Love Song Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Interim

  Part Two

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Part Three

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Part Four

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Charlotte Bingham

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Hope Merriott has always thought of herself as truly blessed; her three daughters, Melinda, Rose and Claire bring her much joy. But when Hope’s fourth daughter Letty arrives, her birth coincides with the failure of her husband Alexander’s newest business venture. And although Alexander’s Great Aunt Rosabel offers to solve the family’s financial worries by gifting Alexander her large, elegant house, Hatcombe, in Wiltshire, Hope is full of seemingly unreasonable foreboding.

  Overnight, the family moves from their cosy suburban life to the isolation of Wiltshire’s rolling acres. All too soon, many of Hope’s premonitions seem about to be realized when Jack Tomm, a neighbour, comes to call on her. Before long Jack and Hope fall passionately in love only to be faced with the ultimate tragedy. It is then that Melinda, Rose and Claire recognize that it is up to them to realize their very individual gifts, and that in so doing, they may well hold the key to bringing their adored mother back to them.

  Award-winning novelist Charlotte Bingham has dazzled readers with an array of spellbinding bestsellers, including the highly acclaimed To Hear A Nightingale, Debutantes, and Grand Affair. In this gloriously romantic novel, she presents an irresistible and heart-rending tale that once more demonstrates her unique storytelling gift.

  Love Song

  Charlotte Bingham

  For Terence my favourite singer of my favourite songs

  A special thank you to:

  Malandra Burrows, Brian Rawling, warner.esp, Martin Craig, Judd Lander.

  The lyrics of “Love Song (Don’t Leave Me)” featured in Chapter 20 appear by kind permission of Rive Droite Music.

  The action of this novel takes place in the late nineteen eighties

  PROLOGUE

  Their voices came towards her on the quiet afternoon air, across a garden bathed in a golden sunlight. It was a light that seemed to her to be painting everything with a tender glow – touching the trees and the lawn with strokes of warmth, the kind of warmth that seems unimaginable when winter comes.

  It was, too, the kind of day that she had once thought might never come again, when a dog shifts itself lazily, a baby sleeps, and someone, somewhere, calls out to someone else to ‘come and see’. A day filled with those sublimely unimportant tasks that make up the best of life.

  In this mood of contentment she turned, feeling someone behind her, smiling. She found no-one there, yet she knew just who it might be.

  PART ONE

  When you were there, and you, and you,

  Happiness crowned the night.

  Rupert Brooke, ‘Dining Room Tea’

  Chapter One

  Hope had thought she was doing the right thing having a spring baby until she stepped into the hospital and saw how many other women were also doing the right thing. It was April and there seemed to be dozens of women arriving with their suitcases, all having babies. Hope had no suitcase. Everything had started to happen too quickly, in the Café Firenze of all places, right in the middle of a tea to celebrate Claire’s birthday, just as the tall glasses with the frothy milk shakes had arrived and Donna Maria the café owner was discreetly lighting all the candles on the freshly made chocolate gateau which was not just the café’s speciality but Hope’s youngest daughter’s birthday cake.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Claire. What a time for it to happen!’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mums. If you hang on until after midnight,’ her third daughter had said as cheerfully as she could, ‘at least I’ll have no trouble remembering its birthday!’

  Hope checked in at the maternity wing and then, the pains having stopped as abruptly as they had arrived, she called her neighbour to ask her to bring round the suitcase whenever she could.

  ‘Fingers crossed!’ said Imogen.

  Hope moved away from the phone booth and was surrounded once more by the chaos on the maternity ward, more like a station in wartime than a hospital. Husbands and grandfathers, boyfriends and sons, small children who would have to be left with neighbours, neighbours arriving with small children who had already been left. And so many pregnant women coming and going, some with suitcases, some like Hope who had not had time to go home and were now queuing for one of the telephones to ask someone at home to bring in the carefully packed case with the talcum powder and the fresh nightdress, the bedroom slippers and the teddy bear.

  The ward sister beckoned to her, and then, seeing Hope lean forward and give an involuntary gasp, caught her by the arm.

  ‘Follow me, Mrs Merriott,’ she said, looking back and smiling at the eternally moving but strangely quiet mêlée behind them. ‘Spring bulge,’ she added with a laugh. ‘But Mr Macleod is here today, so you’re in luck.’

  Hope gasped. Luck. Of course. That was just what she needed.

  In another five minutes she would be born.

  Claire checked her last birthday present from her father to make sure. Five past two and counting. Another four minutes fifty-two seconds and – wow! – she would be coming into this world, exactly fourteen years ago.

  ‘Claire?’ her sister Rose groaned from under her duvet. ‘Put out the light, OK?’

  ‘No.’ Four minutes and forty-seven.

  ‘Put the light out!’ Rose pulled her duvet higher over her mane of long dark hair and groaned again. ‘Every year it’s the same,’ she complained. ‘As if you were the only person in the whole world ever to have been born, for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘Three minutes.’

  ‘Think of poor Mums.’

  ‘She can do it in her sleep now.’

  ‘I remember Mellie saying you nearly killed her.’

  Melinda put her head round the door. ‘You did, Claire, you nearly killed her.’

