‘Hugh, don’t be unkind,’ Delphine admonished, but Beatrice would simply take the letter, snatch up her schoolbag and slip out of the door, hardly muttering goodbye. How she ever managed to reach Carlyon on a letter day without falling over the cliff on the way, was a wonder, so deep would she be in Rafe’s scrawled pages.
He was an amusing, if irregular correspondent, the letters full of dramatic accounts of rugby matches and practical jokes, but sometimes there were serious, even tender comments, too.
Sturton is much missed, one early letter said. He was our best prop forward by a mile and he made us laugh and didn’t mind being the butt. No one can believe he’s gone. Some days I hate myself for I still think I’m to blame.
After the arrival of a precious letter, Bea had to force herself not to immediately post a reply. She felt she shouldn’t seem too eager. Angie’s tuition had its uses. ‘You should always make boys wait, Mummy says.’ Angie was showing by example. She’d had several passionate letters from the young man she’d met in Scotland, and these she read out to Beatrice, rolling her eyes and clutching her chest mockingly. Beatrice laughed despite herself, but she disapproved of Angie taking ages to scrawl a couple of lines of reply or sometimes sending nothing at all.
‘You’re so cruel. Someone should tell him you don’t care,’ Beatrice said. She vowed never to read Rafe’s out to Angie.
The Scottish boy’s letters grew plaintive, then ceased.
Chapter 9
Cornwall, April 2011
‘At the beginning of 1938,’ Mrs Ashton told Lucy, as they finished the lunch Mrs P. had prepared for them, ‘the news was full of Hitler’s calumnies, but in this house most of the conversation was about my future. Two things finally put my parents off choosing the same route for me as Angelina. One was the uncertainty of the situation in Europe. Many girls went abroad anyway, but my parents were a fearful sort. Even in peaceful times they would have worried. Adolf Hitler provided a useful excuse.
‘The second concerned a visit from our governess, Miss Simpkins. She felt passionately that my schooling should continue beyond the summer. I was extremely able, she told them, and it would be a waste to give up now. My parents discussed the various options endlessly above my head. As ever, the main obstacle to any ambition was lack of funds. Finally, my father agreed once more to swallow his pride and write to his father on the matter.
‘To his amazement, my grandfather replied with a generous offer. They would pay the fees for me to attend a reputable boarding school for girls near their home in Gloucestershire. It would mean spending my exeat weekends with them, but they were happy to receive me, and I would go home for the long holidays. And so it was settled. There was the small matter of an entrance test, of course, but somehow, with Miss Simpkins’s help, I muddled my way through that and was offered a place to start the following September, just before I turned sixteen.’
Lucy asked: ‘Didn’t you mind that you weren’t going to Paris and London?’
‘You might be surprised, but no. I wanted to see those places, but in the end, I didn’t think I’d be good at being finished and then all the fuss, people staring at me and whispering about my looks and my background, how much money my father had, that sort of thing. I knew I’d be found wanting on all of these fronts. And part of my mind was now always on Rafe. I liked to think of him studying at Oxford, and me being a few miles away at school, studying too. I tried not to think of his tales of bullying and petty cruelty, and thought that was probably just boys for you. It might seem hopelessly unrealistic to a modern girl like you, but I really believed that we were meant for one another and that we’d be together one day. When he was ready I would be there waiting for him. I just knew, Lucy. I loved him so much it hurt.’
Lucy smiled. ‘I’ve never felt that way about anybody,’ she said. ‘Boys came and went when I was in my teens. None ever made me think, This is the guy I’ll be with for ever.’
‘Quite. But I’d had such a protected childhood. I existed in a cocoon, wrapped in daydreams. It’s dangerous to be too much alone with an imagination.
‘The last summer term of tuition at Carlyon was a queer one. Miss Simpkins, whilst doing her duty by little Hetty, turned most of her attentions to me, to prepare me for school. Angie drifted through our lessons, making little effort. She was bored with the schoolroom, bored with being treated as a child. Anyone could see that. She talked endlessly about September. The school she’d be going to in Paris, the other girls who might be there. Who might chaperone them on the journey. And there was great excitement when a letter arrived from Lady Hamilton offering to present Angie at court in the 1939 season.