Lorimers at War Read online

  ANNE MELVILLE

  Lorimers at War

  Contents

  Part One

  WAR

  1914

  1915

  1916

  1917

  1918

  Part Two

  THE AFTERMATH

  1919

  1920

  Part One

  War

  1914

  1

  The darkness of war had spread across Europe, but at Blaize, Lord Glanville’s country house on the bank of the Thames, the chandeliers glittered as brightly as though the world for which they had been made could expect to endure for ever. Yet the ballroom they illuminated on this October evening was empty, and no sound disturbed the silence of the old house. It was the moment within the eye of a cyclone when the rushing wind suddenly holds its breath in an unnatural calm. The storm was just about to break.

  For three days Kate Lorimer had looked on with admiration as the household bustled with activity, in preparation for the ball which would celebrate her brother Brinsley’s twenty-first birthday at the home of their aunt and uncle, Lord and Lady Glanville. The idea that dancing and dining and drinking and flirting were unsuitable activities for a country at war was not one which was likely to occur to either the hosts or the guests tonight. England was fighting to preserve the values of a civilized society against the clumsy aggressions of a decaying Austrian empire, and a brash new German army and navy. Already young men were dying on the battlefields of France. It was necessary that gestures should be made, gestures of gaiety and defiance, to show that a way of life could not so easily be killed.

  Amidst all the preparations of the past few days, only one small concession had been made to the fact that England was at war. The fragile silk curtains, intended to drape decoratively at the sides of the ballroom windows rather than to cover them, had been stored away. Their replacements were made of a heavier fabric which would prevent any light from being seen outside. It was unlikely that a Zeppelin would waste its explosive load on an isolated country house when the whole city of London, further down the Thames, offered so much more tempting a target. But it seemed sensible to remove even the slightest cause for unease.

  Not until midnight would the party supper be served to the guests, so the members of the family who were staying at Blaize had assembled for a light meal earlier in the evening. Most of them now had retired to their rooms for a brief rest or last-minute adjustment of hair or gown. Kate was alone as, dressed for the ball, she wandered through the suddenly silent house. The heavy doors of the banqueting hall were closed. With the secret pleasure of a child opening her Christmas stocking too early, she let herself into the hall so that she could inspect the tables set for the buffet.

  The sumptuous display represented the culmination of a month of planning and several days of feverish effort. A patisseur had been brought from London. Out of spun sugar he had fashioned exotic birds and butterflies, creating a feast as much for the eye as for the palate. The wives of Lord Glanville’s tenants, tying their aprons and rolling up their sleeves, had augmented the normal kitchen staff in a heroic baking of breads and tarts and hams. A last-minute whipping of cream and the dextrous dressing of cutlets in paper collars had been preceded by two days of steaming endeavour in which the kitchen hobs and ovens were organized with military precision. Lobsters boiled in cauldrons, salmon simmered in fish kettles and sucking pigs turned on spits which, although rarely used, had been maintained in good order for three hundred years.

  When it was cold, the food had been arranged on Jacobean banqueting dishes to be glazed and decorated. Sixteenth-century refectory tables were covered with eighteenth-century lace cloths. Waterford glass sparkled with the light reflected off highly polished Queen Anne silver. Starched drawn-thread napkins were piled beside stacks of Waterloo plates, each hand-painted with a different scene from the Duke of Wellington’s battles. It was a measure of the secure foundations of Lord Glanville’s heritage, as well as the extent of his wealth, that although it had been necessary to transport a certain amount of china and glass to the country from Glanville House in Park Lane, there had been no need to hire a single piece.

  By now all the preparations were complete. In less than an hour, as the first carriage or motor car drew up outside the door, the inhabitants of Blaize would begin to move in their appointed tracks like wound-up clockwork figures waiting only for a lever to be pressed. Lord and Lady Glanville would appear to greet their guests, footmen would step forward, maids would hurry along cold back corridors. But now the house was as quiet as though it were uninhabited. The housekeeper had come from her hall, the cook from her kitchens and the butler from his pantry, to inspect the ballroom and the buffet for the last time and, satisfied in their own spheres, had retreated downstairs again. Blaize was at peace.

