could imagine Jack Taylor bending over them, his cap and coat shed, his brown hair gleaming in the sunlight…
“Eleanor?” Anne spoke more sharply this time. “My dear, you are miles away.”
Eleanor turned from the window, blinking guiltily. The train was heading towards the sea, where the rail line ran along the coast, all the way to Barrow. “Sorry, Mother,” she murmured. “I was miles away, as you said.”
“And what were you thinking about?” Anne asked, a small smile playing about her lips. Eleanor hesitated.
“The garden,” she finally admitted. “I’d like to plant a bed of herbs in the lower garden. Rosemary for remembrance.”
“That’s a splendid idea, Eleanor,” her father said with a nod of approval. “Splendid.”
Eleanor smiled, still feeling guilty. She had only just thought of the idea of a herb garden, and judging from Katherine’s narrowed look, her sister knew it.
A few minutes later, when her father had snapped open his newspaper and her mother had fallen into a doze, her head resting on her hand, Katherine leaned forward and hissed, “The garden, indeed.”
Eleanor lifted her chin and whispered back, “Why shouldn’t I be interested in the garden? It was meant to be my project, after all.”
“I know just what your project is,” Katherine answered, and turned back to the window.
London, Eleanor decided when they left the train at Euston Station, was like Carlisle, only bigger, noisier, and dirtier. People crowded the streets, and veterans with slings and bandages and the awful tin masks seemed to be on nearly every corner. But there were other people too: women in fancy frocks and hats trimmed with lace and flowers; men who accompanied them and were whole and well and smiling; children who ran ahead of their mothers in the park with hoops and balls.
There was an energy and an expectation to the place that made Eleanor feel as if she were buzzing inside. Open-mouthed, she watched a gaggle of office girls leave a building near Euston Station; two of them had shingled hair, and one wore bright-red lipstick. Another girl took something from the little bag swinging from one wrist, and to her shock Eleanor saw that it was a cigarette case.
“Don’t stare,” Anne murmured as they passed the girls. Their laughter, to Eleanor, sounded like the cawing of the rooks that circled high above the church back in Goswell. “Although,” Anne added, dropping her voice even further, “I do think some of these city girls seem quite fast.”
They stayed at the Cumberland Hotel near Marble Arch, and even that experience amazed her. Eleanor could not remember the last time she’d stayed in a hotel, and Andrew Sanderson, as a treat for his wife, had splurged on the grand hotel that boasted the first en-suite bathrooms in any of London’s establishments.
She’d been allowed a new gown for the opera, a dress of ivory silk with the new drop waist; it was quite the loveliest thing she had ever owned. They were going to see the Australian soprano Nellie Melba as Mimi in Puccini’s La Bohème, which was the exact production the Royal Opera had put on before the war had started.
“It’s as if they are trying to go back to the way things were,” Katherine said with a wry twist of her lips. She wore a dress of pale-green crêpe de chine and was fastening a gold locket around her neck as she looked in the mirror; Eleanor wore an identical one, both given to the girls by Andrew when they’d each turned eighteen. “Don’t they realize you can’t?”
“Perhaps you can in little ways,” Eleanor offered. Outside she could see the dark swathe of Hyde Park and the blaze of lights around Marble Arch; the roads were crowded with black taxi cabs, their tops seeming to shine in the light drizzle that now fell. She watched a man snap open a black silk umbrella and step into the street, his coat flapping behind him like a cape. All of it thrilled her. “Or perhaps,” she continued thoughtfully, “in important ways. We can’t go back to the way things were, not exactly, but we can hope again. We can find happiness again.”
“How poetical of you,” Katherine returned sardonically. “Has your little flirtation with the gardener’s boy made you so eloquent?”
“He’s not the gardener’s boy,” Eleanor returned with heat. “He’s a man in his own right, and a gardener too. He knows ever so much about flowers and their scents.”
