Mourning Doves Read online

  ‘Mr Barnett tells me that he recollects that it was let for years. I understand, however, from the agent, Mr Billings, whom I phoned today from Mr Barnett’s office, that there is no one living in it at present.’

  He heard Celia take a quick intake of breath, and he glanced over to her. Pale-blue eyes stared back at him from a dead-white face. She looked scared to death.

  He continued in a more cheerful tone of voice, addressing himself partly towards her. ‘After being let for so long, it will almost certainly require renovation – but that is soon arranged. You’ve probably seen it, Celia?’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ she muttered.

  He stopped, wishing heartily that he had not been left the unpleasant task of telling these stupid women what they must do; he felt too old and tired to be bothered with them. He went on heavily, ‘When Mr Barnett told me about it, I had thought of selling the cottage on your behalf, instead of this house. But it would not fetch much – I hope, however, that it won’t need too much to make it a very comfortable home for you – and you must have an income from somewhere to live on, which only funds from this big house can provide.’ He reminded himself that, after the funeral the following morning, he should make a quick trip out to Meols to check that the cottage was indeed habitable.

  Louise had temporarily forgotten the cottage; she had not seen it since Felicity had died ten years before. Though the day-to-day care of her property was done through Mr Billings, dear Timothy had always kept an eye on it for her, including that which had been settled on her by her father at the signing of her marriage contract. The thought made her weep ever more heavily into her black handkerchief.

  Now, as she looked at the cottage, she despaired. What would happen to her in this awful place? How could she bear it? And to add to her distress, her scandalous elder sister, Felicity, did not seem to have done much to keep the building up during her ownership of it. She remembered that, when the property had passed to her, Timothy had insisted on letting it, because, he said, it was too shabby for family use. Perhaps it was the tenants who had left it in such a mess.

  How devout churchman Timothy had condemned Felicity’s way of life. He would not hear of Louise having anything more to do with her. All because Felicity had dared to live in the cottage with handsome Colonel Featherstone, a scarred veteran of the Matabele and Boer Wars – without marrying him. As a result, Timothy had always insisted that she might have a bad influence on the children. He had even frowned when Louise bestirred herself enough to say defiantly that she must occasionally write to her only sister, no matter what she had done. And Timothy must have known very well that, if she married a second husband, Felicity would automatically lose the army pension left her by her first husband, dear Angus, killed at Rorke’s Drift during the Zulu Wars. But Timothy had always insisted that shortage of money was no excuse for Sin.

  Only her father had understood Felicity, she thought, as she sniffed into her handkerchief. Felicity had died childless, but, sometimes, when her own elder daughter, Edna, had grown up, she had seen in her some of Felicity’s sprightliness and brave defiance of convention.

  She would have been glad to have Edna with her now, but the girl was married and far away in Brazil.

  When, before setting out for the cottage, cold dread of a future without a father or brother or son to care for her had consumed her soul, Louise had at breakfast wept openly in front of fat, elderly Cousin Albert.

  Harassed Celia, at twenty-four far too old for marriage, had pressed a glass of sherry on her. Mother was so set in her ways, so difficult to deal with if her normal routine was upset, that Celia knew that if any action had to be taken, it would be she who must, somehow, take it.

  She felt despairingly that she had no idea of business matters; Papa had always kept such information in his own hands. In consequence, she had become numb with fear as Cousin Albert explained to her her late father’s financial circumstances.

  The loss of her father, however unloving, had reopened her grief over the loss of her brothers, Tom and George, during the war, and her stomach muscles were clenched as she did her best to keep calm.

  The more she considered her mother’s and her own circumstances, the more terrified of the future she became. With no male to protect them or earn a living for them, what would happen to them? And still worse, what would happen to her when her mother died? She had nothing of her own; she had been her mother’s obedient companion-help ever since she was fourteen. She was totally dependent upon her.

