Act of Will Read online

  Only when her brothers had finally disappeared from sight did Audra drag her gaze away from the empty road at last. She turned back into the driveway and wondered, with a sinking heart and a sickening feeling of despair, if she would ever see her brothers again. Australia was at the other end of the world, as far away as any place could possibly be. They had promised faithfully to send for her, but how long would it take them to save up the money for her passage? A whole year, perhaps.

  As this dismaying thought wedged itself into Audra’s mind she looked up at that bleak, grim house and shivered involuntarily. And at that precise moment her dislike for her mother’s cousin hardened into a terrible and bitter hatred that would remain with her for the rest of her life. Audra Kenton would not ever find it in her heart to forgive Alicia Drummond for her cold and deliberate cruelty to them. And the memory of the day her brothers had been sent away would stay with Audra always.

  The following afternoon, white-faced and trembling, and fretting for her brothers, Audra had gone to live and work at the Fever Hospital. Since there were no vacancies that year for student nurses she had been taken on as a ward maid.

  Audra Kenton’s life of drudgery had begun. She was still only fourteen years old.

  She had been awakened at dawn the next morning. After a breakfast of porridge, dripping and bread, and tea, eaten with the other little ward maids, the daily routine had commenced. Audra was appalled at the hardship of it, and she, who had never done a domestic chore in her entire life, had found that first day unspeakable. Balking at the tasks assigned to her, she had asked herself despairingly how she would manage. Yet she had not dared complain to her superiors. Being intelligent, and alert, she had understood within the space of a few hours that they were not interested in the likes of her. She was inconsequential in the hierarchy of the hospital, where everyone—doctors and nurses alike—worked extremely hard, and with conscientiousness.

  On her second morning she had gritted her teeth and attacked her chores with renewed vigour, and she had learned the best way she could, mainly by observing the other maids at work. At the end of the first month she was as efficient as any of them, and had become expert at scrubbing floors, scouring bathtubs, washing and ironing sheets, making beds, emptying bed pans, cleaning lavatories, disinfecting the surgical ward and sterilizing instruments.

  Every night she had fallen into her hard little cot in the maids’ dormitory, so bone tired that she had not noticed her surroundings or the uncomfortable bed. She was usually so exhausted in these first weeks she did not even have the strength to weep. And when she did cry into her pillow it was not for her state of being or for her mean and cheerless life. Audra wept out of longing for her brothers, who were as lost to her now as her mother and Uncle Peter lying in their graves.

  There were times, as she scrubbed and polished and toiled in the wards, that Audra worriedly asked herself if she had brought this disastrous state upon her brothers and herself. Guilt trickled through her when she remembered how insistent she had been about taking those inventories of her mother’s possessions. But generally her common sense quickly surfaced and Audra recognized that they would have been punished no matter what. In fact, she had come to believe that Alicia Drummond had callously determined their fate on the very day their mother had died.

  When Audra had been pushed out of The Grange and sent to the hospital, Aunt Alicia had told her that she could visit them every month, on one of her two weekends off, and spend special holidays with them. But Audra had only ever ventured there twice, and then merely to collect the remainder of her clothes and a few other belongings. For as far back as she could remember, she had never felt anything but uncomfortable in that appalling house; she understood she was not welcome.

  The second time she went to fetch the last of her things she had had to steel herself to enter The Grange, and she had made a solemn vow to herself. She had sworn she would never set foot in that mausoleum of a place again, not until the day she went back to claim her mother’s property. And so, over those early months of 1922, as she had learned to stand on her own two feet, she had kept herself to herself. She had continued to do her work diligently, and she had stayed out of trouble at the hospital.

  If her daily life was dreary, and lacked the normal small pleasures enjoyed by most girls of her age, she nevertheless managed to buoy herself up with dreams of a pleasanter future. Hope was her constant companion. No one could take that away from her. Nor could anyone diminish her faith in her brothers. She was absolutely convinced that they would send for her, that she would be with them in Australia soon. Three months after Frederick and William had left England their letters had started to arrive, and these had continued to come fairly regularly. They were always full of news, good cheer, and promises, and the pages had soon grown tattered from her constant reading of them. Audra treasured her letters; they were her greatest comfort and joy in those days.

