She was going to organize a fete. The idea came to her one sunny morning as she gazed out at the garden, and thought of all the work Jack had put into it, and all the joy to be had.
And they needed joy, desperately. A week after Eleanor had risen from her bed, Katherine had moved to Whitehaven to live with James and his parents. They hoped to secure a house for themselves before too long, but it was strange not seeing her sister, not having her walk up the stairs with her brisk, light step, or frown at her across the dinner table or scold her for using too much hot water in the bath. Eleanor had not thought she would miss such irritations, and yet she found she did.
Her parents missed Katherine too. Eleanor could see it in her mother’s pale, drawn face, and the way her father closeted himself in his study. Even Tilly seemed a bit disheartened, and Mrs Stanton had made Katherine’s favourite cake for tea, a currant loaf, before realizing she was not there to eat it.
Eleanor suspected that none of them would have missed Katherine quite so much if they’d all believed her to be happy. But in the three visits she’d made since joining the Freybourns, she hadn’t seemed happy at all. She’d seemed brittle and edgy, her smile too bright, her hands clenching too hard on her handbag.
“What do you do all day?” Eleanor asked, not meaning it unkindly, but she did wonder how Katherine occupied herself. She was living in her mother-in-law’s house, and so could not order things to her own satisfaction, and she no longer went up to Carlisle.
“Oh I lead quite the life of leisure,” she’d replied with a laugh that sounded harsh rather than amused. “I read books. I tidy my room – James and I have our bedroom, of course, and then the Freybourns have allowed us another room to use as a sort of private sitting room upstairs. It’s really very kind of them.”
Eleanor had the most appalling image of Katherine and James sitting in their little bedroom-turned-sitting room, perched stiffly on the Freybourns’ cast-off settees, enduring entire evenings of silence. Was that what marriage was? She’d rather be a spinster, and yet she knew things wouldn’t be like that with her and Jack.
But there was no use thinking about Jack, because he had avoided her completely since that day in the walled garden, when he’d put his head in her lap and she’d touched his hair… If she only had that moment of joy to remember, Eleanor supposed it might be enough. Almost.
But of course it wasn’t really enough, not for Eleanor or anyone, and so she was determined to chivvy everyone into happiness with a garden fete. If she couldn’t be happy, perhaps at least Katherine and James could, for an afternoon. She remembered how they’d been at the fete they’d had before the war; Katherine had been behind a stall, selling jam, but James had drawn her out to play the ring toss. Katherine had got it in on the first try and James had whooped and laughed. Eleanor remembered the sight of her sister looking both proud and abashed, and James being his old, exuberant self, and thought perhaps they could capture just a little bit of that again. She no longer naively believed you could go back, but surely you could at least remember.
She broached the idea at breakfast while Andrew was reading The Cumberland News and Anne a letter from a friend in Kendal. They both looked up when she spoke.
“A garden fete? We haven’t had one in ages, have we, Andrew?” Anne said. “Not since before the war.”
“All the more reason to have one,” Eleanor persisted. “Do you remember how they used to be, Mother – stalls in the garden, with jams and cakes and silly games? It was so much fun.” Anne smiled indulgently at her and Eleanor continued, “I know it might sound childish and simple, but I think we need a bit of fun in our lives now. Everyone is so…” She hesitated, almost afraid to put what she felt, what it seemed everyone felt, into words. “Disenchanted,” she finally said.
A mood of disillusionment had crept into society in the last few months; the post-Armistice euphoria had given way first to disappointment as men were delayed in being demobilized and the soldiers who did return didn’t look like the ones that had left. But as people had adjusted to that new reality, expectation had taken hold again, only to plummet as the reality stretched on and on. The front page of The Cumberland News was dedicated to the miners’ strike; bakers were striking too, everyone demanding fairer treatment and better wages. And even people who did not work seemed to suffer from this malaise. Even the Prince of Wales had been said to feel restless, wondering what joy or adventure his life might hold.
“I think it’s a grand idea,” Andrew said with a rustle of his newspaper. “My old friend Edward Stephens and his wife wanted to visit the weekend after next – why don’t we have it then?” He turned to Eleanor. “We went to theological college together, down at Cambridge. He served in the war as a padre, all four years.”
And so it was agreed.
As soon as breakfast was finished she put on her hat and walking boots and headed out to the garden. The grass was velvety green and neatly trimmed, scattered with the fallen petals of the fading blossoms.
Jack eyed her warily as she approached, setting down his wheelbarrow and taking off his cap. His face was completely, carefully blank.
