Fast Flows The Stream

by Connie Monk

Genres: Sagas

Synopsis

In the halcyon days of the 1930s Sebastian Kilbride, a screen idol, and Nick Kennedy, his accountant and financial adviser are close friends, enjoying an almost idyllic lifestyle. The lives of their wives and families are intertwined. Tessa Kilbride, in contrast to her glamorous husband, is scatterbrained, warm-hearted and a homebody; Sally, Nick's efficient, well-groomed wife, is conversely a woman frustrated by domesticity. But, despite their differences, the two women have formed a strong bond. As have their teenage children, Jethro Kennedy and Zena Kilbride, who just lately have seen their childhood friendship tentatively blossom into something deeper. But the threat of war on the horizon will mean changes for them all...

Release date: January 14, 2016

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 304

Sample

‘Oh come on, smile, boys, smile.’ There was a lilt of laughter in Tessa Kilbride’s teasing voice as she switched off the wireless. ‘Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you, that’s the rule to live by. It’ll all blow over. Look at all the fuss there was about Austria, then it turned out that the bulk of the people wanted Friend Hitler there. Aren’t I right, Sally?’ She turned for support to the other woman of the foursome.

‘About not troubling trouble, yes, I’m sure you are. But as for the rest …’ Not so easily could Sally Kennedy put the seething pot of Europe out of her mind. She’d lived on the Continent too many years.

Her more serious answer was heard but not listened to. On such a morning it was all too tempting to be persuaded by Tessa’s childlike trust, her warm smile and eagerness for the day ahead.

This was the first time Sally and Nick Kennedy had joined the Kilbrides on holiday. Until this year she’d always made the arrangements following the same pattern, tugged by the need to sense for herself changes she dreaded finding in the atmosphere yet felt drawn to out of loyalty to her past. Taking the car, they would cross by ferry to the Continent then spend four weeks touring, visiting towns full of memories, trying to instil into their young son some of her own feeling of belonging. Had the choice been hers alone, that’s what she would have done this year too, despite the unrest. Originally Nick had been prepared to follow her lead, although, since the Kilbrides had bought The Limit, his resistance had strengthened. It was his final ‘I don’t work forty-eight weeks a year to spend the remaining four driving from one city of culture to another. I thought you enjoyed being with Tess and Sebastian. Anyway, it’s time we thought of Jethro. He deserves fun on his holiday.’ Agreeing to the change of plan, Sally had hidden her hurt that through the years, while she’d believed the holiday had meant as much to him as it had to her, his resentment must have been building. A fair-minded streak in her helped her to fall into the new plan with a good grace. Yet deep in her heart was regret for that trip through France and Luxembourg, to Germany, where she would have gauged the atmosphere of Berlin in that summer of 1939, spent time with her father and seen for herself whether the news bulletins that sent a chill down her spine were an exaggeration of the truth. She wanted to experience for herself – and yet she was afraid of the truth her inner self knew she would find. Places she had known all her life – but where were they heading now? Austria … Czechoslovakia … How much did Hitler’s fragile promise mean? Was Europe hurtling on a downhill slope towards disaster? What were the feelings of the people, how great were the fears of those whose race or faith didn’t fit Hitler’s dream for his country? Travelling with her father, Eliot Burridge, an international concert pianist, so much of her early life had been spent abroad. Many of their friends were Jewish; some had already been driven out of Germany by the atmosphere of mistrust and hatred, looking for a future either in Britain or on the far side of the Atlantic. But perhaps they were ultra-sensitive, perhaps the dangers were enlarged by the newspaper and the wireless, reporters vying with each other to gain attention.

Even now her expression gave no hint of her thoughts as the conversation went on around her.

‘You’re right,’ Nick Kennedy said to Tessa, standing up from the breakfast table and stacking the plates, something he would never have done at home. ‘We’re on holiday, the sun’s shining; and just look at it, the sky goes on for ever. To sit here listening to that mournful Johnny and his gloom is nothing short of a sin. Just say thank God we’re English. Now then, this morning? What’s it to be? Beach? Sailing? Fishing? Out to lunch? I say, Sal, this is a hell of a lot better than the culture search we anticipated in Europe.’

