Annelise had to laugh. She could easily imagine Edmund being a wonderful grandfather; he had always been such a good father to her, and a great uncle to Pip and Em. What she couldn’t imagine so clearly was balancing her Oxford life with that of being a mother. Even a part-time mother. ‘You make it seem so perfectly respectable and normal what Edmund has proposed, but what if they find out at St Gertrude’s that I have a child?’
‘Who will tell them? And if anyone does, you simply say a widowed friend of yours who was terminally ill asked you to be her child’s guardian. And don’t forget we have a history of doing that in our family, first me with you, and then Romily with Isabella.’
‘But is it right to live with a lie of that magnitude?’
‘Oh, Annelise, we live with lies all the time. But if I know you, you’ll know when the time is right to be honest.’ Hope suddenly shivered and once more tugged at the blanket.
‘I’ll put some more logs on the fire, shall I? By the way, Stanley’s offered to come and chop some trees down if we run low on logs. He said it was the least he could do after Edmund let him stay here while he waited for a plumber to mend the burst pipes at his cottage.’
Hope sipped her coffee thoughtfully, then took a bite of shortbread. ‘Stanley hasn’t seemed his usual self recently. Would you agree?’
The fire nicely built up, Annelise sat down again. ‘I would. Romily told me that he’s thinking of leaving the village.’
‘Really? Where is he planning to go, back to London? I didn’t think he much cared for it.’
‘All Romily said was that it might surprise everybody.’
Hope frowned. ‘And he hasn’t told you what he’s planning? I thought he told you everything.’
Not anymore, thought Annelise sadly. She stared out of the window at the sculptured beauty of the garden in the slanting sunlight. With everything buried beneath a deep covering of snow, she thought how Stanley kept so much of himself hidden out of sight. But then, who didn’t?
Chapter Eighty-Six
Chelstead Preparatory School for Girls, Chelstead
January 1963
Evelyn
The atmosphere at school was feverish with the dizzy-headed girls struggling to concentrate on their lessons. Evelyn could hardly blame them. All they wanted to do was be outside on the playing fields hurling snow at each other.
There had been no question in Evelyn’s mind that she wouldn’t open the school for the start of term; as far as she was concerned she had an obligation to teach her pupils and that was that. Thank goodness the members of her staff were similarly minded and either braved the treacherous roads in their cars as Evelyn did, or trudged through the snow with the kind of gritty determination they had probably shown during the war. Joyce Gatley, the games mistress, had taken to cross-country skis to make the journey every day, and a large number of the girls used sledges to take advantage of any downhill slopes. Morning assembly had been shortened to no more than a few minutes during which Evelyn tried to calm the girls and instil a sense of order to the start of the day.
First break was now over and a crowd of girls, flush-faced and as giddy as a herd of goats, was in the long corridor divesting themselves of their outer wear and shrieking their heads off.
‘A little more decorum, ladies,’ Evelyn said as she passed through the mêlée. An instant hush fell on the high-spirited girls, but was soon followed by stifled giggles when she pushed open the door to her office.
Seated at her desk, and after dealing with a number of telephone calls, she reached for her handbag. Opening it, she pulled out a letter which had arrived in the post yesterday while she was at work, and while Kit was over at Fairview seeing Hope. With the flying school closed until further notice, he spent most afternoons keeping his sister company. There had been something vaguely familiar about the handwriting on the envelope, and taking it through to the kitchen, she had been about to open it when she realised why the writing was familiar. At the same time, she’d heard Kit’s key in the lock of the front door. Hurriedly she had stuffed the unopened letter into her handbag to read when there was no danger of Kit asking who it was from.
That moment was now.
Dear Evelyn,
I know your first reaction, when you realise this letter is from me, will be to chuck it away without reading it. But please don’t. I urge you to take a deep breath and read what I have to tell you.
But before I do, I want to stress how disappointed I was at Christmas that we didn’t have the opportunity to talk in private; had we been able to, I might have succeeded in allaying the worst of your fears. Hopefully I can do so now.
I want you to know that I understand completely why you and Romily would sooner Isabella had brought Jack the Ripper home for Christmas! Perhaps that is an exaggeration on my part, but it makes the point I am trying to impress upon you, which is, I don’t underestimate your distrust of me. But, and this I swear is the absolute truth, my feelings for Isabella are wholly genuine. No woman has ever turned my world upside down in the way she has. I’m well aware that you will have tutted or rolled your eyes as you read that, but I assure you, it’s true.
I love Isabella and count myself the most fortunate of men that she loves me in return, which is why I have been totally honest with her. I didn’t want Isabella to be confronted at a later date with anything that might hurt her. That was why I told her about the two of us at Bletchley. I have also taken the step of sharing with Isabella something I ordinarily withhold. I’m sure it won’t surprise you that when I left Bletchley, and with the threat of the Cold War knocking on the door, I was recruited by MI5. It’s very tame what I do, mostly vetting procedures for the Security Services. I’ve often thought that you would have been a perfect fit for the organisation.
And now I come to the crucial part of this letter which I hope will put your mind at rest, if indeed you ever had any doubts. But I raise the matter because of what you told me the night of your party. In early December, just after the smog began to clear, I visited my doctor for a specific test to be carried out. You may think it was an odd thing for me to do, but it was a measure of the way I felt about Isabella – I badly wanted (and always will want) the best for her, which in all seriousness isn’t hitching herself to a man twenty-six years her senior! But thank God the heart is a fickle entity and for reasons beyond my comprehension, Isabella regards me as a worthwhile risk.
To my very great regret, the upshot of the test I requested from my doctor dealt me a personal blow – I am, it turns out, incapable of fathering a child. On Christmas Eve, on our way to Suffolk on the train, I shared this disappointment with Isabella, feeling it only right that she be in full possession of the facts before our relationship went any further. As painful as it would be to let her go, I knew it would be the right thing to do if she wanted to be with a man who could provide her with children one day.