The van drove round to the tradesmen’s entrance at the back of the house, the delivery driver being familiar with the layout of Cucklington. He had brought the other consignments down from London when they were ready to be returned to their owner, a journey he enjoyed making not only because he himself had been brought up only ten miles from Bexham, but also because he had fallen in love with the owner of the house when he had made the first delivery. Indeed, as he opened the back of his smartly painted black and green van, he hoped and prayed it would be his heroine, Miss Gore-Stewart, who opened the door to him.
And of course, since Richards had long since left to take up his duties as the landlord of the local public house, the delivery boy’s prayers were answered and Meggie opened the back door to him in person, dressed in a bright red wool dressing gown piped in white and red kid slippers, with her blond hair pulled tightly back and tied with black ribbon. Despite her early morning attire, to her little admirer she was still the most beautiful creature on whom he had ever set eyes.
‘Delivery from Barnstaple and Brown, miss,’ he stammered. ‘I understand you’re expecting it.’
‘As a matter of fact, in the excitement I had completely forgotten all about it,’ Meggie replied, examining the delivery chitty before staring back at him with clear blue eyes. ‘The excitement of Christmas, that is.’
‘Only three days to go now, miss. And, you know, I still get all excited like. Even though I know it’s daft.’
‘I don’t think it’s daft at all. I think it would be much more daft not to get excited about Christmas. Now, if you wouldn’t mind carrying that through to the hall for me and unpacking it, I’ll get you some refreshments.’
The delivery boy took the wooden crate through as directed, easing off the nailed planks of softwood with a screwdriver he kept in his pocket and carefully removing the newspaper that his employers had rolled into balls as a means of insulation and protection for the cargo. Finally and with even greater care he removed the painting from the case, picked off a couple of flakes of newspaper from the frame, and stood it up against the side of a large armchair that stood by the fireplace in the hall to await its owner’s return.
Meggie was back moments later with a tray bearing a mug of hot tea and a plate of hot buttered toast in a muffin dish that she set down on the hall table before standing back to appraise her restored painting.
‘Yes, that is brilliant,’ she said finally. ‘I’m always a little frightened about having paintings repaired when they’ve been damaged, but they really have done a brilliant job. And now – thanks to the sale of the house – I don’t have to get rid of it. It can come with me wherever I go.’
‘Mr Barnstaple said he thinks it’s one of the best Herbert Wilkinsons he’s seen for a long time,’ the delivery boy offered.
‘He didn’t paint a lot of portraits, apparently,’ Meggie said, staring at the painting with her head on one side. ‘Wilkinson was mostly known for his landscapes, so they tell me. Now. Now all we have to do is find a new home for it.’
Had the painting been hanging where it had hung before, Waldo would have seen it the moment he walked in the front door. As it was, Meggie had decided to hang it in the library above her writing desk, and because of this Waldo didn’t see it until he had poured them both a drink in the drawing room. He was about to produce the photographs that he had gone home to collect, when Meggie took him by the hand and led him towards the library.
‘I want you to see something first,’ she said. ‘One of my favourite paintings has come home. It got damaged about nine months ago – fell off the wall – and I got it back this morning.’ She threw open the library door. ‘I bet like me you’ll find it rather special.’
Meggie preceded him into the room, but as she turned to see his reaction she saw Waldo was already transfixed.
‘Good heavens above, Waldo,’ she said, hurrying back to him. ‘Waldo, whatever is the matter with you?’
‘You won’t believe this, Meggie, but the woman in this painting is the woman in my photographs.’
‘I’m very sorry to disappoint you, Mr Astley, but my mother could not possibly have been your mother,’ Meggie teased him after they had sat trying to puzzle it all out.
‘I don’t see why,’ Waldo said, still worried, and not entirely convinced. ‘She could have got pregnant, returned to America, had me—’
‘Waldo?’ Meggie smiled at him, shutting him up as she did so. ‘Pipe down, and listen. My mother and father got married in 1918, after the war was over. The women in the photograph and in this portrait do look a little alike, I agree, but only because they are costumed in dresses and hats of the period.’