  ‘Two minutes forty-eight seconds.’

  ‘You arrived feet first.’

  ‘I turned round at the last minute – just in time – two and a half minutes …’

  Rose stood up. A tall, dark-haired girl with long legs and dark eyes, she made a terrific sight with a duvet wrapped around her. Even Claire, in the middle of her counting, could appreciate that.

  ‘I’m going to sleep in Mellie’s room, Claire. It’s like sharing a room with the speaking clock being in here with you.’

  ‘It’s where you should be sleeping anyway.’ Claire prepared to get out of bed to commemorate her arrival into the world. ‘I don’t mind if you want to go and sleep with Mellie.’

  ‘You wanted me to sleep in here! You were the one having bad dreams!’

  ‘Shush.’

  But it was not another interruption from Rose that broke the silence but the sudden ringing of the telephone.

  ‘God!’ Rose, who had climbed back into bed, now sat bolt upright again. ‘That might be Dads!’
r />   ‘You go and see,’ Claire suggested. ‘I’ve still got just over a minute.’

  ‘Verna will answer it.’

  ‘Verna never hears anything.’

  ‘God.’ Rose sighed dramatically, jumped out of bed pulling her duvet around her, and staggered off to answer the telephone. ‘Mums’s probably nearly died again or something.’

  ‘Forty-three seconds!’ Claire’s eyes narrowed. ‘Forty-two forty-one forty!’

  ‘Hello? Two six three oh?’

  Melinda was by Rose’s side. ‘I’ll take it—’

  ‘Shhhh. It’s Dads.’

  ‘I’m born!’ Claire yelled joyously from behind them both. ‘Happy birthday to me! And not only am I born but I am fourteen at last, goodbye thirteen. Wow!’

  ‘Shush! I can’t hear Dads!’ Rose turned to Melinda. ‘He wants to speak to you.’

  ‘Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday to me!’ Claire sang, dancing round the landing.

  ‘Shut it, Claire, OK?’ Rose insisted, frowning hard. ‘I’m trying to hear.’

  ‘What is it? A boy or a girl?’ Claire asked, coming to her sister’s side and adjusting her wire-sided spectacles.

  ‘Neither,’ Rose replied, staring at Melinda who had lost all colour from her face. ‘Yet. It’s turned itself and got stuck.’

  ‘It’s nothing to worry about, darlings, really,’ their father assured them on his end of the line, running a hand back through his thick dark hair. ‘Really. Just remember, darlings, Mums’s had one before. No, sorry, two before – or is it three?’ he added, joking. ‘Anyway, much better to give her another Caesarean, Alistair Macleod said. I’ll explain it all when I come home, my angels. So. Really, there’s nothing at all to worry about – nothing at all. They’re doing it first thing in the morning, so go back to bed, and I’ll wake you up with the good news.’

  Alexander replaced the telephone and smiled wanly at the man, obviously yet another father, standing behind him. He hoped to God he had reassured them at home. He knew how much they worried, bless their cotton socks. They had all been knitting and sewing – in careful primrose or aquamarine, or navy blue – baby clothes for months. None of them minded in the least if it was a boy or a girl, just so long as Mums’s all right. Nowadays fathers and children knew all about the risks of childbirth, not like in the old days, when it was all kept a mystery, and babies arriving seemed simply a matter for midwives and boiling kettles.

  ‘I’ve never been able to understand that Catholic thing,’ Alistair Macleod said the following morning to his anaesthetist, as the surgeon cut his way neatly across Hope’s abdomen. ‘Saving the baby and not the mother. It just doesn’t make sense.’

  Hope heard nothing of this. She was far away flying over beautiful green meadows filled with wild flowers while the medical staff drained off her amniotic fluid through a suction tube and began to ease the baby out through the eight-inch incision in her flesh.

  A minute later the surgeon handed the newborn infant, still attached to its mother by the umbilical cord, to the nurse. They both looked down at the baby, registering its presence in this world, and wondering.

  ‘Number four,’ Alistair Macleod told Hope, an hour later, making sure to sound as cheerful as possible, as he placed her newest daughter in her arms, while Alexander stood with his back to her, staring out of the window.

  ‘She has a beautiful face,’ said Hope, at pains to sound as cheerful as the surgeon, yet in reality appalled at herself, at how she felt as she looked at her newest daughter. It was ridiculous. She felt as if she had done something terribly wrong, as if it was her fault that she had given birth to another one of her own sex.

  ‘Wonderful to have a perfect baby …’

  Hope nodded. ‘She has a beautiful face,’ she said again, and after a while, because there really was not much more to say, the surgeon left the three of them together. ‘Hasn’t she a beautiful face, Alex?’

  ‘Absolutely beautiful, just like her mum.’ Alexander leaned over and kissed his wife’s oddly cold forehead. ‘And, darling, you are not to worry about a single thing. Verna, the new Australian girl – she’s a real goodie. So really, there’s nothing to worry about at home. Nothing.’

  Hope smiled, feeling that she wanted to go back nine months and start again.