  The hospital routine had scarcely varied during Audra’s first year. The work was hard, even for the strongest of the girls. Some of them had left because their daily chores had worn them down and inevitably demolished their interest in nursing. Only the truly dedicated remained. Audra, with nowhere else to go, stayed out of sheer necessity.

  However, there was also something very special in Audra Kenton, call it stubbornness, that made her stick it out until she could graduate to nurse’s training. Small though she was, she had unusual physical stamina, as well as a mental energy and toughness of mind that were remarkable in one so young. Despite her youth, she possessed inner resources which she was able to draw on for courage and strength. And so she had valiantly continued to scrub and clean and polish endlessly… run up and down endless stairs and along endless wards… forever on her feet or on her knees.

  The toil and monotonous grind of her days quite apart, Audra could not complain that she was ill treated in any way, for she was not. Everyone at the hospital was kind to her and the other little ward maids, and if the food was plain, even stodgy at times, at least there was plenty of it. No one ever went hungry. Audra, plodding along and braced by her stoicism, would tell herself that hard work and plain food never killed anybody.

  But by the end of the year she was looking to better herself. Her eyes were focused on the day she would take a step forward and start climbing the ladder. She had been sent to work at the hospital against her will, but slowly, as she had mastered her chores, she had had a chance to look up, to observe and absorb. Gradually she had begun to realize that nursing appealed to her.

  Audra knew she would have to earn a living, even if she went out to join her brothers in Sydney; she wanted to do so as a nurse. According to William, she would have no trouble finding a position in a hospital. He had written to tell her that there was a shortage of nurses Down Under, and this knowledge had fired her ambition even more.

  It was in the spring of 1923, not long after Audra had started her second year at the hospital, that her chance came. Matron retired and a successor was appointed. Her name was Margaret Lennox and she was of a new breed of woman, very modern in her way of thinking, some said even radical. She was well known in the North of England for her passionate espousal of reforms in woman and child welfare, and for her dedication to the advancement of women’s rights in general.

  With the announcement of her appointment there was a flurry of excitement and everyone wondered if the daily routine would be affected. It was. For, as was usually the way, a new broom swept clean and a new regime, in this instance the Lennox Regime, was swiftly instituted.

  Audra, observing everything with her usual perspicacity, decided that she must waste no time in applying for nurse’s training at once. From what she had heard, Margaret Lennox favoured young and ambitious girls who wanted to get on; apparently she went out of her way to give them her unstinting support and encouragement.

  Two weeks after Matron Lennox had taken up her duties, Audra sat down and wrote a letter to her. She thought this was the wisest tactic
to use, rather than to approach her personally. Matron Lennox had been in a whirlwind of activity and surrounded by a phalanx of hospital staff since her arrival.

  Less than a week after Audra had left the letter in Matron’s office she was summoned for an interview. This was brisk, brief and very much to the point. Ten minutes after she had walked in, Audra Kenton walked out, smiling broadly, her application approved.

  With her superior intelligence, her ability to learn quickly, Audra swiftly became one of the best student nurses on the hospital staff, and earned a reputation for being dedicated. She found the new work and her studies challenging; also, she discovered she had a desire to heal, and therefore, a real aptitude for nursing. And the young patients, with whom she had a genuine affinity, became the focus of the love she had bottled up inside her since her brothers had gone away…

  ***

  Now, remembering all of this, as she lay in the grass on the crest of the slope above the River Ure, Audra thought not of her diplomas and nursing achievements over the past four years, but of Frederick and William.

  Her brothers had not sent for her in the end.

  They had not been able to save up the money for her passage to Australia. Things had not gone well for the Kenton boys. Frederick had had two serious bouts with pneumonia and seemed to be in a state of physical debilitation a great deal of the time. Apart from the problems with his health, he and William were unskilled and untrained. They had had a hard time scraping a living together.

