The Rose in Winter Read online

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I was really hoping you’d be there.’

  ‘How nice of you to say so. I suspect the others can take me or leave me, though it was kind of the Keyes to ask. What I need now is peace and quiet and a bowl of soup, not cold bubbles and chit-chat.’

  ‘I can’t say I blame you.’ Barbara couldn’t hide her envy.

  Edith rose, towering over her. ‘You’re going, I hope.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Quite right. And you will enjoy it.’

  ‘I expect so.’ She must have sounded unconvinced.

  ‘Yes, you will.’ Edith tapped her arm with the rolled-up programme. ‘That’s an order.’

  ‘Right you are!’

  ‘And don’t hang about politely for me, for goodness’ sake. I shall take my time and be last out.’

  ‘If you’re sure, I can’t—’

  ‘Run along.’

  At the door, Barbara paused before putting her umbrella up and glanced back. Edith had changed her shoes for black wellingtons and put on her long, unfashionable mac, with the hood that tied under the chin. She cut an odd figure, of no particular age, time or sex – she might have been an archer from Agincourt, a nun from some obscure order, or a mackerel fisherman straight off the boat.

  The Keyes – Evelyn and Richard – lived in Cliff Terrace, only a hundred yards from the parish rooms. In the end, their party was quite enjoyable. In company, Barbara often felt younger than her forty-four years, because of how others treated her. Perhaps they were prompted to by something girlish in her manner, a trait fostered albeit unintentionally by Stanley. She suspected that her widowhood at a relatively early age, combined with her childlessness (something not willed, but not regretted either) conferred a sort of spurious sanctity. Had she been single through choice, let alone a divorcee, the reactions would have been different. As it was, the men were teasing yet chivalrous, the women indulgent. This sense of being petted could be annoying, but today she found it agreeable. Perhaps, in spite of the disparity in age, she reminded people of the new Queen whom she did superficially resemble, with her steady gaze and full, serious mouth.

  Then suddenly she was tired and ready to leave. Having decided, she wished to make her goodbyes as swiftly as was consistent with politeness. Evelyn implored her hospitably to stay, but nonetheless fetched her coat from the study. Richard, pleasantly squiffy, was more insistent.

  ‘Now then, Bar, what’s all this? Not leaving us, surely?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid I must, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why must you?’ he turned to his wife who was holding Barbara’s coat. ‘Why must she?’

  ‘Pish tush Dickie,’ said Evelyn, ‘don’t bluster.’

  They wrangled amiably over her as she put on her hat and galoshes. She was used to this underlying attitude that she never really needed to be at home because, after all, what was waiting for her there? They didn’t realise that Heart’s Ease was well-named. What they saw as ‘that isolated house’ that was too big for her up at the top of the hill was, in fact, her sanctuary. The place where she felt safest and most content. Now she longed to be back.

  ‘Thank you so much for a lovely party.’

  ‘Well,’ said Evelyn, ‘thank you for coming. It’s been a memorable day.’

  ‘I had an umbrella …’

  ‘Let me guess.’ Richard’s hand hovered over the sheaf of brollies and selected a coppery silk one with a handle like a twist of barley sugar. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Nice, but no.’ She smiled and dragged out the mighty golf umbrella.

  ‘Hold your horses – you’re not thinking of walking, are you?’

  ‘Definitely, I walked down very happily.’

  Evelyn pulled a face. ‘Down is the operative word. It’ll be a frightful trudge all the way back up and in the rain, Dick will run you home, won’t you?’

  ‘Certainly, it would be my absolute pleasure!’

  ‘No thank you. Honestly. It’s so kind of you to offer, but I’m completely prepared, and the fresh air’s just what I need.’