‘No, no, I won’t have it, he cried! I insist my father came here, fell in love with your mother, and we’re really brother and sister. Our romance is doomed, and we will have to go to the vicar to be shriven.’
They both laughed.
‘Now there’s a notion.’ Meggie handed Waldo a cup of coffee, and some buttered toast on a plate. ‘A Greek tragedy in Bexham. That would be more than the poor vicar could take.’
‘It would give him a good theme for a sermon. Something along the lines of do not do unto your brother, or sister, what you would do unto another.’
‘Why Waldo Astley!’ Meggie said, in her best mock-shocked Southern American.
‘He’d have a full house all right.’
‘Leaving that aside, are you really telling me you came all the way from America simply because of two old snaps. Is that really true?’ Meggie bit into her toast, relishing food for the first time for months.
‘I suppose in a way, yes, and in another way, no.’ Waldo leaned back in the old red velvet chair and of a sudden stared past Meggie. ‘I came to Bexham because of the snaps, as you call them – and also because of Hugh Tate whom I met, if you remember, in Paris in ’45. But it wasn’t just because of either of those things I came here. I think I came because something had happened here, to my father, and I felt that. According to my uncle it was not just my mother running off that closed his heart for ever. It was closed already, which was why she ran off. He suffered some huge disappointment, some heartbreak perhaps. I know it sounds a bit melodramatic, but the mystery of why my father had always been so full of rancour and hatred was beginning to worry me. I wanted to try to find out what it was – because it had to be something. Instead of which, it seems that instead of something I’ve found someone. And now I have, it kind of solves it all. If something happened to my father here, something that changed his life utterly – and not for the good – then what’s happened to me must surely balance the books.’
Meggie smiled at him a smile as warm as spring sunshine, then leaned over and kissed him. ‘That’s just the nicest thing, Waldo. What a lovely thing to say.’
‘I say it because I can because it’s true, Meggie,’ Waldo replied. ‘Finding someone is more important than finding out some vague half-truth to do with someone else. Funny thing is – I don’t care any longer what that thing might have been. That’s history. My father’s history. I have to live mine now, and that’s what matters. And my history is here – with you.’
‘I think it’s time to pull a cracker,’ Meggie said gently. ‘I think we should let Christmas commence. Because I’d say we most surely have more to celebrate than we can possibly imagine.’
Everyone gave parties over the next week. Even though they were still a long way from the land of plenty, the people of Bexham had saved what they could and bought what they could, and what they couldn’t buy they made, and what they couldn’t make they imagined.
Christmas Day dawned cold, but with a fine frost high on the Downs that made the faded grasses sparkle and the hedgerows glint. As usual Bexham Church was fuller than it ever was during the rest of the year, but Stephen Anderson no longer minded this since he had come to appreciate that sometimes a congregation of two dozen people who were there to worship in earnest could be even more fulfilling for a priest than a church full of people whose minds were more on the roast turkey than the mysteries of the Trinity.
After Matins Waldo and Meggie were invited to the Tates’ for drinks, where, with an air of caution in her voice, Judy, in what she thought was a low voice, whispered to Waldo that she might be pregnant.
‘I take it the Savoy dinner went OK, then?’ Waldo asked straightfaced, once Walter was well out of earshot.
‘You were absolutely right – it worked like a dream,’ Judy replied. ‘But if you really want to know, I’d say that my rumoured flirtation with a certain person – no names no pack drill – did even more than a lovely dinner at the Savoy for two. It acted like a fifty megawatt charge to our relationship.’
‘Tell that to my left eye.’ Waldo sighed.
Judy laughed and looked across the room. ‘Now, only John and Mattie to go, really,’ she said. ‘Poor John’s on tenterhooks. His parents have indicated that they wish to ask Mattie to dinner, but they haven’t announced the date for it yet. John keeps wondering if they didn’t really mean it, if it will never really happen.’
‘It will happen. If it’s meant to happen, it does. It’s just difficult waiting for the moment, that’s all.’
