In Distant Fields Read online

Just as Kitty and Harry had done, the two of them walked, at first in silence through the castle grounds, until eventually Peregrine turned to Partita.

  ‘I meant what I said about letters, Mischief, especially your letters.’ Tie stopped and looked at her for the first time in her life with real love. ‘You are so like your letters, you know, or rather your letters are so like you. But not the child I once knew, the grown-up woman.’

  Partita looked away. ‘I hope I’m not that grown up, Perry. I hope Mischief is still around somewhere, although I do admit I have a hard time trying to find her sometimes. All the gaiety goes out of one when one sees so much suffering. You don’t mean it to, but it does.’

  ‘We are bound to have changed, but perhaps in some strange way, we have changed for the better? Perhaps that is what heartbreak is all about? Getting better, becoming more as we should be as a result, more caring, more loving?’

  Partita shook her head, all impatience once more. ‘No, I don’t believe that, not for a single second. That is just something that happens by accident. It’s not something that should happen. No war should happen, especially not a war like this war. No, not ever, never should a war like this war ever happen again. What a bunch of fools we have been led by, and we can’t even bring our boys home. Almeric, think of Almeric, Perry, he has to stay out there, all alone. Not a day goes by when I don’t think of that.’

  No one was more aware of this fact than Miss Gertrude Jekyll and her partner, Mr Ned Lutyens, so that even as Peregrine consoled Partita, and very eventually, she allowed him to take her in his arms and console her as a lover does best, the designer and architect were thinking of how best to treat the boys who had to stay out there, who would never return. It was a question that concerned them both deeply.

  However many had returned, against all the odds, there was still one person who had not – Jossy’s youngest boy, Ben – and nor was there any news of him.

  They knew he was safe, of course – that at least was known – but they had no idea when he was due to arrive nor why he had been so delayed, and nothing anyone could do helped to unravel the mystery.

  The war had ended with the Armistice signed on 11 November, yet they were still waiting, until one fine, crisp December morning they had the call.

  It was midday when the telephone rang with the last of the good news to be relayed to Bauders.

  ‘My dear, Jossy’s Ben is home at last.’ The Duke walked into the library unannounced to find Circe.

  ‘Ben is home? Oh, John, that is fine, so fine.’

  ‘We will all go to meet him, I think, we will all go. After all, he is the last to come back, and that is not nothing, is it, Circe?’

  John looked across at Circe, who was hastily putting away some papers. He knew very well what they were, but he said nothing.

  ‘Come, we will go in that confounded vehicle that Tully so enjoys us going about in. We can all pile in, huggermugger, and leave Jossy to follow in the trap.’

  ‘The last of us home, John, imagine that. Ben, your boy, the last one home, Jossy, isn’t that too marvellous?’ the Duchess shouted to Jossy above the sound of Tully revving the new motor car.

  ‘Aye, but I only ‘ope he’s had a hair cut and a shave, with all of us turning out to him. I only ‘ope he doesn’t look like summat the cat wouldn’t bring in,’ Jossy grumbled to the pony as he shook up the reins and set off.

  The train was late, as it always seemed to be when it was not meant to be, when so many hearts were centred on its arriving on time, when so much depended on its arriving on time.

  ‘It had to be late, on this day of all days. Couldn’t be on time, could it?’ the Duchess murmured to Tully as they all walked up and down the platform in an effort to keep warm.

  ‘Never mind, Your Grace, so long as it gets here, that’s all that matters.’

  Jossy could see that the Duke, always the most punctilious of men, was beginning to get agitated because he had started to follow the poor station-master up and down the platform, muttering that since the war was now well over trains were not expected to be late, when all of a sudden in the distance they heard the sweet sound of wheels and engine, and the station-master at once started to blow his whistle, if only perhaps to drown out the Duke’s remonstrations.

  It was the usual passenger train bearing with it a large cargo van coupled between the last carriage and the guard’s van.

  Ben was the first to alight and, to Jossy’s relief, he had had his hair cut, and he had shaved, and he went straight up to the Duke and saluted, like a good ‘un.

