A Fall from Grace, Maggie Ford [best english novels to read txt] 📗

to interfere with her grief, with her intense anger against her father.

Eleven

It was taking forever to pull herself together after hearing about her mother in that way and, despite the solicitor having worded the letter as discreetly and as gently as possible in a bid to cushion the shock, her anger grew each time she thought about it.

‘I know how you must feel, my dear,’ James said as kindly as he could, aware of her continuing distress. ‘It was a dreadful business, I know, but you must try to surmount it or you will make yourself ill.’

‘How can you know what I feel?’ she shot at him.

‘I lost my wife,’ he said simply.

She knew instantly exactly what he meant but wasn’t prepared to give way. ‘How can you compare the two?’ she replied with venom. ‘No one kept the news from you until it was too late to go to her funeral. You’ve no idea how that feels. You’ll never know! Nor will anyone who’s not had it happen to them.’

Rushing from the room she failed to notice the expression of pain those thoughtless words brought.

Her anger and resentment growing rather than diminishing, she knew she could never rest until she faced her father. The following Saturday she told James that she had been invited to spend the day with Margaret Dowling, one of the many friends she’d made from social gatherings she’d begun to arrange since their marriage.

Despite James’s preference for discretion, with the war still raging, hardly any ground being lost or gained, lives of thousands of young men still being sacrificed seemingly for nothing, she continued to look for any excuse for a party to liven a life growing ever more dull with the passing of time.

Slowly she was becoming more and more known for them, thus developing a widening circle of friends these past couple of years. Without them life would have become deadly dull for she’d soon discovered that James was no party-giver, much more preferring his privacy. He’d forever be seeking the first chance to leave a social gathering the second it became the least bit noisy, disappearing usually to talk business somewhere else with a few of those who shared his own business interests.

With Margaret’s husband, Colonel Dowling, being away in France helping conduct the war from the safe distance of some administrative desk or other, she missed his presence and like Madeleine looked forward to any diversion that might make the void seem more bearable.

She lived well west of London so the pretence of visiting her would give Madeleine ample time to travel on to Buckinghamshire and back home without there being any suspicion of her having gone to seek out her father.

Wisdom kept telling her that she was being foolish but she strove to ignore it as she sat on the train from Marylebone watching West London’s skyline change slowly to urban sprawl then to green countryside with small villages trundling by, wartime seeming to give trains every excuse to go slow.

A first-class carriage did afford privacy from the noise and turmoil of second-and third-class ones, but the relative peace only helped to accentuate her thoughts on the possible stupidity of her resolve.

Watching the rain driving across the carriage windows at least helped sweep away that thought but brought instead thoughts of what she’d read in the newspapers of present fearful conditions in Flanders. Reports of men being bogged down in a sea of Flanders mud caused by ceaseless rain and remorseless bombardment around Passchendaele, men being sucked down by the quagmire to their deaths should they slip off the duckboards.

The mounting daily toll of men missing suddenly made her think of James’s nephew, Anthony. He too was somewhere in Belgium. She would find herself constantly praying that he still remained safe, though had he been killed or wounded the news would have reached her and James instantly, she was sure.

As his only nephew, he was his favourite relation. In fact on marrying her James had altered his will previously leaving most of his estate to him. It was now only a quarter of that, the rest, James had told her confidentially so as to reassure her, going to herself which amounted to more than she would ever need or want.

‘The boy already has enough and more,’ he’d told her, ‘left to him by his father, my eldest brother Wilfred, Will, when he passed away. So he is already a wealthy young man in his own right and would want for nothing,’ adding in fond and glowing terms, ‘nor is he at all selfish to begrudge you the major portion of my estate. He is a most likeable young man, I am proud to say. And when this dreadful war is finally over, I sincerely hope to see much more of him. You know, my dear, I do so miss his cheery voice in this house.’

She too found herself hoping to see more of him, suddenly aware of a strange twinge of excitement in her stomach that for a moment managed to smother her feelings of bitterness towards her father.

She should never have come. Alighting from the taxicab that had brought her here from the railway station in Beaconsfield, her first sight of the house she’d once lived in struck her as remote, different to what she remembered, like the momentarily unexpected impression one gets of even a familiar place when returning from long holidaying in distant parts.

Saturday morning, her father would be home. A man of strict habits, he seldom had any engagement on a Saturday until perhaps the afternoon.

In spite of the steady rain, she had the taxi stop well before reaching the house lest in glancing from the sitting-room window he’d see her and bar her way, though he probably wouldn’t recognize her all that quickly under the large black umbrella she held well down over her head.

She intended to be inside the house before he knew it, rather than standing on the doorstep in full