Loopy and Hugh tried once more to persuade Waldo and Meggie to stay for Christmas lunch but they refused, having made a private arrangement to dine at Cucklington House for what Meggie knew was to be her last Christmas there.
Waldo and Meggie had prepared the lunch together and together they cooked it, Waldo surprising Meggie by how good he was in the kitchen and Meggie surprising Walter by how good she was, both having assumed that having been brought up in rich households neither of them would be really that good at preparing a full scale meal, even though it was only for two. They cooked side by side in perfect harmony, preparing a traditionally delicious Christmas dinner, albeit with a fresh farm chicken in place of the turkey they had not managed to secure in time.
Yet although there were only the two of them sitting in the large dining room at Cucklington, a dark-panelled room which Meggie had decorated with an abundance of candles arrayed all around the room in old jam jars and beautiful traditional arrangements of dark green shiny red-berried holly intertwined with mistletoe and ivy, it seemed that there were six if not a dozen times as many people at the table, so hilarious was the conversation as the two of them ate their way through their mouthwatering dinner. Happily there were still good wines to be plundered from the cellars, although it took some looking, a task that Meggie conferred upon Waldo since she was spooked by the spirits she was convinced remained in some sort of limbo in the subterranean rooms of the large house.
The fearless Waldo, innocent of any such ghostly accounts and stoutly maintaining that no good American should be put off by medieval spirits, returned with two bottles of ancient Vosné-Romanée, a Château Lafitte, and some extremely ancient crusted port. By the time it was the hour to listen to the King’s speech, the two of them were – as Meggie put it – well and truly toasted.
After King George had finished addressing the nation, they exchanged presents, Meggie having at the eleventh hour decided to give Waldo a pair of antique gold cufflinks that had belonged to her grandfather as well as a leatherbound edition of Great Expectations which she had learned by chance from Judy was one of Waldo’s favourite books. Waldo presented her once again with his box beautifully wrapped in the shiniest of red papers. She opened it to find a door key.
‘Fine,’ she said, her blue eyes narrowing. ‘You have me here, sir. Is this one of your quaint jests, perhaps? Or something symbolic?’
‘Why, it is neither, madam,’ Waldo replied, entering into the spirit of things. ‘It is but a plain unvarnished front door key.’
‘To the house in which I already live, sir. To a house indeed already sold, sir, moreover.’
‘Sold to someone who now has found someone to whom to give it.’
‘Oh, no. Not the mysterious inventor Mr O’Whatsit?’ Meggie said slowly, as she realised. ‘No, Waldo Astley – now you go too far.’
‘I do so hate to see houses go out of the family.’
‘But your bid was ridiculous!’
‘What I love most of all about you is your unfailing gratitude,’ Waldo scolded. ‘I had no idea of what anyone else would bid. And when I asked privately—’
‘They said to themselves rich Yank, let’s push him up.’
‘Well, of course. But I knew it was all in a very good cause.’
‘Ever since you arrived here because of two burned up photographs, all Bexham seems to have done is scrounge from you. It doesn’t seem right.’
‘What you really mean is, ever since I arrived here I keep throwing my money about, isn’t that it?’
‘Well, if you insist on being vulgar …’ Meggie shrugged her shoulders, but remembering all the backbiting and criticism with which Waldo’s generosity had been greeted she sighed. ‘Most people suspect good motives. It always follows that if you’re generous, you must be self-serving. It’s true, isn’t it? What they say – that no good deed goes unpunished.’
‘Oh sure, but don’t worry.’ Waldo laughed. ‘I’m used to people disliking my generosity, and believe me I do nothing I don’t want to. They say money doesn’t buy happiness, but I don’t go along with that. It might not buy you, the guy with all the money, happiness – but it certainly can buy happiness for other people. I got that out of this cracker.’ Meggie groaned and Waldo continued. ‘As you might have guessed, I’m pretty rich, Meggie. Actually pretty absurdly so – and through none of my own brilliance, I assure you. My father made several fortunes, and let me tell you no-one comes by all that money purely legitimately. I have this sense that a lot of his money came from places where it shouldn’t have – and if that was the case, I reckoned that if it came from bad use, why not put it to some good use.’