She didn’t argue. How could she expect him to feel as she did? By chance her glance met Sebastian Kilbride’s, Sebastian with his intuitive perception. Perhaps it was that understanding that made him the actor he was. Four people all so different, yet from the onset they had slotted into place like pieces of a well-cut jigsaw. The same could be said for their children, Jethro Kennedy and, eighteen months younger, Zena Kilbride. At sixteen, Jethro was a well-built lad with all the promise that before long, when the awkwardness of adolescence was behind him, he would be as handsome as his father. In years Zena was his junior but she saw herself as his equal. On that July morning they’d already packed their sandwiches and a bottle of cider, and planned to cycle the eight coastal miles to their favourite isolated bay. Sheltered by a craggy and not very high cliff more than a mile from the nearest road, the shore was reached by an overgrown footpath they’d explored a few days previously. Coming to the cliff top, they’d left their bicycles and clambered down to their solitary paradise. On this day they calculated that the tide would be right out by the time they arrived, they planned to collect driftwood and make a fire on the sand. The frying pan they’d taken from the cupboard and the sausages they intended to buy on the way were an unnecessary addition to the mammoth pile of sandwiches Tessa had made for them.

‘The boat, that’s my idea for today.’ Surely there was a purr of contentment in Nick’s voice as he gazed out of the window at the waves breaking on the shore.

Were Sebastian’s thoughts on the day ahead or on what had gone before? ‘Can’t believe our luck, you know.’ He spoke more to himself than to the others.

‘Ours may be luck,’ Sally laughed, taking the cloth to dry the dishes, ‘But yours, dear Seb, is no more than your just desserts.’ And of course she was right. They’d not known Sebastian Kilbride in the days before Fate had taken a hand in his career, Fate in the form of Alexander Morraine the film producer. Had Alexander been less kindly disposed towards his sister who, like Sebastian, had been a member of the touring and third-rate repertory company playing near his home in Surrey, he certainly wouldn’t have spent his Saturday evening in the small and none too comfortable theatre. That evening had changed the course of Sebastian’s life and Tessa’s too. For until then she had moved with him from town to town as the players were booked for a few weeks in one town, then a few in another. By nature Tessa was a home maker, but never once had she grumbled about their nomadic boarding-house existence. She had earned a few extra shillings altering costumes and, out of school hours, kept an eye on Zena. Always there had been the worry that the child hadn’t the continuity of a base as she moved from school to school with no chance to make friends and no home to bring them to. In fact their young daughter had never shared their concern, for right from the start the smell of greasepaint, the excitement of applause, the nervous tension as the actors waited for their cues, these things were making their indelible mark. Even so, Zena abhorred ignorance, just as nothing would have shamed her more than being found wanting in some social grace; so, when Sebastian’s fortunes were suddenly changed, she accepted the expensive boarding school, determined to excel in everything she did and then to go on to drama college. In her dreams she saw herself, adult, glamorous, as beguiling as anything out of Hollywood, a name to be reckoned with in the legitimate theatre.

In appearance there was little of the matinée idol in Sebastian Kilbride. Anyone seeing the two men together as they made their plans for the day would surely have cast them in opposing roles. Nick wore his casual holidaywear with grace, his physique and his almost perfect good looks set him apart; Sebastian dressed, as he had every morning of their stay, in much-loved and much-worn khaki shorts, an open-necked shirt and pumps. His face hadn’t the perfect symmetry of Nick’s and yet there was something about him that arrested the attention, a sensitivity that belied the rugged set of his chin, a penetrating gaze, a manliness in some way enhanced by a gentleness of spirit. This, and his very real talent, Alexander Morraine had recognised.

Until with his first film Sebastian made his mark, the Kilbrides hadn’t known what it was to have two ha’pennies to rub together. With sudden riches, his feet had stayed still firmly planted on the ground; he wouldn’t let himself forget that nothing is more fickle than the public. This year’s hero could be next year’s yesterday’s man. That’s why he had sought the help of a firm of accountants and his affairs had been put in the hands of Nick Kennedy. Four years had passed since then; his place in the ranks of the famous was firmly established. Living in Worcestershire, he’d been able to fulfil his lifelong ambition to fly and had joined a flying club in neighbouring Gloucestershire. Nick had a talent very different. Inspired by precision and accuracy, he produced miniature paintings of near perfection. Yet from the onset the two men had been at ease with each other. Never before had Nick made a personal friend of a client, but between Sebastian and him it seemed inevitable, something that had soon stretched to include wives and children.

