Love Forbidden Page 2

  She hurried into the kitchen and, while she was frying the eggs on a small gas stove, which stood beside the great useless range with its spit and huge bread ovens that had been there in her grandfather’s time, she thought almost despairingly of Charles’s face when he told her that the Bank Manager had asked to see him.

  She knew this meant that he would not sleep until the interview was over and she knew too that he would drive himself to work, even harder than he was working already, forcing himself to do the work of ten men and to have an almost superhuman strength.

  ‘Poor Charles! Poor, poor Charles!’

  The soft hiss of the gas seemed to echo the words that moved Aria’s lips. She thought suddenly that it was difficult now to remember the time when she had not had to worry about her brother and be sorry for him.

  She had seen so little of him when she was small as he had been at boarding school. She had been with her father, often abroad when the holidays came round, so that Charles had gone to relatives and brother and sister had not even met. During the war Aria had seen Charles only twice.

  And then, when the hostilities in Europe were over, Charles had volunteered first for Korea and then for Malaya.

  He had been in Malaya only a week when he was captured by the terrorists. They tortured and ill-treated him until, when he was finally rescued, he was little more than a corpse. He had come back to England a nervous and physical wreck – to face disaster in his own family life.

  Charles’ and Aria’s father, Sir Gladstone Milborne, had died in 1953 when Aria was eighteen and Charles was twenty-four. It was only after his death that they discovered how he had managed to live for so many years in luxury and comfort.

  Everything had been spent – there was nothing left.

  Even the money that should have been in Trust had somehow been used up by methods that would certainly not have stood a legal investigation had there been any point in having one.

  Worse still than the fact that there was no money was the discovery that he had stripped Queen’s Folly in his desire to finance his enjoyment of what he termed ‘a gentleman’s way of life’.

  He had gone abroad immediately after the war taking Aria with him. They had stayed in Italy, in Paris and had gone to Egypt in the winter.

  They always stayed at the best hotels but, while Sir Gladstone amused himself with beautiful women, luxurious food and the nightlife of the Cities they visited, Aria was strictly chaperoned by an elderly Governess, who never ceased to express, not in words but by her manner, her disapproval of her employer.

  Why her father wished to have a girl still in her teens with him, Aria afterwards could never understand. Perhaps it gave him, in his own way, a sense of security, a feeling of homeliness although no one who knew him could have suspected him of wanting anything so alien to his character.

  There was no doubt at all that, as he grew older, Sir Gladstone became more dissolute. There were ever-recurring scandals, scenes, recriminations and often violence, which meant that they packed their possessions hastily and moved on to another gay City, another part of the globe. Rome, Madrid, New York, Buenos Aires – Aria knew them all, but only through the pane-glass of a hotel window.

  The fact that his home had been sacked and the family treasures sold had been a worse torture to Charles than anything he had experienced from the terrorists. Knowing her brother so little, Aria had not at first understood his passionate and almost fanatical devotion to his home.

  “It is mine! Mine! Do you understand?” he had shouted at her once. “Queen’s Folly has belonged to a Milborne since Queen Elizabeth’s day, father to son, father to son, and now it’s mine and I’ll never give it up. I will die first, die on the threshold and be buried in the soil that belonged to my ancestors and now belongs to me.”

  His voice had risen shrilly to what was almost a scream. He was shaking, his hands were icy cold and yet the beads of perspiration were running down his forehead.

  “Only time can heal his nerves,” the doctor had told Aria. “Try not to let him upset himself, try to make him take up his ordinary everyday life as easily and smoothly as possible. It’s not going to be easy, I know that. Those devils have jerked him out of gear, so to speak. We have to get him back into the rhythm of living. Do you understand?”

  Aria had not understood at the time, but as the years went by she began to understand a little of what Charles was suffering and to learn how to handle him. Sometimes she must be soft and tender and sympathetic, but at other times she must be firm, hard and cold and must even bully him a little.

  Sometimes she must cling to him and at others she must be a rock of strength itself.

  There were nights when she wept into her pillow and felt that she was being a failure and days when she thought that Charles was mad and that nothing could save him from the asylum.

  These were the occasions when she hated Queen’s Folly because it must mean so much to the man who loved it as though it was his mother, wife and mistress.

  She hurried from the kitchen now, back into the sitting room and to her relief Charles was still sitting at the table.

  “Here are your eggs,” she announced. “And if you go without your lunch again, I shall instruct Joe to force it down your throat, however much you abuse him for doing so.”

  “I won’t forget it another time,” Charles said with a sudden good humour. “It’s been a hell of a day today. Everything has gone wrong. The fox took six of our pullets last night.”

  “Oh, not again!” Aria exclaimed. “How did he manage it?”

  “Bit a hole in the hen house. You know we want some new ones. The wood is rotten and, as soon as I repair one hole, two or three others appear.”

  Aria sighed. The hen houses were like everything else, falling to pieces for want of money. And what could they do about it? She pondered for a moment, her eyes on her brother’s face as he ate his eggs and then she said quietly,

  “I’ve been wanting to talk to you for some time Charles. I have come to a decision, a rather important one.”