‘You are really quite a remarkable person, Mr Astley,’ Meggie said, taking his hand. ‘And now – you know what I am going to do with this key you have just given me?’
‘I do not have even the vaguest of ideas, madam.’
‘I am going to get up,’ Meggie said, after which she did just that. ‘And I am going to go to the front door, and I am going to lock the door from the inside and hide the key so you will not be able to leave until I say so.’
‘And now I shall tell you something, Miss Gore-Stewart,’ Waldo replied. ‘That little idea of yours just suits me fine.’
But as far as parties proper rather than improper went the party voted best of all by all and sundry was the all day open house Waldo and Meggie threw the following day at Cucklington House. It seemed that at one point or other of the day every person who lived in Bexham arrived for a drink and a good wish. Some stayed for hours, others just dropped in with a small present, or a card, or just to present the compliments of the season. The drink flowed, tray after tray of Rusty’s homemade mince pies were consumed, and Waldo sang at the piano while people danced in the drawing room until the bell atop the old Saxon church chimed midnight and the revellers finally staggered home, all except Rusty and Richards who stayed at their own insistence to help clear up the house.
When the Sykeses had finally retired and Richards had ambled back to the Three Tuns, Meggie damped down the fire and locked up the rest of the house while Waldo, now recovered from what he called post-host exhaustion, sat at his piano playing a favourite piece of Schumann.
‘I haven’t really thanked you for your present, Waldo,’ Meggie called to him, over the closing bars of Träumerei. ‘But I think that’s because I didn’t know how to.’
‘I know how you can thank me,’ Waldo said. ‘By staying just as you are …’
At which he at once began to play ‘Stay As Sweet As You Are’, his rich sonorous baritone filling the lovely drawing room and floating up to the ceiling where, it seemed to Meggie, it stayed, floating around the room like the cloud of happiness on which she found she was now sitting.
Mattie gazed at herself in the mirror in her newly made home sewn winter dress. It was a three-quarter length shirtwaist style frock, remodelled from one of Lady Melton’s pre-war winter gowns, and as she turned herself every which way to examine it Mattie saw it to be very flattering and that it showed her off to her best. But pretty though she undoubtedly looked she felt the very opposite. She had never felt less self-assured in all her life, just at the moment when she needed all her poise and self-belief most. For at long last the formal invitation to dine with the Tates had arrived and tonight was the appointed night.
And now it was here, now the time she had longed so much for had finally come, she felt gauche, unattractive and timid, as if the occasion was going to prove to be far beyond her social capabilities, as if in fact she was making the most terrible mistake in thinking that John’s parents were going to ratify their association. What could she have been thinking? she wondered miserably as she sank onto her dressing table stool to stare glumly at herself in her looking glass, with her chin propped up on her fists. She should have known that the Tates could never accept her. Enough people had told her so, heavens above. Accept somebody not only with her past but with an illegitimate child? It really was completely absurd to think that they might. It was worse than absurd, it was extremely embarrassing.
At that moment Mattie felt like chucking the whole thing in – like tearing her newly fashioned dress off, throwing it in the waste basket and climbing into her bed where she would remain until all this stupidity had blown over and calamity had been avoided. Because sure as eggs, she thought, that is what it is going to be – calamitous. It didn’t matter any more how much John loved her and she him, nor the way he had accepted so completely what had happened to her in the war without question or criticism, just as she had understood and accepted what had happened to John, when believing his brother to be dead he had found himself falling in love with the woman he thought was now Walter’s widow. It mattered not that both she and John were perfectly content to accept each other for what they were because if John’s parents were not, then they had no future as a couple, at least not as a respectable couple. They could perhaps run away somewhere and either live together or get married in some register office or other, but in her heart of hearts Mattie knew that this was not what John would want. John Tate came from a very close and loving family, and what he would want was for the parents who loved him to love the woman that he now loved.