“I’ve the most grand idea, Jack,” Eleanor said with determined gaiety. “We’re going to have a summer fete for the whole village – right here, in the garden, since you’ve made it look so lovely. You won’t mind helping, will you, with the stalls and things?”
“Of course not.”
She could not tell a thing from his tone. She searched his face for a moment, looking for some hint of the emotion he’d shown her in the walled garden, but there was nothing. “I shall have to solicit people for the raffle – and cakes, of course. There must be a cake stall. A jumble stall, too, to be sure. Everyone is in search of a bargain these days.” She let her gaze wander round the garden, imagining it lined with stalls, filled with people. “And the butterfly house will be such an attraction! We could sell tickets, couldn’t we?” She turned to him with a smile. “Where did you get the butterflies, Jack? I never asked.”
“I caught them,” he replied. “With a net.”
“It must have taken ages!” Eleanor exclaimed. “I didn’t realize there were so many butterflies in all of Cumberland!”
“I sent away for some,” Jack said, and settled his cap back on his head. “You can buy the chrysalises from a catalogue.” He straightened, his gaze flicking away from hers. “Your father can let me know what I need to do for the fete,” he said, and began trundling the barrow away while Eleanor watched.
She couldn’t bear going inside just then; the day was so warm and bright and the house felt stifling in so many ways. She went to the walled garden instead, and slipped inside the butterfly house.
She’d been inside many times since her father had first shown it to her several weeks ago. She loved the sudden flashes of beauty, and sometimes she would lift the net back and a butterfly would alight on her fingertips. Today she had a sudden, mad urge to let them all go, to see them silhouetted against the blue sky, freed from their prison.
She didn’t, though, because the butterfly house had been Jack’s gift to her, and she feared it was the only one he would ever give her. Instead she pressed her cheek against the cold stone and closed her eyes as her forced gaiety trickled away and tears slipped silently down her cheeks.
That afternoon Eleanor decided to take the train into Whitehaven to visit Katherine. She had been to the Freybourns’ home, a Georgian townhouse overlooking the harbour, several times before when Diana had invited her and her mother, along with Katherine, for afternoon tea, but this was the first time she’d gone on her own.
She mounted the steps with some trepidation, and apologized to the maid who answered the door, flustered to have an unexpected caller and stammering that Mrs Freybourn was out.
“It’s the younger Mrs Freybourn, my sister Katherine, I wish to see,” she said. “I should have telephoned, I suppose, but I’m still not used to them.”
Her father had had a telephone installed several years ago, but Eleanor had precious little reason to make a call.
The maid let her into the sitting room and then went upstairs to fetch Katherine. Eleanor glanced around the room, filled with heavy Victorian pieces, every little table and dresser covered with a frilled doily or several ornaments: porcelain milkmaids and shepherdesses, and in pride of place above the mantel, a framed poem about a fallen soldier that Eleanor read silently, the last lines clutching at her heart:
Shall we, your mothers, sorrow then
As those who have no hope? Ah, no!
The Father’s house is large and very safe.
“Eleanor, what on earth are you doing here?”
Eleanor whirled away from the fireplace, the lines of poetry still echoing in her head. Was Walter safe? Was he happy? She blinked rapidly and turned the corners of her mouth up in a smile as Katherine came into the room, frowning as she shut the door behind her.
“Surprise! I thought I’d visit.”
“You should have telephoned. I might not have been in.”
“Ah, but I thought you were living a life of leisure.”
Katherine’s face twisted at that and she crossed the room. “What is it you want?”
“Can’t I come simply for the sake of your company?”
“I didn’t think you ever enjoyed my company, or I yours for that matter.”
Eleanor recoiled at that bit of plain speaking. “That is hard, even from you, Katherine.”
Katherine sank into a chair by the window, leaning her head against its back with a sigh. “I fear marriage doesn’t suit me.”
“Have things not improved with James?” Eleanor asked hesitantly.
“No.” Katherine stared out the window. “He has nightmares,” she said flatly. “Every night. He’s taken to sleeping in our sitting room – but I shouldn’t tell you such things. They’ll put you to the blush, I’m sure.”
“They won’t,” Eleanor insisted, but she could feel her cheeks heat all the same. It was a bit startling to hear Katherine talk of marriage and beds and sleeping. “Anyway,” she said after a moment, “I came over here to ask you to help with the summer fete.”
Katherine turned from the window. “What summer fete?”
“The one we’re having in our garden, of course,” Eleanor said with a laugh. “You must help, Katherine. You’re so much more capable than I am—”
“And whose idea was this garden fete?” Katherine asked.
