cover

Contents

Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Title Page
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Copyright

About the Author

Audrey Reimann was brought up in Macclesfield where she was educated at the Macclesfield Grammar School for Girls. She and her husband now live in East Lothian.

Audrey has three children and is the proud grandmother of ten, and has been variously a bank clerk, a nurse, a teacher and a foster mother to twenty-five. But, above all, Audrey is a storyteller. Recently, on Anne Robinson’s BBC Two programme ‘My Life in Books’, comedian Sarah Millican named Audrey’s novel Flora’s War as one of her favourite books, saying: ‘This is a book that will make you laugh and make you cry.’

About the Book

Dare she risk her reputation?

When the orphaned Flora MacDonald escapes from a harsh reform school she falls – literally – into the arms of Andrew Stewart, a handsome sailor on shore leave. But their blossoming love is interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War.

With Andrew away fighting, Flora finds herself in an impossible situation: alone and pregnant. Out of desperation, she travels to Andrew’s country estate, but she doesn’t know how kindly his well-to-do family will welcome her in. Will she find a home where she can raise a child?

title page for Flora’s war

Prologue

1961

It was a tranquil Scottish summer evening and the swans, gliding upriver in regal formation, seemed oblivious of the rotting body of a man that floated, grey and bloated, face down in the reeds.

Above the watershed where the River Esk gushes into the bay of the Firth of Forth, high tides bring flotsam, fishing nets and lobster pots upstream. A fisherman’s lad who daily scavenged the banks was the first to spot the clothed corpse swirling slowly, one bare purple foot caught under a piece of driftwood. The lad’s father had said that there was a reward of five pounds for a body found at sea. That would buy a transistor radio. He ran swiftly up the bank, over the ancient stone bridge and past the church until he reached the police station.

‘I’ve found a dead body,’ he gasped. ‘My dad says it’s five pounds.’

The sergeant leaned across the high wooden counter. ‘Dead body? Where?’

‘Under the Roman bridge.’ The boy took a deep breath. ‘I’m first, if there’s a reward.’

Half an hour later the sergeant rang through to Edinburgh and demanded to be put through to Chief Inspector Andrew Stewart.

From the window of his office in Royal Terrace, Chief Inspector Andrew Stewart had a good view of the high craggy ridge of Arthur’s Seat, the 1,000-foot extinct volcanic mountain that rises in Queen’s Park in the centre of the city. The phone rang.

‘Answer it, Jenny,’ he said over his shoulder to his secretary.

He continued to scan the park where tomorrow, on his day off, he’d run to the summit of the mountain and see the whole city laid out at his feet, the castle on its rock, and below it the little graveyard where still stood the weeping willow under which as a young man he’d plighted his troth.

From the top, on a clear day, he’d see the three giant iron cobwebs of the Forth Bridge, the foothills of the Trossachs and, turning full south, the border country. But today he was looking for anything unusual. He’d have to rid himself of this habit of looking for trouble if he were to leave the police force. He’d had fifteen good years and could retire in another five, but was starting to think that perhaps now was the time for a change of direction. He was forty-one; not too old to make a new start, to buy a few acres of fertile East Lothian coastal land, build a house, look for a wife and hope for children. He should wind down, limit himself to civil work, and not get involved in anything exciting.

Behind him Jenny said, ‘It’s the sergeant at Musselburgh station.’

‘All right.’ He walked over to the desk and took the handset from her to hear the sergeant saying, ‘Chief Inspector, sir? We’ve just pulled a body out of the River Esk. I think it’s your old commander.’

This was the last thing Andrew wanted – the frisson of excitement that came when the song in his ears was different from the tune being played in the investigative area of his mind. He often thought in musical metaphors, for he was a good singer and a fair pianist. He rumpled thick dark hair that was greying at the temples and said sharply into the mouthpiece, ‘Who else could it be?’ and after a few seconds, ‘No. His wife must identify him. Is he in the mortuary?’

While he listened, Andrew glanced at his desk, where the lead story on the local paper read:

The sea search for Sir Gordon Campbell of Ingersley has been called off. Sir Gordon sailed out of North Berwick harbour at high tide on 15 June in perfect sailing conditions. His empty yacht drifted ashore the following day but there have been no sightings and there is little hope now of finding the wartime naval captain alive.

Lady Campbell, well-known local figure, JP and school governor, told reporters that her husband was being treated for depression. He had never recovered from the loss at sea of his son Robert, who went missing, presumed drowned, off the coast of San Francisco three years ago. It is looking increasingly likely that our foremost local family has once again been struck by tragedy.

Andrew knew all about the misfortunes and tragedies of the Campbell family, for he had been born and brought up on their Ingersley estate. The sergeant’s words came faintly over the crackling line. ‘He’s in our mortuary. It looks as if he capsized and drowned.’

Sir Gordon Campbell had captained a county-class cruiser in the Mediterranean from 1940 throughout the war. How could he capsize a small yacht on a night when a child could have set a straight course over the Forth? Andrew said, ‘The fiscal deputy’s been called? And the pathologist? Photography crew? This is a suspicious death.’ He put down the phone.