  “What about?” he asked, not looking up and she knew he was not really attending to her, but thinking of his problems on the farm.

  “Listen to me, Charles,” she said urgently. “This is important. I have decided to go away, to see if I can find a job.”

  “A job! Whatever for?” Charles had raised his eyes to her now and she saw for once that she was really holding his attention.

  “To make money, of course. I have been talking it over with Nanny. There are so few visitors that she can manage them and the house. We thought at first that we should have crowds here, but hardly anyone comes until the afternoon and if they do we can always put a notice on the door for them to ring the bell. Nanny can sit in the hall in the afternoon and, if things really get busy, it only means that your supper may be a bit later than usual.”

  “But you can’t go away. You can’t leave me, Aria.”

  Aria’s face softened and there was a sudden light in her eyes as she held out her hands to her brother.

  “Oh, Charles! That’s the nicest thing you have ever said to me. Would you really miss me a little? But, dearest, I am really wasted here. I am hale and hearty and I have got a few brains, I think, tucked away somewhere. If I could earn a decent wage, think what it would mean to all of us. Even two or three pounds coming in regularly would pay half Joe’s wages. We might even be able to afford another man.”

  She saw by the look on Charles’ face that he was taken with the idea.

  Then abruptly he dismissed it.

  “It’s nonsense!” he said. “You have never tried to earn your own living. God knows the old man never brought you up to do anything sensible.”

  “Yes, I know,” Aria answered. “But Nanny heard from her niece yesterday, you remember, the girl who came here last Christmas. You thought that she was rather half-witted, but she has found a job in an aircraft factory and she is earning ten pounds a week with overtime. Just think of it, ten pound
s a week, Charles! Why, it would make all the difference in the world to us.”

  “What on earth is the use of your trying to go to an aircraft factory?” Charles asked. “You would crack up within a week. You’re not strong enough.”

  He looked at his sister as he spoke as if he saw her for the first time. He noted the little, pointed, heart-shaped face, the dark eyes that looked too big for it and the red mouth that dropped a little wistfully at the corners.

  Dark eyes and red hair, it was a strange combination, even though the red Milbornes had cropped up all through the centuries.

  Aria was five feet six in height with a tiny waist and long thin legs, which carried her with a grace that owed much to a lissom slenderness and much more to the discipline of deportment lessons which she had endured all through her childhood.

  She certainly did not look capable of any great feats of endurance and yet Charles knew that she was stronger than she looked, having a resilience and determination that at times had even equalled his own.

  “What can you do?” he asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” Aria answered. “And I am not going to suggest ideas so that you can laugh at them. I am going to find out. I have made up my mind. I am going to London tomorrow for the day and I shall go to all the registry offices and I will get a job. I shall then find a room somewhere as I can’t travel up and down from here, as you well know.”

  They both smiled at that. It was a family joke that the buses, which passed the end of the drive only twice a week, took them from nowhere to nowhere and in the slowest possible time!

  “Well, there’s no harm in trying, I suppose,” Charles said uncertainly. “But I think you will find that you won’t get a job at anything more than five or six pounds a week and, if you have to live in London, you are more likely to be out of pocket at the end of it than to have anything to spare.”

  “In which case I shall come home,” Aria told him. “I am not a fool. I want to make money for Queen’s Folly. If I can’t do that, I will stay here and go on scrubbing the floors and taking the half-crowns.”

  Charles had turned towards the door. Now he swung round and, walking across to Aria, unexpectedly put his arm round her shoulders.

  “Do you hate it so much?” he asked.

  She sprang to her feet as if he had insulted her.

  “Hate it! You know I don’t hate it,” she answered. “I love it as much as you do. No, that’s not true, no one could love Queen’s Folly as much as you. But it’s my home and it’s the place I dreamed about when I was wandering with Father round those boring hotels.

  “I used to think of my own little room and wish I was back in it. I used to remember the oak tree where I could climb up and no one could find me and the shrubbery where you and I played Indians when we were very small. Queen’s Folly was the lodestar, the goal, the ultimate end of everything I wanted most – to go home to!”

  “And when you did come back it was to find it empty and ruined,” Charles said with a sudden bitterness.

  It was a dangerous subject and Aria replied quickly,

  “Nonsense! It is still home for you and me. It is still here and that’s what matters.”

  Her words seemed to touch him.

  “Yes, it is still here,” he said quietly. “I suppose that really is the point.”

  “Of course it is,” Aria smiled. She kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Go along and don’t be too late. I want to talk to you and, if you are too tired to listen, you will fall asleep immediately after dinner.”

  “You make me sound like a rather boring middle-aged husband,” Charles retorted.

  “You often behave like one,” Aria told him.

  He laughed at that and she heard him whistling as he went through the back door and across the yard towards the farm.

  Aria stacked the tea things and then, just as she was about to carry them into the kitchen, she fetched another cup and filled it for Nanny. There was never a time of day or night when Nanny was not pleased to drink a cup of tea. Aria put in the milk and sugar and carried it along the passage and into the hall.