So, much as Mattie wanted to see the evening through, even if it ended in defeat, and not to let John down, suddenly it seemed that all her courage had evaporated. Indeed, the normally optimistic and resolute Mattie now felt so utterly without hope that instead of getting on with preparing herself for what she had so foolishly hoped would be her big night, all she felt like was taking her clothes back off and clambering into her bed.
If it had not been for the sudden knock on her door, Mattie might well have done just that, but hearing her father’s cheerful voice outside asking if he could come in there was little she could do but go to the door and speak to him.
‘Yes?’ she asked, allowing just her face to appear in the narrow opening. ‘Is something the matter?’
‘On the contrary, I thought something must be the matter with you,’ Lionel reported. ‘I know you women take the best part of a year and a day to get ready, but you can’t afford to be late. The Tates are not people to be kept waiting.’
‘I’m not going,’ Mattie said feebly, doing her best to close the door.
‘Of course you are – don’t be so damn’ stupid.’ Lionel pushed the door open and gained an easy admittance, so surprised was his daughter by his resolution, let alone his language. ‘I thought you might be fuffing about,’ her father continued. ‘But believe you me, there’s no need to. You can save all this sort of behaviour for your wedding day.’
‘Who said anything about wedding days?’ Mattie asked, nervously fiddling with her hair, which was already done beautifully.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ Lionel groaned. ‘What on earth do you think this is all about, Mattie? They’re not asking you to dinner with their eldest boy just to talk about the weather.’
‘They could be asking me up to tell me I’m not suitable, Daddy.’
‘Not suitable? Not suitable? You?’ Lionel threw back his head and roared with laughter in a most un-Lionel Eastcott-like way. ‘Why’ – he beamed, putting both his hands on her shoulders – ‘I’ve never seen anything more suitable! Let alone anything quite as lovely. So come along now, Mathilda. I’ve got the car out for you. I’d drive you myself, but then there’d be no-one here to look after young Max. Off you go, now. And don’t you dare come back here without a ring on your finger.’
Kissing her a fond farewell, Lionel watched Mattie walk off down the garden path before closing the front door and leaning his back against it.
‘Fingers crossed,’ he said out loud. ‘Fingers crossed the old letter’s done the trick.’
Twice on the short drive from her home to the Tates’ Mattie stopped the car and thought about turning back for home, the second time seriously considering the option. She could easily plead illness, have her father telephone the house and say she had suddenly been laid low with some bug or other, and then – and then what? For a start her father would never agree to making any such excuse for her, and even if he did, she would only be delaying the inevitable. Sooner or later she would have to face the Tates and come to terms with the objections she just knew they were going to put in her and John’s way – her past – her child – her social unsuitability – so really she might just as well bite on the famous bullet and have done with it now. Putting the car back into gear she drove on through the village and headed up the lane to Shelborne. As she proceeded to her delight and surprise she found her confidence flooding back. She had realised that even to think of ducking out on this evening would mean that she was ashamed of herself and, more important, ashamed of her beloved little boy, Max.
So in spite of having to ring the bell three times to gain admittance, by the time Gwen finally opened the front door Mattie was her old self.
‘Sorry, miss.’ The maid sighed. ‘It’s the captain. He’s banging away at the old joanna, as you can hear – and when he’s banging away that loud it’s as much as I can do to hear me own thoughts.’
To the sound of her host singing and playing loudly at his grand piano, Gwen took Mattie’s coat, put it over her arm and pushed the door to the drawing room open with her free hand.
‘Miss Eastcott,’ she announced. The group around the piano took no notice whatsoever. ‘I said! Miss Eastcott!’ Gwen bellowed.
