Could I forget

by Denise Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

Laura has never liked young Dr. Marsh, though he cares deeply for her. When he first came to the Yorkshire moors, her father's medical practice suffered. After her father died, loyalty and pride stood between them like a wall. However, the rising tide of Philip Marsh's love begins to weaken her defences, until, one night, she surrenders her heart. Then her jealous sister schemes to steal Philip's heart away. Could Laura ever forget the betrayal that tears her world apart?

Release date: September 11, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 256

Sample

But thou would’st tarry or I would follow Could I forget or thou remember. …

SWINBURNE

Laura was walking across the moors with William Briggs. It had been raining. The waterproof wrapped around her slim figure was glistening wet, like the little green mackintosh bonnet tied under her chin. A cold north wind blew across the wide, open spaces and it was bitterly cold. But this walk with William on a Saturday afternoon was an “institution.”

William was a farmer with a fine old farmhouse and a good bit of land just outside Harristown. He always brought her up here on the moors in his old squeaky Ford which they left parked by the roadside while they talked. Then, as a rule, they drove down into Huddersfield to have a cup of tea.

Laura stood still a moment, hands dug deep in her pockets and let her brooding gaze travel beyond the wild wet moor, down into the valley from which the pale blue smoke curled up from the tall chimney stacks of the Industrial area. Five miles down there and up the hill again beyond Huddersfield lay Harristown, her home. For the last two months the little town had lain buried under a white pall of snow. The winter had been long and bitter. And bitterness lay deep in Laura’s heart for all was not well in her home.

But this was March and she could hear even as she stood there the feeble bleating of new-born lambs. The snow had melted. Nature was stirring to bedeck herself in the first ecstatic greenery of the spring.

Suddenly Laura’s eyes grew moist with tears—she knew not why, but she wanted to cry this afternoon though she did try to laugh at William’s jokes. Dear William! Always so bluff and hearty and brimming over with Yorkshire humour. Lacking in imagination too. He understood things—but not people.

Like their Saturday walk, however, he was an institution in her life; a friend with whom she and her sister Barbara had grown up. Their fathers had been friends; one the prosperous master of Starbridge Farm; the other, a much respected physician in Harristown.

But now old Reuben Briggs was dead and young William, exempt from war duties, carried on with the farm. But Dr. Cliffe … Laura would not allow herself to reflect any further. She could not bear to think about her father, for she knew that he were better dead, like old Reuben, than alive to suffer the humiliation and despair which was his portion at the moment, and her most bitter grief.

William Briggs pressed her arm against his and lifting a pipe pointed across the smoke-filled valley up to the sky. There was a break in the heavy clouds and a bar of living gold streaked the western sky.

“Sun’s coming out,” he said in his rich, comforting voice. “And it is going to be a fine evening. Finer weather ahead of us, Laura. War’s over, what’s more, and spring will bring better days …” He paused and gave a quick sigh, glancing sideways at the girl’s profile. She was so very beautiful with her chiselled features and pale fine skin and those large melting eyes, dark and lustrous under their sweep of lashes. William had loved her all his life and wanted nothing more than to take her out of her home to Starbridge Farm as his wife. But he had asked her as many times as he could remember and the answer was always “No.” He added: “I wish you were happier, Laura. I wish I could make you feel it was good to be alive.”

She echoed his sigh and tried to smile at him.

“Take no notice of me, William. I’ve enjoyed our walk but I’m soaked to the skin, my dear, and I think if you’ll excuse me I won’t stay for tea. I’ll go home and get changed.”

William’s bright blue eyes clouded and his round ruddy face looked disappointed. But he was not one to show much of his feelings and Laura’s word was law, always.

“Ay,” he nodded. “You look cold. I’ll drive you home.”

“Mind you,” said Laura as they turned and walked back to the car, “I do realise how lucky we are in Harristown with the war over, and the winter too. Europe is in chaos and we have plenty. One ought never to grumble and I do hope——” she stopped.

He looked at her with his blue wistful gaze.