  Moving along the table, Kate reached forward to pick out a cherry from a huge punch bowl and caught sight of her own reflection in the gleaming silver. Even distorted by the curve of the vessel, the face it showed her was familiar – freckled and green-eyed, with wide, strong eyebrows and cheekbones and a generous mouth – but it seemed to be attached to the body of a stranger. In a way she felt herself at this moment to be as artificial a creation as the swan which had been made out of meringue or the miniature trees whose fruit, on close inspection, proved to be not apples but sweetmeats. With the help of her aunt’s maid she had been laced into a corset which constricted her sturdy waist, and buttoned into a ball dress whose shot silk matched her sea-green eyes. She had refused to wear even the discreetest cosmetics, but had allowed the maid to pile her long, thick hair – the tawny colour of a lion’s mane, and almost as unmanageable – elaborately high on her head. The strain of maintaining this edifice upright caused her to stand even straighter than usual.

  This effect of stateliness was not one which came naturally to Kate. She had only recently qualified as a doctor, and her years of hard work as a medical student had allowed her little time for society entertainments of this kind. In any case, she had no taste for them as a rule. But she and her brother Brinsley were very close and she was anxious that he should not be ashamed of his sister’s appearance in this celebration of his birthday.

  Kate turned away from her study of the buffet tables, licking her fingers, and found that she herself had been under observation. Brinsley rose from the window-seat of one of the mullioned windows of the Tudor hall and stepped down to take her hands.

  ‘You really do look absolutely ripping, Kate,’ he said. ‘I like the dress.’

  ‘You should have said that before, when Aunt Alexa was listening. It’s the one she gave me two years ago for my own twenty-first. It makes me feel a little like Cinderella – as though at midnight the clock will chime and all these trappings will disappear. But I must return the compliment. You look absolutely ripping yourself.’

  Brinsley was wearing his new second lieutenant’s uniform, still as smartly pressed as when the tailor first delivered it. But he had made no attempt to sleek down the exuberant curls of his golden hair in the approved military style, and his eyes sparkled with high spirits which were equally unsubdued.

  ‘You approve, then?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh yes, very smart,’ said Kate. ‘How I wish that Mother and Father could see you. You must have a photograph taken to send to them. They’ll be thinking of you at this moment and wishing you were with them.’

  ‘Could we take a walk?’ asked Brinsley abruptly. ‘Would you be too cold?’

  ‘I’ll fetch a wrap.’ Kate was strong, and normally unmindful of the weather. But her ball dress was cut low at both back and front and she guessed she would feel the chill as soon as she moved away from the blazing log fires of the house.

 
; She took Brinsley’s arm as, a few minutes later, they made their way down the stone steps and strolled towards the river. Had the war not imposed a need for darkness, their Aunt Alexa would certainly have ordered the carriage drive to be illuminated with oil lamps, the front of the ancient house to be decorated with coloured lights, and spotlights to be fixed on the roof to pick out the twisting patterns of the sixteenth-century brick chimneys. As it was, a full moon provided a romantic substitute for all these. The woodland paths along which Kate and Brinsley wandered were dappled with the moving shadows of the trees, but were lit clearly enough for them to move without hesitation.

  For a little while neither of them spoke. Kate guessed that Brinsley, like herself, would be thinking of their parents and of their childhood home in Jamaica. Hope Valley, the village community in which their mother worked as a doctor and their father, a Baptist missionary, as pastor, had been Brinsley’s home until he was sent to England for his schooling. Kate had remained longer with her parents in the West Indies, but her wish to become a doctor like her mother had been so strong that when she was eighteen she too had been allowed to go to England to study.