At last Loopy heard. She had her back to the door, and was busy mixing cocktails at the same time as joining in the general sing-song, but somehow over the general noise and cacophony she managed to hear Gwen’s announcement and turned to see Mattie standing in the doorway. At once she waved to her newly arrived guest as if greeting someone who had just boarded a yacht from ashore, beckoning her to come over at once, which Mattie did, noting and envying her hostess’s elegance, dressed as she was in a silk patterned evening skirt and white silk shirt over which she had thrown a silk cardigan. Hugh Tate also looked relaxed and elegant in his plum velvet smoking jacket and white silk cravat. Seeing the new arrival, he at once stopped playing and rose to his feet.
‘Most dreadfully sorry, Miss Eastcott,’ he said, coming round from the piano. ‘We’ll really have to get Gwen a loudhailer, I’d say.’
Mattie shook hands with the Tates, who both seemed genuinely pleased to see her, while John hovered, smiling too much.
‘Bang on time, too,’ he said too loudly. ‘I said you were an ace timekeeper.’
‘My military training, I’m afraid,’ Mattie explained. ‘Left its indelible mark.’
‘Army, John tells me,’ Hugh said. ‘Staff driver, weren’t you?’
‘Absolutely. Staff driver, that was me.’
‘Drive anyone interesting?’
Mattie felt John’s glance but didn’t return it. ‘Some five star generals,’ she said evenly. ‘In fact I was attached to one in particular.’
‘One of ours or one of theirs?’
‘An American.’
‘Anyone we’d know?’
‘General Michael Rafferty.’
‘Rafferty? Oh, quite a fellow, Rafferty. One of the D-Day boys. You had a big cheese in the back of your car. Quite the war hero.’
‘He was a very nice man. He was a pleasure to drive. Very nice manners,’ she added inconsequentially.
‘Guests, Hugh?’ said Loopy, prompted by Gwen struggling with an armful of fresh coats while kicking the drawing room door open backwards with one foot.
A very jolly older couple were introduced to Mattie, Major John and Caroline Haskett-Smith, friends apparently of the Tates’ from Bexham Yacht Club and the sort of people Mattie’s father always described as the backbone of England. In spite of a bad war wound that necessitated the use of a heavy walking stick, Major Haskett-Smith was as spry as could be, while his tall and slender wife, her handsome face weather-beaten from her sailing days, was as wry as her husband was nimble. Having survived the worst of wars, it seemed they were determined to enjoy the rest of their lives to the full.
Soon the room was full of laughter as everyone regaled everyone else with the latest in local gossip, their tongues quickly loosened by Loopy’s absolutely perfectly made dry Martinis. Far from feeling estranged, Mattie felt oddly at ease, as if the moment she had walked into the drawing room she had been accepted. From the continued riotous behaviour at dinner in the yellow painted dining room there was no reason to suppose that the mood might suddenly alter, and that Hugh Tate would bring an end to the happy proceedings by banging on the table for silence before announcing that in both his and his wife’s opinion it would be by far the best thing if Miss Mathilda Eastcott removed herself from their eldest son’s affections and returned to her modest little home immediately. Mattie smiled inwardly when she thought of this, amused, because such a ludicrous scene was exactly the sort of fancy that had run through her mind as she was getting ready for the evening.
But now instead she found herself laughing and talking freely to the people who she had been convinced were about to shun her. Here she sat at ease in elegant surroundings, eating dinner off fine china and drinking wine from cut glass without one disparaging remark being passed about her. She would give anything to be accepted by this elegant and sophisticated family. Now it would seem that she was about to be just that, and yet Mattie’s inner fears were not quite allayed. Having lived through the war she knew all too well about false dawns, about the weeks of quiet when one hoped the bombing was at an end, only to have such hopes dashed by the arrival of the Doodlebug or the V2, or some other dreadful weapon of mass destruction. So she knew better than to count her chickens, even though so far all the portents had been more than favourable.
In fact it was almost too idyllic to be true. It was too much to hope for, too much to want, and the seed of doubt had been sown when Hugh Tate had asked her whom she had driven? Remembering certain rumours about John’s father and his possible involvement with government intelligence, all at once Mattie got the feeling that perhaps Hugh Tate knew – and that was the reason not only for the brief but what had now become in Mattie’s mind pointed conversation before dinner but for her very invitation here. Perhaps any moment now, when everyone had finished their dinner, John’s father was indeed going to bang the table for silence, but instead of merely sending her home and banishing her from his son’s life, first he was going to reveal not just her secret, but the identity of the father of her child.