  She also felt a profound unease about Cousin Albert himself. Was he altogether trustworthy? She did not know him well, but he struck her as a manipulative man, a man with little idea of kindness or humanity – though her father must have had some faith in him to make him his executor.

  Immediately after the funeral was over, Albert had had a private discussion with Timothy’s solicitor and old friend, Mr Barnett of Barnett and Sons.

  Elderly Mr Barnett was himself trembling with fatigue and grief, because the AND SONS of his practice no longer existed; one had died while a prisoner of war and the other had succumbed to trench fever in the horrors of 1916. With difficulty, the old man had single-handedly kept the practice going for his sons while they were at war. Now, he knew he would never enjoy a peaceful retirement; to keep himself, his wife and three daughters, he must continue his practice until he dropped. It was no wonder that he found it hard to concentrate on what the pompous Mr Albert Gilmore was saying, and that he agreed to everything suggested in connection with Mrs Louise Gilmore’s affairs.

  After lunch, Albert took out his gold hunter watch and announced that he would go again to Timothy’s office to do some more work, would stay one more night and then, the next morning, catch an early train back to his Nottingham home. ‘Mr Barnett will have the will probated and will do a further check in case there are any, as yet, undiscovered assets,’ he told Celia.

  ‘My dear Louise,’ he continued paternalistically to the tear-soaked widow, ‘I shall be in constant touch with Mr Barnett – fortunately, I have a telephone – and, in a few days’ time, I’ll be in touch with you again by mail. In the meantime, you should go out to Meols – that is the nearest railway station – to look at your cottage there.’ He tucked his watch back into his waistcoat pocket. ‘Mr Barnett will oversee the paperwork regarding the house for you. An estate agent may come tomorrow to evaluate it.’

  He carefully did not mention to her that, since her present home and its contents already belonged to her, she had the right to refuse to sell it. Nor did he tell her that that afternoon he would pay a quick visit to the cottage to check that it looked repairable. She must face reality herself, he felt defensively.

  Albert did not want any argument about the sale either. He dreaded dealing with women – they were so volatile and so lacking in common sense, and physically they revolted him. Better by far to persuade Louise to sign a quick agreement with Mr Barnett that he should arrange paperwork of the sale.

  That evening, after Cousin Albert and Mr Barnett had dined with her, she had signed the agreement to sell without even reading it.

  It never occurred to her that she was signing away her own property, that she was free to make her own decisions. She was certain that men always knew best.

  Terrified, white-faced Celia’s instinct that something was wrong was, therefore, correct. Albert Gilmore’s intentions were, however, of the best. He was simply convinced that women were totally incapable of running their own lives, a belief certainly shared by his late cousin, Timothy. With money coming in every month from an annuity and with Celia to care for her, he could comfortably forget Louise.

  Now, buffeted by a brisk sea breeze, Celia and her mother stood in front of a dwelling which looked as shabby as a house could look without actually falling down.

  ‘Built in 1821,’ Celia said without hope. ‘See! There’s the date above the front door. No wonder it’s shabby – it will be a hundred years old next year.’

  A
wave of pure panic began to envelop the younger woman, as her mother sniffed into her handkerchief, and wailed, ‘What are we going to do, Celia? We can’t possibly live here. What is Albert thinking about, suggesting such a thing? Couldn’t we buy another house?’

  Her daughter shivered, and tried to muster some common sense. She replied, ‘Well, probably this is the cheapest roof we’ll ever find, Mama, even if we have to have it repaired. Mostly, I suspect that Cousin Albert wants us resettled quickly, because he doesn’t want us to live with him.’

  Her mother turned back towards her, and with a sigh, inquired, ‘What did you say, dear?’

  Celia had bent down to pick up two hairpins which had fallen out of her untidy ash-blonde bun. Her voice was muffled, as she replied, ‘I think he may wish us to begin a new life together without delay. He may fear that we expect him to invite us to live with him – he has a big house – I remember our going to visit him once, when I was little.’ She straightened up and pushed the pins into her handbag. ‘But he hasn’t offered us a home, Mother – and I don’t think he should have to. It is not as if he were your brother – then he’d have a duty towards us.’

