Philippa Carr - We’ll meet again

He looked at me quizzically. Then he put his hands on my shoulders and said: “This business … it hasn’t altered things, has it?”

I laughed with relief. “Oh, James,” I replied. “It has been so awful.”

“Somewhat melodramatic, eh?”

I said: “I can’t forget what happened … because of us … Tristan …”

“I know,” he replied. Then: “Come to Riverside this afternoon, can you? We could talk there.”

“Yes,” I answered, my spirits soaring.

I did care for James, and it would be good to be with him once more.

He was waiting for me when I arrived. He put his arms round me and kissed me.

“Wonderful to be with you again … like this,” he said.

“I didn’t realize that you were not exactly what you were said to be.”

“Who is?” he asked.

“I suppose you are a very important person?”

“One of the cogs in the wheel. I have my little part to play. I am sorry you had to be drawn into all this.”

“It will be different knowing that you are not really here to look after those men. But that is something which we must not mention.”

He smiled. “Then it makes no difference. What we are to each other is the same as it ever was. Do you agree?”

“Yes, I agree.”

It was wonderful to have him back. It was exciting. There was a secret we shared. He was not what he had seemed to be, but a man of mystery, which made everything more enthralling.

When I left Riverside Cottage, I drove into Poldown, where I sensed an excitement in the air. A little knot of men was standing by the bridge reading a newspaper. Something had clearly happened.

I got out of the car and went into the newsagent’s.

“Oh, there you be then, Mrs. Tregarland,” said Mrs. Benn from behind the counter. “Have ’ee heard the news then?”

“News? What news?”

“They Japs have gone and bombed the American fleet in a place called Pearl Harbor and they do say this ’ull bring them into the war at last.”

I bought a paper and read the headlines. Then I drove back as fast as I could to Tregarland’s.

There was immediate relief. We no longer stood alone. This must be the beginning of the end.

ANOTHER YEAR WAS WITH us and there was still no news of Jowan. I think I was beginning to believe, with others, that he would never return.

We had made a great effort to have a merry Christmas with the men and had succeeded fairly well. Everyone joined in, including my parents, who had come to Tregarland’s to spend Christmas with us.

It was wonderful to see them. There was so much to talk about. My mother had known nothing about the kidnapping until it was over. She and my father would have been absolutely distraught and I was glad we had not told them until Tristan was safely back.

My mother was busy with all sorts of war work. She told me that my grandmother had opened Marchlands again. She would have liked to go there but she would not leave my father who could not leave the estate. She and my father had considered turning Caddington into a hospital, but it had proven to be very useful for holding meetings for all sorts of projects.

She and my father, I knew, were deeply worried about me. Though they did not talk of Jowan, I was aware that he was continually in their thoughts, and I guessed they discussed my future when they were alone in their bedroom. Dorabella did not, I supposed, give them the same cause for concern, which was something of a turnabout, for usually she was the one to disturb them.

Dorabella had become a devoted mother, which pleased Nanny Crabtree.

“It does you good to see them together,” she said. “Poor mite, he may have lost his father, but he has his mother to make up for that, and he thinks the world of her.”

Then there was Captain Brent. I wondered how significant that was. He certainly had great charm, and Dorabella had acquired that special radiance which I had seen before. At the same time, she was obviously aware that her affair with the captain had brought about the kidnapping of her son and she blamed herself for that. But she still enjoyed being with him, and now it seemed that they were together again. I felt certain that it was one of those wartime romances. Well, perhaps Dorabella needed it; he certainly made her happy. I was the one who was giving concern to our parents.

My mother gave me news of Gretchen, who was now in London because Edward’s regiment was stationed in the southeast near the capital.

“Of course,” said my mother, “the bombing has eased off a little and they seem to have got used to it.”

“It must be dangerous there.”

“Well … yes. But it is dangerous everywhere. Gretchen told me of a family she knew who thought they must get out of town, so they went to Wales. They had come through the London Blitz unscathed; they went to this remote place on the borders and an aircraft returning with its bomb load from Birmingham unloaded its bombs right over their house. They were all killed … the entire family. That’s how life goes.”

“And Gretchen is happy there?”

“I think so. She was upset over the suspicion about her.”

“I know, it was terrible for her.”

“In London it’s different. There’s not so much petty gossip. People are more concerned with their own affairs. Hildegarde is a great joy. Of course, nannies are almost unobtainable and looking after the child herself in a fairly small house without much help is a full-time job.”

“She has friends, I suppose.”

“Oh yes, and Edward has a certain amount of leave. He can get home, if only for a day or so. And she is near the Dorringtons. You remember them.”

“Yes, of course. How are they?”

“Very much the same. Richard is in the army. Like Edward, he is stationed not far from London. His mother is doing good works.”

“And Mary Grace?”

“She works in one of the ministries. Everyone without home duties is being called up to work, as you know. Not that Mary Grace would want to be idle. Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could all get back to normal?”

She was looking at me wistfully. I knew what she was thinking.