  Nanny was sitting at the table, knitting one of the interminable brown pullovers that Charles wore on the farm and which seemed to become worn out with irritating regularity.

  “I’ve brought you a cup of tea, Nanny,” Aria told her. “And, what do you think? Charles came in. Something had broken down on one of his machines and so he had to go to Hertford for a new part. Of course, he had forgotten his lunch.”

  “There now and I made him his favourite bacon sandwiches,” Nanny sighed.

  “I fried him a couple of eggs for tea,” Aria went on. “But he’s worried, Nanny. The Bank Manager has written asking to see him.”

  “I guessed that was it,” Nanny answered. “I saw the mark on the back of the envelope. It’s always bad news when one of those comes.”

  “I hope the Bank doesn’t start harrying poor Charles just at this moment. I thought he was a bit better lately, didn’t you?”

  “Much better,” Nanny nodded. “He’ll put it all right, you’ll see if he doesn’t. Give him another year or two and he’ll be just like he used to be, my bonny boy.”

  “He gets so worked up,” Aria sighed. “The slightest thing and up he goes.”

  “Yes, I know,” Nanny answered. “But you can’t expect anything else when his nerves are all of a jangle. He’ll be fine, dearie, don’t you fret yourself.”

  “I told him that I was going to London tomorrow to see if I could find a job.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He was really very sweet about it. I think he realised for the first time that he might miss me. At the same time, when I said it was for Queen’s Folly, he was all for it.”

  “If you get something good, it will be worthwhile. If not, you come home, dearie. I don’t like to think of you living in London on your own – you’re too young.”

  “I shall be twenty-one next month,” Aria said. “Old enough to look after myself, Nanny.”

  “I hope that’s true,” Nanny answered, her eyes on Aria’s face.

  Aria was looking at the money in the box.

  “Those people didn’t stay long,” she said at length. “The man in the Bentley. Did they say anything when they left?”

  “He thanked me most politely,” Nanny replied. “I thought he was a nice gentleman. ‘Your pictures are well worth a visit,’ he said. He couldn’t say fairer than that, could he?”

  “I am glad he was pleased.”

  Aria didn’t know why, but she really was glad. She felt a sudden warmth in her heart. Rich, important and attractive he might be and yet he had liked the pictures of Queen’s Folly. Idly she wondered if she would ever see him again and then she laughed at herself.

  Tomorrow she would begin a new adventure.

  Perhaps it was the opening of a new phase in her life. She was going to London and she was going to find a job. What did it really matter if a man in a grey Bentley liked the pictures or not?

  Chapter 2

  Aria paused at the foot of the stairs leading up to Mrs. Benstead’s Secretarial and Domestic Agency.

  It was the fifth agency she had visited that morning, she thought a little wearily and a dusty mirror on the side of the wall reflected her face, showing her, even in its damaged and untruthful surface, looking pale and a little drawn.

  She had set off from Queen’s Folly with high hopes. She had imagined, foolishly, that jobs were waiting for the asking – only to find herself speedily disillusioned.

  There were jobs, of course, a large number of them. But they were not what she was looking for, for the simple reason that the salaries were not large enough for her to be able to send more than a pittance back to Charles.

  That, after all, was the main reason for her coming to London. To be able to contribute something in support of the home they both loved, to be able to relieve just some of the lines of anxiety round Charles’ eyes, to release the tension that seemed to
keep his lips pressed together as if in an almost superhuman effort of self-control.

  “You mustn’t let your brother worry.”

  How often Aria had listened to those words from their family doctor and known that he might just as well have asked her to stem the tide or change the weather by some magical formula!

  Charles’ nerves were on edge. The slightest thing could set them jangling until at the end of it he was in little better shape than he had been when he was rescued from the terrorists. And what always upset him worst was the thought of money!

  Aria knew that always at the back of his mind was the fear that he would not be able to hold on to Queen’s Folly and that the house would have to be sold.

  The land was mortgaged up to the hilt. It was hard enough to manage to pay the premium year after year and only by the superhuman efforts of Charles on the farm could they contrive to live at all.

  Money! Money! Money!

  It seemed to Aria that the sound of it was ever drumming in her ears, haunting her in the daytime and being a familiar part of her dreams every night.

  On the way to London she had calculated how much it would cost her to live. Even the cheapest type of hostel would not be less than three guineas a week and then there was her food.

  With a little sigh she felt ashamed of her appetite. She often felt hungry and yet any other girl of her age would have envied her because, however much she ate, she never seemed to put on any weight.

  She glanced at herself in the mirror. The black coat and skirt she had bought in Paris the last winter she had stayed there with her father still looked smart and up to date. It was fortunate that she had been able to have a black one. So many of her clothes were definitely schoolgirlish.

  When the news had reached them that her grandmother had died, Sir Gladstone at first had pooh-poohed the idea of Aria going into mourning, but he had finally consented to her buying enough black in which to meet a cousin who was passing through Paris after the funeral.

  The cousin had later gone to live in South Africa and she was the only relative that Aria could remember with the exception of her brother. Their mother and their father had both been only children and if there were any other relatives living, Charles and his sister had lost touch with them.