Watching the two of them standing at the window, the moment was one that would stay with Sally. There wasn’t a cloud to be seen in the azure sky, not so much as a white fluffy one. This was today, nothing could take this away from them. She was determined to follow Tessa’s advice: never trouble trouble.

‘We need bait,’ Sebastian said. ‘OK, we’ll sail. But we’ll catch our supper at the same time. You girls can man the rods if we need extra hands. Not good for you to be too idle. You know what? Four weeks hence at this time Tess and I will have left all this behind us. We’re due to sail just about now.’

‘And I shall be back in a musty, dusty office, dealing with the largesse of the likes of you, seeing how I can legitimately make the rich richer.’

‘Come on then, old chap, let’s make the most of today. You girls pack some food, Nick and I will drive to the tackle shop and pick up the bait.’

Sally envied all of them, even Nick with his dusty, musty office. Sebastian was to travel on the Queen Mary to New York, Tessa was going with him and would be sharing all the excitement as they went on by air all the way across the United States to Hollywood. Of the four it was only she who would be left behind, nothing but part of the background of home for Nick to come back to each evening. Watching Tessa vigorously clean the washing-up bowl and rub a cloth around the taps she marvelled how anyone could remain so untouched by the glamour all round her. What other film idol’s wife could be so unchanged? She knew Tessa was almost exactly her own age, her thirty-eighth birthday behind her, yet there was about her a quality unrelated to years. Her face, void of make-up, still had the innocence of youth, the peppering of freckles all the more pronounced by the recent sunshine; her short fairish hair sprang into natural curls; she had the figure of a young lad and endless energy to match it. By contrast, nothing ever seemed to ruffle Sally’s immaculate grooming; from the top of her dark pageboy bob to the tips of her elegantly painted toenails she might have stepped from the pages of a glossy magazine. Neither was there anything in her demeanour to hint at the discontent that niggled her.

‘We’re going to miss you and Seb,’ she said, as she put the pile of clean plates away.

‘And us you. Don’t bother putting those in the cupboard, Sal, we’ll only have to get them out again for supper.’ Muddle never worried Tessa. Left to her own devices, with no Gladys and Jessie at home to clean and polish, she still would have managed to convey a feeling of warmth and homeliness in her chaotic surroundings; unlike Sally, who disliked and resented domesticity, yet couldn’t bear disorder. ‘Oh well, be tidy if you must. Now, for food. What shall we throw in the sandwiches?’

That July day, almost the end of their first week, the four of them sailed, or more accurately Sebastian was skipper, Nick was crew and the girls soaked up the sun and occasionally manned the fishing rods. The sound of the wind whipping the sails lifted them from the rumbles of unrest that threatened. Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you; and how tempting it was to be lulled into a sense of endless security. So the day progressed, a day much like those that followed.

Not every day was filled with sunshine, even if in retrospect those would be the ones best remembered. There were mornings of mist, evenings of storm when the six of them sat around the kitchen (and only) table playing Monopoly, drawn together in their awareness of isolation from the rest of the world as the rain beat against the window. For the first time in her life Sally found herself donning waterproofs instead of her usual showerproof and umbrella – even wellington boots and sou’wester were an essential for the weather that blew in from the west – and striding happily along the coastal path for a pub lunch nearly two miles away.

Sebastian had bought the isolated cottage, tumbledown, lacking in all amenities except mains water, and had had it restored, brought up to date with the addition of a septic tank and bottled gas. They had decided to call it The Limit, perhaps because of its state when first they saw it or perhaps because of its position where land gave way to foreshore. One thing was certain, it was beyond the limit of the sort of civilisation that made up their normal lives.

The month went so quickly. It seemed that the children had reached an ideal age: old enough to find their own amusement, to go where they pleased unescorted and unworried. On holiday their normal half-past nine bedtime was extended; there were some evenings when the two of them were allowed to make a fire on the beach and cook their own supper. But it was ‘their own’, it didn’t encroach on the other four. The idea of driving the five miles to the nearest habitation, finding somewhere to all eat together, didn’t occur to any of them any more than it did for the adults to go out leaving their offspring alone after dark. There was a special magic about those evenings at The Limit. Supper cooked by Tessa and Sally – in truth credit was more often due to Tessa – a couple of bottles of wine on the table, the friendly haze of smoke from their cigarettes. It was at the end of their first week when, after Jethro and Zena’s extended bedtime had seen them depart up the narrow creaking staircase, the others pushed the furniture back to make a space, wound up the gramophone and danced.