Katherine turned from the mirror and folded her arms. “And that is all you have to say?”
“It’s not a flirtation,” Eleanor said. She thought she should have said that first, and suppressed a pang of irritation that Katherine had somehow managed to catch her out. “The truth is, we barely know each other.” And yet she’d told Jack Taylor more about herself, her own sorrows and doubts, than anyone else in Goswell, ever.
“And you’d like to remedy that situation, I suppose.”
“Oh, Katherine.” Eleanor shook her head, torn between weariness and anger. “Why do you care?”
“I don’t,” Katherine snapped and snatched her wrap. “Why should I care if you shock the village and dally with a farmer’s son? Come along. Mother and Father are no doubt waiting for us. We can’t be late for the opera.”
From the moment she sat down in the grand theatre with its seats of plush red velvet, Eleanor was entranced. When the orchestra started, her heart seemed to stop and then suddenly leap. And when Nellie Melba began to sing in her lilting soprano that held so much power and emotion, she was completely caught.
She could not understand the Italian, of course, but she was still able to follow the general storyline of love found and lost and found again, and it spoke to her heart and the secret dreams she’d nurtured, and fed them. When the Bohemian Rodolfo and the poor seamstress Mimi bumped in the dark, their hands fumbling over a single candle, Eleanor’s heart swelled. And when the consumptive and desolate Mimi died at the end, with her lover Rodolfo weeping over her still form, Eleanor could not keep tears from slipping silently down her cheeks. It was so beautiful and powerful and sad, so overwhelming, and it captured so many of the feelings and desires she’d nurtured without daring to name them.
She sat for a moment in her seat, her handkerchief pressed to her lips, not wanting to leave the magic of the theatre and break the spell the opera had cast over her.
Anne leaned over and patted her hand. “It touches me like that too, my dear,” she said. Eleanor could only sniff and nod in reply.
Afterwards they walked through the shadowy arches of Covent Garden Market to look for a cab, and Eleanor still felt as if she were brimming with emotion; she could not keep it from spilling over. She saw a veteran begging at the corner of the market, a crutch under one arm and a tin mug in his hand.
“Spare a coin, Miss?” he asked with a tired smile, and when Eleanor looked in the mug, she saw there were only a few ha’pennies rattling around in the bottom. He coughed, covering his mouth with his hand. “Begging your pardon, Miss.”
“Oh…” Eleanor gazed at him, her eyes filling with tears at the wretched sight.
“Eleanor,” Katherine began, a bit sharply, for she more than anyone else seemed to sense when Eleanor was on the verge of being swept away by emotion.
“Here,” Eleanor said, and with one swift tug she took the locket from around her neck and dropped it into the mug. The man’s eyes widened.
“I couldn’t, Miss—”
“You must,” Eleanor insisted and turned away before he could give it back to her.
Her parents had walked ahead to a cab that waited on the corner, and as Eleanor made to join them Katherine stayed her with one hard hand on her arm.
“Tell me you didn’t just give your locket – the locket Father gave you for your birthday – to a beggar on a street corner.”
“A veteran,” Eleanor corrected, shrugging off Katherine’s hand. “And yes, I did. Why shouldn’t I? He needs it more than I do.”
Katherine shook her head in exasperation. “Why can you never be measured or sensible about anything, Eleanor? He’ll be lucky if someone doesn’t come along and think he’s stolen it. And what will you tell Father?”
Eleanor hesitated for a moment before lifting her chin and marching towards her parents. “He’ll understand,” she declared, although she was not quite sure she believed it. She had a terrible feeling her father would look at her with that awful disappointment in his eyes, and she would have hurt him, and for what purpose? A man on a street corner she’d never see again. “I don’t care,” she tossed back to Katherine as their father beckoned them towards the open door of the cab. “I don’t care!”