Outside, his metallic gold Ford Zephyr was parked in front of the soot-blackened building. He liked this car. It was big enough to accommodate his long legs and fast enough to cover the twenty-five miles to Ingersley in under an hour. He would break the news to Lady Campbell before she heard it from anyone else. She must identify the body immediately – if she could; the facial features on a body that had been submerged for three weeks were usually unrecognisable. He turned the car towards Abbey Hill and took the low road, through Queen’s Park, past Holyrood Palace towards Duddingston Loch and out on to the highway, heading for his old home at Ingersley. And as he went his normally alert, watchful expression gave way to a wry smile. This was the first time in his life that he had volunteered for the job that all policemen try to avoid – breaking the news of a man’s death to his wife. He wanted to see her immediate reaction, though he did not expect Lady Campbell to shed a single tear over the man to whom Andrew himself owed so much.

As a boy he had hero-worshipped Sir Gordon Campbell, the master of Ingersley, though the young baron represented everything his youthful heart rebelled against; the Scottish system of feudal land rights where a few aristocrats, dukes and lords own vast estates. Land parcels are leased annually to tenant farmers who can only rent and never own the land they work. He also hated the knee-bending and forelock-tugging that went with privilege. But Sir Gordon, the most honourable man Andrew had ever known, was contemptuous of privilege and had inspired every young man whose life crossed his own.

Chapter One

Early August 1936

Sir Gordon Campbell, the youngest Justice of the Peace in the county, glanced through the window of Haddington courtroom as the boys were led in. It was a perfect day for sailing, with a light breeze ruffling the leaves on the aspen trees outside. He was thirty-seven, tall, sandy-haired, and had the keen, steady blue eyes of a seafaring man. He hated the civic duties that had fallen to him three years before, on his father’s death. Three years he had been away from the sea and his life as a commander in the Royal Navy; three years of trying to adjust to the duties of landowner and master of an estate that, since the catastrophic stock market crash of 1933, was all but bankrupt.

He had spent a soul-destroying morning here, sending to reformatories juveniles who showed any spark, any inkling of hope for reform. He’d also sent to prison the likes of the boys who stood before him now: four street urchins, the eldest of whom was fourteen, the youngest twelve; not related, all from big families yet none of them had a father present in court. And without a father to plead for them and accept responsibility for their good behaviour, there was nothing Gordon could do about it. Prison was the only punishment for robbery.

He had no children himself, but was mindful of the fact that had any one of the four boy children Elizabeth had miscarried come to term, that son might almost have been the age of the boys who stood before him, dirty, frightened and hostile.

Gordon said gravely, ‘You leave me no other course but to sentence you to six months’ detention.’ The eldest boy would go to prison; the others to a reformatory. ‘Have you anything to say?’

‘No,’ said one.

The sheriff’s officer barked, ‘No? No, what? How do you address the magistrate?’ With surly reluctance the boys said in unison, ‘No, Your Honour,’ before they were led away. Gordon signed the order, passed it to the clerk and asked, ‘How many more?’

Before he could answer there came from the waiting room next door the sound of a girl singing: ‘Speed, bonny boat, like a bird on the wing. Onward! The sailors cry. Carry the lad that’s born to be King. Over the sea, to Skye . . .’

Her voice soared, high and sweet, only to be silenced by the sheriff’s officer, who left the courtroom bristling with indignation. Gordon heard him roaring, ‘Wheest, lass! Ye’re here to be sentenced. Show some respect.’

The girl replied, ‘There’s nobody here. What harm is there …?’

‘They can hear you in court.’ The officer slammed the door.

There was silence again. Gordon repeated, ‘How many more?’

‘Just the girl, sir.’

Gordon nodded as the clerk gave him the papers to read before she was sent in. No doubt it would be another sorry tale of neglect and misfortune. If he dealt with her quickly he could be home in half an hour and by three o’clock out on the Forth estuary, with the wind carrying him fast over the water to Fife. He read. She was a twelve-year-old orphan, brought up by her grandmother on a small tenanted farm, close to his own Ingersley estate. Her mother had died giving birth to her, and her father shortly afterwards. Her name was Flora Macdonald. Here, at last, he smiled. Imagine giving a commoner’s lass the name of one of Scotland’s heroines. Did she know she bore the name of Lady Flora Macdonald who rowed Bonnie Prince Charlie over the sea to Skye? He remembered her sweet voice, ‘Speed, bonny boat, like a bird on the wing …’ and read on.

In the waiting room Flora sat very still, though inside she was shaking. She must not let the sheriff’s officer see how afraid she was. She had sung a few moments ago to give herself courage – and tried to imagine how much more courage had been needed by her namesake. But Lady Flora Macdonald had had a chance of escape, and Flora had none.

She adjusted her navy-blue beret over blazing coppery hair that fell in soft curls to her shoulders. To calm herself she closed eyes that were the liquid green of a deep, troubled sea and fringed with dark lashes that were damp with held-back tears. Biting her trembling lip, she tried to summon up the courage that Gran had instilled in her, and tried to remember Gran’s advice, but all that came to her was the knowledge that her life had changed irrevocably on that February afternoon, five months before.

It was almost dark at four o’clock and Gran was nowhere to be seen when Flora came home from school. The fire was blazing and Flora’s stomach rumbled in anticipation as the aroma of simmering leek and lentil soup wafted up from the back of the stove. The jiggling of the lid on the long-handled iron pot told her that Gran had made cloutie dumpling as a winter’s treat.