  She sighed and bestirred herself, then sat up, blinking as she opened her eyes and adjusted them to the brightness. Poor Frederick and William had had nothing but bad luck really. Their letters, which arrived less frequently these days, were permeated with defeat. Audra had all but given up hope of going out to join them in Sydney. She continued to fret and to miss them, and she supposed she always would. They were her only family, after all, and she loved them very much.

  Her work at the hospital gave her satisfaction, and for this she was grateful, but it was not enough. Her sense of isolation, of not belonging to anyone, or more precisely of not being part of a family, and her dreadful loneliness, all contributed to the aridness of her life. Sometimes she found it unbearable, despite her treasured friendship with the devoted Gwen.

  Audra stood up, then cast her gaze to the other side of the river.

  The light had changed in the last few hours and High Cleugh now looked as if it had been built from polished bronze stones. It was bathed in a golden glow, appeared to shimmer like a mirage in the distance, and even the gardens had a burnished sheen in the rosy sunset. All of her life thus far, at least the best, the happiest parts of it, and her dearest memories, were bound up with that old house. A rush of feeling swept over Audra and she suddenly knew that she would never cease to yearn for High Cleugh and all the things it represented.

  CHAPTER 4

  Here they were, sitting in the Copper Kettle in Harrogate. She and Gwen.

  Audra could hardly believe they were finally meeting after all these weeks. The two girls had not seen each other since the beginning of June. On this hot and muggy Saturday it was already the end of August, the end of the summer, and the first time Gwen had been able to travel from Horsforth for a visit with her best friend.

  Even so, Gwen had not been able to make it as far as Ripon, and in her letter she had asked Audra to meet her half-way. Audra had agreed to this request immediately, and had sent off a note by return post.

  Now, flushed with happiness, Audra looked across the table and broke into a smile. ‘It’s lovely to see you, Gwen. I’ve really missed you.’

  ‘So have I—missed you, I mean.’ Gwen’s cherubic face, covered with freckles and vividly alive, was filled with laughter; it signalled her own pleasure at their reunion. ‘I still feel ever so awful about not being able to spend your birthday with you—’ Gwen broke off, reached down for the fabric shopping bag at her feet and proceeded to rummage around in it. She pulled out a package wrapped in royal blue paper and tied with scarlet ribbon.

  With a flourish and a little grin, Gwen handed it across the table to Audra. ‘Anyway, this is your birthday present, lovey. I never did get to take you to one of the fancy tea dances at the Arcadian Rooms, so here, I bought you something instead.’

  ‘You didn’t have to, you shouldn’t have!’ Audra protested, but it was easy to see she was thrilled to receive the gift. It had been a long time since she had been given a present, and there had been nothing on her birthday. Her face lit up and her bright blue eyes danced as she tore off the ribbon and paper with the excitement of a small child.

  ‘Oh Gwen! A paintbox!’ Audra looked up and beamed at the other girl. ‘How lovely. And how clever of you. I really needed a new one. Thank you so much.’ She reached out and took hold of Gwen’s hand lying on the table and squeezed it affectionately.

  It was Gwen’s turn to look pleased. ‘I wracked my brains, trying to think of something… something… well, just right. You being ever so particular as you are. As it happened, I was looking at that watercolour you painted for my mother last Christmas… the tree reflected in the pond, and it suddenly occurred to me. The paintbox, I mean. I thought to myself, that’s exactly the thing for Audra. It’ll appeal to her practical side, but it’ll give her pleasure as well.’

  Gwen sat back and wrinkled her pert, very freckled nose. Her gaze did not leave Audra’s face as she asked, ‘It will, won’t it?’

  ‘Oh yes, Gwen, lots and lots of pleasure.’ Audra’s smile widened. Then she lifted the shiny black lid of the paintbox and looked inside at the small blocks of bright colour. She repeated some of the familiar names under her breath: Chrome yellow… rose madder… cobalt blue… jade green… burnt sienna… crimson lake… Saxe blue… royal purple… burnt umber… Malaga red. Audra loved the sound of the names almost as much as she loved to paint.