To be able to take a girl around a dance floor was looked on as part of a boy’s training; in fact, once a week Jethro, like the rest of his year at school, had regular instruction. To put what he learned into practice beyond steering another boy (or alternatively playing ‘the girl’ and being steered) around the gym, was a new experience, but an opportunity he didn’t mean to miss. For him and Zena it added to the pleasure to know they were believed to be in bed as, pyjama-clad, they waltzed or foxtrotted around his bedroom, along the landing and around hers. Neither knew what was going on in the other’s mind, but both were excited by what was going on in their own. Familiar with his own adolescent dreams, Jethro longed for the thrill of holding her against him, being able to feel the warm softness of her body. Yet he was frightened that she might notice what was happening to him, notice and not understand – or almost worse, suppose she noticed and did understand – how could he explain it to her? His fears were groundless. Younger she may have been, but there was little of the child in Zena, or so she liked to think. Purposely tempting, she held herself close to him, relishing the discovery of her power to excite him. While he tried to concentrate on putting his feet in the right place in time to the distant music, her natural sense of rhythm allowed her mind to roam free. We’re not just children. That’s what they suppose downstairs, they think we’re kids who want to play. ‘When the children are in bed …’ that’s what they believe. Wonder what he’s thinking. No, I don’t wonder, I’m pretty sure he’s thinking just the same as I am. She raised her face to his; instinct was her guide as she gently moistened her parted lips with the tip of her pretty tongue. Poor old Jethro, he’d love to kiss me, I know he would.

‘They’re stopping,’ he whispered, a surge of something like relief flooding over him. ‘Hop off to bed. We did pretty well, didn’t we?’

She nodded with no trace of the road her thoughts had taken. ‘Soon be like Fred and Ginger,’ she whispered back with a near silent chuckle. ‘Maybe they’ll dance again tomorrow. Night, night. If it’s fine, let’s see if we can get all the way to Land’s End tomorrow.’

At that moment he would have gone to earth’s end for her. Two minutes later they were both safely in their beds. She lay on her back in the summer darkness, her mouth curved into a smile of satisfaction, her hands exploring the contours of her fast developing body with satisfaction. Tonight had been her first insight into the power she had. Dear funny Jethro, he really had got himself in a state and then imagined she didn’t know. I wonder if this is what it’s like to fall in love. Tomorrow I won’t mention how I know it was for us, I’ll act just the same as usual. Otherwise he’ll be frightened away. Boys are so silly, why can’t they just enjoy it all? Bet he’s not asleep, I bet he’s remembering what it was like to feel me against him, bet he’s still thinking of me. In that she was right. If that evening had been a step forward for her, so it had for him. Until that night, whether waking or sleeping, his dreams had been a journey of exploration, glorying in the discovery of his own sexuality; now it subtly changed, the quest was the same but his imagination was based now on a new reality.

All too quickly the weeks passed; good or bad, time carries it all away. Europe may have been losing its grip on sanity, but through those weeks there was no sign of it at The Limit. Tessa’s maxim cast its spell.

On their last full day, Sebastian and Nick sailed the boat to its mooring in the harbour a few miles along the coast while Sally and Tessa packed the cases to be strapped to the luggage grids of the cars, which already each had a bicycle tied securely on top. Next morning the gas bottle was disconnected and, in a moment of nameless emotions, each one of them kept hidden, the front door of The Limit was locked. ‘Here’s to the next time,’ they all sang the familiar signature tune of Henry Hall’s BBC Dance Band as they piled into their cars.