Flora, wearing a knitted brown hat and herringbone tweed overcoat against the freezing February chill, went to the door and smiled at the sight before her. Gran, careless of the hard frozen ground and the foot-long spears of ice that hung inches above her head from the eaves of the old pig sties, had no coat on. She was wearing a voluminous brown corduroy skirt, patched and pocketed, that reached to her boot tops. Over it she wore a thick jumper knitted in random stripes and random thicknesses of wool spun from her own fleeces, while on her head she sported a crocheted purple bonnet.

Gran was stomping squarely towards the vegetable patch waving her stick at ‘they drat sheep’, as she called the twelve blackface ewes who escaped from their field practically every day.

‘Gran, I’m coming.’ Flora grabbed a walking stick from the porch and ran down the yard. She reached Gran as the little flock of twelve sheep bunched together, ready to run across the cabbages.

Gran shouted, ‘Over yon …’ her breath freezing into a white vapour cloud about her dear old face.

Flora leaped to narrow the gap between the sheep and the cabbage patch. Sheep always made for the widest opening. The secret was to keep closing in, narrowing the way you didn’t want them to take. They worked the flock in harmony, Gran shouting instructions, Flora running like a sheepdog under the darkening sky. She jumped, gawky but agile as a young deer, over tall Brussels sprout plants, the cold air hurting the back of her throat as she herded and urged the animals forward. Gran ran behind the flock until the leading sheep went, dashing for the gap in the hawthorn hedge.

‘Go on by!’ Gran shook her stick again as the last panicking ewe shoved its way through the hedge. Then she leaned, heavy and unsteady, on the loose fence post, getting her breath back.

‘Shouldn’t we put them in the barn, Gran?’ Flora asked. ‘They’ll be coming in for lambing in a couple of weeks.’

‘No. Best keep them oot o’doors till their time. They’ll stop escaping then. They won’t be running in a flock when they have lambs at foot.’ Gran dived into her skirt pocket for twine and scissors and on her knees in the dead, frosty grass began to repair the wire netting whose rusty, weakened state was the reason for the sheep’s daily excursions.

Flora said, ‘I hope we don’t lose any ewes this year.’

‘But you like your pet lambs,’ Gran said, smiling. Her breath was a white plume in the frosty air. ‘You want to go on bottle-feeding them long after the others are weaned.’

‘I feel as if I’m their mother,’ Flora said. ‘You’d think that if a ewe died, then another one who’d lost a lamb would take it on, wouldn’t you?’ Ewes whose lambs were born dead would bleat plaintively for days, and yet they would not foster a dead ewe’s lamb but would kick out at and attack the orphan lambs who needed mother’s milk.

‘Aye. You’d think. But it’s a rare female of any species that will adopt a suckling.’ Gran pulled hard on the twine to bring two rusty squares together and tied them firmly. ‘It’s nature’s way. It’s all to do with the secretions they call hormones. It’s the protective instinct and it comes with the birth. Same wi’ women and their bairns. Women can be cruel to a bairn that’s not their flesh and blood. I never knew a woman who loved an orphan like her ain.’

Flora said, ‘You weren’t cruel to me. I was an orphan lamb.’

Gran smiled her crooked old smile. ‘Ye felt like me ain bairn. I liked the smell of ye. And the feel and the sound o’ ye.’

Flora stood for a few seconds stamping her booted feet on the hard ground, banging her bare hands together before saying quietly, ‘Some of them have already left, Gran. Gone on to half-time work; the girls into service, the lads in the fields. It’ll be me come summer.’

‘You want to stay on, don’t you?’ Gran’s face was a picture of regret as she looked up at Flora.

‘It’s not school. I’ll miss my singing lessons if I go into service.’

Gran’s arthritic fingers were blue with cold as she tried to hold the twine that was catching on the stabbing spines of the hawthorn. ‘It’s a shame there was no money to buy a piano and have you taught.’

‘I am being taught, Gran.’ One term of ten piano lessons cost two guineas from Miss Whitehead in the village. One term was all they could afford, and without a piano there was no chance of practising, but Flora now knew the basics of notation, and instead of playing she sang operatic arias to Miss Whitehead’s accompaniment.

So well did she sing that Miss Whitehead gave her an hour’s free tutoring every week, firing her up with enthusiasm, saying, ‘You’ve got the finest soprano voice I ever heard,’ and promising that when she was eighteen she’d get her into a choir or an operatic society.

Flora said, ‘I’ll have to leave before I’m fourteen anyway. We can go part-time from thirteen. But I don’t want to go into service. They keep you in. I hate being kept in.’ In fact she had a horror of being shut in anywhere. She had told nobody about the suffocating panic that came over her in crowded places, the fear of closed doors and small spaces, and the wariness if other people stood between herself and the nearest way out. She said, ‘I’d have to live in and I don’t want to leave you.’

‘Then dinnae.’ Gran winced as a spine stabbed into her thumb. ‘You never know what might happen, lass, if you keep in mind what it is you want. Do as I did. Have courage.’ Gran sucked her thumb hard before going back to her task.

Gran told tales on winter nights of her young life, for she’d been brought up on one of the grand ducal estates where whole families served as housemaids, farm workers, ghillies, shoemakers, wheelwrights and skilled craftsmen. The large estates had their own schools and churches, and the practising faith of the landed family they served became the faith of the estate workers. Gran had seen it as a form of slavery. It was an enclosed life and servant families had little contact with the wider outside world. Gran, like Flora, had been a painfully shy child who was given to occasional outbursts of bravery or rebellion. ‘Besides,’ she once said in a rare attempt at explaining her own actions, ‘we Scots dinnae forget old alliances and allegiance, nor oor enemies. The family I worked for was a branch of the Campbells and I’m a Macdonald.’