“Mine, of course.”
“Any excuse to get into the garden, I suppose?”
Now Eleanor well and truly blushed. “It’s not like that,” she said stiffly. “I know – I know there can be nothing between Jack and me.”
“As long as he knows it as well,” Katherine answered, and then gave a long sigh. “I suppose I can help with the fete – it will be something to do, at least.”
Eleanor spent the next fortnight arranging the fete; Katherine came over to the vicarage nearly every day to help. It was encouraging to see her sister looking and acting more like herself, bossy and purposeful and just a bit irritating. Eleanor did not begrudge her anything, for she longed for Katherine to be happy, as her own happiness was surely out of reach.
The sun continued to shine as Jack helped to erect the wooden stalls that now lined the garden, and villagers brought their jars of chutney and jam to be sold. Raffle prizes piled up in the corner of Andrew’s study and Mrs Stanton saved nearly a month’s worth of ration coupons to make a chocolate cake for the cake stall.
As cheered as she was by her sister’s involvement, Eleanor could not keep her own spirits from sinking a little when Jack’s gaze moved deliberately over her, or he carefully called her Miss Eleanor while not meeting her eyes. His stiff politeness felt like a slight, and with each bland, formal interaction she felt him moving further and further away from her.
Which was, Katherine reminded her more than once, as it should be, and yet Eleanor still fought against it, still longed for a world where propriety did not stand in the way of love.
“Your head is full of daydreams,” Katherine told her bluntly when she’d caught Eleanor staring after Jack. “What do you suppose would happen? He’d marry you and you’d live in the back room of Mr Lyman’s cottage?”
Eleanor stiffened. “We’d rent a place,” she said, hardly able to believe she was admitting to thinking of such things. “A cottage…”
“With what money? I imagine Jack has a few pennies in his pocket, and that is all. He’s not educated, he’ll never be more than a gardener’s boy—”
“A gardener,” Eleanor corrected fiercely. “In his own right. He designed the garden, Katherine; he thought of it all himself. He may not have the proper training to work on a grand estate, but he—”
“Even so,” Katherine cut her off dismissively. “Do you want to live in some hovel and break your back scrubbing the floors?”
“Jack said the same thing, and I told him I wouldn’t mind—”
“What!” Katherine drew back, appalled. “He’s discussed such matters with you? The impertinence! Has he – has he made some sort of offer…?”
“No, no, of course not,” Eleanor said quickly. She was realizing far too late that she’d been terribly indiscreet. “I was the one – oh, never mind. It’s all come to nothing.”
“And a good thing it has,” Katherine returned. “Yes, I can imagine that you were the one. You are so impulsive, Eleanor. So reckless. I wonder if you will ever learn.”
“I wonder too, sometimes,” Eleanor admitted, and then let out a rather shaky laugh. “But it doesn’t matter, Katherine, honestly. He won’t have anything to do with me now.”
“He should have had nothing to do with you in the first place,” Katherine answered sharply, and moved away.
The day of the fete dawned with heavy grey clouds, making Eleanor’s spirits plummet. It seemed quite unfair that after months of sunshine this day would turn out so gloomy.
“Never mind,” Anne told her over breakfast. “The sun might come out later, and we’ve had plenty of fetes where the rain has poured down! Do you remember when there was a downpour and everyone huddled under one of the stalls? Walter knocked one of the poles with his elbow and the whole thing came falling down on everyone’s heads!” Anne laughed, shaking her head, and then subsided, her face now drawn in contemplative lines. “It’s nice to remember,” she said quietly. “Remember the good times, that is.”
Eleanor nodded; for a moment she was unable to speak. Yes, it was nice to remember the good times, but it hurt too. Perhaps it would always hurt.
By ten o’clock the grey sky had, thankfully, lightened to pale blue, and the sun peeked out from behind the remaining shreds of cloud. People had begun to arrive, and the photographer who had taken pictures for Katherine’s wedding set up his things in a corner of the garden, offering portraits for a shilling.
Eleanor had taken special care with her appearance, wearing her hair in finger waves around her ears, the rest pulled back in a knot low on the nape of her neck. It almost looked as if she’d had her hair shingled, something she knew neither of her parents would ever countenance.
Anne had allowed her a new dress of white lawn with the dropped waist that had become so fashionable. She pinned on her hat, one of soft felt rather than the huge affairs of straw and silk that were starting to go out of fashion. She looked, Eleanor decided, quite modern, but hopefully not so much as to cause her parents alarm.