  Her mother responded with unexpected acerbity. ‘Well, he is your father’s trustee until the estate is settled. He might at least have stayed long enough to help us, instead of leaving us in the hands of a solicitor – and an estate agent who has had the insensitivity to come in the day after the funeral, and run around our home – with a tape measure!’

  ‘The estate agent is concerned only with selling our house, Mother. He came to see it this morning only because Cousin Albert wants it sold quickly. He did apologise for intruding on us, remember. And the house is enormous, Mother, with seven bedrooms and three servants’ rooms. Too much for just two of us.’

  Her mother’s puffed eyelids made her eyes look like slits in her plump face, as she replied pitifully, ‘I don’t want to sell it, Celia. It’s our home. And, what’s more, I don’t like the agent – so officious and totally lacking in delicacy or compassion.’

  Celia wanted badly to cry herself, but she put her arm round her mother’s waist, and said gently, ‘Try not to grieve, Mama. This little house is yours, too, remember – you can do anything you like with it. We can probably make it very pretty.’

  Celia gestured towards the shabby front door facing them. ‘I suppose Cousin Albert imagines we can arrange for the renovations ourselves?’ She paused, as she tried to think clearly.

  Louise continued to cry. At Celia’s remarks, however, her petulant little mouth dropped open. She could do anything she liked with this miserable cottage? What rubbish! Men always looked after property.

  ‘How can I get it done up? I have no idea how to proceed, and where would we get the money to do it?’ she wailed.

  Celia had to admit that she did not know either. She responded firmly, however, by saying, ‘Perhaps we can find someone in the village, a builder, who could at least advise us about what it would cost.’

  Then another frightening thought struck her, and she asked, ‘Did Cousin Albert say what we were to do about money until the house is sold? We would have to pay workmen, wouldn’t we?’

  Albert had not mentioned immediate financial needs, except to say that he had himself advanced the money for dear Timothy’s funeral.

  Her mother closed her eyes. She had no idea what, if any, money she had to draw on for the time being. It was all too much. She was trembling with fatigue and bewilderment at the sudden upheaval in her life. She wished heartily that she could follow Timothy – and simply die.

  It really was most inconvenient that Timothy should have a heart attack before he had even reached his fiftieth birthday – and die in his office. What a fuss that had caused!

  As if she could bear anything more, when they had already lost both their sons, George – her baby – in the dreadful sinking of the Hampshire in 1916. Drowned with Lord Kitchener, she had been told; as if that made it any the less painful to her. And big, strong Tom, her eldest and the pride of her soul, killed on the Somme.

  Her terrible frustration at their youthful deaths still haunted her. There was nothing she could do to express her love of them. She could not give them beautiful funerals to mark the family’s grief at their passing. They had left no wives or children to be comforted. They did not even have graves which she could tend in memory of them. All she could do was weep for them.

  And her own two brothers, who could have been so much help to her in the present crisis? Both long dead, Peter from yellow fever while serving as an administrator on the Gold Coast, and Donald, a major in the 43rd, killed in a skirmish in the Khyber Pass just before the war broke out. The Empire had cost an awful lot of men, she thought, with sudden resentment against governments as well as against poor Timothy.

  Celia patiently repeated her question about money, and her mother mopped her eyes and responded mechanically, ‘I suppose he thinks I’ll find it out of my own small income – my dot. There may be a little money in the bank which is mine, and I still have most of my March housekeeping.’

  ‘Do you have any idea how much is in your banking account?’ Celia knew that her grandfather had settled on her mother a dowry – a dot, as such a settlement was popularly called – of rental housing in Birkenhead. It was doubtful whether the income from their small rents would be enough to tide them over, never mind pay for extensive repairs to this dismal house.

