The Long Wait

by Patricia Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

Allerton Manor was the only home Tammy had ever known - and the Allerton family treated her as their own. But when she realised that her love for Dick Allerton had changed from the careless affection of childhood to the mature love of a woman, she was heartbroken when Dick still treated her as his little sister. When the final blow fell, and she thought she had lost not only Dick, but the only other thing that made her life bearable, she was in despair.

Release date: January 1, 2015

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 400

Sample

It was very hot. The August sun beat down on their faces as they lay by the stream, listening to the cool rush of water over the shining stones.

They looked alike, both in striped tee-shirts and faded blue jeans. There was only a half-tone difference in the brown of their hair, but Tamily’s was curlier than Dick’s. It was urchin-cut and suited her small, pointed face.

Dick’s younger sister, Mercia, called them The Heavenly Twins. Of course, they weren’t even related, but they were always together, always had been ever since Tamily first came to live in the big house at the age of seven.

‘Ten whole years!’ Dick said suddenly, turning on his side and running a finger along Tamily’s smooth arm. He smiled suddenly, wrinkling his blue eyes unconsciously in a mannerism so familiar to Tamily that she never noticed it, though strangers always did. ‘We’ve known each other longer than we haven’t!’ he remarked ambiguously.

But she knew what he meant—she always did.

‘Horrible little boy you were at eight!’

‘No worse than you at seven—all skin and bones and enormous great brown eyes like a gazelle.’

‘Was I?’ Tamily mused. Funny, she’d never thought much about her looks then. Everything was too new, too wonderful, too ‘different’ for her to have spared a moment’s thought for herself.

‘I’ll never forget the day you arrived,’ Dick said, suddenly serious. ‘It was the beginning of the summer holidays, a day rather like this, shimmering and hot and lazy. Mother came out of the house with Jessie on one side and you on the other. Mercia and I had been speculating for weeks about you and your mother … what you’d be like, how you’d alter our lives. We thought we were going to hate you! You were dreadfully shy. Mother pushed you forward and you shook hands with Mercia but you wouldn’t look at me.’

Tamily laughed. ‘Well, I was shy! And desperately nervous. It was quite an ordeal for me. To begin with, Mother had spent weeks telling me how to conduct myself properly. I was scared of your mother and father and so afraid I’d do the wrong thing. After all, I’d never been in a big house before and “titled” people to me were like royalty—I thought they must be completely different from anything I’d ever known.’

It was Dick’s turn to laugh.

‘I know! You looked at our garden clothes with positive disapproval. I suppose you expected me to be in a sailor suit and Mercie in organdie!’

Tamily scowled, although her eyes were still smiling.

‘My position wasn’t easy, Dick. I knew your mother had engaged my mother as housekeeper and that I had a job, too. I was afraid I couldn’t do that job. Supposing Mercia didn’t like me? And what did a “companion” do anyway? Don’t forget I was only seven.’

‘You were a stunning success!’ Dick said warmly, burying his face for a moment against her warm neck like a puppy. ‘You gave Mercia a new lease of life and everyone always says she made such a good recovery because of your patience and encouragement.’

Tamily thought of the girl she had now come to regard as a very, very dear sister. At seven, the pretty fair-haired little girl had been crippled by polio and now, ten years later, although she couldn’t take an active part in sports or ride, or even dance, she could at least walk and lead an independent life. Dear Mercia! So gentle and sweet and affectionate. Generous too. When Dick came home from his prep school for the holidays, it was Mercia who insisted Tamily left her side to companion Dick. ‘You go and bowl to him, Tamily!’—‘Why don’t you both go for a ride—take your lunch and spend the day out? I’ll be quite all right—I’ve got a wonderful book I want to read!’

Mercia had been confined to a wheelchair in those days and at first Tamily and Dick had been reluctant to leave her alone. Later, when Mercia and Tamily were alone, she had explained to Tamily that it made her far happier to see Dick amused and occupied, than to keep Tamily with her and see him bored and lonely. In those very early years, Tamily would rather have been with Mercia. She wasn’t good at boys’ sports then and Dick was always shouting at her: ‘For goodness’ sake, bowl straight!’—‘Can’t you bowl overarm?’—‘Butter-fingers!’—‘You’ll never make a goal-keeper!’

She knew very well that he put up with her merely because there was no one else around.

Later, of course, when Dick went to public school, he would sometimes bring a boy home for a week or two; and then he had no time for Tamily and she would spend the long, lazy days sitting beside Mercia’s chair, sewing, knitting, or just talking about the kind of life they would like to lead when they were grown up.

Now Dick had finished with school life and was on the threshold of Oxford. He would of course be going to the same college as had his father, Lord Allerton, to read history. Unlike most of Dick’s contemporaries, there would be no need for him to earn a living when he came down. Lord Allerton, although not as rich as his father, nevertheless was a very wealthy man by present-day standards.