Flora had said, ‘I think you were brave to run away.’

‘Aye,’ Gran went on. ‘Watch your back when a Campbell comes offering friendship. I ran away at fifteen when I was told the history of the massacre at Glencoe.’ She cackled with laughter. ‘Sounds silly, I ken. But I had five years of working life on the estate behind me and I’d had enough.’

Gran had climbed the wall and run away to find work on a little hill farm where, later, she married the old farmer. After he died, leaving her with a son to rear, Gran carried on – as she was doing still, fifty years after her small rebellion.

‘I want to help.’ Flora squatted down and said, ‘Let me do that.’ Gran waved her away. ‘Don’t dirty your school clothes, lass. I’m nearly done.’

Flora stood. ‘I’ve been a burden to you, haven’t I?’

Gran said softly, ‘You’re my pride and joy. I lost my son and your mother. And I never want to lose you. My own flesh and blood.’

Gran had never said anything like that before. What she usually said was that blood was thicker than water and families must cling together.

‘I want to make your life easier,’ Flora said. ‘But if I don’t earn money I can’t help. And if I go into service I’ll never be a singer. You only get Sunday afternoons off at the big house.’

Gran stopped twining the netting. ‘There’s plenty work here. Ye’ll be a help. No regular money, mind, but you can keep on with Miss Whitehead. Tell those teachers that they can’t force you.’

‘Can’t they?’

Gran was breathless from her exertions. She stopped twining for a minute and looked at Flora, her eyes full of sadness. ‘I worry about you, lass. You cannae go through life being obedient. There’s plenty will tell ye what to do. Plenty as’ll give orders. You need courage to make your ain choices.’ She went back to her task, saying, ‘It’s dark. Run back. Set the table. I’ll be nae mair than ten minutes.’

Gran didn’t come back. A sobbing Flora found her, lying still and cold, the twine in her clawed hand where she had clutched it to her chest in the last agonising throes of what the doctor said was a massive seizure.

And Gran’s advice could not be taken. Flora had no choice. The few acres of farmland and their cottage were rented and she was too young to have charge of an agricultural tenancy. The land reverted to the master of the estate and after that the authorities took care of everything. They sold Gran’s sheep and hens. They sold her furniture, they emptied her penny bank savings book, to pay for the burial. And then they sold Flora, or so she believed.

Here in the waiting room at the Haddington courtroom she could have cried thinking about what had become of her. She had never done wrong in her life until they – the authorities – had told her they had no choice but to place her with an ironmonger as part-time schoolgirl and maid-of-all-work.

No girl would have stayed with that disgusting old man, who demanded that she went to school only two days a week and on the other days worked in his shop from morning until night. One night he tried to creep into her bed, saying she should not have left her bedroom door ajar, in invitation. Where was the justice in being brought before the court for running away from such a man?

Gordon looked sternly at the girl in front of him. She’d be a real Scottish beauty one day; she had the height and colouring and a proud way of holding herself, standing before him with shoulders back and chin held high. He said, ‘Do you know that vagrancy is a criminal offence? You were found sleeping on a park bench. We cannot have young people living rough on our streets. Why did you run away, Flora?’

The girl made no answer. She was fighting back tears, biting her full lower lip. He said, more gently this time, ‘If you have anything to say in explanation, then you must do so now.’ He waited a few seconds. Then, ‘Are you prepared to return to your employer? I see that he is willing to take you back.’

‘I’m not going back to that old devil …’ she began agitatedly.

‘Respect the rules of the court,’ the court officer said. ‘Address your replies to “Your Honour”.’

Gordon knew that if he were to speak to her in a fatherly way – and this course was open to him, the lass might tell him what had gone wrong. But even if he did, there was no alternative employment he could offer. She had no parents and no home. He must find a safe place for her. Didn’t she know that there were dole queues at every labour exchange and that skilled men, too proud to sign on for help, walked miles from the villages to Leith Docks, desperate to get a few hours’ work so they could feed their families? The girl was lucky to have employment and a roof over her head. Three years of administering justice to juveniles had taught him that no matter what one did with a girl who preferred life on the streets to respectable employment, once on the downward path, in no time at all she’d be in the gutter.

He said, ‘You should be receiving an education. I think it is best that we send you to the industrial school.’

‘Don’t send me to the reformatory.’

Before she could be reprimanded again, Gordon said, ‘Dr Guthrie’s has a fine reputation for reclaiming wayward Christian souls. You will have daily lessons and be trained for a life in domestic service or laundry work. You’ll be fed, clothed, housed and obliged to attend church. I am giving you a chance. Two years in Dr Guthrie’s establishment will make an honest girl of you.’

Flora drew in breath very sharply, her shoulders sagged, and with tears streaming down her face and her self-control broken she said, ‘I am honest. I’ve done nothing wrong. I can work. Don’t lock me up, sir. Give me another chance. Please … Please … your Honour.’

Tears made Gordon feel inadequate. He could not deal with emotional women or girls and he never again wanted to pass sentence on youngsters. Most of the children he had dealt with today would not be in court if they had good homes; fathers to guide and protect them. He looked kindly at the orphan girl who stood, terrified, before him, and said, ‘I wish there were more I could do for you.’ Then he nodded to the court officer, who took her by the arm and led her away.