“What, Laura lass?”

“That things will get better,” she said. “They must, Will. The whole world lives on hope now, and I refuse to despair.”

In silence they drove down the long winding hill into Huddersfield and then out on to the main road branching at the “Three Nuns” for Harristown.

William Briggs knew well the trouble that lay so heavily upon Laura Cliffe’s mind. He grieved for her and, like herself, had conceived a bitter hatred of the young man whom they both believed to be the cause of the trouble in the Cliffe household. Philip March from “Blakely House.” “Damn him,” thought William Briggs. “Damn him for the misery he has brought, particularly to Laura.”

That name “Philip March” was foremost in Laura’s mind at the moment. She was wondering also if she would find her father at home when she got there. But no, he would be out on his rounds. Poor pathetic Daddy struggling to keep up some pretence of being a doctor in Harristown, and more likely than not he would be doing nothing. But Dr. Philip March would be driving in his smart car from door to door attending all the patients in and outside the district … patients he had purloined from the older man.

They came to Harristown—its long straggling streets bounded on either side by squat, grey-stone Yorkshire houses. The last house in the main street was Laura’s home. Standing bravely against the elements, it was surrounded by a small, sadly neglected garden. William deposited Laura outside the iron gateway which was flanked by two sycamore trees.

As she said goodbye to him, Laura looked up at the sky and gave a sad little smile.

“Your sun’s gone in again, Will. More rain coming.”

Cap off, William smoothed back his thick fair hair and looked down at her half apologetically.

“Ay … maybe we are in for more rain.”

“If it goes on, there’ll be floods and the bridge will go. We’ll be isolated like we were last March during the thaws,” said Laura.

“Trust not, but, if you want me, phone up to the farm, love,” he said in his stolid way.

She waved goodbye to him as he drove away and then walked into the house and took off her dripping waterproof and cap.

It seemed a pity that she could not love William and go with him to Starbridge Farm. There would be peace there and plenty. There was neither here in the Cliffe household. And as for telephoning to the farm … she had been too proud to tell him that the telephone had been cut off yesterday because of the unpaid bill. She did not love William that way and she would not marry until she loved—really loved—a man.

Her sister Barbara came running down the stairs, followed by a black-and-white terrier, barking shrilly.

“Shut up, Judy!” Barbara admonished the dog. “Oh, Laura, I’m glad you’re home. Daddy isn’t in yet, and Emily is so cross because I hadn’t the money to give her for the Co-op. Can you let us have some? We’re right out of flour.”

Laura shrugged her shoulders.

“I dare say, but we’ll have to go easy on everything. We’re terribly hard up.”

Barbara Cliffe, small and as fair as her sister was dark, cast a rather sullen glance at Laura.

‘We’re always hard up. Everything’s beastly and dull. The war’s over, too, and everybody else seems to be looking forward to something nice except us.”

Laura’s dark eyes softened and she put an arm around the younger girl as they walked together into Dr. Cliffe’s study—the only room in which a small coal fire was burning.

Barbara looked so very pretty, she thought, and, as always, that thought was followed by another. What a shame that the poor child couldn’t have better clothes and a more amusing time. She was only twenty, two years younger than Laura, and she had never really had any fun. For the last three years she had worked in a war factory in Huddersfield, whilst Laura ran the house and looked after their father. It hadn’t been much fun for Laura either, but she never thought of herself. She hadn’t time.

Once in front of the fire she lit a much-needed cigarette, one of the few luxuries she allowed herself. She knew perfectly well that on that desk lay a pile of unpaid bills. Everything was leading towards disaster in this house. … If only life was as it used to be, even up to a year ago, when Daddy had been a prosperous physician in his small way and a much-loved member of the community in Harristown.