There had been a time when she had hoped I would marry Richard Dorrington, the barrister friend of Edward. He had, in fact, asked me. I admit I had been uncertain then. I had been seeing Jowan in Cornwall, but there had never been any reference to love between us and I had not really understood my feelings at that time. I had liked Richard very much, but I had realized even then that my feelings did not go deep enough for a lifetime partnership. Perhaps subconsciously I had known that it must be Jowan.

Now my mother was thinking that Jowan would never come back and there was Richard, still a bachelor and an eligible one. Perhaps old fires could be stirred.

I knew she was concerned, too, about my brother Robert, who had just joined the army. He was younger than Dorabella and I were, and full of high spirits; she must be missing him. She wanted to tell me that I could not go on grieving for Jowan, but she must be aware that I could continue to hope for his return as long as there was the remotest chance.

However, we certainly tried to be bright that Christmas and to make this one as normal and lively as they used to be.

Mrs. Jermyn had asked Dorabella and me to put our heads together and devise a program which would entertain the men. We thought at first of a treasure hunt, but many of the men were disabled and would not be fit to take part, so we decided that we would put on a play in which some of them could take part.

We had chosen The Importance of Being Earnest and the result was a great deal of fun. Captain Brent played Jack and Dorabella made a fascinating Gwendolyn; I was Cicely; one of the old sergeant majors was the real star of the show as Lady Bracknell.

We all seemed to forget our troubles briefly during that day—which was, of course, the whole object of the enterprise.

In due course, my parents left us with many regrets at the parting and insisted that Dorabella and I must come to Caddington soon.

We assured them we would as soon as possible, but it would be difficult to get away as we had our work with the invalid soldiers. Moreover, it would mean taking Tristan and Nanny Crabtree, for I was sure that Dorabella, in her present maternal role, would not agree to leave him; moreover, I believed that, if there was news of Jowan, it would go to Jermyn’s first, and I should be wondering if it had come all the time I was absent.

One March day there was a message for Gordon from Bodmin. Would he come as soon as possible? His mother’s condition had changed.

When he returned, I was waiting for him. I went to his study where I found him looking upset and perplexed.

“What happened?” I asked.

He stared ahead and replied: “She … she’s changed. She is remembering.”

“You mean … what happened?”

“Not everything … some of it. She is different now. She talks of Tregarland’s. It crops up again and again in her rambling conversation. She keeps saying ‘Where would it have been without you, Gordon? You saved that place. It should be yours.’”

“Did she remember … what she had done?”

“She mentioned Tristan. She looked … haunted.”

I though of her creeping into the nursery, preparing to kill him because he stood in the way of Gordon’s inheriting Tregarland’s, and she would have done so if Nanny Crabtree and I had not been ready to prevent it. Tristan … so young, and yet at the center of such dramatic events … fortunately he knew little of them.

Gordon was saying: “I am afraid for her. With the return of sanity, there will come remembrance, when she realizes what she planned to do and would have done, too. Murder! Oh, Violetta, I do not know what will become of her.”

I felt a great urge to comfort him. “This may be a phase through which she is passing,” I said. “And she might not remember …”

I thought what a terrible thing it was that we should hope for her return to that clouded world which she inhabited with people who were similarly afflicted.

“You have done everything you can for her,” I went on. “She could not have had a better son.”

“And I had a mother who was ready to commit murder for me. I often think how different it could have been. She might have married someone … someone in circumstances like her own; she might have had a happy life. But she met my father and he took her to Tregarland’s, to grandeur such as she had never known before. And she wanted a place for me in all that. It was an obsession and it led her to this.”

“It might have been different, yes,” I said. “But that is the way life works out. It is the same with all of us. Dorabella and I might never have gone to Germany, never have met Dermot. Life hangs on chance. We might never have known Tregarland’s existed.”

“There is one good thing at least which came out of it all,” said Gordon. “You came to Tregarland’s.”

He took my hand in his and held it. I let it rest there because he was so distraught and seemed to draw comfort from the gesture.

Gordon went to Bodmin the next day. I impatiently waited for his return. I could not help hoping that Matilda had lapsed into her previous state.

The news was surprising. She had been out in the grounds of the Bodmin establishment; she had left her coat indoors and the wind was cold. A little later, she had become feverish, and the doctor had diagnosed pleurisy. She was now quite ill.

“She said little,” Gordon told me. “She just smiled at me. She was quiet and the wild look had gone from her eyes. She looked sad. I shall go again tomorrow.”

It was two days later when we heard that Matilda was dead. She had developed pneumonia and there had been little hope after that.

Gordon went to Bodmin and remained there all day. When he came home, he looked more tired and strained than I had ever seen him before.

He said: “She looked peaceful in death … more so than I remembered seeing her. It is over, Violetta. I think I should not mourn too much for her. It is happier so.”

I sat very still, my mind going back once more to that time when she had meant to kill Tristan. And I saw that this was the best thing that could happen to her, for if she had realized what she had done, she could never have been happy. She would have had to live out her life tormented by remorse.