A Time of Hope (Part Five of The People of this Parish Saga) Read online




  A TIME OF HOPE

  (Part Five of The People of This Parish Saga)

  Nicola Thorne

  Publishing History

  First world edition published in Great Britain in 1999 by Severn House Publishers Ltd of 9-15 High Street, Sutton Surrey SM1 1DF.

  First published in the USA 2000 by Severn House Publishers Inc. of 595 Madison Avenue, New York 10022,

  Unabridged Audio Edition Published in 2002 by Isis Publishing Ltd

  This E book edition revised by the author in 2013

  Copyright 1999, 2000, 2002, 2013 © Nicola Thorne

  The author has asserted her moral rights.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Author website: www.nicolathorne.com

  Cover Illustration by David Young

  Cover design by Ruth Wrixton

  E book preparation Witley Press Ltd, Hunstanton, PE36 6AD

  About the Author

  Nicola Thorne was born in South Africa and, after a spell in New Zealand with her mother who was born in Wellington, came to England as a child where her parents finally separated. She spent her youth in the North of England, where she was educated first at a convent school and then a co-educational school. After completing her education at the London School of Economics she then spent most of her adult life in London. She has made a long career as a writer and is the author of over fifty novels. For a number of years Nicola has been among the top most borrowed authors from public libraries in the UK (PLR statistics) and many of her books have been published in foreign languages apart from English. After fifteen years spent in Dorset, she now lives in Devon.

  By the same author

  Return to Wuthering Heights (also e-book)

  A Woman Like Us (also e-book)

  The Perfect Wife and Mother (also e-book)

  The Daughters of the House (also e-book)

  Where the Rivers Meet (also e-book)

  Affairs of Love

  Pride of Place

  Bird of Passage

  Champagne

  Champagne Gold

  A Wind in Summer Silk, a novel

  Profit and Loss

  Trophy Wife

  Repossession, a novel of psychic suspense (also e-book)

  Worlds Apart

  Old Money

  Rules of Engagement

  The Good Samaritan

  Class Reunion

  My Name is Martha Brown (also e-book)

  In Search of Martha Brown (non-fiction)

  A Friend of the Family

  Coppitts Green (also e-book)

  The Little Flowers (also e-book)

  Rose, Rose, Where are You? (also e-book)

  On a Day Like Today

  The Holly Tree

  The Pride of the School (e-book only)

  After the Rain (also e-book)

  The Askham Chronicles, 1898-1967:

  Never Such Innocence

  Yesterday’s Promises

  Bright Morning

  A Place in the Sun

  The People of this Parish series:

  The People of this Parish (also e-book)

  The Rector’s Daughter (also e-book)

  In This Quiet Earth (also e-book)

  Past Love (also e-book)

  A Time of Hope (also e- book)

  In Time of War (also e-book)

  The Broken Bough Saga:

  The Broken Bough (also e-book)

  The Blackbird’s Song (also e-book)

  The Water’s Edge (also e-book)

  Oh Happy Day! (also e-book)

  The Enchantress Saga

  The Enchantress (e -book only)

  Falcon Gold (e-book only)

  Lady of the Lakes (e-book only)

  Synopsis

  ‘I believe that this is a time of hope and I pray that we keep faith with the future with unborn generations entrusted to us and that we never see another war.’

  It is the year 1932 – wealthy, young Alexander Martyn is instantly drawn to pretty, but unsuitable Mary Sprogett so that their rapidly forming attachment incurs his adoptive mother’s displeasure.

  When Alexander and Mary elope together, a Pandora’s Box is opened and the secret of Alexander’s birth, long concealed from him, alienates him and threatens to split the family apart. However, when tragedy strikes, Alexander discovers that he needs his family around him more than ever before.

  This continuation of the engrossing saga, The People of This Parish, follows the lives of the characters in the years leading up to the Second World War, and charts the impact that the devastating events of that time had on the Woodville and Yetman families as well as the world at large.

  This is the fifth book in the six part

  The People of This Parish Saga

  Contents

  Part One: The Moment of Truth

  Part Two: A Great Tradition

  Part One

  The Moment of Truth

  Chapter One

  Summer 1932

  Alexander Martyn watched the golden-haired girl playing with the baby on the lawn with fascination. “She’s beautiful,” he murmured.

  “She’s only fifteen.” Dora smiled, following the direction of his eyes.

  “Never mind. She’s beautiful ... and the baby’s beautiful too,” he added with a guilty start.

  “Oh, I know she’s beautiful.”

  Louise was eighteen months old and over from her home in France to visit her grandmother, Eliza Heering, who sat nearby listening to the conversation between her daughter and Alexander. There was an air of contentment about Eliza. Normally a woman who lived alone, she liked nothing better than to be surrounded by her family, as she was now, in her family home: Pelham’s Oak, where she had been born.

