“Smoke? What sort of smoke?”
He chuckled then. “It’s what us Cockneys call London.”
She stared down at him critically. “I haven’t seen much of you on the estate.”
“I’m at school in the village all day.”
“How do you like it?”
“It’s all right. The village kids pick on me ’cos I’m little for my age, and I ain’t got no one to stick up for me.”
“That’s not nice.”
He looked up at her haughty little face, a face that looked so content with itself, so secure. “In case you haven’t noticed, people aren’t nice,” he said. “There’s a war on. Blokes are flying over London every night dropping bombs and not caring who they kill—women, children, old people . . . it don’t matter to them. I saw a baby after a bomb had gone off. Lying there in the street, looking as if there wasn’t a mark on it. And I went to pick it up, and it was stone-cold dead. And another time a woman ran down the street screaming, and all her clothes had been blown off in the blast, and do you know what she was screaming? She was screaming, ‘My little boy. He’s buried under all that rubble. Someone save my little boy.’”
Phoebe’s expression softened. “You were sensible to come here, away from the Smoke,” she said. “How old are you?”
“Eleven, almost twelve.”
“I just turned twelve,” she said proudly. “I was hoping they’d send me to school when I was thirteen, but I don’t think it will happen now. Not with a war on. My sisters went to school, lucky ducks.”
“You mean you haven’t been to school yet?”
“No. I’ve always had a governess. It’s so boring doing lessons alone. It was different for my sisters because they had each other, and they were naughty and played tricks on the governess. But I was an afterthought. Dido says I was an accident.”
“Who’s Dido?”
“My sister Diana. She’s nineteen. She’s furious about the war because she was supposed to come out last year.”
“Come out of what?”
Phoebe laughed, a rather fake and superior sort of ha-ha. “You don’t know anything, do you? Girls like us have a season and are presented at court. We go to dances and are supposed to find a husband. But Dido’s been stuck here instead, dying of boredom. The older ones all had their season.”
“And got married?”
“Livvy did. But she was always the good child, Dido says. She married boring Edmund Carrington and she’s already produced the heir.”
“Air?” Alfie asked, making her laugh again.
“Not that sort of air. I mean she’s had the required son to inherit the title one day. Our parents couldn’t manage a son, which means Farleigh will go to some remote cousin when Pah dies, and we’ll all be turned out into the snow, Dido says. But I think she was teasing. Things like that don’t happen these days, do they? Especially with a war on.”
She paused while Alfie digested this information, then continued, “But the others didn’t quite obey the rules, much to Pah’s fury. Margot went to France to study fashion in Paris and met a handsome Frenchman. She wouldn’t leave when she had a chance, and now she’s trapped in Paris, and we don’t know what has happened to her. And Pamma—well, she’s really nice and very clever. She wanted to go to university, but Pah said it was a waste of time educating women. I think she had someone she wanted to marry, but he went into the RAF, and he was shot down, and he’s in a prison camp in Germany. So it’s all rather sad, isn’t it? This horrid war spoiling everybody’s lives.”
Alfie nodded. “My dad’s with the army in North Africa,” he said. “We hardly ever hear from him, and when we do, it’s a tiny little bit of paper with most of the words blacked out by the censor. Mum cried the last time one came.”
Alfie was getting out of breath, walking fast to keep up with the pony and talking at the same time as they crossed the soft grass of the parkland, went through a stand of trees, and came to the edge of the formal gardens. There were still perfect rows of rosebushes and herbaceous borders, but the flower beds were now overgrown, and the roses hadn’t been pruned. To one side, the lawn had been dug up and turned into another kitchen garden. And beyond them, where the forecourt had once allowed carriages to draw up, there were rows of camouflaged army vehicles.
Alfie hardly ever came this close to the big house. He stared at it now in wonder. He’d been taken to Buckingham Palace once, but this was just as big and imposing. It was built of solid grey stone, was three stories high, and the roof was adorned with towers at both ends. Two wings came out from the front to create the shape of an E with the imposing central entry making the middle bar of the letter. The pillars at this central entrance supported a pediment adorned with classical figures engaged in a battle. The impression of grandeur was marred, however, by a group of soldiers, sauntering down the marble steps, laughing and smoking. More soldiers were standing around army vehicles of various shapes and sizes, and from the other side of the house sounded the tramp of boots and shouts of drill sergeants as the ranks were put through morning parade.
Two officers approached, walking toward them. “Hello, young lady, going out for a ride, are you?” one of them said affably.
“I’ve already been, thank you,” Phoebe said primly. “We’re just taking my pony back to the stables.”
She looked down at Alfie as soon as they were past the soldiers. “Don’t mention to my father that I was out riding alone. He’d be furious. I’m not supposed to go out without the groom. But that’s so silly, isn’t it? I’m a perfectly good rider, and the groom is getting old and doesn’t like to gallop.”
Alfie nodded. Now that he was close to the big house, his stomach had tied itself in knots. He remembered too clearly the day he had arrived here. When he had first come by train from the Smoke, as he called it, he had been a pathetic-looking little specimen—scrawny and small for his age, wearing short trousers one size too big, revealing skinny knees covered in scabs. His nose was running, and he wiped it with the back of his hand, leaving a trail of snot across his cheek. No wonder he had been the last of the evacuated children to find someone willing to take him in. In the end, the billeting officer, Miss Hemp-Hatchett, local justice of the peace and Girl Guide captain, had put him in the back of her Morris and driven him to Farleigh.
“You’ll have to have him, Lady Westerham,” she had said in the voice that made generations of Girl Guides snap to attention. “There is simply nobody else, and you do have a bigger place than the rest of us.”
Then she had departed, leaving the boy standing there, staring in awe at the marble foyer with its weapons and portraits of ancestors glaring down at him with looks of distaste.
“Damned blasted cheek,” Lord Westerham exploded when Lady Westerham came to report this to him. “Who does the bloody woman think she is, bossing us around? Where do these damned people think we’re going to put the brat? We’ve already had two-thirds of our house taken from us by the army. We’re reduced to one bally wing, and a damned inconvenient wing it is, too. Does she think I’m going to put a child from the London slums on a camp bed in my bedroom? Or should he bunk in with one of our daughters?”
“Don’t shout, Roddy,” Lady Westerham said in her calm way, after thirty years, accustomed to her husband’s outbursts. “It makes your eyes bulge most unpleasantly. There is a war on. We have to do our bit, and it must seem to most people that we have more than our fair share.”
“So we’re supposed to have a slum child given free rein of our house? Running around pinching the silver, I shouldn’t wonder. It’s not on, Esme. It’s simply not on. How am I to enjoy a gin and tonic in my study, never knowing whether I’m going to be interrupted by a Cockney child? Tell that Hemp-whatsit woman that we won’t do it, and that’s that.”