LITMIR.BIZ

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up the stairs, tripping over her long silk skirt, her heart thumping and the wretched sweats making her cheeks flush like rouge. This was no time for her usual decorum.

      Angus was lying on his bed, his face swollen and bruised and his eyes shut. There were stitches on his left temple.

      Hester turned to her other son. ‘What happened this time?’

      Guy muttered the whole story about Angus going too high, the village boys warning him and his mistimed dive. ‘If the Bartleys hadn’t been there, and their sister, I dread to think…It was awful, Mother, and I was useless.’

      Angus opened his eyes sheepishly, sighed and went back to sleep.

      ‘Now don’t get your mother in a state, young man,’ ordered the doctor. ‘It’s no’ as bad as it looks. He’s a wee bit concussed and shaken, but lots of rest and sleep will sort him out in no time.’

      ‘He ought to be in hospital,’ said Hester, examining her son closely. Mackenzie was a fool, in her eyes, driving around in his car like a lord, living above his means with his silly wife called Amaryllis, for goodness’ sake, and far too friendly with the natives. She would get a second opinion.

      ‘Hospital would be fine if it weren’t twenty miles away. Movement and sudden jerks would be unwise. Rest, but no sleeping draughts, mind, just in case.’

      ‘In case of what?’ she demanded.

      ‘If he’s sick and drowsy after tomorrow I want to know, but give the laddie a chance to settle himself. Nature knows best. He’s had a lucky escape. Yon Foss has seen a fair few into the next world. Ah, but boys will be boys…the wee devils!’

      ‘Thank you, Doctor. You will call later,’ she ordered.

      ‘Of course, Lady Hester. Do you want a nurse?’

      ‘That won’t be necessary. I shall see to my son myself.’

      ‘The colonel is abroad, I hear,’ said the doctor, packing up his Gladstone bag.

      ‘That is correct. I shall inform him immediately.’ She was not going to endure his presence a moment longer, but he turned to Guy, who stood pale-faced by the window.

      ‘You look like you need a brandy, young man. How old are you now? How time flies, and you so tall already…Don’t worry, Angus’ll live to plague the life out of you for a while longer. He’s done far worse falling off his horse.’

      How dare he be so familiar with her son? ‘Arkie, show Dr Mackenzie to the door. I’m sure you’ve got plenty of patients waiting.’

      ‘Funnily enough, I’m quiet. It’s too braw a day to be sick and I’ve sewn up all the cut fingers at haytiming, but if it stays this hot, the old folk’ll peg out if they’re daft enough to go walking midday.’

      ‘Yes, quite,’ Hester sighed. Would the fool ever go? ‘Goodbye, Doctor.’ She waved him away, then pulled down the window blinds to stop the sunlight shining on Angus’s face. ‘Ask Shorrocks to organise a bath, Guy—it’ll ease out any stiffness—and I’ll get Cook to send you up a coddled egg and soldiers.’

      ‘Mother, don’t fuss, I’m fine…Angus was just showing off as usual. He can be such a chump.’

      ‘I turn my back for five minutes and you get up to mischief again.’

      ‘We’re not babies. It was so hot and we just fancied a swim.’

      ‘What were those village brats doing on my land?’

      ‘You know everyone plays in the Foss when it’s warm. It’s tradition.’

      ‘Not while we’re in residence for the summer, they don’t. I shall speak to the Parish Council.’

      ‘Oh, Mother, the Bartleys saved Gus’s life. You ought to be singing their praises, not punishing them. I told them you would be grateful,’ Guy argued. He always stood his ground, just like his father. What a fine soldier he would make one day, she thought, but she must be firm.

      ‘Sometimes, Guy, you overstep the mark…Over-familiarity with the lower orders breeds contempt and disobedience. Playing cricket against the village is one thing, but cavorting in front of locals is another. It is your duty to set an example, not make promises on my behalf. Ask Arkie to have tea sent up here. I’ll sit and watch over Angus, just in case…He really ought to be in hospital.’

      ‘I wish Father was here. He promised to be home for the hols.’

      ‘The army needs him. There’s talk of war with Germany. The situation demands all the staff officers to be making contingency plans. We mustn’t worry him now about such folly. Run along. Have a warm bath, you’re shivering in that indecent bathing suit.’

      Hester needed to be alone. Angus looked so fragile and battered, poor darling. Nothing must harm either of her precious sons, her golden eggs. They were so late coming into her life. At nearly forty she had feared she was barren and then they came together one terrible night when all her dignity was abandoned in the struggle to bring them into the world. Guy Arthur Charles came first, all of a rush, and then the shock when another baby emerged, Garth Angus Charles, taking his time. Two for the pain of one, her beautiful boys, alike in every way. In one night her world was changed for ever and she loved them both with a devotion that knew no bounds.

      Looking round at the mess in Angus’s bedroom—cricket bats and fishing rods, horse crops, rugby shoes, clothes scattered on the floor—she sighed. He was such an energetic boy, full of pranks and madcap ideas. He was a skilled horseman, winning rosettes to prove his competitive spirit. On the wall were stag antlers, model ships and biplanes, and a map tracing Colonel Charles’s campaigns in South Africa. The twins were as bad as each other when they were home. At school it was another matter. They were put in different houses, beaten for any misdemeanours but excelled on the sports field and in the Officers’ Training Corps.

      It was always so quiet when they were away. That was why she’d begged Charles to let her buy Waterloo House, so she could be close for their exeats and any public concerts at Sharland School, the great stone fortress that stood on the edge of the moor.

      To think that life could have ended for one of them this beautiful afternoon didn’t bear thinking about. Horse treks and camping out over the Dales would be out of bounds for the rest of the holidays after this escapade. Now she must be gracious and receive their rescuers, but of all the children to save Angus why did it have to be the blacksmith’s brood of non-conformists?

      Only last week she was in her carriage doing a round of charitable visiting when she chanced to see the blacksmith striding along the cobbled narrow street in his leather apron, shirtsleeves rolled up, showing muscled arms the colour of walnut oil. His black curly hair was far too long under his cap, more like a gypsy’s locks. She looked down at him from her carriage, expecting him to doff his cap in deference but he swaggered on as if she was nobody of consequence.

      ‘Stop the carriage!’ she ordered Beaven. ‘Go and ask that man why he has been so rude.’

      ‘Yes, ma’am,’ said her coachman, pulling up until Bartley was alongside them.‘Hey,you, why didn’t you pay the usual respect to her ladyship?’

      ‘Oh, aye,’ said Asa Bartley, looking straight at her with those coal-black eyes. ‘You tell your mistress I bows to no man but my Maker, and that’s a fact!’

      Hester flushed at such insolence and demanded that Beaven drive on. The blacksmith might own his business but he rented his cottage from the Waterloo estate. How dare he be so rude?

      Men like him didn’t know their place. These chapel ranters were behind all the stirrings of unrest in England: the Labour Movement and trade unions, socialist ideas of all being equal, women wanting to register for the Vote and such like. The Women’s Suffrage Society had the cheek to send wagons round the villages canvassing for support from Sharland’s millworkers, encouraging them to strike for better wages. She blamed all the unrest on the preachers in the pulpits of these stone

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