What Dick really wanted to do was to farm and although his father was hoping that Oxford might quash his idea and that Dick might follow his footsteps and go into politics, Tamily felt that Dick would never relinquish the dream he had so often told her about.

Despite the heat, she gave a sudden involuntary shiver. Could Oxford change everything? Would he come back a different person, with different habits? He was still a boy, really, with a boy’s limited horizon; and Oxford—as Tamily very well knew from listening to Lady Allerton’s diatribes on the subject—was going to change him from boy into man; round off ‘the rough corners’, turn him into a ‘polished member of society’ …

Whenever the voluble Lady Allerton used these phrases, Tamily felt at a loss to understand their meaning. As far as she was aware, Dick had no ‘rough corners!’ His manners were perfect and quite natural. His voice was deep, well-modulated and always kindly.

The only knowledge she herself had of ‘society’ was of the week-end guests who invaded Allerton Manor. On these occasions Tamily was not included as a member of the family although Lady Allerton frequently called on her to arrange the flowers or decorate the wonderful long refectory table in the dining-hall. She had a great gift for arranging things artistically and Lady Allerton had been quick to see this. Tamily was also required to see that the guests had everything they needed in their rooms and to help Simmonds, the old butler, at cocktail times. But she did not sit down to meals with the family on these occasions.

Once Dick had asked her if his mother had expressly excluded her from these gatherings, but Tamily, strangely embarrassed, had lied to him for the first time in her life and assured him that it was from her own choice. In point of fact, she didn’t at all care for the shrill-voiced, hard-drinking, smart society women who were Lady Allerton’s friends. They all called one another ‘Darling’; had identical fashionable hair-styles and to Tamily’s way of thinking were far too heavily made-up and over-dressed for a week-end in the country. Mercia agreed with her and managed whenever possible to have a sudden desperate headache or pain in her back which Lady Allerton strongly suspected, but could not prove, was fabricated for the occasion.

The men, for the most part, were different. Lord Allerton was a good deal older than his wife and his friends belonged to the previous generation, which Tamily supposed would have been described as the huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’ type. They came in tweedy suits with guns or fishing rods, with their favourite pipes and very often with their favourite gun-dogs. They were always beautifully mannered and courteous to her, in contrast to the women who seldom bothered to say ‘thank you’ for any little service she had performed. But what frightened Tamily were the young men, their sons, whom they sometimes brought with them. They seemed to her to be younger, masculine editions of their mothers rather than youthful copies of their fathers. They wore exaggeratedly well-cut suits, or alternatively in the summer gaudy Italian beach wear. Their conversation consisted entirely of the Riviera, the races, the size of their newest car or even the amount of money they had made on the Stock Exchange. They quite openly discussed their latest love affairs or described the girl they were currently living with—not always in flattering terms. They seemed so far removed from Dick as to belong to a different species and now with a twist in her heart Tamily wondered if this was what Lady Allerton meant when she spoke of ‘polishing Dick up’.

Granted, most of these objectionable young men were in their late twenties and did not belong to Dick’s generation. Tamily had invariably liked the school friends he had brought home. Was she to suppose, therefore, that Dick and his friends as they grew older would change into such objectionable human beings or could she console herself with the thought that they were a peculiarity of the generation who reached adolescence at the end of the war?

She glanced sideways and saw that Dick was lying with his eyes shut, his hands behind his head, so that she could no longer see the long brown fingers with their curious, square nails. With a sudden moment of understanding she realized that she knew Dick’s appearance so well that were she an artist she could have reproduced him on paper with every tiny detail accurate—the way the short brown hair curled inwards to a point at the back of his neck; the way his eyebrows turned upwards towards his forehead; his mouth, wide and generous, following the same upward line so that even in repose it looked as if he smiled.

‘I love him,’ Tamily thought. ‘It isn’t the way I’ve always loved him, with a young sister’s adoration for an older brother. I love him completely and wholly, as a woman loves a man.’ The realization did not come as a shock. It was as if until this moment she had been blind and now quietly and calmly she had opened her eyes on a beautiful truth.

‘How strange!’ Tamily thought. ‘When Mercia and I tried to imagine how it would be when we first fell in love, we always supposed it would come as some kind of thunderbolt, shocking us into a completely new set of feelings; our emotions would change completely, our lives alter, even our personalities would be transformed!’ But this unexpected awareness of loving Dick—of having always loved him—was so different—it was like a soft, warm wave washing over the ridges of the sand and leaving a smooth, shining perfection in its wake. There was as yet no torment of wondering whether her love was returned, no agony of indecision about the future, no pain, no sorrow; only a wonderful sense of completeness.

Quite suddenly Dick opened his eyes and seeing her strange, far-away expression said:

‘Penny for them, Tammy?—and don’t say they aren’t worth a penny or I shall do what I did yesterday and duck you in the stream.’