  The past five years had been satisfying ones for Kate, but she guessed that her parents must often have been lonely without their two elder children – for two of their other children had died in infancy and the youngest, still living at home, was a cripple. On this evening in particular they would be upset not to have Brinsley with them. Kate knew that her brother, coming down from Oxford in June without distinction but without disgrace, and then enjoying two leisurely months of playing county cricket, had planned to set sail for Jamaica in September, ready to celebrate his coming-of-age in his old home.

  Two shots in a Sarajevo street were to change the lives of a whole generation. A birthday party in Jamaica was hardly a significant casualty. Brinsley had shown no interest in politics, and Kate felt sure that the rapid exchange of declarations of war across Europe must have taken him by surprise. Both at school and at university, however, he had been a member of the Officers’ Training Corps, so he was one of the first to volunteer and to be commissioned. Now he was awaiting the summons to join his regiment, and it could not be very much longer delayed.

  Their walk brought them to the bank of the River Thames. The moon, escaping from the net of the trees, was brighter here, reflecting in the broad band of water which scarcely rippled on this calm night as it swept steadily towards the sea. Peaceful and powerful at the same time, the movement hypnotized them into stillness at first. Then Kate surprised herself by laughing at an incongruous thought. Brinsley’s questioning look made it necessary to explain.

  ‘I was thinking, if we were in Hope Valley, we’d both have sat down on the bank of the stream without giving it a second thought.’

  ‘When we lived in Hope Valley we were both shabby, all the time,’ said Brinsley. ‘No beautiful ball dress to be spoiled by mud or grass stains.’

  ‘And no elegant uniform.’ It was true that in Jamaica they had been allowed to run wild. Their mother had cared nothing for her own appearance and felt no need to dress her own children more smartly than those of her patients. In a tropical village, clothes were required for decency and not for either warmth or fashion. ‘All the same, this birthday would have been a very special day for Mother and Father. They must be disappointed that you’re so far away.’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry about that, of course.’ Brinsley sighed, but almost at once Kate heard the regret in his voice giving way to excitement. ‘But I don’t really feel ready to settle down at home yet. I can’t pretend that the prospect of acting as a kind of farm manager for the rest of my life is a very jolly one.’

  Kate knew what he meant. Their father performed all the spiritual duties which his black congregation required of their pastor; but he was a man of great energy and ability, and early in his pastorate he had been so shocked by the poverty of the villagers that he had organized them into an agricultural labour force. Whipped on by his passionate oratory, they had reclaimed a derelict plantation next to the village, and now the efficient running of the estate had become Ralph Lorimer’s chief enthusiasm. Since Brinsley had never shown any bent towards any other profession, it was taken for granted that he would return to help his father manage the plantation. Kate laughed affectionately now at her brother’s lack of eagerness.

  ‘What would you rather do instead?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, nothing in particular. Anything that would leave me time to play a little cricket. I shall have to settle down to work sometime, I can see that – and I know I’m lucky to have a family business on offer. All the same, I’m in no hurry to start. A few months of adventure will be just the thing.’

  Kate glanced across and saw that his eyes were alive with excitement at the prospect. For her own part, she had wanted to be a doctor for as long as she could remember. She had always known that years of hard work would be needed to attain her ambition; and although her mother’s generation had borne the brunt of the fight against prejudice and prohibition which had for so long made it impossible for women to become doctors at all, Kate had appreciated that determination as well as study would be required. Her social conscience and serious approach to life made her temperamentally the opposite of her brother, but her affection for him made it easy for her to sympathize with his light-hearted lack of ambition.

  All the same, it was difficult not to wonder how ‘jolly’ he would find the next few months. Kate’s own vocation was to heal, and she would have been appalled if she had ever found herself expected to take life instead of preserving it. Nor was she absolutely clear why it was so necessary for England to become involved in the war at all. Who were the Serbs, and why should the assassination of an Austrian archduke be of more than local importance? Brinsley had done his best to persuade her that now the war had started it ought to be won quickly; and the best way to win it quickly was to send as many soldiers as possible to fight in France, and with the greatest possible speed. It was certainly obvious to Kate that if the finest young men were required, Brinsley was one of them; but she could not help wondering whether Brinsley himself – although ready and indeed eager to fight – had recognized that at some moment he would have to kill.