  She looked up at her absurdly handsome husband who was smiling down at her with such sweetness and warmth while he brushed some strands of her long blond hair away from her face. Alexander was so comforting. She was so lucky in him. Even so she stared out of the window, past him, unable to stop looking back. Before the baby everything had seemed so simple, but now it seemed suddenly far from so.

  ‘Darling, all that matters at this moment is that the baby thrives and you get better.’ This time Alexander leaned over and kissed Hope on the mouth. ‘I’m just going to pop home and tell the girls – I think it’s important that they don’t hear from anyone else. Then I’ll come back and look in on you before I toddle off to work.’

  Hope nodded and then stared once more out of the window as Alexander went. It was so different for men. They could ‘toddle off’. She thought of the girls at home, all waiting to look after the new baby, and the thought of them comforted her. It seemed to her that she could already hear them squabbling over who should feed their new sister. Everything would go on just as it had before – they would all just go on being as happy as they had been before, surely?

  ‘Mr Merriott?’ Alistair Macleod hailed Alexander as he walked across Reception. ‘I was waiting in the hope of catching you.’ The consultant gynaecologist smiled. He already knew Alexander by sight since they played tennis at the same club. He also knew he was what was known by other men’s wives as ‘quite a dish’. ‘You already have, what is it? Three children, I believe?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why indeed.’ The surgeon took Alexander by the elbow to draw him aside. ‘I’m sorry, Alexander – you don’t mind if I call you Alexander?’

  Alexander shook his head and smiled. Macleod was a nice man. Decent.

  ‘In a way this should wait, but then it’s going to have to be said some time, and the facts aren’t going to alter in any meantime. The fact is, I doubt very much whether your wife – whether Hope – I would say, it would be – let us say inadvisable for her, in my view, to have any more babies after this. I mean, put it this way, if she was my wife, I would say, really, that this would be the time to stop. I’m sorry, but previous scars et cetera would make it quite unwise. I know you were both really longing for a boy, she told me, but really …’ He tailed off.

  Alexander tilted his head to one side and stared at the surgeon, only vaguely hearing him. ‘When will you be certain?’

  The surgeon stared at him. ‘Not when, Mr Merriott, I am certain. I think you would find that anyone else you consulted would say exactly the same.’ He cleared his throat and smiled. ‘I mean., I know there is a woman in Ireland who holds the record at the Rotunda of thirteen Caesareans, and my wife has a cousin who has had six, but I would not swear to the poor creatures’ quality of life, I really would not. Quite honestly, I would say that your wife, if she was my wife, deserves a rest now. Even though,’ he ended with an attempt at a joke, ‘it’s not in my own interests to tell you so.’

  That evening Alexander drove home in a hail-storm which he barely noticed. Poor, poor Hope, what a thing to happen. After such a long wait since Claire they had pinned so much on the baby’s being a boy. Everything suddenly seemed to have gone pear-shaped.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Dads, another girl doesn’t matter,’ Melinda said later, sensing her father’s sadness and hugging one of his arms. ‘Come on. You know we shall love the baby anyway. Even more, probably.’

  ‘Poor Mums.’ Rose frowned. ‘She is all right, isn’t she?’

  ‘She’s fine. Just fine.’

  ‘I don’t think I shall bother having babies,’ Claire said, taking her glasses off to clean the lenses on the hem of her nightgown. ‘I really don’t thi
nk I shall.’

  ‘I shouldn’t,’ Alexander joked, suddenly smiling. ‘I mean, look at you lot.’

  With his arms round Claire and Melinda and Rose leading the way, they proceeded into the warmth of the long narrow kitchen where Melinda offered to make them all a hot drink. Alexander kissed her on the top of her head and demurred, fetching down a bottle of brandy instead.

  ‘It’s the man’s fault if it’s a girl, isn’t it? The men determine the sex, don’t they?’ Rose asked her father.

  ‘It isn’t anyone’s fault, darling,’ Alexander smiled, pouring himself a glass of brandy. ‘It’s just what happens, that’s all.’

  ‘You know it’s my birthday?’ Claire asked him suddenly. ‘You realize I am fourteen and baby is twelve hours or something, all at the same time? That means always sharing a cake with her – but I don’t mind.’

  ‘Really, Claire? Your birthday? I thought it was last week.’

  ‘You are rotten, Dads.’ Claire pushed her spectacles up her nose, and then said with a happy smile, ‘Aren’t you going to wish me happy birthday?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh. Why not?’

  ‘Because I don’t want to, Kipper.’

  ‘Dads …’ Melinda cajoled, because it seemed to her that Claire was about to take their father seriously, ‘Claire is fourteen today.’

  ‘I don’t want to wish you happy anything, because I hate you.’ Alexander growled like a dog, but opening his arms he hugged Claire to him. ‘Happy birthday, Kipper.’

  Melinda found Claire’s presents and cards where Hope always put them once they were wrapped and written.

  As Alexander piled the six parcels one on top of the other to carry them downstairs he felt a twinge of conscience that although he had signed the labels when Hope gave them to him, he had no idea what was inside.

  Claire threw her arms round her father’s neck to hug and kiss him while her sisters examined the book on Renoir and his paintings that he had apparently bought for her.