  ‘I don’t know how much. I will have to ask the bank manager – and Mr Billings.’

  ‘The agent who collected the rent for this cottage and manages your Birkenhead property?’

  ‘Yes, dear. Cousin Albert says I am lucky that, when I married, your grandfather made quite sure that that property always remained mine.’

  At the mention of Mr Billings, some of Celia’s fear receded. Mr Billings would surely know how to deal with house repairs. He might know how they could obtain credit so that they did not have to pay immediately.

  As she searched in her leather handbag for the key to the house, handed to her by Cousin Albert, who had found it, neatly labelled, in Timothy’s key cupboard in his office, she said with false cheerfulness to her mother, ‘Let’s go inside. It may not be so dreadful as we think. Then, instead of going directly back home to Liverpool, we could pause long enough in Birkenhead to see Mr Billings; he’ll know something about house repairs, I’m sure. We can take a later train back to Liverpool.’

  ‘Well, I suppose,’ Louise whispered wearily, ‘since we are here, we might as well look at the inside.’

  As Celia slowly turned the big iron key in the rusty lock, Louise paused to look round what had been the front garden, and sighed deeply at the sight of the foot-high weeds. She sobbed again into her large, black mourning handkerchief, one of the same set of handkerchiefs she had used when crying for her lost boys.

  Celia’s hand was trembling as she put the big key back into her handbag, before pushing hard on the stiff door to open it. What will become of us? she fretted. What shall we do?

  Nineteen twenty was supposed to be a year when, two years after the war, things would settle down and life return to normal. Mourning was supposed to be over, your black dresses put away. But you can’t bury grief as quickly as you can bury men, she thought bitterly.

  At best, life was proving to be totally different from that of 1914, when during a gloriously hot August, Europe was plunged into war, and life’s main preoccupation became the casualty lists.

  Added to the death of her sons, her poor mother now had this burden of comparatively early widowhood, a penurious one, and the loss of her superbly furnished home.

  As she pushed hard at the reluctant door, she thought for a moment of herself, and she saw no hope of a decent future anywhere.

  Chapter Two

  As the door swung open to reveal a tiny vestibule, decayed autumn leaves rustled across a dusty tiled floor. Facing them was an inner door, its upper panels consisting of a stained-glass window with an elaborate
pattern of morning glory flowers.

  In an effort to cheer her mother up a little, Celia exclaimed, ‘Wouldn’t that be pretty if it were cleaned?’

  ‘Mother loved it,’ Louise said abruptly. Because her nose was so swollen from weeping, she sounded as if she had a heavy cold.

  Using the same key, Celia unlocked the pretty door and hesitantly opened it. She had never been in the cottage before, and did not know exactly what to expect.

  A very narrow, gloomy hall was revealed. It was poorly lit by a window at the top of a steep staircase to her right. To the left of her, two doors led off the hall. At the back was a third door. The lower half of all the walls was painted brown; the upper half looked as if it had once been cream. It was, however, very dirty; every corner was hung with cobwebs, and dust clung to them. Dust lay thickly on the wooden banister of the stairs, on the bare wooden treads, and on the ridges of the door panels. Under their feet fine sand, blown in from the dunes at the back of the house, crunched faintly on reddish tiles.

  Celia quickly flung open the two doors and they glanced in at tiny rooms which looked equally dirty and depressing, their fireplaces choked with ashes, the bare wooden floors grimy and littered with bits of yellowed newspaper. The light from the windows, filtering through gaps in the boards hammered over their exterior, did little to lift the general air of dinginess.

  Determined to be brave, Celia said to her mother, again steeped in melancholy, ‘They’ve both got fireplaces – and quite big windows.’

  Louise did not reply. She was past caring.

  She did, however, follow Celia, as the younger woman approached the door at the end of the hallway, which she presumed correctly would lead into some sort of a kitchen.