At the Ingersley estate’s South Lodge, Andrew Stewart, seventeen years old and built like a man twice his age, lay asleep in bed. He was six foot four, with laughing brown eyes, dark curly hair and a wide, firm mouth that broke into a smile as Ma came to his room to wake him before she went to work in the big kitchen.

‘Five o’clock, Andrew.’ She drew back the curtain and tripped over the Sherlock Holmes novel that was on the floor. ‘What a laddie,’ she laughed. ‘Isn’t farming enough? You don’t still want to be a detective?’

Andrew put a tanned arm across his eyes to shut out the light. ‘All right, Ma.’ He’d have another five minutes. He didn’t have to be at the field until six.

Ma said, ‘If you want something hot, I’ll be cooking for the men up at Ingersley. But there’s bread and cheese and hard-boiled eggs.’

Andrew owed his strong body to three years’ labouring and his robust constitution to Ma’s cooking of the good, plentiful food that came from the estate farm, Ingersley Mains. The estate farms of the great houses in this part of Scotland traditionally took the name of the estate followed by ‘Mains’, just as their counterparts elsewhere would be known as ‘Home Farm’. Andrew’s ma was employed as cook for Ingersley House, not Ingersley Mains, which was run by a manager, but she helped out at hay-making and harvest, cooking for the hired men.

Now Andrew sat up and pulled a pained expression to make Ma smile. She was forty years old, the best little mother a lad could have, the widow of a fisherman Andrew hardly remembered – and here she was at five o’clock in the morning, her brown eyes clear and bright and her pretty face cheerful as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Other women would be worn down with the amount of work Ma tackled, for she had only two kitchen maids to help her cook for the Campbell family, visitors and staff.

He pulled the sheet up to cover his broad, hairy nakedness, because Ma thought it more seemly for a young man to wear a nightshirt. Then he grinned. ‘You work too hard. The Campbells ought to get more staff.’

Ma would be doing all the cooking for the next several weeks, while a gang of itinerant Irish reapers were crammed ten to a room in the nearly derelict Dower House. She was up at five o’clock, making breakfast for twenty hungry men and toiling to keep up the high standards of the dining room. And all for a pittance and the rent-free house. Andrew wanted an easier life for his ma.

Ma said, ‘We manage, son. Their money’s all gone. I don’t mind any of it. I’m used to hard work.’ She was still smiling as she added, ‘Don’t fall asleep again. I’m off.’ He heard her going down the oak stairs, her shoes clattering on the tiles in the hallway.

Andrew wanted to get Ma out of here, wanted independence for them, but he’d never earn enough as a farm labourer. And he had a terrible pride in his own worth. If he worked himself to death it would not be as anyone’s paid hand. It would be because the land he worked belonged to him. A man could raise a family and have a happy, satisfying life if he emigrated to Canada where virgin land was being given away to those who were prepared to clear and work it. Ma would not do it. She said he’d marry, and why would a wife want her mother in-law living with them? Besides, she said, she would not leave because ‘I belong here. We have a roof over our heads and work to do. Many haven’t. And since young Lady Campbell’s accident, they need me.’ Sir Gordon’s wife had been thrown from her horse a few months ago.

Andrew pointed it out to her. He said, ‘The Campbells give us work, and a roof over our heads, but they don’t own us body and soul.’

‘They own our time if they pay our wages. I never had much schooling. I wasn’t trained for anything. If we didn’t have the Campbells we’d have nothing.’ Ma, exasperated when he talked this way, would add, ‘Know your place, Andrew. Show respect.’

He’d answer, ‘I have self-respect. I won’t be subservient.’

Ma said, ‘Nobody’s subservient now. The old order went with his father’s death.’

This was true. Gone with the loss of their wealth and the death of Sir Gordon’s father was an army of servants and a whole way of life for many families who’d been employed on the estate. Ma would remind him, ‘the Commander’ – though he’d left the sea three years ago, Sir Gordon was still referred to by his naval title – ‘says the workers are worthy of their hire. He said it when his father died. The Commander said, “My wife and I do not expect servitude. Respect, yes. You for us and us for you.” That would never have been said by his father.’

‘Aye! When they sacked the workers they had enough money to have gas and electricity brought here. That saved them a good few wages. No lamps to trim every day. A big gas cooking range.’

Ma ignored this. She said, ‘And Lady Campbell – look what she’s done for the servants. She gives us a full day off every week. And she’s put a piano in the servants’ hall.’

‘Aye. An old one that’s not been tuned for years and can only be played after nine o’clock at night if the work’s all done.’ All the same, he acknowledged, the new order, espoused by the Commander and Lady Campbell, had led to a relaxing of the old master-and-servant system. Lady Campbell, before the riding accident that had fractured her skull and nearly blinded her, had given hours of her time to teach Andrew chords on the piano and show him how to read music. But though Sir Gordon Campbell talked in naval terms of all hands on deck and pulling together, he, the Commander, was still master and Andrew and Ma were servants. The old order was that servants who didn’t toe the line could be turfed off the estate, thrown out of their tied cottages. The three-year-old new order had not yet been tested by Andrew or Ma.