For the rest of the meal Mattie found she could hardly eat a thing.
‘Let’s go for a walk, shall we?’ John said to her, more as an order than an idea, after dinner had been finished without any terrible revelations on the part of Mattie’s host. Everyone had gathered again around the piano to be entertained by Hugh and Loopy, who was singing some Noel Coward song in a light but sweet soprano, so it was an ideal opportunity for the young couple to take themselves off into the garden.
Which was where Mattie very soon found herself, before she had time to utter a word.
‘What on earth got into you over dinner?’ John asked with a laugh that did not altogether conceal his concern. ‘One minute you’re the life and soul, and the next you look as though you’d just received a tragic telegram.’
‘No I didn’t,’ Mattie protested. ‘It was just that everyone else was being so awfully entertaining. Major Haskett-Smith’s story about escaping from prison camp and meeting up with those American airmen, Hank and Buddy, dressed as women, was hilarious.’
‘Made all the funnier by the fact that they were in such danger.’
‘I couldn’t possibly compete with that.’
‘It wasn’t your sudden silence,’ John said. ‘It was the look you got on your face. Come on.’
‘I don’t know,’ Mattie protested. ‘I just suddenly – I don’t know. I got tongue-tied.’
‘You?’ John laughed again. ‘Dearest darling Mattie, the day you get tongue-tied is the day I start painting my nails.’
‘I think it’s because – it’s because it was such a wonderful evening,’ Mattie blurted out as John, with her hand in his, led her down the lawns.
‘And that turned you into Ophelia?’
‘I didn’t want it ever to end.’
‘And it won’t,’ John said quietly, turning her to him. ‘Why should it?’
‘Why shouldn’t it? It’s just an evening.’
‘It won’t end because there’ll be lots more evenings like this,’ John said. ‘Hundreds of them.’
‘And?’ Mattie shrugged, feeling certain that she would never be a part of them.
‘And you’re going to be enjoying them—’
‘I am?’
‘Because we’re going to get married.’
‘We are?’ Mattie said, now totally wrong-footed. ‘I mean are we?’
‘Sorry,’ John said, pulling a mock sorry face. ‘I didn’t phrase that very well. Let’s try again, shall we?’ He dropped to one knee and took her hand. ‘Mattie – my darling –’
‘Don’t fool about, John,’ Mattie warned. ‘I mean it.’
‘I am not fooling about, Mattie.’
‘Have you asked your parents?’
‘Of course I have asked my parents! Not that I have to ask my parents, being over twenty-one—’
‘You know what I mean, John. What I meant was have you told your parents?’
‘I have told them, Mattie, I have asked them, Mattie, I have declared it to them, stated it to them, I have consulted them, debated it with them—’
‘John – be serious.’
‘I am being serious, Mattie! I am being serious!’
‘And?’ Mattie asked cautiously, expecting the spell to break at any moment – suspecting that this must be the most dreadful tease, and that as soon as she said yes, everyone would pour out of the drawing room into the garden, holding their sides with laughter.
‘And we have their blessing!’
‘We what?’ Mattie asked, quite sure her ears had deceived her.
‘We have their blessing.’
‘And … and Max?’
‘And and and Max too!’ John laughed. ‘Why shouldn’t Max have their blessing as well? My parents can’t wait for him to join the family. They said so, only last night. Dad – having brought up three sons – he can’t wait to help bring up another. Teach Max sailing, and cricket, and golf – he’ll be playing trains and table tennis, and charades at Christmas. He can’t wait! Between his two grandfathers poor young Max won’t be given a moment’s peace, at least that’s what Mother says.’
‘Are you sure, John?’ was all Mattie could ask. ‘I mean it’s an awful lot to ask.’