Outside the air was damp and fresh, the sun just starting to dry the dew from the grass. Instinctively Eleanor looked for Jack, but she couldn’t see him amidst the crowds that were starting to gather. She suspected he would do his best to keep out of her way.
She saw Katherine and James standing together, James as stiff as always. Katherine looked tenser by the second, her face pale, her lips pursed. Determinedly Eleanor walked towards them, swinging her parasol by its handle.
“Isn’t this grand! We haven’t had a fete here since 1914.”
“Yes, I remember,” Katherine answered. “Didn’t you eat too many walnut whips and become sick?”
“Didn’t you win the ring toss?” Eleanor countered. She would not let Katherine’s sour mood spoil the day. “Perhaps you will again, if you try.” She let her gaze linger on Katherine meaningfully for a moment before she turned to James. “I’m glad we’ve brought the tradition back,” she said brightly. “Aren’t you, James?”
James looked startled to be addressed; he gave a little shrug. “I suppose.”
“And how are you finding married life?” Eleanor ploughed on. “Have you started looking for a house?”
“Not yet,” James answered. He ignored her first question, and Katherine shot Eleanor a glowering frown, keeping her from pressing the point.
She studied James as covertly as she could; his face was so bland, his expression so blank, it seemed hard to believe he had once been jolly, fooling around with Walter. Another memory of that last fete suddenly slotted into place.
“That last garden fete… you and Walter did a dance!” She thought she saw a ripple of remembrance in James’s eyes but then he shook his head.
“I don’t recall.”
“Oh, you must. You put on women’s hats and did the can-can. It was quite the laugh, even if Father pretended to disapprove. Don’t you remember, Katherine?” She turned to her sister, who looked torn.
“I… I’m not sure.”
Eleanor felt like shaking them both. They were married; they loved each other, or had once. Why couldn’t they find happiness again? Why did they have to be so infernally stubborn, wallowing in misery when joy was surely within their grasp if they just tried for it?
“I remember,” she said firmly. “I remember it being such a jolly day even though I’d had too many sweets. Mother said it’s nice to remember the good times, but I think it’s important that we create new memories too.” She turned to smile at James. “Why don’t you try the pitching game? Three throws for a penny. And if you hit the mark, you win a cake—”
James stared at her for a moment, and Eleanor thought he might relent. She thought she saw, underneath that carefully blank, oh-so-polite expression, a trace of the true James, Walter’s best friend who had been filled with life and laughter.
“Very well,” he said, tilting his head in acceptance, and both Katherine and Eleanor watched as he headed over to the stall. Robbie Sykes, the boy who had delivered the telegram about Walter, was manning the stall, and he gave James three cricket balls after accepting his penny.
Eleanor and Katherine both drew their breath in sharply as James threw one ball after another, as hard as he could and with deadly aim, hitting the mark three times in a row. A moment of silence ensued, stretching on until Eleanor thought it might snap.
James nodded towards Robbie, whose mouth was hanging open, and then walked quickly out of the garden.
“He didn’t even take a cake,” Eleanor managed after a moment, and Katherine whirled on her.
“Why did you have to do that?”
“I was trying to help—”
“Help? By pushing and pushing? He doesn’t want to remember the good times, Eleanor, and he certainly doesn’t want to create new memories. Why can’t you just leave well enough alone?” And with that Katherine walked quickly away from her.
The moment had passed and the fete continued, children running with hoops and balls; Andrew called for children to participate in a game of The Bellman, and Mrs Hennessy, a matron of the village, went forth to judge the offerings of jam and award a first prize.
It had all fallen flat for Eleanor. She walked around, praising the produce people had brought, awarding prizes, clapping for the children, all with a bright smile pinned onto her face. Yet she felt as she had when she’d arranged the Christmas decorations and crackers for everyone back in December.
She turned and walked away from the people and the party, the noise of children’s laughter fading as she headed for the only solace she could find: the walled garden. Walter’s garden.
It was quiet inside the garden once she’d closed the door; the tours of the garden and butterfly house were to be later in the day. Andrew had refused to sell tickets but had agreed to open the garden up to everyone in the village for the afternoon.
Now, however, the garden was empty and silent save for the rustle of the breeze through the damson trees; the plums, Eleanor saw, were small and hard, still needing to ripen.
She walked through the grass to the butterfly house, slipping inside and breathing in the warm, damp air, the almost tropical scent of the flowers. The rustle of the butterfly wings filled her ears and for a moment she could simply be; she didn’t have to think or want or grieve.