  It had been her favourite pastime since her childhood. Her father had been a gifted artist and his paintings had sold fairly well, but then he had fallen gravely ill just as he was becoming known. Adrian Kenton had not really had a chance to make a name for himself before he had died. She had inherited his talent—or so her mother had always told her.

  Audra closed the lid of the paintbox and raised her eyes to meet Gwen’s soft hazel-amber gaze. How pretty she looks, Audra thought, so blonde and golden from the sun. Gwen’s fair colouring and her flaxen hair, cut short in a halo of curls around her head, added to the angelic impression she gave; so did the pale blue frock with its big white Quaker collar, which she had chosen to wear today. She reminds me of a sweet young choirboy, Audra thought, and smiled at this analogy. With her beautiful bosom and lovely figure, there was nothing very boyish about Gwen Thornton.

  Audra noticed that for once Gwen looked very restrained. Usually she glowed and glittered with all kinds of jewellery: necklaces and beads, earrings and bangles and rings. Obviously she had made a big effort to be both understated and dignified for this trip to Harrogate. She wants to please me, Audra decided, and her warm feelings for Gwen soared.

  Leaning forward, Audra said, ‘I’m going to paint a very special picture for you, Gwenny. For your room at home. Would you like a scene—the kind I did for your mother? Or a still life, such as a bowl of flowers? Oh, I know what I’ll paint for you. The Valley Gardens here in Harrogate. You’ve always said that’s your favourite spot when all the flowers are in bloom. Would you like that?’

  ‘Yes, that’d be ever so nice. Thanks very much, Audra. I’d treasure one of your paintings—Mum says they’re masterpieces. The Valley Gardens would look lovely on my wall. So I’d—’

  ‘Can I take your order, miss?’ the waitress interrupted rather peremptorily. She looked first at Gwen, then at Audra, her pencil poised impatiently above her pad.

  ‘We’d like to have tea,’ Audra said pleasantly, ignoring her huffy manner and angry stance. ‘For two, please.’

  ‘A pot? Or the set tea?’ the waitress asked in the same snippy tone and
licked the end of her pencil.

  Gwen said, ‘You oughtn’t to do that. I hope that pencil’s not indelible. You’ll get a purple tongue, and probably lead poisoning.’

  ‘Get on with you, I won’t get no such thing!’ the waitress scoffed disbelievingly, then gave the two of them a worried glance. ‘Will I?’ she muttered and carefully examined the tip of her pencil. ‘Oooh bloomin’ heck! It is indelible.’

  Gwen nodded solemnly. ‘I thought it would be. You’d better go and see a doctor immediately if you develop peculiar symptoms tonight, especially if they’re at all like convulsions.’

  ‘Convulsions!’ the waitress repeated in a shrill voice and turned as white as her apron. ‘Are you having me on, like?’

  Audra, taking pity on the young woman, said, ‘No, we’re not. We’re nurses and we know about these things. But I’m sure you won’t get lead poisoning from licking that pencil a few times. My friend tends to be a bit of an alarmist.’

  The waitress, appearing slightly relieved, nodded her head. ‘I wouldn’t want to be getting poorly…’

  ‘You’ll be perfectly all right,’ Audra reassured, and went on briskly, ‘Now about our order, I think we’d better have the set tea. I suppose that means it includes everything… sandwiches, scones, jam, clotted cream, cakes—all of the usual things?’

  ‘Yes,’ the waitress said laconically. She brought the pencil up to her mouth, then dropped her hand quickly. She scribbled on her pad and edged away from their table.

  When she was out of earshot, Audra stared at the merry-faced Gwen and shook her head a bit reprovingly. However, she could not help grinning at Gwen’s gleeful expression. ‘You’re incorrigible, Miss Thornton. And that really was a little mean of you. Why, you’ve gone and ruined that poor young woman’s day.’

  ‘I jolly well hope I have!’ Gwen cried with a show of indignation. ‘She’s a right tartar, that one, Audra.’