‘Why?’ John grinned. ‘I love you, Mattie Eastcott – I love you and because I love you I love your son, and because they love me my parents love you – and your son – and even if they weren’t my parents they would still love you. I know that for a fact. Because that’s the sort of people they are – and more importantly because that’s the sort of person you are. Someone everyone loves.’
John kissed her slowly and sweetly and Mattie kept her eyes open right through the kiss, staring at the bright stars above her to make sure she was awake and not dreaming. After which John took a small red leather box out of his pocket and opened it, revealing a beautiful single diamond ring whose very brilliance seemed to capture the whole of the night in its irridescence.
‘You only have to agree to one thing,’ John whispered. ‘Besides agreeing to marry me.’
‘Oh, I’ve agreed to that, John Tate,’ Mattie whispered. ‘I agreed to that the moment you asked me.’
‘Then the only other thing you have to agree to is to marry me as soon as you can. I don’t want to waste any more of my life not being married to you, if you don’t mind.’
‘Oh, very well,’ Mattie said with a teasing sigh. ‘If you insist.’
‘I do. I insist with all my heart.’
Despite the fact that John was looking and sounding more intense than she had ever heard him, Mattie was only half listening to him. The rest of her was thinking about how her life was changing for ever and ever, and in only a few minutes. She was going to be part of Shelborne. She was really going to be able to sit down for dinner with John and his parents and their friends – she was going to be related by marriage to Walter and Judy and Dauncy, and be a proper part of that close and happy family. No longer would she be that Mattie Eastcott who had the illegitimate baby. That part of her life was over now and for ever. Now she was to be Mathilda Tate.
But while they embraced and kissed and celebrated their bliss, what neither of them would ever know was that it was Lionel Eastcott’s letter to Hugh that had finally swept away the Tates’ objections to John and Mattie’s relationship. Indeed, what Lionel had written to Hugh on behalf of the two young lovers had made not just Hugh but also his more broadminded wife feel ashamed of the stand they had taken against John’s romance, albeit that it had been a more or less unspoken one.
Lionel had written, in his precise but surprisingly sensitive hand –
There has been a terrible war. Young people make mistakes in war, but they only make mistakes because the older generation have made an even greater one in failing to stand up to a great and terrible enemy. In failing to mend errors of diplomacy, in indulging in fear and indecision, our generation brought war upon themselves. In my view those mistakes are far greater than the mistake of one young girl who succumbed to a love affair which resulted in a baby being born. To stand in the way of the next generation’s happiness, at whatever cost to one’s family pride, is surely to add to the misery of man, and woman, kind. Millions upon millions have been killed so that the few who are left behind can be free and happy. I know that, and I think you know that. You must accept that John loves Mattie, as I have had to accept that Mattie loves John, and much as I will miss my daughter I know that to do otherwise than to wish her well would be to bring yet more shame on our generation.
Hugh had shown Loopy the letter, the expression on his face that of a man who has just fallen over a trip wire.
‘He’s absolutely right of course, Loopy,’ he said. ‘We may not approve of what happened to Mattie, but it is something we should accept, like the all-important fact that John loves her. We must withdraw any objections that we might have and ask Mathilda up here to meet us properly, as soon as possible. I know it takes a bit of getting used to – because whatever Lionel Eastcott says and however right he might be, one’s eldest son marrying a girl with what our old gardener used to call “a foal at foot” does need a little bit of time to get used to. But used to it we shall be and I have to say, having read what her father had to say, I feel more than a bit ashamed of myself. I shall look forward to welcoming Mathilda – and that little boy of hers – into our family. And making them both feel a part of it.’
Loopy had already come to this conclusion before Lionel Eastcott’s letter had arrived but knew it was only proper that she should wait for Hugh to come to his own conclusion, even though she felt that in good time he would most probably come round to her way of thinking.
But then Lionel’s letter had brought matters to a head much sooner than she had imagined. Of course she’d always liked Mathilda, and even admired her for her honesty and resolution, and although it had been a shock at first when she’d seen them kissing on the beach that day, Loopy now accepted that they loved each other, in the only way possible; with good grace.