Still more did she wish things were as they had been in her mother’s lifetime. Over the fireplace hung a large portrait of the late Mrs. Cliffe taken in her fortieth year. Laura looked at it with bitter regret and yearning. Mummie had been so beautiful, and so good, and worked like a slave in this house to keep things going for her husband and children. And in those days before the war things had been bright and beautiful here, but three years ago a sudden attack of pneumonia had proved fatal to Mrs. Cliffe, and from that tragic day onwards Laura had to manage the house, look after Barbara (a problem because the girl was so high-spirited and pleasure-loving) and keep her overworked father from worry.

Laura had achieved her object until Philip March came to Harristown.

Barbara was, at this moment, mentioning that very name which Laura so abhorred—looking through her lashes at her sister.

“Laura, I met Betty Story this afternoon and she’s being taken to Blakely House on Saturday night to the Marches’ party. Why can’t we go? I do think it’s a shame that we have to miss the best show in Harristown just because—”

“Now, Barbara, for goodness’ sake don’t start that!” broke in Laura. Another painful flush stained her cheeks. She leaned down and poked the fire into a warmer blaze, then added: “You know perfectly well we can’t go to any party that Philip March gives.”

“Well, I think it’s silly and I’ve always thought so. It’s cutting off your nose to spite your face. I saw Philip this morning and he raised his hat to me. I think he’s frightfully handsome, and he’s got that lovely place and bags of money. We’ve been fools to be so unfriendly.”

   Laura’s heart started to beat a trifle rapidly.

“I think you’re very disloyal, Barbara.”

“If you mean I owe loyalty to Daddy, I agree that I did once, but I don’t now. What’s he doing for me—or for you?” argued the younger girl.

Laura bit her lip as she looked down into Barbara’s eyes—very beautiful, violent blue eyes in a defiant young face. Her heart sank. If Barbara was going to start this sort of thing and go over to the enemy’s camp, it would be too much. Really, she felt she could not bear much more.

During the years following her mother’s death Laura’s burden had been heavy but not unendurable. They had not felt the war so badly up here, perhaps, as many had done in the south. Old Emily, the Yorkshire woman who had been their cook in Mrs. Cliffe’s lifetime, refused to leave them and was here to do her best. Old and infirm though she was growing, she could still do a hard day’s work. Barbara had been directed to factory work which enabled her to get home every night, and they might have been happy, even without darling Mummie, but for the coming of Philip March to Harristown.

Handsome, Barbara called him. Yes, Laura admitted that. She often saw him pass in his smart coupé on the Huddersfield road. This morning he had raised his hat to her, but she had cut him dead just as she always did. He had replaced the hat and smiled. How dared he smile! He who had systematically and mercilessly ruined her father.

She looked back on the last twelve months. Up till a year ago, Blakely House, one of the biggest houses in the district had stood empty, following the death of old Lady Blakely. The cousin who inherited the place was in South Africa and had put the property up for sale. There had been surprise—and in the Cliffe household consternation—when they heard that a young doctor from the south, recently qualified, had, bought the place and had come here to set up his practice. Laura remembered expressing her indignation to Daddy on the first day she heard the news. It was a wild wet day in March—an even colder March than that one in which Laura had walked with William upon the moors above Huddersfield and thought of her wrecked home.

It was the year 1944. England was still at war. Barbara had just come back from the factory in an exhausted condition but with the resilience of youth, and her inborn love of gaiety, woke up the household by switching on the radio, trying out a new make-up which she had just bought and shortening an old silk dress so as to show a little more of those slim, pretty legs of hers.

Laura was waiting for Dr. Cliffe to come back from his rounds. He was always busy, too much so for her liking, although he himself cheerfully announced that a busy doctor was a happy one and that no calls or callers meant the end of a practice.

Laura had seen to it, as usual, that there was a bright fire burning in the sitting-room and old Emily had some scones baked for tea. In spite of the rationing the doctor’s little household managed to live comfortably with all the home baking, the bottling of fruit and the making of preserves in which both Laura and Emily excelled.

The sitting-room was bright and warm, defying the bitter north wind that curled around the little house. Laura sat with her toes to the fire glancing at the advertisements in the local newspaper.