  The Keyes, spurned, exchanged a look of amused helplessness. Richard shrugged. ‘If you say so, my dear. Make yourself a hot toddy …’

  At first, she strode along happily enough, buoyed up by her own resolve and glad to be on her way. Her sturdy galoshes stamped through the puddles, the rain rattled down merrily on her umbrella and the air was cool and damp on her face. There were a few people around, mostly parents with children clutching mugs, returning from the soggy mayoral presentation on the Green. She passed Salting’s own simpleton, the affectionately named Hummer from the Denley Estate, singing ‘Morning has broken’ in the entrance to the ironmonger’s. Not for the first time did Barbara think about what a nice voice he had and that, if things had been different, he might have been in a choir, or made a record.

  She was smiling as she marched up the high street. But as she left the shops behind and began the long slow ascent from the town, with the comfortable villas looking smug and closed and so little traffic, she became rather dejected. She almost wished an acquaintance, even the garrulous Richard, would draw alongside and suggest she hop in. Her earlier route would be a quagmire by now; she had nearly a mile to go by road, before she could turn off and follow the sheltered path up through the beech wood to the back gate of Heart’s Ease.

  She plodded on, keeping her eyes on the streaming pavement, until the point where it ran out. For a few hundred yards, it became a track across Little Common, an area of scrub bordered by firs and containing the scout hut. In the lee of the hut, she paused for a moment and looked over her shoulder to remind herself how far she’d come, that she was halfway to the beech wood and so doing pretty well. There was one other person, a man, walking some hundred yards behind her. He wore a hat, but no coat, the collar of his jacket was turned up, a mere token gesture against the downpour. As she looked he stopped and seemed to be consulting his watch, glancing around as if looking out for someone.

  Twenty minutes later, she reached the point where she could cross into the beech wood. Though there were no cars coming in either direction, she positively scampered over the road and the moment she’d done so, she closed the umbrella and felt much better. She was almost home and this last part of the walk was familiar as well as sheltered. The trees were old and tall, she could hear the rain on the branches, but down here in the green and sepia twilight, it fell as no more than intermittent drops and splatters. The path was soft beneath her feet. A grey squirrel scuttled about busily in the beech mast.

  The path continued through the beech wood for a couple of hundred yards, before emerging to wander up the hill between an apple orchard and a dense, high hedge.

  The climb was quite steep and as Barbara emerged from the trees she stopped to catch her breath. She was too warm now and, in spite of the rain, she unbuttoned her coat. She caught a movement behind her in the soft twilight of the wood – the squirrel again?

  Quickly, she set off once more, on the last lap, looking forward to the cup of tea she’d make, and how on this dingy evening she’d light the lamps in the drawing room and enjoy the space and ampleness that no one thought she needed.

  About twenty yards before the five-bar gate of Heart’s Ease, the path levelled out and she glanced back. This time she could clearly see another walker, moving at a good pace, in fact gaining on her. She realised it was the man she’d seen earlier from Little Common. A thin man, his suit jacket tightly buttoned, collar still up, head down, his hands thrust into his pockets. He must have been soaked, but his step was quick, light and purposeful, like a fox she sometimes saw trotting over the lawn at dusk.

  Barbara’s scalp stirred beneath her hat. She pulled her coat around her and moved as fast as she could without running, she didn’t want him to see her run to the gate. Once she was through to the other side, she did run, frantically, her feet clumsy in her galoshes, the half-furled umbrella flapping at her side, her hat slipping off on to the gravel. As she reached the p
orch, she heard the soft metallic scrape of the gate latch and felt the sweat pop out all over her. She dropped the umbrella, snatched and scrabbled with slippery fingers for the key in her bag, pushed it into the lock and burst through into the hall closing the door behind her.

  She thought she heard the stealthy whisper of steps on the gravel … Then nothing but the patter of the rain as she fled.

  Three

  1929

  Barbara’s mother, Julia, was looking forward to the season much more than Barbara herself. She was not a frivolous or socially ambitious woman, but an intelligent one with rather too much time on her hands and introducing her only child to society was a project she could get her administrative teeth into.

  She even displayed a sense of humour on the subject.

  ‘Do it for me, darling. I never did it myself and I shall derive a great deal of simple pleasure from being the mother of this year’s prettiest debutante.’