Even though the two families lived within a mile of each other, the holiday month had already become a bright and carefree memory – like all things, in retrospect more bright and carefree than the reality. Mulberry Cottage was the Kilbrides’ first and only home, purchased when Sebastian’s debut into films had given him the sort of money they’d only dreamed of, dreams that had had no real expectation. Like so many ‘cottages’, it was no such thing. It was a seven-bedroomed house, built more than three hundred years ago and brought up to date by the previous owners with no thought of period or taste, simply an eye on convenience. Great open fireplaces had been blocked up, ceilings lowered and exposed timbers covered. ‘Sheer vandalism,’ Sebastian had said. Yet in a way they had been glad they’d found it in the state they had, for the thrill of owning it was enhanced with every new discovery as each original feature was restored, each old beam exposed. All that was more than four years ago and by the time the Kennedys first saw it, its recent past might never have been. An invitation to lunch and to see the restoration work had been Tessa and Sally’s first meeting, Jethro and Zena’s too, a few Sunday hours that had laid the foundation of the friendship that followed.

At that time the Kennedys had been living on the outskirts of Cheltenham. It could be said that the situation of Mulberry Cottage unsettled them, or it could be said that, in the way women do, the two young wives made the decision. Of the two, Tessa was the more contented to make a home, although it was she who had two living-in maids, also a man three days a week to take the backache out of keeping the two-acre garden under control. Domesticity and Sally had never been on more than nodding terms and, although she could see Mulberry Cottage as beautiful, she envied no one the task of keeping it that way. When, about six months after their first meeting, Tessa had told her that Owls’ Roost was coming up for auction she’d not given her hopes a chance to rise. The name implied it would be a rustic idyll, something incompatible with her idea of the ideal home. As it transpired, the name was out of keeping with the modern house only a few years old and in half an acre of lawned garden. No self-respecting owl would look twice at it and, fortunately for Nick and Sally, most house-hunters looking for somewhere in the country had shared the same opinion. Under the hammer it had gone to Nick, and within two months their Georgian terrace house had been sold and they had come to live within a mile of their friends. Two mornings a week a cleaning lady come to Owls’ Roost and worked her way through the list of jobs Sally wrote for her. For despite having no enthusiasm for housework, her standards were high. Day-to-day cooking was a necessity she couldn’t avoid, but face her with catering for a dinner party and she rose to the challenge, presenting a table to compete with a professional. Unlike Tessa, she rejoiced in the arrival of frozen vegetables in the shops and most weeks she telephoned a large order of groceries to be delivered.

Through the months and years they’d lived near each other, there had been a subtle change in the friendship between the two women. By that summer of 1939, even without the strength of the bond between Nick and Sebastian, the two of them had become something akin to sisters. So it was that, of them all, it was Sally who had most reason to look towards the autumn with foreboding. If she wanted the freedom the car allowed, she would drive Nick to his musty and dusty office, agreeing to meet him at the railway station in the evening. The alternative would be to be marooned, the only choice a bicycle ride to the village more than a mile away. And what would she find there? A butcher’s shop, a grocer, a dress shop where she’d not dream of buying anything other than stockings. Until now Tessa had always been nearby, but in two days time Zena would have gone to stay with her cousins until it was time to go back to boarding school and in three days Sebastian and Tessa would be on their way to Southampton and the Queen Mary. The autumn beckoned, void of everything but the ever-increasing threat people seemed too frightened to acknowledge.

‘You’re very quiet.’ Nick gave her a quick glance of concern as he drove. ‘Do you want to stop and get a breather?’

‘No. I was just thinking. Two days and you’ll be back in the office. Everyone will be gone.’ Involuntarily she shivered. ‘I hate the thought of it, the weeks, the months, just so much empty time.’

‘Now tell me I wasn’t right. Of course, you can’t. Have you ever come home feeling so flat? Of course you haven’t. These last four weeks have been something apart. Isn’t that so, Jethro? Have you ever enjoyed a holiday as much?’

‘It’s been great.’ Oh, but they didn’t know the half of it; even Zena didn’t know. ‘How long will they be in America, Dad? This aunt Zena is being packed off to, she’s got to go there again for Christmas. It’s stupid. She’d have a much better time with us, she hardly knows her mother’s family.’

‘I suggested our having her,’ Sally told him, ‘but Tessa said this aunt – distant cousin actually – would be hurt if they didn’t accept her invitation. She’d think they’d outgrown the family. And there are children of her own age; she’ll probably have quite a good time.’

‘Just because her people don’t want to look too big for their boots Zena has to put up with it. Jolly selfish if you ask me.’

Nick craned his neck to see his son’s reflection in the reversing mirror, his eyes alight with laughter.