  ‘Glad to have you home, Ben.’ The Duke saluted back.

  ‘Glad to be ‘ome, sir.’

  ‘What kept you? A Parisian poodle, perhaps?’

  ‘No, sir, not a poodle,’ Ben laughed. ‘Myself, I’m more of a terrier man. No, something else kept me, Your Grace.’

  At that moment the Duke heard the unmistakable sound of hoofs. He turned slowly, and stared. It seemed that Ben and the other two passengers had not been the only ones on the train.

  ‘What the devil, Ben? What the devil have you brought back to Bauders?’

  ‘An old friend, Your Grace. He’s a bit battered, but he’s in one piece, and if that’s not a bloomin’ miracle, I don’t know what is.’

  Of course the old horse was visibly battle worn, one of his ears holed by a bullet, a long scar down one side of his noble head, a wound that had cost him the sight of an eye, and evidence of another wound on one flank, an injury that seemed not to have affected his walk. But other than that he looked a picture.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ the Duke muttered, clearing his throat several times. ‘Well, I’ll be dashed. I can’t believe it. I really will be well and truly dashed, I can’t believe it. Look, Circe, the old boy’s come home.’

  But of course Circe couldn’t look. As the train finally pulled out of the station she turned and walked a little way off, leaving the Duke to go forward, alone.

  John put his hand up to the horse’s head and pulled gently on his one undamaged ear, stroked his nose and ran his hand under his mouth to scratch the animal’s chin, after which the two of them stood side by side for a while, until the horse finally lowered his head and laid it over his master’s shoulder.

  So it was they stood for a while surrounded by those that were left from the great house and stables, until taking the halter from Ben, the Duke led him off the platform and out of the station.

  He walked Barrymore Boy all the way home. It took him well over an hour and a half, only stopping now and then to allow the old chap to take a pick of grass from the verge, and Ben walked behind them, occasionally patting the old chap on his flank.

  ‘You’re home, old boy,’ John said as they passed the gate lodge and walked into the entrance of the long drive. ‘There you are, old fellow, dulce domum.’

  Because it was a fine, sunlit day, after he had been fed and they had put a good, heavy rug on him, the Duke and Ben led the weary old horse out into the home paddock, an enclosure clearly visible from the house.

  The horse stood at the gate for minutes, looking around at his surroundings, as if unable quite to take in where he was, He stood there for so long that the Duke started to worry that he had been set fast and was unable to move, when all of a sudden, with a tremendous snort, he galloped forward, as if the years had fallen off him, kicking his heels in the air and ducking and twisting his head in joy. Round and round he charged, before rolling over and over in the sweet grass, all four legs in the air, finally getting to his feet for a good shake.

  Naturally everyone that could, very promptly and very eagerly celebrated Ben and the old horse’s return, laughing and talking and drinking champagne. Wavell circled round them with bottle after bottle, topping up everyone’s glasses, over and over, frequently moving across to the Duke, who never moved from the library window, watching his old friend intently, still not quite able to believe that it was really him moving steadily through the winter grass, before being led
back into his old box.

  Circe’s garden of remembrance for Almeric had been planted out for the spring when Miss Gertrude Jekyll and Mr Ned Lutyens both found they had arrived at the same conclusions.

  ‘Where the fallen are buried, Ned, they are in foreign fields,’ Miss Jekyll stated, adjusting her firmly rounded figure at her desk and staring at her partner through the thickest of spectacle lenses. ‘We must be sure to see – to see that they will all lie among the flowers of home.’

  ‘And we must see to it that the cemeteries are filled with light. I’ll have none of those weeping dark cypresses for our young men.’

  Miss Jekyll’s eyesight was all but gone, but in her mind’s eye she could see Ned’s light, and she could see the colours of the flowers she could command to fill in the square after square, the field after field of enclosed light.

