If You Were the Only Girl. Anne Bennett

Чтение книги онлайн.

       FOUR

      Lucy felt even more homesick after her visit home, and Clodagh and Evie were full of sympathy.

      ‘I suppose it helps that we are kept too busy to brood much,’ Clodagh said one morning as they were getting dressed.

      ‘Yes, and set to get busier,’ Evie said, ‘because the Heatheringtons are having guests for Christmas.’

      ‘Are they?’

      ‘So it seems. I overheard Mrs O’Leary talking to Cook,’ Evie said. ‘Two couples: the Mattersons and the Farrandykes. People of importance around here, it seems.’

      Lucy and Clodagh soon found out that Evie was right. Cook was complaining about it over breakfast.

      ‘It will mean extra work for all of us,’ she said. ‘And that’s the trouble with trying to run an establishment like this with such few staff.’

      ‘Well, they’re hardly likely to ask our permission, are they?’ Clara said.

      ‘Not likely,’ Norah said with a wry smile. ‘As far as I can see, we must like it or lump it, but I must say that it has perked up Lady Heatherington no end knowing that there will be company over the festive season.’

      ‘Oh, I suppose the poor lady must be fair lonely at times with Lord Heatherington keeping to his room so much,’ Cook conceded.

      ‘Well, that will soon be changed,’ Rory said. ‘When Master Clive is home for Christmas, the General intends to be much more active. He says he doesn’t want Master Clive to think of him as some old crock.’

      Lucy knew Clive was the Heatheringtons’ only son. ‘The only one they have left,’ Clara had told her the the day she had bought Lucy the new clothes.

      ‘The only one left?’ she repeated.

      ‘Yes,’ Clara said with a sigh. ‘Their three elder sons were killed in the Great War. It was Cook told me about the tragedy of it not long after I started working in the Heatherington household. And, as you know, I’d had my share of tragedy and loss in my own life then, and I knew what they had been going through and felt some sympathy because money and influence cannot make up for the loss of a loved one.’

      Lucy nodded. ‘I didn’t know that it hurt so much when someone you love dies,’ she said. ‘The night Daddy was taken to the sanatorium was the first time I faced the fact that he was dying. I knew I would miss him greatly and I did. But it hurt so much. I had an almost unbearable ache in my heart and sometimes was doubled over with the stabbing pains in my stomach. At times even now it catches me.’

      ‘I know.’ Clara nodded. ‘After Sean’s funeral, in November 1924, which my two brothers arranged, for I was in no fit state to do anything much, they took me back to England with them. They looked after me so well, and so did their wives, but I was like a zombie and the pain too deep for any tears to ease, though I shed many of them. For a time I really didn’t want to go on because I felt that I had no one to go on for. I think my brothers were aware of that for I was seldom left alone. Eventually, and slowly, as the spring of 1925 gave way to the summer, I knew I had to leave. Times were hard and my brothers’ families had little enough to eat themselves, without providing for me as well. I also found it hard to be around my young nieces and nephews. It wasn’t their fault but the sight of them was sometimes like a knife twisted in my heart.

      ‘When I applied to be lady’s maid to Lady Heatherington, in June 1925, I was initially dismayed to hear that there was a child in the house. Clive had just turned seven. I knew, though, that he would almost certainly be sent off to school before he was much older, and I was surprised when his mother was against the whole idea. It was Cook, who had been with the family since she was a child of twelve, who told me why. And she said the two eldest sons had been killed when the youngest, Clifford, enlisted, and shortly afterwards Lord Heatherington was invalided home, having been wounded in the arm. By the time he was drafted overseas again, Lady Heatherington found herself pregnant. For many that would have been an unwelcome СКАЧАТЬ