‘Aren’t your school mates company enough any more?’ he teased.

‘Don’t be daft,’ Jethro growled, sure that his hot feeling of embarrassment must be plain to see. So he lowered his head and pretended to concentrate on the road map. If they could guess where his imagination guided him and the encouragement he gloried in giving to it … ‘This must be the beginning of Bristol. Hey, look, Dad, on up the road there, there’s a Walls’ man. See him on his trike? Can we pull in and get some ices? Hot as anything in the car.’ Pleased with himself, he’d steered them off dangerous ground.

Nick overtook the ice cream salesman on his familiar blue and white tricycle, then pulled in by the kerb, passing Jethro half a crown. ‘You get them. Mine’s chocolate. Yours, Sal?’ So Jethro took the orders, his mind surprisingly easily diverted at the prospect of looking in the truck and deciding what he wanted. Then, ices eaten, luggage checked to make sure the ropes were still secure, they were on their way again. Soon the inside of the car was wreathed in smoke. Nick drove with his cigarette comfortably between his lips, Sally puffed hard on hers then exhaled clouds.

‘What’s up?’ Nick asked with unusual perception. ‘You’ll miss Tess, of course you will, but after a month away you’ll find plenty waiting to be done. I know what you’re like if a weed dares to show its head.’

‘I hate untidiness. I shan’t be idle. But what a waste of life, looking for jobs even before they need doing, combing the garden for weeds, plumping up cushions the second anyone stands up. Fiddling about cooking meals that get eaten in five minutes and nobody notices.’ She heard the grizzle in her tone and hated herself for it.

‘It’s because Tess has more help in the house, is that the trouble?’

‘What’s Tess got to do with it? It’s my life I’m concerned with. Nick, all the time Jethro was a kid I accepted I had to be at home. But he doesn’t need me nannying him; as if he’d care if I was at work when he came home from school at his age.’

‘Work?’ Nick’s laugh told her even more than his words. ‘We’ve had a month with the Kilbrides, you’ve seen what wealth can do for a family –’

‘Wealth? Whenever has having money altered Seb and Tessa?’

‘It’s enabled him to buy a holiday home, a boat, travel on the Queen Mary.’

‘As if any of that counts. They’re the same now as they were when we first knew them. Anyway, Tessa is happy in the home, cooking, making things, that’s what she likes. She even sews their own curtains, would you believe. I’m no good at that sort of thing. Wouldn’t you rather come home in the evenings knowing that I’d actually done something with my day?’

‘You’ve a sizeable house – which you always keep immaculately. You’ve a garden where a weed doesn’t stand a chance. And you have absolutely no need to work. I may not have Sebastian’s sort of money, but there has never been any need for you to add to our income.’

‘Money! Is that all you ever think of?’

‘Actually, no it isn’t. Hark at the woman, Jethro! You and I’ll have to see if we can’t make a bit more muddle for her, eh?’

‘You’re laughing. I’m not.’ There was a pout in Sally’s voice.

‘Then, try to, Sal. You say what you do doesn’t count, but believe me it does. If we were on the breadline it would be different, I’d be grateful that you wanted to help. Perhaps it’s me who brings home the money, but you have your own part to play keeping things comfortable. And what happens when I have to phone you and say I’m bringing a client home? You never let me down.’ Silence. Sebastian might have sensed the frustration that made her clamp her teeth firmly, frightened her voice would betray her. ‘Anyway, Sal,’ she heard the laughter in Nick’s teasing voice, ‘I can’t see you behind a shop counter and I can’t think what other sort of work you’d get. You fancy yourself having a career but, my sweet, a career doesn’t fall out of empty air. It needs training, qualifications.’ Did she grunt her agreement or did he imagine it? ‘Your trouble was, you were too fetching for your own good. And when I had my sights on you my charms were too much for you. Any dreams you might have had for a career were blown straight out of the window. Right?’ That ought to cheer her up. ‘There’s another packet of cigarettes in the glove compartment, fill my case and light one for me, will you.’

She did and for herself too. After seventeen years of marriage it was seldom he made anything so near resembling a declaration of affection; his words went some way towards mollifying her.

Thankful that what had promised to turn into an argument seemed to have been avoided, Jethro fanned himself with the road map.

‘Rotten fug in here from you lot,’ he grumbled. ‘I’m