Ma never stepped out of line. Ma was dutiful and loyal, and when Lady Campbell’s younger sister Ruth made ever more demands of her, she said no more to Andrew than, ‘She has a right to ask.’ And once, ‘She’s not as gentle and soft as her sister. Lady Campbell’s a stricken woman. Ruth Bickerstaffe has determination. It’s what her ladyship needs.’ Ruth Bickerstaffe, though only twenty-seven, was driven, Andrew sensed, by a thirst for power, not sisterly love. He had seen how she whipped her horse. Andrew would not trust Ruth Bickerstaffe with an animal, let alone her invalid sister. But he would not upset Ma by giving his private opinion of their bosses.

It was half past five when he woke again. He threw himself out of bed, put on his vest and moleskin working trousers and tied the laces of his work boots tight about the trouser bottoms, so no seeds or tiny thunder-bugs could get inside his socks and irritate his feet.

Into his pockets he stuffed cheese and hard-boiled eggs and he ate his bread on the run. The labourers were not allowed to cut across the park but he would not be seen and it would save a few minutes. The sun warmed his face, the air was clean, cool and invigorating and the dewy grass squeaked under his boots as he ran swiftly and quietly around the great beeches, elms, oaks and ornamental trees of the parkland. It was good to be young and alive and have the blood singing through his veins on such a morning. So that nobody would know he’d overslept again, he would cut round the back of the dairy cottages and hop over the beech hedge on to the track. He might even arrive before the Irish gang came up after breakfast.

He was there. He slowed to a walk, hidden by the herd of Jersey cows that were lowing softly in the holding yard, waiting their turn to be milked. He crept past the milking parlours, bent double so the milkers wouldn’t see him, and round behind the empty, swilled-out dairy where the milk would be brought in half an hour. Suddenly, to his alarm, he saw Mike Hamilton, the manager of Ingersley Mains, come out of the front door of his farmhouse, which faced the dairy buildings. Andrew had not been seen. He pressed his back against the wall until Mike Hamilton went into the dairy. He’d be checking that everything was in order, hoping to catch some poor beggars and dock their wages for an infringement of his endlessly revised rule book. Andrew himself could lose a morning’s pay if he were late.

He flattened himself against the wall and sidled towards the open door. If he could get past Hamilton’s gimlet eyes, he’d make a dash for it across the doorway to the beech hedge barely thirty yards away. He edged closer, and then he heard them – Hamilton and Lady Campbell’s sister, Ruth.

It was cool and dark in the dairy with the shutters closed against the early sunlight. Ruth Bickerstaffe waited, a few feet back from the door, her small hands clenched into fists in the pockets of the long brown cardigan she wore over a silk shirt that was tucked firmly into riding breeches. Her bobbed golden hair fell in soft waves across her heart-shaped face and the pupils of her round blue eyes dilated as they adjusted to the darkness. She was aware of her good looks and aware that her delicate appearance masked a steely determination. She saw it as her strength that she was seldom opposed. Most people eventually bent to her will; saw things her way. Today she was set on showing Mike Hamilton that he was no match for her.

She heard footsteps. They paused then started again, heavier this time, and in he came, quick and furtive, before he stopped in his tracks, seeing her. Her pulse quickened, as it always did when she was near this dark, swarthy man of thirty-two. He had the brooding manner of intelligent, uneducated men, but the greater part of his attraction for Ruth was that he was a natural athlete – the sort of man you’d put on to a horse and he’d ride, or drop into the sea and he’d swim – confident in his mastery of his own body and, as Ruth knew, sure of his mastery of hers. But though their affair was only three months old, it was high time he knew that his power over her began and ended in the bedroom.

‘What the devil?’ he said. ‘What are ye doing here at this hour? Surely Elizabeth needs you?’

A suffocating tide of jealousy swept over her. Elizabeth, Elizabeth. That was all she had heard all her life. Her beautiful, sweet-natured sister, Elizabeth. Her sister’s looks and compliant nature had brought to her all of life’s prizes, even marriage to the heir to a Scottish estate. Ruth had never come close to Elizabeth, not in anyone’s eyes – their father’s or their brothers’ – even though Ruth knew herself to be prettier, cleverer and two years younger than her sister. In Cheshire, where their wealthy, mill-owning father had bought a small estate and brought his family up in grand style, the Bickerstaffe girls had had no hope of marrying into the minor aristocracy. Father’s unpolished manners and new-money tastes saw to that.

Then, when Ruth was eighteen and Elizabeth twenty, a young naval officer, Gordon Campbell, a friend of a member of the hunt, arrived on the scene. He was handsome, rich and would inherit a title. He was a landowner in Scotland, where social divisions were differently defined: one was born either serf or master it appeared to Ruth. English affectations, the behaviour of the Cheshire county set, could have no significance in Scotland – in fact, such things were despised.

An introduction to the Bickerstaffe girls at the Cheshire hunt ball – though Gordon was not a hunting man – and he was hooked. His every leave had been spent in Cheshire from then on, and though he showed no preference, Ruth was sure he liked her best. However, he pretended an encompassing interest, inviting their father and eldest brother as well as Elizabeth and Ruth to Scotland. And never had Ruth schemed and plotted as tenaciously as she did when first she set her sights upon a title and the means of acquiring it: Gordon Campbell. The Ingersley estate had not then fallen into disrepair. It was a devastating blow when Gordon married Elizabeth a year after they met.