  ‘Good, that is good, Ned. They must have light, and flowers, so when their loved ones come to visit them, as they will surely do, they will see only English flowers, Ned, Shakespeare’s flowers. English roses, and cornflowers and columbines, wild thyme on the banks, and all manner of plantings that will tell them that whatever the place where their boys fell, however far from home, in distant fields, they are yet in England.’

  Postscript

  The Halt has long gone, and the railway that brought the few back, but Bauders is still approached by the same long road. The parkland is still beautifully kept, grazed by herds of rare-breed cattle and sheep, as well as the famous white deer. The lake is fished by permit, but rarely freezes over.

  The house is unchanged, although the family live in only one wing, which allows the visitors freedom to see over the great rooms. Yet there is evidence of family life everywhere as successive dukes have maintained the tradition of trying to keep the house as a home, and not a museum. There are family portraits, naturally, but they are greatly outnumbered by silver-framed photographs. Children on ponies, friends with their dogs, wedding groups, all the usual paraphernalia that crowd table tops in reception rooms and private sitting rooms everywhere, all speaking of time passing, but also in some strange way, standing still.

  The most popular room with the summer visitors is that known as the Pirate Room. In this small gallery there hangs a collection of photographs and informal pencil portraits, and the occasional oil, of all the members of something once called, it seems, the Pirate Club. In this room there are also paintings taken from old photographs of family and friends in costume, and a fine portrait of Valentine Wynyard Errol, who, after the war, became the well-known British film star, Valentine Errol.

  ‘The family used to put on full-scale operettas in the house, for the amusement of themselves and the estate workers,’ the guides will always explain. ‘However, this is the first time – this production The Pirates of Penzance, evidence of which you see here – this is the first time they were able to put on an operetta as a family, which is obviously why everything has been kept from that production – the programmes, the costumes, the music sheets, all of it.’

  ‘All right for all of them, having the time and money to do that kind of thing, while everyone else around them waits on them hand and foot,’ someone in the crowd will always, inevitably, be heard to mutter.

  ‘Quite so,’ the guides are trained to retort. ‘But you will also note that many of the young people you can see here died in the First World War; and when you go outside you will be able to see the Duchess’s garden that Miss Jekyll and Mr Lutyens designed for her, and which eventually became a memorial to her son, Lord Almeric, killed at the battle of Loos as was his friend Teddy. He was succeeded by his brother, Lord Augustus, whom you see here. He is always known in the family as the motoring duke. He married Miss Lavinia Ponsonby and had four sons. Now if you turn to your left, you will see a portrait of Lady Partita Knowle, the youngest and most beautiful of his three sisters, all of whom are depicted here. Lady Allegra, who married a Mr Millings; Lady Cecilia, who married Lord Milborne, and lastly Lady Partita, the most beautiful, as I said, who married a Mr Peregrine Catesby of Catesby House, situated not ten miles from here. They had eight children, seven sons and a daughter, Lady Katherine, who became a famous actress, acting under the family name of Knowle. And then of course we have family friends such as Emerald Bickford who was sadly killed whilst driving an ambulance in the Great War. Last but not least, we have a portrait of the family servants. Mr Wavell, Mrs Coggle, and so on, a few of whom came back to the house after the war was over. Mr Harry Wavell, here, was the son of the butler, and he married into the aristocracy, a Miss Rolfe, and eventually became the well known author, H. R. Wavell.

  ‘Now we move on to the kitchens, always so popular, we find, since the television series Upstairs Downstairs.’

  The other favourite place for visitors, particularly the older ones, is Circe’s secret garden, always known as ‘the Duchess’s Garden’. It is a place of great tranquillity, at the centre of which is a memorial to Almeric. The garden is lovingly tended by a team of gardeners, a few of whom are directly descended from those who worked on the original design.

  In summer, if visitors choose to sit on one of the fine old oak benches, they can see up to the acres beyond the garden where the Duke and Duchess planted thousands of blood-red poppies. On a summer’s day when the flowers sway, their frail heads catching the sunlight, they seem to be saying, ‘Lest you forget’ – lest you forget!

