Green and Pleasant Land Read online

  Green and Pleasant Land

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  PART TWO

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  PART THREE

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Copyright

  PART ONE

  1928

  Chapter One

  ‘If you can’t beat them,’ standing naked by the tall window, sunshine gilding wide shoulders and an elegant line of back and lighting his tousled hair to gleaming gold, Toby Smith yawned and stretched, ’nobble their best man, I always say.’ He turned, eyes narrowed, smiling a little. ‘Good wheeze?’

  Lady Fiona Paget stirred sleepily. ‘Sounds like a perfectly rotten trick to me.’ Her tone was mild. ‘It is a cricket match you know, my dear. Not the Battle of Waterloo.’

  Toby’s grin widened. ‘Don’t you want your husband’s team to win?’

  Fiona’s mouth twitched to a faint smile. ‘I’m not sure that’s quite the way James looks at it.’

  Almost imperceptibly the quality of the young man’s smile changed. ‘“And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat?”’ he enquired gently, blue eyes mocking, ‘“Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame?”’

  Fiona, suddenly fully awake and wary, pursed her lips exasperatedly.

  ‘I knew a Captain who quoted that shit the way the Padre quoted the Bible,’ Toby said, amiably. ‘The voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks: “Play up! Play up and play the game!” What tommy rot.’

  ‘What happened to him?’ She was watching him now, interested. Toby, like so many survivors of the debacle of the Great War – indeed like Fiona herself, who had nursed in those filthy trenches, had seen a friend’s blood soak into the soil of France – rarely spoke of it, would never be pressed. The ‘war to end wars’ may have been over for almost ten years, but the scars that it had inflicted remained, some more obvious than others.

  ‘Who?’ The deceptive, forget-me-not eyes were innocent. ‘The schoolboy?’

  ‘The Captain, you ass.’

  He shrugged, losing interest. ‘What do you think happened to him? The same as happened to most. So much for blue blood, the playing fields of Eton and Sir Henry bloody Newbolt.’ He turned back to the window, his eyes on the lush green of the parkland, the square, solitary tower of the church, the distant cluster of tiled and thatched roofs that were the village of Breckon Parva. As it had been for the past two days, the wide East Anglian sky was pale and brilliant with sunshine. The sound of birdsong came to him with the drift of the summer air through the open window. A clock struck, musically, in the distance.

  ‘It’s poor Gideon I feel sorry for.’ Fiona said, reverting to the original conversation. ‘He won’t like it, you know. He won’t like it at all.’

  ‘Then he’ll have to lump it, won’t he?’ Toby’s voice was flat. ‘He’ll get his day of glory; he’ll just get it playing for the House instead of the village, that’s all.’

  Fiona said nothing.

  He glanced at her across his shoulder, his face in shadow. ‘You don’t approve?’ The question was light.

  She lifted neat and well-marked brows. ‘Does it make any difference if I do or not?’

  He shook his head, smiling gently.

  ‘Then there’s not a lot of point in making the effort one way or the other, is there?’ she asked, the words tart. She leaned on one elbow, watching him, unselfconscious in her nakedness. The short, dark red hair was rumpled, the narrow eyes pensive. ‘Why does it mean so much to you? It doesn’t seem like you to care so much about a game of cricket.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn about the cricket. I just don’t like to lose, that’s all. James has had the good sense to appoint me Captain – I intend to deliver a victory. It’s that simple.’

  Fiona chuckled in sudden real amusement. ‘You already have a Cambridge Blue playing for the House. Why subvert poor Gideon, whose only claim to fame is his ability to knock a regular century each year for the village?’

  He turned again, his long, spare frame outlined against the light. Fiona watched him with affection and the eye of a connoisseur; there was no doubt that Toby Smith, however uncertain his origins, was one of the most attractive young men she had ever known, from the shining crown of curly hair to the neat and narrow feet. That he was at least ten years her junior disturbed her not at all. If taxed she would never bother to deny it; she liked younger men, and considered it her great good fortune that a good many of them were ready to return the compliment.

