Weyward(21)

As she walked down the stairs, she heard Father talking loudly in the entrance hall. A boorish laugh echoed through the house. It was so loud that Violet heard the family of blue tits that lived in the roof chirrup in fright. She disliked cousin Frederick already.

When she reached the hall, she saw that the owner of the boorish laugh was a straight-backed young man in a sand-coloured uniform. He smiled when she drew near, revealing white, even teeth. Below his officer’s cap, his eyes were green. Her favourite colour. Father, who had just finished telling some dull story, clapped him on the back. Graham stood awkwardly off to one side, looking as if he didn’t know what to do with his hands.

‘Frederick,’ said Father, ‘I’d like to introduce you to my daughter, your cousin. Miss Violet Elizabeth Ayres.’

‘Hello,’ said Frederick, extending his hand towards her. ‘How do you do?’

‘Hello,’ said Violet. His hand felt warm and callused. Close up, he smelled of a spicy sort of cologne. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt suddenly light-headed. Was this, she wondered, a normal response to the young adult male? She had never known any apart from Graham, and the second under-gardener, Neil – a buck-toothed, wan-faced lad who had perished at the Battle of Boulogne.

‘Violet,’ said Father. ‘Have you forgotten your manners?’

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘How do you do?’

Frederick grinned.

Father rang for Penny, who flushed and almost forgot to curtsey when she saw Frederick. Father asked Penny to show Frederick to his room. Dinner would be at eight, he said.

‘Don’t be late,’ said Father, looking at Violet.

Violet wore her favourite dress to dinner – green serge with a full skirt and a Peter Pan collar. It had no pockets, so she had stowed the feather safely between the yellowed pages of the Brothers Grimm. She sat across from Frederick and stole glances at him. She was heady with looking – at the sharp line of his jaw; the square, golden hands with their dark smattering of hair across the knuckles. He was so unlike Father – whose own hands recalled joints of gammon – that he might have been a different species. He repelled and fascinated her in equal measure.

She was trying to work out the exact shade of his eyes – the same colour as the enchanter’s nightshade that grew beneath the beech tree, she decided – when he turned his gaze to her. She flinched.

‘How are your parents, Frederick?’ Father was asking. Apparently, Frederick’s father was Father’s younger brother Charles – whom Violet and Graham had never met. It seemed, from the familiarity with which they spoke to each other, that Father and Frederick had kept up a rather involved written correspondence for many years. Knowing this made Violet feel a little smaller in her chair. Why hadn’t Father wanted her to meet her only cousin until now? She thought again of the lack of callers, the prohibition on leaving the estate.

‘As well as can be expected, I suppose,’ said Frederick. ‘Mother’s nerves are still a bit frayed, after the Blitz. I keep telling them to leave London – too many reminders – but they won’t hear of it. I’ll go down and see them, before I head back. But I wanted to get some country air first.’

‘Did you grow up in London?’ Violet asked, finding her voice. The prospect horrified her. Everything she knew of London came from newspaper articles and Dickens. In her mind, it was soot-choked and sunless, with no animals except mangy foxes foraging in alleyways. ‘What was it like?’

‘Well, I spent most of the year at school,’ said Frederick. ‘Eton, of course.’ Graham stiffened and looked at his plate. ‘But it’s a wonderful city. Full of life and colour. Or, it was, before the war.’

‘But … are there any trees?’ Violet asked. ‘I couldn’t imagine living without trees.’

Frederick laughed and took a sip of wine. The bright green flash of his gaze landed on her again, like sunlight in a forest.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘In fact, my parents live in Richmond, just next to the park. Have you heard of it?’

‘No,’ said Violet.

‘It’s beautiful. Over two thousand acres of woodland, just on the outskirts of London. You even see deer there, sometimes.’

‘Have you thought about what you’d like to do once the war ends, Frederick?’ Father interrupted.

‘Well, I was planning to move back to London, and rent somewhere for a while; maybe in Kensington – if it’s still standing, that is … my allowance would cover it. I thought I might write a book, about the war. But now …’

‘Yes! Didn’t you have a title? Torment in Tobruk? You mentioned it in your last letter. Sounded like stirring stuff. You’ve changed your mind?’

‘Well. I’m not sure yet,’ Frederick began. ‘I thought of going to medical school, perhaps. One sees things, in a war … so much death.’ He is watching Violet. ‘But miracles, too. Chaps brought back from the brink. In a field hospital, doctors are like … God.’

There was an awkward pause. Father cleared his throat.

‘I think what I am trying to say’, Frederick added quickly, ‘is that I just would like to contribute somehow, when all this is over, to making people’s lives better.’

‘A noble aspiration,’ said Father, nodding his approval.