  Barbara, who was not in any case rebellious by nature, could scarcely refuse. Her father, in shipping and rich as a result, regarded the whole thing as a necessary evil that would set him back a few bob, but which might prove an investment in terms of exposing her to not entirely hopeless husband material. (On encountering some of the young men he wasn’t quite so sure, but was by then resigned to his course of action.)

  The Delahays’ country house was a rambling arts-and-crafts villa in the Surrey Hills. Barbara and her mother lived there most of the time while Sir Conrad was in London at the Regents Park mansion. He came down at weekends to play golf, socialise and renew acquaintance with the locals. When occasion arose, the positions would be reversed and Barbara and Julia would go up to town. Barbara always knew her parents liked London, but she preferred Surrey with its civilised countryside, cosy villages and manicured paddocks, in one of which was Jiggins – her old Dartmoor pony. Throughout a happy and secure childhood, the closest thing she had to siblings were: Jiggins, Myrtle the Labrador, Shamus the border terrier and the cats. When Barbara and her parents attended church at Christmas (the only time they did so) and sang the carol containing the phrase ‘all His wondrous childhood’ she pictured that childhood as exactly like hers, if a squeak holier.

  Nor was she short of friends. As she entered her teens, classmates from Aggie’s – St Agatha’s school for girls near Godalming – came to stay, and there were sedate but enjoyable parties, tennis and treasure hunts, not to mention pony club events ranging from adventurous treks to gymkhanas and dances. She knew lots of nice boys, the sons of her parents’ social circle, but they were jolly, puppyish friendships rather than anything romantic. Some of the boys might have liked a little more from pretty Barbara Delahay, but she was protected from unwelcome attention by the aura of innocent, carefree confidence of which she was largely unaware.

  The season, when it happened, seemed more of a game than anything else. She had left Aggie’s at Christmas, just after her seventeenth birthday, to find her mother already planning a cocktail party in London at the end of May and a dance at Ardonleigh a month later. Barbara had no particular ambitions so this seemed as good a way as any to spend the summer, although it was rather overwhelming to have so much attention and money lavished on her. She knew from talking to her friends, Lucia (scion of a noble house in Suffolk) and Rosemary (an admiral’s daughter from Weybridge), that her own parties were going to be enviably lavish, which she found rather embarrassing. Also, the guest lists were largely composed of people she didn’t know.

  ‘Don’t worry darling!’ Julia gave an insouciant wave of the hand. ‘You’ll have met most of them by then.’

  ‘How will I?’

  ‘You’ll see them at other people’s parties.’

  The full implication of this was suddenly borne in on her. There were going to be innumerable parties, a multitude of people, many strangers and countless dresses. Life for the next few months was going to be, as Julia put it, happily, ‘one mad whirl’. Barbara was not one of nature’s whirlers, but she appreciated her good fortune and was determined to enjoy herself.

  The whirl soon became, if not routine, then at least less mad. Several of the girls doing the season were friends and others, if they were not acquaintances already, soon were. The young men were jolly, attentive and some were surprisingly good dancers, with whom she loved taking the floor. She discovered a streak of show-offness which she didn’t know she had. Jiggins, gazing glumly over his fence in the Surrey hills, grew rather fat as Barbara became fashionably slim. The current styles suited her, but she wouldn’t have her hair cropped; she compromised by wearing it in a neat Grecian coil on the nape of her neck, to which Julia liked to attach a fresh flower – a rose or camellia – preferably in bud, so that it would open over the course of an evening.

  One morning in London, the day after a particularly lively dance in the garden of a Chelsea mansion, she emerged from her room to hear a rumble of male voices in the drawing room. It was only just approaching midday and she had on her kimono over her nightdress. The kimono was red and black silk, brought back from Hong Kong by her father, but was definitely not suitable for mixed company at this time of day.

  Clarice was hovering helpfully on the landing, passing a duster over picture frames.

  ‘A word to the wise, miss, Sir Conrad’s got company.’

  ‘Thanks Clarice, I’ll put some clothes on.’

  ‘I would if I were you.’

  ‘Do we know who?’