  ‘For your information so far as I can discover your young Hugo Fellafield only ever once got beyond twelfth man,’ he drawled, the impeccable upper-crust accent exaggerated just enough to bring an answering glimmer of laughter to her face, ‘and though I’m sure he’s a jolly good chap and all that he’s a bowler, old thing. A bowler. He’s about as useful with a bat as you would be.’

  She refused to be deflected. ‘He’s a good bowler?’

  ‘Of course he is.’ He reverted to his normal, pleasant tone.

  ‘So,’ Fiona tilted her head, watching him, shrewdly, ‘poor Gideon loses out both ways? If he’s as good as James says he is – and he’s often said that the man would be County material if he weren’t who and what he is – then wouldn’t he appreciate the opportunity to test himself against a really good bowler?’

  Toby moved to the tallboy, picked up a flat silver cigarette case, extracted two cigarettes with long, deft fingers and lit them both. ‘Possibly.’ His voice was cool.

  She accepted the cigarette, lay back on the pillows, blew smoke to the high, ornate ceiling. ‘But you aren’t going to let him?’

  ‘No.’ He sat on the bed beside her, almost idly ran his fingertip between her small breasts then spread his flat hand upon her belly, her skin warm and smooth beneath the palm of his hand. ‘Gideon Best is playing for the House this year. Whether he wants to or no. And this year – with Toby Smith as Captain – the House is going to win this bloody silly match for the first time, I gather, since ’twenty-three.’

  ‘And none of this nonsense about it being only the game that counts?’ she grinned, amused and caustic.

  The hand moved. She drew a sudden breath, sucked her lip, watching him.

  He smiled, that warm, angelic, dangerous smile that lit his face like sunshine and had been, she knew, the undoing of more than one innocent soul. ‘Well of course not,’ he said, mildly reproving. ‘Whatever do you take me for, Lady Paget? Some kind of gentleman?’

  She laughed aloud at that. ‘Perish the thought.’

  He leaned towards her, relieved her of the cigarette, kissed her with unexpected gentleness upon the mouth, then with a typically swift and fluent movement stood up, stubbing the cigarettes into a cut glass ashtray and reached for the clothes that were draped across the back of the chair. ‘Come on you lazy loafer. Tennis before tea.’

  ‘Oh no! Don’t be such a brute!’ Fiona rolled onto her stomach and buried her face in the pillow.

  Toby grinned as he pulled on a crisp, white shirt, immaculate flannels, slung his pullover around his shoulders. ‘Three minutes,’ he said.

  ‘Or what?’ Fiona cocked an interested eye from beneath the fall of
red hair.

  ‘Or I cart you downstairs as you are.’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare!’

  ‘No?’ He slapped her buttocks none too lightly as he passed, still grinning. ‘Try me.’

  Groaning melodramatically Fiona rolled from the bed, walked to the door of her dressing room, stood for a moment before the rows of drawers and cupboards then shook her red head firmly. ‘No. It’s no good. I’ve given Benson the afternoon off, and she’s positively the only person in the world who knows where the hell anything is in here! Anyway,’ she began to rummage through a wardrobe, her voice muffled, ‘you mustn’t make an old lady overdo it, you know. Go and find Rachel, or Flip. They’ll play with you. Rachel might even beat you. And serves you right. I’m going to have a bath. A long one.’

  She found a pale silk wrap, hauled it from the cupboard, slipped her arms into it, belted it with quick and determined movements about her lean waist.

  Toby was back at the window. He had lit another cigarette and was leaning against the deeply shuttered window frame, his eyes on the ancient square tower of Breckon Parva church, stranded within the parkland of the Hall almost a mile from the village it served. ‘Did James’ grandfather really move the village to improve the view?’ he asked, with sudden and interested curiosity.

  Fiona joined him at the window, slipped an arm about his waist, laid her head upon his shoulder. ‘He did. The houses were his. He decided to move them. And – Bob’s your uncle – the village reappears over there.’ She nodded her head towards the roofs.

  Toby offered his cigarette. She drew upon it, gave it back to him. Toby tilted his head, eyes narrowed and thoughtful.

  Fiona slanted a sly glance at him. ‘What is it? Gives you ideas, does it? Fancy having a view of your own to improve? I’m not sure the locals would be quite so cooperative nowadays.’