  THE END

  If you enjoyed In Distant Fields, look out

  for Charlotte Bingham’s next novel,

  The White Marriage.

  Charlotte Bingham would like to invite you to visit

  her website at www.charlottebingham.com

  About the Author

  Charlotte Bingham comes from a literary family – her father sold a story to H. G. Wells when he was only seventeen – and Charlotte wrote her autobiography, CORONET AMONG THE WEEDS, at the age of nineteen. Since then, she has written comedy and drama series, films and plays for both England and America with her husband, the actor and playwright Terence Brady. Her published novels include the highly acclaimed bestsellers SUMMERTIME, THE SEASON, THE BLUE NOTE, THE LOVE KNOT, THE KISSING GARDEN, LOVE SONG, TO HEAR A NIGHTINGALE, THE BUSINESS, IN SUNSHINE OR IN SHADOW, STARDUST, NANNY, CHANGE OF HEART, DEBUTANTES, THE NIGHTINGALE SINGS, GRAND AFFAIR, THE CHESTNUT TREE, THE WIND OFF THE SEA, THE MOON AT MIDNIGHT, DAUGHTERS OF EDEN, THE HOUSE OF FLOWERS, THE MAGIC HOUR, FRIDAY’S GIRL, IN DISTANT FIELDS and THE WHITE MARRIAGE.

  Also by the Author

  CORONET AMONG THE WEEDS

  LUCINDA

  CORONET AMONG THE GRASS

  THE BUSINESS

  IN SUNSHINE OR IN SHADOW

  STARDUST

  NANNY

  CHANGE OF HEART

  GRAND AFFAIR

  LOVE SONG

  THE KISSING GARDEN

  THE BLUE NOTE

  SUMMERTIME

  DISTANT MUSIC

  THE MAGIC HOUR

  FRIDAY'S GIRL

  OUT OF THE BLUE

  IN DISTANT FIELDS

  THE WHITE MARRIAGE

  GOODNIGHT SWEETHEART

  THE ENCHANTED

  THE LAND OF SUMMER

  THE DAISY CLUB

  The Belgravia series

  BELGRAVIA

  COUNTRY LIFE

  AT HOME

  BY INVITATION

  The Nightingale series

  TO HEAR A NIGHTINGALE

  THE NIGHTINGALE SINGS

  The Debutantes series

  DEBUTANTES

  THE SEASON

  The Eden series

  DAUGHTERS OF EDEN

  THE HOUSE OF FLOWERS

  The Bexham trilogy

  THE CHESTNUT TREE

  THE WIND OFF THE SEA

  THE MOON AT MIDNIGHT

  Novels with Terence Brady

  VICTORIA

  VICTORIA AND COMPANY

  ROSE'S STORY

  YES HONESTLY

  Television Drama Series with Ter
ence Brady

  TAKE THREE GIRLS

  UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS

  THOMAS AND SARAH

  NANNY

  FOREVER GREEN

  Television Comedy Series with Terence Brady

  NO HONESTLY

  YES HONESTLY

  PIG IN THE MIDDLE

  OH MADELINE! (USA)

  FATHER MATTHEW'S DAUGHTER

  Television Plays with Terence Brady

  MAKING THE PLAY

  SUCH A SMALL WORLD

  ONE OF THE FAMILY

  Films with Terence Brady

  LOVE WITH A PERFECT STRANGER

  MAGIC MOMENT

  Stage Plays with Terence Brady

  I WISH I WISH

  THE SHELL SEEKERS

  (adaptation from the novel by Rosamunde Pilcher)

  BELOW STAIRS

  For more information on Charlotte Bingham and her books,

  see her website at www.charlottebingham.com

  TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS

  61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA

  www.transworldbooks.co.uk

  Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies

  whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

  First published in Great Britain in 2006 by Bantam Press

  a division of Transworld Publishers

  Bantam edition published 2007

  Copyright © Charlotte Bingham 2006

  Extracts from Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan are used with kind permission of the Royal Theatrical Fund.

  Charlotte Bingham has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.