  The object of Alexander’s admiration was her great-niece, Mary Sprogett, who had been allowed by her mother to act as nanny for the summer holidays to the infant Louise. As well as golden hair Mary had peach-blossom skin, deep blue eyes and a pert, vivacious smile. She was quite tall and expressed her agility in the way she danced about the lawn, clearly entrancing Louise and those about her watching from the comfort of their deckchairs set in the shade of the oak tree higher up the garden.

  They could hear the sound of horses’ hooves approaching from the rear of the house. Alexander, roused from his reverie, jumped up beckoning to Dora who, like him, was in riding gear.

  “Uncle Carson’s ready.” He pointed towards the beautiful horses, so docile and obedient in the company of their groom who held their reins.

  Seated on his black mare, Carson waited for them, his eyes roving over the gathering on the lawn; the seated adults, the playing children. He still thought of Mary, his niece, as a child. Yet in many ways she looked so adult with a slender figure and a small bust. Like her mother, Elizabeth, whom she much resembled, she had grown up before her time.

  Carson greeted Dora and Alexander with a curt nod. He had been busy in the stables when they arrived.

  “Sorry I kept you waiting.”

  “No trouble,” Dora said, as the groom helped her to mount. “We were lazing on the lawn on such a perfect day.”

  For some reason she was anxious to placate her cousin who, these days, was such a solemn, taciturn
man. Alexander was already mounted and looked eager to be off. Carson led the way round to the far side of the house, across the paddock and into a field which sloped steeply towards the broad valley which lay between Pelham’s Oak and the town of Wenham situated on top of a hill several miles away.

  The three set off across country, a soft breeze blowing down from the hills. They were all accomplished riders. When they came to the small whitewashed cottage a mile or so away from the main house, Alexander, who was leading, suddenly slowed down and looked up at the open window.

  “Is that woman I saw still living here, Uncle? I thought she was very ill?”

  “Alas, she died,” Carson said, drawing up beside him. “Oh, over a year ago. But her friend and companion, the good woman who looked after her, lives there now. I said she could stay as long as she liked.”

  “I said you were good, Uncle.” Alexander looked at him fondly. “The day we passed by and she appeared at the window, I told you that you were a good man. Good and kind.”

  “No I’m not, not at all,” Carson said gruffly, and dug his heels into the flank of the horse. “If only you knew me you would not think that.”

  And he galloped away so fast that a thick cloud of dust from his horse’s hooves rose up behind him. Alexander gazed after him in astonishment.

  “What was all that about?” he asked Dora, who had reined in beside him.

  “I have no idea.” Dora, equally bewildered, shook her head.

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  “You just said he was good and kind, and I agree.”

  “It’s something about that woman. The one who died. She was standing at the window looking at me intently as we passed and I waved to her. I said she was very beautiful and uncle seemed moved by what I said.”

  “When was this?” Dora still looked puzzled.

  “It was about a year and half ago, about when Aunt Connie left. We were riding, just like today. He told me she was tubercular and had not long to live. I never gave it another thought until now.”

  “Mother will know who she was,” Dora said. “Mother knows everything. I’ll ask her.”

  And then she gently pressed her heels into her horse’s flank and set off after Carson, now a mere speck in the distance.

  Breathless at last from her exertions, Mary Sprogett left little Louise to the care of her nursemaid and threw herself on the ground beside Eliza.

  “Had enough?” Eliza smiled sympathetically.

  “For the time being.” Mary tilted back her head and shut her eyes to the sun. “It’s such a lovely day.” Opening her eyes again she gazed round. “Where’s Alexander?”

  “He’s gone riding. He’ll be back for lunch.” Eliza looked at her curiously. “Do you ride Mary?”

  Mary shook her head. “I’d like to, but Mummy thinks it’s too dangerous. Mummy never rode.” She looked gravely at her aunt as though to say she knew the reason why. Her mother had been brought up as a servant although she had been the natural daughter of Sir Guy Woodville, Carson’s father. It was something that rankled very heavily.

  Mary could just about remember the little house in Blandford where her mother had laboured all hours of the day on other people’s washing. Her father had been a war invalid and there was never enough to eat, nothing new to wear. Then, one magical day, Uncle Carson had arrived and driven them off in a large car, and from then on their fortunes had changed dramatically.

  “Well, Alexander will be here for the rest of the summer,” Eliza said. “He can teach you. I’m sure he’d like that, unless your mother won’t allow it.”

  Mary, who in so many ways – maybe due to the rigour of her upbringing – was older than her years, stared at her gravely.

  “Maybe you could talk to her, Aunt Eliza. She’ll listen to you.”

  “You have a touching faith in me, my dear.” Eliza smiled. “I don’t know that I have that much influence over your mother.”

  And, indeed, her relationship with Elizabeth was a difficult one. Elizabeth had felt slighted for too long by the Woodvilles for them to be able to make full amends, despite the fact that, following the death of her first husband, she had made a good match with a prosperous solicitor and now lived in some style in a large house not far from Wenham.