  Toby said nothing. A tall dark girl, bobbed hair swinging, was approaching the house across the wide sweep of lawn. Even from this distance the athletic grace of her carriage, the challenge in the lift of her chin was apparent. She was dressed in an outfit that looked as if it might have been left over from the making of The Sheikh. Ruby silk edged with gold glimmered in the sunshine, clung in the faint breeze to her long legs.

  Fiona laughed, reached up to kiss the smooth-shaven cheek. ‘What you need, my love, is a wife. A very rich and doting wife. Would you like me to arrange one for you?’

  Toby smiled a little absently. ‘As a matter of fact that’s all in hand. I meant to tell you. What in hell’s name is that Rachel’s wearing?’ Faint irritation had sharpened his voice.

  Fiona was staring at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Rachel. Why the devil can’t she dress like a normal person?’

  ‘Not Rachel,’ Fiona said, carefully. ‘The wife. In hand? How in hand?’

  He brought his eyes to her face, stubbed the cigarette out briskly in an ashtray on the windowsill. ‘Oh, just that. I think I’ve found her. She’s rich. She seems amiable enough. And her father doesn’t care that I’m not exactly top drawer. Seems he scrambled out from a fairly insignificant drawer himself. Self-made man. Underscars. Heard of them?’

  Fiona, still regarding him, clear-eyed and thoughtful, considered for a moment. ‘Underscars. The chemist shops? That have started to sell these fancy electrical gadgets and things?’

  ‘That’s the one. I’ve been doing some legal work for him. The old man lost his sons in the war. There’s just one girl. Daphne.’

  ‘And – you’re going to marry her?’ Fiona’s voice, to her own surprise, held a slight acid edge.

  ‘Probably.’ He might have been discussing the price of fish for all the real interest shown in his voice. ‘If I suggest tennis to Rachel do you think I could persuade her into something civilized or will she insist on dressing like some character in a panto?’

  If she thought you really cared, Fiona found herself thinking, her understanding and sympathy for Rachel, as so often, surfacing at the most inappropriate of moments, she’d dress fit for Wimbledon’s centre court. She shrugged. ‘Who knows? Depends how she feels.’

  ‘That’s true. Never let it be said that our Rachel would ever allow other people’s preferences to interfere with her own.’ He walked to the door.

  ‘Dare I say hark who’s talking? Being brought up together has made you two more like brother and sister than any brother and sister I know. Wait for me. I’m going to use James’ bathroom. It’s much sunnier. Mine’s such a dark little hole.’ She sauntered to her dressing table, picked up a hair brush, a small perfume bottle, a box of powder.

  Toby turned and leaned against the door jamb, watching her, his bright eyes warm. They had been friends long before they had become lovers, and their affection for one another was genuine and based on more than the excitement and physical pleasure each afforded the other in their lovemaking. Fiona was one of the few women with whom he did not play-act. She knew him and accepted him for what he was. And if she did not always approve of his attitudes and actions – and he knew she did not – then neither did she condemn.

  ‘Oh, damn it – wait a minute – I’ve forgotten my comb.’

  Toby strolled into the corridor and stood rocking on his heels, hands in pockets as he waited, looking at the paintings that hung upon the long panelled wall of the landing. In a moment Fiona joined him. She stood beside him, her eyes, too, upon the pictures. A landscape lit with sunshine, a riot of flowers, the lucent glimmer of a brilliant sea had all been depicted with a loving eye and an undeniable talent. Fiona’s face was suddenly shadowed with sadness as she looked at them.

  ‘Madeira, isn’t it?’ Toby asked.

  ‘Yes. James’s eldest son Peter painted them. He loved the island. Well – they all do, of course, but he really adored it. He painted it often. He was very talented, as you can see.’

  ‘They’re certainly good. He copped it at Passchendaele, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. October ‘16. Ralph – the younger boy – survived that one but was lost at Verdun a year later.’ She shook her head. ‘What a waste. What a bloody waste!’