She closed her eyes, letting everything in her absorb the moment; wanting to stay in it, never to go forward, never to go back. Then she heard the creak of the garden door and reluctantly she opened her eyes.
She thought it would be some villager hoping for a private peek of the gardens, or perhaps her mother or father looking for her, but when she turned her head she saw it was Jack.
He stopped in the doorway, bracing one shoulder against the frame. “I came to check on things before the garden is opened for visitors.”
“I almost don’t want people to see it any more,” Eleanor said. “It feels like an invasion of privacy somehow.” Jack didn’t answer and Eleanor lifted her hand to a butterfly that was clinging by its thread-like legs to the netting. “I wonder what will happen to all these poor creatures. Even with the warmth in here, they can’t live forever.”
Jack didn’t answer, and Eleanor turned to him with a small smile. “No one lives forever, and certainly not a butterfly. Even with this heating…” She gestured to the pipes.
“The butterflies will lay their eggs,” he said. “On the leaves of the plants and flowers. And so there will be butterflies for the house next summer, when the eggs hatch.”
“Caterpillars first, then.”
“Yes, it will be something to see.”
She sighed, shaking her head. “I still feel sorry for them somehow. Trapped behind all this netting.”
“They’re safe, at least.”
“Yes.” She paused, her gaze still on the blue butterfly that trembled by her fingers. “What will happen to me, do you think, Jack?” she asked. He was silent for a long time but Eleanor could not think of anything else to say. She did not even know what to think.
“I only want you to be happy,” he finally said in a low voice.
“Oh, I don’t think I shall be happy. Content, perhaps, if I ever learn to be satisfied with what I have. But happy?” She turned to him then, too weary to feel angry or accusing any more. “I don’t think so.”
“You will, Eleanor. You’ll find someone – someone worthy—”
“And who will that be, do you think? Is there a man left who is whole in body and soul?”
“You think I’m whole?” he asked, his voice turning rough.
“I know you’ve had more than your fair share of grief, Jack,” Eleanor answered. “I don’t mean to suggest otherwise—”
“It’s not that,” he said, shaking his head. “I know I’m lucky to be alive. But I made my own luck, and I pay for it every day of my life. I’ve got scars, Eleanor, same as any other man who has been in France. You just don’t see them.”
She lowered her gaze. “Don’t you know I’d take your scars, and all of you, if you’d let me?”
“You shouldn’t say such things.”
“I know I shouldn’t. I suppose my reputation could be ruined, standing in this butterfly house alone with you. But I’ll say it all the same, much difference it will make. I know you’ve made up your mind.”
“For your sake, Eleanor—”
“If I could prove to you,” she cut across him, her voice rising, “that I could manage, that I wouldn’t mind, would you accept me then?”
“How could you prove such a thing?”
“I don’t know.” The fierce emotion that had seized hold of her for a moment subsided and she shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Jack laid a hand on her shoulder. “Come. Your father will wonder where you are. Where we both are, for that matter.”
Eleanor didn’t move and after a moment Jack left her there; she heard him walk across the grass, and then the creak of the door. Impulsively she pulled back the net; the blue butterfly clinging to it beat its wings against it and then flew free.
Eleanor let the net fall back as she watched it go; it zigzagged through the house, bumbling around before it finally found the door and flew out into the garden.
She followed it out, watching it flutter; Jack, she saw, was standing by the garden door, but his gaze was drawn to the butterfly as it weaved its way towards him.
“I had to free it,” she said, and stretched her hand out to the butterfly that seemed almost to hover in the air. “I had to let something find what happiness it could, since you won’t—”
“Eleanor,” Jack said, and she heard the anguish in his voice. She reached for the butterfly, caught between rage and despair, wanting to let the poor creature fly free and yet also longing to hold on to it.
“I’ve come to take snaps of the garden,” Edward Dyson, the photographer, announced, and she looked up to see him standing there, smiling brightly, his Graflex 1A held out in front of him. She froze, the butterfly still hovering near her fingertips, Jack behind her. “What a picture!” he exclaimed, and held the camera up to his face. There was a snap and a pop, and then he lowered it, grinning. “Even the butterfly stayed still,” he said with a laugh, but the noise had since startled it, and Eleanor saw it was now gone.
From behind her Jack made a sound and she turned, startled to see his face become leached of colour.
“Jack—” she exclaimed without a thought of how it would appear, but he didn’t even seem to hear her. His gaze was on the crowd of people that were strolling towards the garden, and then he slipped through the door and walked quickly away.