But today, Elizabeth was helpless and Gordon needed Ruth. He had begged her to stay and help Nanny Taylor look after Elizabeth. Ruth could not risk damage to her reputation. Mike Hamilton must be made aware of his place. She said, ‘Where were you last night? Anyone could have seen me. You left me hanging around the stables like some little floozy.’

‘I canna get awa’ in the middle of harvest.’ He made a move towards her and smiled. ‘Anyway, there’s nobody about on the estate at night. Nobody but you, looking to your horse. Nobody suspects. I’ll see ye tonight, after dark.’

She side-stepped him and gave him an icy look. ‘I’m not here to ask if you are cooling off, though I warn you – nobody takes me for a fool.’ She put her head back and looked him in the eyes. ‘I spent last night going through the wages book.’

Mike Hamilton’s eyes blazed. ‘You did? What the hell for? Ye’re not the mistress of Ingersley.’

‘I came to Ingersley to be my sister’s companion,’ she said. ‘She cannot be left alone for a moment in case she has blackouts.’ The riding accident had left Elizabeth epileptic and though Elizabeth pretended it was not so, she was slowly going blind.

‘Blackouts? Give it its name, woman. Your sister has fits. Full-blown fits. I’ve seen her.’

‘Fits, then. I’m not her keeper,’ Ruth answered sharply. ‘Elizabeth has Nanny, a trained nurse, as well as myself.’ Yesterday Elizabeth had confessed that though she could see faces, her close vision was going and she could not do the accounts, which, since the estate could no longer employ a bookkeeper, had become a duty of the wife of the master of Ingersley. So Ruth had done them for her. Now she said, ‘You are getting above yourself, Mike. Sir Gordon has asked me to take on some of Lady Campbell’s duties.’ ‘Don’t come your English airs and graces wi’ me. Gordon Campbell and his wife dinnae use their titles.’ His face was dark with fury. ‘I’ve known Gordon all my life. We were next-door neighbours. We were never as rich as the Campbells, who could waste a hundred acres of their good arable land on park and pasture. But my father’s still farming. And making a profit.’

‘And you’ll make your profit here. I know what you are up to,’ she said in a controlled voice. ‘You are drawing money for workers who don’t exist. You want us to think that there are thirty casual workers.’

‘Us? Speaking for the family, are you?’ Hamilton said in a fury.

‘I am making myself indispensable. Everyone on this estate will be here because I trust them.’ Ruth felt a quick thrill of satisfaction at the prospect of being the chatelaine of Ingersley. ‘I warn you, Mike. Make good that money or I’ll have no choice but to tell.’

‘You bitch!’ Mike came close again and put his face so near to hers that Ruth had to flinch away. ‘I do the extra work meself. Making a few bob this way is an accepted benefit of the manager,’ he said. He was so close that she could smell the sweat that had broken out on him, feel the heat of his breath on her face. He said, ‘What if I tell Gordon that you aren’t the good, church-going girl he thinks you are? If I tell Gordon that his sister-in-law warms the factor’s bed …?’

Mike Hamilton was too sure of his power over her. The dangerous thought that he might tell made rage rise in her, concentrated her mind sharply and brought two high spots of colour burning on her cheeks. But she replied coolly, ‘You dare threaten me?’

‘I’m remindin’ ye.’ He almost spat the words out. ‘Ye’ll be back for more.’ Then he grabbed her by both arms and pulled her up hard against him. His eyes narrowed. ‘Ye’ll come crawling,’ he said. ‘Ye’ll be crying for me to hurt and bruise ye.’ He forced her arms down to her sides then twisted them quickly until with one hand he held both wrists behind her back.

Ruth snorted her contempt of him and did not struggle. She enjoyed the rough handling, the callused hand that was dragging her thin blouse open. She enjoyed the feel of his unshaven chin scraping down her neck, his open mouth fastening over her breast and the pink nipple that was distended with anticipation.

Mike Hamilton was as needful as she. He had to have her. She delighted in her wild sexuality. Her riding master had whipped her into shape when she was fifteen and had introduced her to the new rubber protection – the Dutch cap – a few years ago. Their affair had continued until she was called to Ingersley. And she’d been at Ingersley barely a month when she’d singled out Mike, estate factor and farm manager, and introduced him to practices he had before only dreamed about. Now, delicious sensations were thrilling and spreading about her loins as she said in a low, throaty voice, ‘If you make a mark on me, Mike Hamilton, I’ll have you thrown out on your ear.’

He let her breast drop for a moment and a tight little smile came to play around the corners of his full, sensuous mouth. ‘Ye canna do that. Ye dinnae have the power.’ He tightened his grip on her wrists, making her gasp. The cold morning air was chill on her hot, attar-of-roses-scented skin as he brushed aside the silk, exposing the other breast, and slowly brought his mouth down again, hearing the in-drawing of her breath as she felt the increasing suction and his teeth biting into her soft flesh. He stopped, released her and said, ‘Show that to Sir Gordon Campbell. And ye can tell him that his little angel of mercy is nae better than a bitch on heat.’

Before she could strike him, for sensation was only just tingling back into her hands, he was through the open doorway and out in the yard. She did not stop to pull the blouse around her exposed, reddened breasts. She followed him to the door and saw that he was heading for the milking shed. She called out, ‘Pay that money back. Today. Or I’ll …’ She stopped. A young man, the cook’s son, was flattened against the wall. Ruth saw his alarmed glance travelling to her breast then, blushing, to her face as she pulled the cardigan about her. She demanded, ‘What are you doing?’