She wanted a sewing-machine. She wanted one badly so as to help make new things for Barbara, more than for herself, and her machine had “conked out” just before Christmas. It didn’t seem possible to get it mended. Daddy had said he would buy a good second-hand one if she could find something suitable and not too exorbitant.

“Ah! There is one to be seen at Heckmondwyke. ‘Hardly used,’ Barbie. We must go and see it tomorrow,” she observed, and handed the paper to her sister.

Barbara yawned. She liked pretty clothes and she liked Laura to make them for her, but she had no particular interest in sewing-machines.

“You go and see it, darling,” she said vaguely, and then, “Here comes Daddy.”

The old Austin which Dr. Cliffe had been running for the last six years pulled up at the door.

Dr. Cliffe walked into the sitting-room, rubbing his hands.

“Well, girls—it’s a bitter wind,” he Said; “I’ll be glad of a cup of hot tea.”

“It’s ready, dear,” said Laura.

Robert Cliffe sank into the armchair which Laura had just vacated. She looked at him with fond and anxious gaze. She was always a little anxious that he was working too hard and ever conscious of her responsibilities where he was concerned, for she had promised her mother to take good care of him. Laura adored her father—everybody in Harristown loved him. The big genial man with his thick, iron-grey curling hair, kindly, rugged features, and hands that could be very gentle with the sick.

But something more than anxiety touched Laura now, for as Dr. Cliffe looked up at her she saw a new and disconcerting expression on the big bony face. An expression altogether foreign to Robert Cliffe, for it was one of deep distress. A look such as she had not seen in her father’s eyes since the day of Mrs. Cliffe’s funeral.

As Barbara went out to tell Emily that the doctor was home, Laura swiftly went to her father and put her slim hand on his shoulder.

“Daddy, something’s wrong,” she said.

He gave a faint smile and patted the gentle and so capable hand of the daughter who had been such a comfort to him in these recent years of bereavement and loneliness for which even much work could not always be a cure.

“That’s very discerning of you, child,” he said.

“I know you, Daddy. Is someone very ill? Is it something you can’t tell me about?”

He gave another short laugh.

“No. I’ve nothing on my mind about my work. It’s something you’ll soon hear, so I might as well tell you right away. I’m to have a rival in the district, Laura. What do you think of that?”

For a moment she did not understand.

“A rival?” she echoed. “What do you mean, Daddy?”

He leaned forward and spread his hands out to the blaze of the fire, frowning.

“Oh, perhaps ‘rival’ is a foolish word to use. I don’t suppose for a moment that the chap will interfere with my practice. But we have another doctor in Harristown, Laura love. And he’s setting up in a big way from all accounts.”

Laura was stunned. She stared at her father.

“But that’s impossible! There couldn’t be room for another doctor here. Anybody who’s ill comes to you.”

At this naïve remark Robert Cliffe gave a third halfhearted laugh and patted his daughter’s hand, but the look of distress remained in his eyes and the shaggy brows were still drawn together.

“That’s what I think and what we must hope for. But this is a London chap with money and big ideas, and I can’t say I altogether care for it.”

“But what right has a London man to come here to our little town and set up his plate?” demanded Laura indignantly.

“The right of money and what goes with it, I suppose,” said Robert Cliffe, with a bitterness Laura had seldom heard before from him.

Barbara came in with a plate of cakes and old Emily followed with the tea-tray. In ten minutes’ time the doctor’s out-patients would be coming for surgery. After that they would have a light supper, then be off to bed.

Laura, with heightened colour and a heart still beating fast with indignation, passed the startling news on to her sister.

“What do you think of it, Barbie? Isn’t it disgraceful?” she exclaimed.

But Barbie did not think it disgraceful and said so, and a look of new interest came into her pretty long-lashed eyes.

“Is he young? Is he a bachelor?” she asked.

“Why, Barbie!” reproved Laura; “as if that mattered.”

Barbara put her tongue in her cheek and looked at her father through those silken lashes.