  If anyone she was close to Carson and maybe he could persuade her to let Mary learn to ride, as he was such a good horseman himself.

  Eliza could see the three riders, pinpricks in the distance, making their way across the valley and up the steep slope towards the house. Looking across at her son slumbering in his deckchair she gave his foot a nudge.

  “Hugh, the riders are returning. Lunch will be at any moment.”

  A grunt came from Hugh, whose book had slipped from his knee as if he had been half asleep. He tipped back the brim of his hat and peered owlishly at her, his round horn-rimmed spectacles on the edge of his nose.

  “What was that, Mother?”

  “Lunch darling! Had you better go and have a wash?”

  “Do I look dirty?”

  Hugh gave her that lazy smile which always so affected her, a strange, shy smile which reminded her that Hugh had always been an enigma, even to her. The baby of the family, he was now a man of forty-seven, an Oxford don who had given his life to scholarship. He had always been self-contained, self-effacing, rather overshadowed as a child by his elder brother, Laurence, and his ebullient and forthright sister, Dora.

  His life had not been easy. He had lost a leg in the war and spent many months suffering the consequences, emotionally and physically. The stump had been slow to heal and so had his mind. He had withdrawn into himself even more, seldom took part in family events, and had never shown any inclination to marry. Eliza didn’t even know if he had ever had a girlfriend.

  “No, you look perfectly all right.” Eliza prepared to rise from her chair. “I just thought you might like to freshen up. I’m going to.” She looked down at the girl still lying on the grass at her feet. “Mary?”

  Mary inspected her grubby hands, smiled and, jumping up, followed her great-aunt into the house.

  “Why is Uncle Hugh always so tired Aunt Eliza?”

  “He’s got an artificial leg. He can’t move around like other people. I think he’s in a lot of pain most of the time, but he doesn’t talk about it.”

  Mary looked at her with awe.

  “How did he get an artificial leg?”

  “He lost it in the war. It was amputated above the knee, so the pain comes from the stump that’s left.”

  “Poor Uncle Hugh.”

  “Poor Uncle Hugh,” Eliza echoed, putting her arm around her niece’s shoulder. “You must be very nice to him.”

  “Oh, I will.”

  When the two returned to the terrace a discussion was going on between the riders and Hugh about where lunch should be eaten. As it was such a lovely day the consensus was on the terrace. In no time David, the butler, together with a small flotilla of maids, had laid a table, provided chairs and, as the everyone sat down, a delicious array of cold dishes and several bottles of chilled white wine were somehow magically produced.

  Halfway through the meal Alexander put down his knife and fork carefully and looked across at Carson.

  “Uncle, you were going to tell me about the woman who lived in the cottage. You said she died. It seemed such a sad story. I remember especially how beautiful she was.”

  Carson too put down his knife and fork and, joining his hands under his chin, glanced briefly at Eliza before answering.

  “It is rather a sad story. She lived in some poverty in the East End of London. I heard about her and brought her here. Alas, not in time to save her. Massie Smith, her friend and companion, now lives in the cottage. That is all there is to tell.”

  Carson picked up his knife and fork and resumed his meal.

  “It’s not much of a story,” Mary ventured derisively. “I mean, how did you come to hear about her?”

  “Through someone I knew a long time
ago.” Carson’s tone was abrupt as if he wanted to discourage any more questions. His attitude signified that that was the end of the matter.

  “How did you know ...” Mary began, but Eliza gave her a sharp look and Mary stopped in her tracks.

  “You know what curiosity did ...” Hugh sat back in his chair and lifted his glass of wine, looking humorously at Mary.

  “I don’t see why everyone is so secretive.” Alexander sounded annoyed. “Uncle said that one day he would tell me the story. I don’t see why he shouldn’t.”

  “He has.” Dora came to Carson’s rescue. “Maybe that’s all there is to tell.”

  “It is.” Looking round to see that everyone had finished, Carson tinkled the little bell in front of him. “Nothing mysterious about it at all. Perhaps we should have dessert.”

  Later, when they were at home Dora said to her mother, “Who was that women in the cottage Alexander was asking about? I did think Carson was very secretive. It sounded as though there was something he was anxious to hide.”

  “Oh dear, did it sound as bad as that?” Eliza’s expression was thoughtful. It was nearly ten. They had dined and Hugh had gone to bed early as he habitually did.

  “I don’t think Alexander was very happy.”

  “No. I don’t quite know what happened.”

  “But do you know about the woman?”

  “A little.” Eliza sounded guarded.

  “Mother! Now you’ve gone all mysterious,” Dora said protestingly getting up to pour herself a brandy to have with her coffee.

  “I do know about the woman, but I don’t know that I’m at liberty to say anything.”

  “It was some old flame of Carson’s?” Dora looked speculative.

  “Something like that.” Eliza remained tight-lipped.

  “Was that why Connie left him?”

  “I really think you’ll have to ask Carson, Dora. I’m sorry. It’s entirely his business, not ours.”