She didn’t speak to anyone for the entire cab ride back to the hotel; her mother and father were still discussing the opera, but for Eleanor it had all fallen flat. She feared Katherine was right, and that she shouldn’t have given away her locket; she’d been impulsive and reckless once again, and yet she wasn’t sure if she knew how to be anything else. She thought of how Katherine had paced by the kitchen, one arm wrapped around her waist, when James had first come home. I don’t know how to be, she’d said.
Eleanor felt the same now. I don’t know how to be in this new world of veterans and hopelessness and confusion. I don’t know how to help, how to act, what to do, what to feel. She thought of Jack Taylor back in Goswell, tending the garden, touching her shoulder. I don’t know how to be with him. But she thought she knew what she wanted.
They left London the next morning; Katherine had given Eleanor a pointed look, knowing she had not told their father about the locket, and Eleanor ignored her. Her father hadn’t noticed, and she wasn’t going to tell him until he did.
Back in Goswell, the sun shone on a sparkling sea; the warm weather had not broken and Eleanor was eager to get out in the garden.
“I had an idea for a herb garden,” she told Jack the next morning. She’d been sitting in the dining-room alcove since breakfast, waiting for his arrival; as soon as he’d come through the gate, a spade over his shoulder, she’d hurried out. Now he stood before her, his hands clasped in front of him, his head slightly bowed, almost as if she were giving him a scolding. He wore his flat cap low on his head and his coat was buttoned, despite the warmth of the morning.
“Very good, Miss,” he said, and Eleanor suppressed a flicker of irritation at his almost subservient tone.
“Jack…” she began and then gave him a playful smile. “I may call you Jack, mayn’t I?”
A small yet telling hesitation. “As you wish, Miss.”
“Then I shall call you Jack. And you shall call me Eleanor.” She felt reckless again, just as she had with the poor veteran and his tin mug, but this time it was a delicious, heady feeling. She felt as if she could fly, as if it would only take a little leap to send her soaring over the garden. “I do wish it. We’re friends, aren’t we, Jack?” she continued, the words seeming to spill from her lips. “You were so kind to me the other day, when I was sad about Walter. You seemed to understand, and I know you’ve seen such tragedy, more than I have.”
Jack’s expression was still guarded underneath his cap but Eleanor thought she saw a certain softening in his brown eyes. “I understand about grief, Miss,” he finally said.
“I know you do.” She took a step closer to him, not quite bold enough to touch his arm as she wished to. “You lost your family, didn’t you? Have you any relatives left?”
“An aunt,” he said after a moment. “But she’s elderly and she never much cared for my father. But some have had it much worse,” he added, his voice gruff; he lowered his head so his face was hidden by his cap.
“Yes,” Eleanor agreed after a moment, “but that doesn’t make it any easier, really, does it? In some ways it just makes it harder to bear.”
He lifted his head then, and Eleanor saw some spark in his gaze, perhaps of interest. “How so, Miss?”
“You’re meant to call me Eleanor,” she reminded him. When he didn’t reply, she continued, “It makes it worse because everyone just expects you to get on with things. Everyone’s grieving, so why should anyone spare a moment for you? You’re no different.” She hesitated, and then said awkwardly, “I must sound very selfish, talking like that.”
“No, Mi—”
“Eleanor.”
“It isn’t proper,” he told her, sounding as if he wished he didn’t have to say it, “for me to call you by your Christian name.”
“Why not?” Eleanor demanded. “Haven’t things changed since the war? My sister is engaged to be married but spends most of her days with veterans, teaching them how to type.”
Jack looked surprised by this, and Eleanor spared a moment’s regret for divulging her sister’s secret so readily. “Why shouldn’t I call you by your Christian name, and you call me by mine? We’re working on the garden together, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” he said, a bit reluctantly, but Eleanor saw a small smile tug the corner of his mouth upwards. She knew she was being shamelessly forward, and while part of her cringed to think what anyone would say if they could hear her – Katherine or Mother or Grandmama – another, greater part of her thrilled to speak so honestly, so boldly.