For a moment Tamily couldn’t reply to him. It seemed strange that Dick could be using the same teasing voice, the familiar words and the threats, when somewhere deep inside her everything had changed. Instinctively she knew that she must not let him guess how she felt. To do so might destroy the wonderfully easy, intimate companionship they shared. She forced herself to look at him and to say lightly:

‘Oh, I was just wondering about Oxford. Whether it would change you. I expect you are looking forward to it, aren’t you?’

Dick lay back on his arms again and stared into the brilliant blue of the sky as he pondered her question.

‘I suppose I am rather excited, and yet on a glorious day like this who could possibly wish for anything better than to be lying here, contemplating the universe. Isn’t it a gorgeous day, Tamily. We really ought to make the effort to swim. Blasted nuisance we forgot our costumes. Still, I suppose we could swim without them. Remember the last time we did, Tammy? Must have been about two years ago when we were on holiday in Cornwall. We decided to have a midnight, moonlight picnic on the beach and it was so warm, we had that gorgeous swim afterwards. We’ve had a lot of wonderful times as kids, haven’t we? In a way I hate the thought of growing up and having to behave properly, yet we used to think that to be grown up meant the beginning of freedom and the end of restrictions. Funny how one’s ideas become reversed as the years go by.’

He turned suddenly towards her and picking a blade of grass ran it gently down the bridge of her nose.

‘You’ll come to “Commem”, won’t you, Tammy? I’d like Mercia to come too but I suppose it wouldn’t be much fun for her if she can’t dance. Still, I intend to throw some parties while I’m up and I promise to be a good brother and find some really handsome young men for you both.’

Tamily sat up abruptly, stung into the first pain of loving where love was not returned. It amazed her to think that Dick could not possibly know how much his remarks hurt her, and yet she was forced to admit that only half an hour ago her reply would probably have been ‘Mind you pick a dark-haired man for me. I don’t like blonds.’

‘I think we ought to go home,’ she said, jumping up and brushing the patched seat of her jeans free from dried grass. ‘Your mother has guests tonight and I want to have plenty of time to do the dinner-table.’

Dick got slowly to his feet and sighed.

‘Blasted nuisance!’ he said. ‘I’d thought we might have a game of tennis after supper when it’s cooler. I do wish Mother wouldn’t be so wildly social. I’m sure Father doesn’t like it any better than I do and it only makes a lot more work for you and Jess and the servants. How Mother keeps her staff, I don’t know! I suppose she must pay them a staggering salary, or they’d never endure it.’

He linked his arm through hers and strolled with her across the ten-acre paddock that separated the trout stream from the formal gardens.

‘As a matter of interest, Tamily, I hope she gives you a decent allowance?’

Tamily flushed, for the first time in her life aware of the social differences between herself and Dick. Her position at Allerton Manor was a strange one. Lady Allerton had engaged her mother as housekeeper and at the same time the seven-year-old Tamily was to act as Mercia’s companion. No doubt her mother’s salary had taken Tamily’s uses into consideration. Because of her disablement, Mercia hadn’t been able to go to school and a private governess had educated both girls. Their bedrooms were side by side and identical, and Tamily shared Mercia’s life as if she were her real sister.

Tamily being the smaller of the two, it had become the natural thing for Mercia’s last year’s clothes to be handed down and once in a while Lady Allerton had herself bought Tamily new clothes from the same expensive shop in London for the occasions when Tamily was to accompany Mercia outside the Manor.

The years had gone by simply, easily, happily, for all of them. A few months ago, on her seventeenth birthday, her mother had told her that Lady Allerton felt Tamily should now receive her own dress allowance in return for which she would act rather in the capacity of personal secretary to Lady Allerton. Until then, her duties in the house had been confined to the floral decoration, but now that she was old enough Lady Allerton wished her to take over such things as the seating arrangements for her guests and similar duties. It was Lady Allerton’s wish that Tamily should look smart, though not ostentatious; and for this reason her allowance was a generous one.

She had accepted it gratefully, glad that she could now afford to buy her mother, Dick and Mercia birthday and Christmas presents from her own earnings; that she could afford little gifts for Mercia, who all their childhood whenever out shopping had never failed to bring something back for her.

Now Dick’s question had made her see her true position in the household; she was an employee and as such must never expect Dick or Mercia to include her in their lives. Nothing and no one could stop her loving Dick, but she saw in this moment how completely hopeless such a love must always be. As Lord Allerton’s heir, Dick would marry someone of his own social standing, someone who would in time become Lady Allerton and own Allerton Manor. She, Tamily, had no rights here, no place here, and the fact that she loved the glorious old Elizabethan manor house, and that it was the only home she knew, could not alter the fact that she lived here only so long as Lad. . .