  ‘Let’s see …’ Clarice pursed her lips, calling the name to mind as she polished the glass on a watercolour landscape. ‘Brigadier Govan.’

  Barbara ran a swift mental inventory of her father’s wartime cronies, but the name didn’t ring a bell.

  ‘Is my mother in?’

  ‘I believe not.’ Clarice paused in her polishing. ‘Would you like some coffee Miss – while you get dressed …?’

  Back in her room, Barbara was tempted to get back into bed and wait till her father’s friend had gone. But the arrival of the hot coffee perked her up. She applied what her childhood nanny would have called ‘a lick and a promise’ at the basin, put on loose trousers and a shirt, brushed her hair and went downstairs to satisfy her curiosity.

  Brigadier Stanley Govan was very, very tall. Sir Conrad was considered an imposing figure, but as both men rose to greet her, Govan towered over him. His big, dry hand enveloped Barbara’s with courteous lightness. Far above, his brows drew together above an eagle’s beak of nose, his mouth was firm and unsmiling and he had a smoothly-groomed peak of hair. The impression was one of uprightness; he was contained, correct, a little stern, a leader of men. She was quite glad she had put on no make-up, but found herself wishing she had opted for a skirt instead of trousers.

  ‘Sit down, Bar,’ said her father easily, ‘and tell us about the goings-on last night.’

  She gave them a judiciously edited version of the events in Chelsea: the garden, the band, the lights … how one girl had lost an earring in the ornamental pond and three boys had jumped in and competed to get it back. Her father nodded benignly and rather enjoyed the idea of his daughter getting up to high jinx. Govan gazed now at his highly-polished shoes, now at her. For a man of his considerable physical presence he seemed ill at ease. He was at least as old as her father.

  Barbara thought it quite likely he disapproved of her but, after half an hour, when she excused herself, Govan sprang to his feet and expressed his pleasure in meeting her warmly and with apparent sincerity.

  It was still a surprise when, a few days later, she returned from cycling with a friend in the park to find her mother in the drawing room, phone in hand.

  ‘Bar is that you? Hang on, this may be her … Bar, darling? Telephone for you.’

  ‘Stanley Govan.’ Her mother mouthed, in answer to her look. And then, aloud into the receiver, ‘She’s coming now.’

  Given another minute, Barbara might have made some excuse, but the receiver was thrust into her hand and her mother was off, beaming like a chesh
ire cat, waving one hand in the air and mouthing, ‘Over to you …’

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Barbara, it’s Stanley Govan here. I apologise if you were hardly through the door. Would you prefer me to call again if this isn’t convenient?’

  ‘No, not at all – it’s fine.’

  ‘I have some theatre tickets for the end of next week, Friday – for what I believe is rather a good new play, “Journey’s End”, do you know it?’

  ‘I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘I wondered, your busy social calendar permitting, if you’d care to come with me?’

  If he had seemed ill at ease before, he didn’t now. She was astonished and taken aback. This friend of her father’s and leader of men? A new play with this old – well quite old – man?

  ‘Thank you, that sounds … May I just go and check?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Her mother was waiting in the Hall, diary in hand. She leaned past Barbara and pushed the drawing-room door closed behind her.

  ‘I think you’re free that night.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Stanley mentioned to your father that he had the tickets.’

  ‘Mummy! You’re ganging up on me.’

  ‘You don’t have to go. I’m just saying you can, if you want to.’

  ‘He’s too old. Why would he want to take me?’

  ‘Not that old.’ Julia put down the diary and took her by the shoulders, turning her to face the hall mirror, which was crowned with reclining brazen dryads. ‘And that’s why.’

  Barbara saw a girl with pink cheeks, disarrayed hair and a baffled expression.

  ‘Don’t be silly. It’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Not at all.’ Julia gave the door a push. ‘But if you don’t want to, simply make your excuses …’

  A second later she went through and picked up the receiver.

  That evening at the theatre was the first of what Barbara would look back on as their courtship. It was a strange choice of opening move, that fierce and uncompromising play that had made her cry; a test of character perhaps.