“And we are friends,” she restated firmly. “So, then. Let’s have no more arguments.”
“Very well.” But he still didn’t call her Eleanor.
“And as for my herb garden…”
“Yes,” Jack said with something like relief. “Where would you like it?”
Eleanor cast her gaze around the garden, with its flower beds of rich, black earth. Jack had started filling some of them. The wisteria was already climbing up the wall, its shoots still tender, fragile and young. The beds he had dug over were surely not big enough for a whole herb garden, Eleanor decided. She glanced at the slope that led to the churchyard and the gate to Bower House, and a sudden smile lit her face.
“I know the perfect place,” she said, and started towards the gate. After a second’s pause Jack followed. They walked down the path to Bower House, skirting the vicarage and the church, until they came to the gate that led to the back of the house’s garden, with the walled garden in front of them. Eleanor struggled to lift the latch; it had rusted shut over the winter.
“Here.” Jack stepped forward, his shoulder brushing her arm as he tried to lift the latch. “Rusted up,” he murmured, and then hooked a boot underneath the door and lifted it; the latch sprang free and the door swung open. “Does this belong to the vicarage, then?” he asked.
The garden was covered in bramble; Grandmama and Mr Lyman had not been inside since they’d harvested the potatoes last August.
“Yes, they say it used to be a herb garden, back when the church was a monastery.” Eleanor stepped into the garden and tried to pull her skirt away from a thorny bramble; the delicate material snagged and she bit her lip, knowing her mother would not be pleased to see a dress rent.
“Let me,” Jack said, and stooped to free her dress. Eleanor felt as if her heart were suspended in her chest as she watched his fingers gently unhook the dress from the thorn. His fingernails were rimmed with dirt, as any gardener’s would be, but his fingers were long and slender, like Walter’s – a pianist’s fingers.
“Do you play the piano?” she asked, and Jack looked up, surprised.
“The piano? No. I’ve got a tin ear, or so my mum used to tell me. She was one for music, though.” He straightened, her dress now freed. “There.”
“Thank you.” She smiled at him, and Jack glanced round the garden.
“I don’t know about this, Miss. It’s not part of the vicarage garden proper, is it? Your father never mentioned it to me.”
“But it used to be a herb garden,” Eleanor returned. “And the flower beds in the vicarage’s garden aren’t big enough for what I want. A garden of remembrance,” she explained, the idea growing within her as she spoke. “A quiet place of beauty where you can come to remember – or forget, as you please. And herbs are fragrant, aren’t they? Like lavender, as you said.” She took another step into the garden, heedless of the brambles now. “A place apart, a place where you can just be, however you need to.” She whirled around to face him, her arms flung out, her dress snagging on a dozen different brambles.
Jack was smiling at her, a smile of amused affection and kindly exasperation that made Eleanor grin back. “Don’t you see?” she demanded breathlessly. “Don’t you see how we all need a place like that?”
“I think you need a place like that,” Jack answered quietly, and he took a step towards her. The breath froze in Eleanor’s lungs as she waited, although for what, she could not say. But all Jack did was free her dress once more, bending down so she could see the back of his head, the dark, ruffled hair and the sun-reddened nape of his neck.
He glanced up at her, and Eleanor knew she’d been caught staring. “Your dress is quite torn. I’m sorry. You shouldn’t come back here until I’ve cleared the brambles – if your father wishes it, that is.”
“He will,” Eleanor said with confidence. She stretched a hand out to Jack to help him up, and he took it unthinkingly; his hand was warm and dry, the palms calloused and rough. He straightened, withdrawing his hand quite quickly.
“Miss—”
“Eleanor.”
He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “Eleanor,” he said, and it sounded like a surrender.
Triumphant, Eleanor picked up her skirts and practically ran from the walled garden. “I’ll talk to my father right now,” she called back to him, and left him there amidst the brambles.