“Well, there aren’t many young men in the district,” she muttered.

Dr. Cliffe either did not hear or did not heed what she said. He sipped the strong, scalding tea that Laura had poured out for him in brooding silence. But the two girls were anxious for more details and in time they extracted a few from their father.

The new doctor’s name was Philip March. He had been trained at St. Mark’s, London, and Thomas Lowood, a Bradford wool manufacturer living on the outskirts of Harristown, who for many years had been a patient of Dr. Cliffe’s, knew someone who knew this young fellow’s history and Lowood had passed it on to Dr. Cliffe that morning.

It appeared that Philip March was not yet thirty and had passed his Finals with Honours and had intended to practice in London. But soon after qualifying he had been laid up with an attack of infantile paralysis which had been checked at the start but kept him in bed for six months. It had been feared at the time that he might never walk again. His vital constitution and a certain amount of luck had, however, pulled him through. Later he had gone back to St. Mark’s to gain experience and had then been told that although he could start private practice he must go slow, and that it would be better for him to have country air until he had thrown off his weakness altogether. For as a result of his illness he was not over-strong and had been left with a slight limp.

Dr. Cliffe went on to tell his daughters that March had no parents but had inherited money, and that he had bought Blakely House and given orders to have it entirely redecorated and modernised.

“Just imagine!” put in Laura. “Old Lady Blakely would have been shocked to think that her house was to be occupied by a young man who was out to try and take away your patients, Daddy. You remember how she loved you.”

The doctor cleared his throat.

“He won’t take away any of my patients,” he said in a voice that belied the uneasiness in his eyes.

And then he told them more.

Lowood had it on the best authority that orders had been given to Ruskin and Bearing, a Leeds firm of contractors, to start work on those two big houses in Harristown (Laura and Barbara knew them) which had once been occupied by one of the ministries but had recently been derequisitioned. Apparently young March had influence as well as money and had got himself the licence to equip the houses and turn them into a Clinic. The latest equipment was being sent from London. The work had already started.

Barbara, listening eagerly, chimed in here:

“Why, yes, I saw a van outside moving things into those houses yesterday but I didn’t know what it was. And don’t you remember, Laura, we thought the Government was taking those houses over again because there were workmen inside?”

Laura nodded. A Clinic to be set up in Harristown. That was certainly a bombshell.

“I think it’s awful,” she said resentfully. “It’ll cause a lot of feeling in the town, and the only thing I can say is, that this Dr. March will soon find himself unpopular and that he’ll have to take himself and his money and his ideas back to London. You’re the only doctor wanted here, Daddy.”

Robert Cliffe stood up and brushed the crumbs from his coat. He smiled with a little more of his old real humour at his loyal and lovely Laura.

“Bless you! And quite right, too, child. I’m not really worried about the young upstart. I shall just ignore him.”

Barbara pouted.

“Won’t we be allowed to know him, Daddy?”

Laura did not wait for her father to answer but, with all her devotion to her hard-worked father burning in her breast, turned on her sister.

“We won’t have anything to do with him. He has no right to come and poach on Daddy’s preserves.”

That was the first conversation they had in the Cliffe family about Philip March.

But it was not long before the shadow of the young London man fell more strongly across the little household.

During the month that followed everybody in Harristown seemed to be talking about Dr. March.

Wherever Laura went she heard his name. Some of the oldest of her father’s patients regarded the newcomer with much the same resentment that the Cliffes had done. There was no room in Harristown for a second practitioner, they said. This fellow—quite a boy—“had a nerve” setting up here, establishing a clinic, obviously trying to seduce Dr. Cliffe’s patients away from him. But old Williamson, who ran Harristown’s one and only stores in which chemists’ goods were sold, and prescriptions could be made up, held the view that young March would soon make his way here and—much to Laura’s annoyance—hinted that the Clinic with its X-ray plant and massage department was sorely needed. But Laura argued that the big hospitals in Leeds and Huddersfield were enough and that everybody here had been well-satisfied w. . .