  The thought worried her, but it was not appropriate to this evening of celebration. Still holding Brinsley’s arm, she turned away from the river.

  ‘Time you were on parade at Blaize,’ she suggested. ‘They won’t be able to start without the guest of honour.’ They began to walk slowly up the hill towards the house.

  ‘You really do look stunning, Kate.’ Whatever Brinsley had been thinking about down by the river, it was clearly not the prospect of killing Germans. ‘It’s a pity I’m not older than you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because a lot of chaps like to marry other chaps’ sisters.’

  ‘It must be quite difficult to avoid doing so,’ Kate laughed.

  ‘Oh, come on, you know what I mean. The sisters of their friends. But of course all my friends are too young for you. You and I should have been born the other way around.’

  ‘It’s kind of you to offer me all your fellow-undergraduates and fellow-cricketers, even if you do promptly snatch the offer back again. But I haven’t spent all these years training as a doctor just to give up without making use of my qualifications. I don’t intend to marry anyone, whether older or younger.’

  ‘There’s nothing to say you’d have to stop being a doctor just because you got married,’ Brinsley protested.

  ‘How many of these friends of yours would allow their wives to work?’ Kate asked him. ‘And how many female doctors do you know who are married?’

  ‘I only know three female doctors, full stop,’ said Brinsley. ‘One is you, and it’s you I’m trying to persuade. One is my mother, and she’s married.’

  ‘Fortunately for our own reputations.’ Kate was still laughing. ‘But she’s married to a missionary. Missionaries’ wives are a special case.’
r />   ‘And there’s Aunt Margaret. She was married as well.’

  ‘Aunt Margaret is another special case.’ Kate was silent for a moment, thinking affectionately of their father’s elder sister, who had provided a home for Brinsley and herself when they each in turn left Jamaica for England. Dr Margaret Scott was as dear to both the young Lorimers as their own mother, but no one could pretend that her life had followed the normal pattern of a Victorian woman.

  ‘She didn’t marry when she first qualified,’ Kate pointed out now. ‘She worked as a doctor until she was in her mid-thirties. And when she did marry, she stopped working.’

  ‘That was so that she could have a baby.’

  ‘She stopped working,’ repeated Kate. ‘The only reason why she went back to being a doctor was because her husband died and she had to support the baby. She wasn’t married for more than a few months out of the whole of her life. You can’t argue from Aunt Margaret. And if I may say so, it’s very arrogant of men to think that the only thing in life a woman wants is a husband.’

  ‘It may be arrogant, but you have to admit that it’s very often true.’

  ‘Well, perhaps I can understand it being true of other women, because they can all long to get their hands on a gorgeous creature called Brinsley Lorimer. But since I’m disqualified from that privilege, I hope you’ll allow me to get quietly on with my doctoring.’

  They stepped out of the woodland as they spoke, and paused for a moment to stare in admiration at Blaize. The two wings which had been added to the old house in the reign of William and Mary provided the more comfortable rooms for normal living, but the Tudor structure in the centre of the mansion was the perfect setting for any grand occasion. As soon as it became clear that Brinsley would not be returning to Jamaica for his coming-of-age, Margaret Scott had offered him a party in her small London house; but his other aunt, Alexa, had swept the suggestion aside. She had never behaved as warmly as Margaret to her niece and nephew, but when it came to giving a dance, she would allow no one to consider any alternative to the Glanville country house. At this very moment, as the clock on the stable tower struck the hour for which the guests had been invited, the wide entrance doors were flung open and the carriage approach was flooded with a warm and welcoming light.