‘Nothing, miss.’ He pretended nonchalance. ‘I’m going to the field.’

‘Labourers are not allowed in the yard.’

‘No, miss. I was late.’

‘So you broke the rules.’ She could not let it go. Suppose he had heard it all? He most certainly had heard her own last words. This young man, Andrew, had come to her attention before as too clever and proud to make a docile servant. ‘We can’t keep you after this. I will report you.’

The boy had an insolent look. He put his head back, looked down on her and said, ‘If you will, you will,’ then went past her to the beech hedge, which, without even speeding his pace, he vaulted as easily as a young colt.

Later, Andrew, waist deep in the cornfield, pitched his fork under the last cut on the end of the row and turned it expertly and gently so as not to damage the ripe ears of golden wheat. A couple of hours of this heat and breeze was needed to dry it, then the casuals – women and girls from the town – would tie the stooks. The corn would then be ready for the threshing machine and this year’s harvest would be safely home. His tanned arms were aching and the muscles were stretched tight at the back of his strong legs. Slowly he straightened and called out to Shuggie, the simple lad who helped out when the farm needed extra hands, ‘Shug. Dinner. Finish that row.’

‘I didnae hear the whistle,’ Shuggie said. ‘Master said, “Wait for whistle”.’

Andrew pushed the curly dark hair back from his damp forehead and shaded his eyes to look over towards the farm buildings. The sun was high. They had been toiling since six with nothing to sustain them but water from the carrier that had been carted to the fields a few days ago. ‘He’s a bad bugger,’ Andrew said quietly, of Mike Hamilton. The heat haze made distances appear greater and he could only just make out the long line of Irish reapers who were scything at the far end of the next field. He could not see Mike Hamilton amongst them. But he ought to be here blowing his damned whistle. It was well past midday and time for their break.

He was hungry. Ma would have the food laid out on trestle tables in the barn; soup and bread, cheese, cold cuts of meat and a barrel of ale. Andrew scratched fiercely at his chest. He had taken off his vest earlier in the day and tiny harvest flies had irritated and bitten him in the damp places – the inside creases of elbows and knees and under the curly black hair on his chest. He’d have liked to take a picnic down to Ingersley’s private beach. The beach was a half-mile of flat sand under the cliffs that sloped away to a little sheltered bay that could only be reached on horseback or on foot by someone who knew the trail through the buckthorn bushes as he did. But the beach was out of bounds to all the field and house servants, though this was another rule that Andrew liked to break. How could a family own a beach and prevent anyone from walking along the seashore?

He screwed up his eyes and looked towards the lane beyond the field gate to see if Hamilton were near. He was not. Andrew stuck his pitchfork into the ground and called out again to Shug. ‘He must be busy. Leave your fork there.’ He grinned. ‘Are you hungry?’

Shuggie threw the pitchfork on to the ground and his uncontrolled features broke into a grin. ‘I’m goin’ hame for dinner.’ His old father, whom the lad loved, was crippled with arthritis from fifty years’ work on the land. They depended upon Shuggie’s money. ‘Dad needs ma wages.’ The farm hands were paid on Fridays, at midday. Shuggie earned fourpence an hour, and though he could neither read nor write he knew to the last halfpenny how much he was due. ‘I get one pound four shillings today.’

Andrew grinned back. ‘Don’t leave your fork lying on the ground. You’ll never find it again. Look.’ He demonstrated for Shuggie as he did every time – pitching the two prongs into the hard ground – and when Shuggie had done the same they left the fields, Andrew striding, Shuggie stumbling beside him along the rutted, stony lane, the red dust from the clay soil powdering their boots and the string-tied ends of their trousers.

They were in sight of the barn when Andrew saw Mike Hamilton approaching down the lane, loose-limbed, arms swinging at his sides. ‘Where are you going?’ Hamilton shouted. ‘Who told you to stop work?’

Andrew stood and waited for him. ‘You know where we’re going,’ he said. ‘You should have blown your whistle half an hour ago.’

Shuggie hopped from one foot to the other. ‘Where’s my wages? My one pound four shillings? I get my wages today.’

‘No pay for you,’ Hamilton raged. ‘Ye’re no’ worth it.’

Shuggie’s jaw dropped and he began to pant and whimper like a beaten puppy. ‘But I’ve worked all week. Twelve hours a day. Fourpence an hour. That’s one pound four shillings.’

Hamilton came a step closer, raised his hand to Shuggie and spat out, ‘Get off with ye! Don’t answer back, ye stupid …’

‘Come off it!’ Andrew would not stand for this even if Shuggie didn’t defend himself. Cool excitement filled him as his fists closed and he stood up to Hamilton. ‘You can’t do that. The lad works twice as hard as anyone on the payroll. He’d earn six and six a day on a good estate.’

‘It’s none to do wi’ you.’ Hamilton turned on Andrew. ‘Shut your mouth. I’m warning ye. Any more from you and ye’ll be signing on the dole every day – wi’ your daft friend.’

Hamilton was a good half-head shorter than Andrew, though more powerfully set. This morning Andrew had stood meek and apologetic while Ruth Bickerstaffe threatened him with dismissal over what he’d seen and heard. Hamilton thought he could do the same to him, did he? Well, he could have another think. The Commander