  A tragedy repeated, she knew, in homes and families throughout Europe. Fiona let her eyes move from picture to picture, trying as she so often did to imagine the young man who had painted them, straight and strong, the pride of her husband’s life, dead before he reached his twenty-first birthday. James rarely spoke of either boy, but knowing him as she did she guessed how he must have suffered from such a crippling blow. His family and his hopes for the future wiped out within one brutal year. Yet still, she had kept royally her part of the amicable bargain they had struck when they had married seven years before. James once again had boys in the Breckon Hall nursery, to carry his name and eventually to take on the responsibilities of Breckon Parva and of the family business. Yet she could not help but ask herself, occasionally, if he did not sometimes hanker for those two young men cut down so young in the fields of France and Flanders – the grim fields she had herself known all too well. Had she ever nursed those two? Often she had wondered. She never would have known. All different, yet – broken, shocked, half-drowned in mud – all so very much the same, she would have had no reason to remember them above the others.

  Toby was surveying the pictures, his fair head on one side. ‘Is it really as good as it looks?’

  She smiled a little. ‘Madeira? Yes, it is actually. It’s—’ she shrugged, spread her hands, ‘—just beautiful. Like an enormous, lovely garden.’

  They turned and strolled to the head of the curving staircase, stood for a moment leaning upon the magnificent sweep of banister looking into the hall below. ‘It’s an enchanting place.’ Fiona was smiling a little, her eyes warm, remembering. It had been during a visit to the island of Madeira that James Paget, nearly twenty years her senior, had in his own bluff and honest way courted and won her, initiating a marriage that in its own idiosyncratic way was as successful as any she knew.

  ‘The climate is virtually perfect – a tem
perate warmth all year round. It never gets too hot and it never gets too cold. It’s a kind of self-perpetuating paradise – the rain falls on the mountains, the water is carried down to the fertile ground around the coast, so it’s green and beautiful all year round. You can grow almost anything there. The sun shines almost all the time – it’s a magical place.’

  ‘Young Hugo Fellafield’s family runs that end of the business, don’t they?’ Toby had turned and was leaning against the banisters, his eyes once more upon the paintings.

  ‘Yes. The Fellafield estate is just outside Funchal – that’s where the cruise ships call, of course. In fact, it’s just about the only town of any size on the island. The Fellafield side of the partnership has always been rather more actively involved in the business than James’ family have.’

  Toby raised gentle eyebrows. ‘Gentlemen and players?’

  She grinned, easy and unembarrassed. ‘Something like that I suppose, to begin with. Though I doubt Spencer Fellafield would appreciate hearing either of us say so now. The two families have been in partnership for generations.’

  ‘The production and shipping of Madeira wine being counted a cut above common or garden trade?’

  ‘I suppose so, yes. And having the added charm of being a part of a truly lovely setting.’ Fiona moved forward again. ‘See – that’s Funchal, and the bay. This is the view from the grounds of the Quinta do Sol, the Fellafields’ place. It’s a wonderful old house. Hugo’s mother lives there virtually permanently. She’s created the most marvellous gardens around the house. She’s quite passionate about them.’

  ‘And rather less than passionate about her unbeguiling husband? That sounds like an eminently sensible lady,’ Toby interjected drily.

  Fiona flicked lightly at his arm with the towel she carried, then drew him towards another painting. ‘The Fellafields have owned the Quinta do Sol for over a hundred years, and of course because of the business connection between the two families, the Pagets have been involved with it for just as long. That’s how Peter came to paint these over the years. There, that’s it—’ she pointed to a small painting of an attractive, rambling, white painted house that was built into the slope of a green hillside, its tiers of windows flanked by dark green painted shutters, the almost pagoda-like roofs a warm terracotta against the canopies of the surrounding trees and the clear blue of the sky. Lawns, shrubberies and terraced flower beds sloped away from the paved garden that surrounded the house. Flowers were everywhere, overgrowing steps and walls and surrounding gleaming pools and streams, a riot of growth and colour. ‘It’s truly like that. One of the loveliest places I’ve ever seen.’ In the sunlit, musty corridor she was suddenly assailed by the evocative memory of a scent of mimosa upon mountain air, a diamond clarity of light, a glow of bougainvillaea in the warm dusk. She stood for a moment, lost in the recollection of it.