Anita Frank was born in Shropshire and studied English and American History at the University of East Anglia. She lives in Berkshire with her husband and three children and is now a full-time carer to her disabled son. Her debut novel, The Lost Ones, was shortlisted for both the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award and the Historical Writers’ Association’s Debut Crown in 2020. Her second novel, The Return, was shortlisted for the Romantic Novelists’ Association Historical Romantic Novel Award in 2022. Her new novel, The Good Liars, a murder mystery set in 1920, is out on 17th August.
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Chapter One
Sunday, 6th May 1917
The brass plaque, polished so it shone like burnished gold, was mounted pride of place on the chantry wall – a new, if unwelcome, addition to the village church. Our boxed family pew was situated directly opposite, and rather than crick my neck to observe the vicar intoning from his elevated position in the pulpit, I found myself captivated by the ornate inscription.
IN MEMORY
ROBERT RICHARDSON
2ND LIEUT, 3RD MILITIA BN, BERKSHIRE REGT
BELOVED ONLY SON OF MR AND MRS HENRY RICHARDSON
KILLED IN ACTUAL FIGHTING IN FRANCE, 2ND JULY 1916 AGED 18 YEARS
DUTY NOBLY DONE
I closed my eyes for a moment as I recalled the blissful summer of 1914: all baking heat and leisurely pleasures; a cricket match on the village green. I remembered a willowy school boy: a muss of ruffled blond hair, cheeks dimpled by an irrepressible grin, a streak of red down the thigh of his white flannels, a powerful run up, a perfect windmill arm, the satisfying clatter of stumps, a smatter of applause. They never found his body. His parents had been forced to settle for the plaque rather than a plot in the graveyard. He was just eighteen years old, a school boy officer fresh from the fields of Eton.
As I read and re-read the words, my fingers strayed to the gold locket that hung against my black coat. It no longer gleamed, dulled as it was by too much caressing. I finally managed to tear my eyes away, but my gaze only strayed as far as the front pew, settling on the poor boy’s parents. They sat shoulder to shoulder, rigid with grief. Mrs Richardson, once a charismatic, vibrant woman, had been greatly reduced by her son’s death. Her plump and rosy cheeks now sunk into hollows, giving her a cadaverous appearance, while her finely appointed mourning clothes sagged over her diminishing frame. I had no doubt she was aware of another mother, sitting just a few rows back. Mrs Whittaker’s broad shoulders shook with misery, for her anguish was still fresh and raw. We three cast sombre shadows, stagnant pools of grief amidst the amassed congregation.
I returned my focus to the vicar’s monotonous monologue purporting to the value of sacrifice, but it wasn’t long before I found myself shifting irritably on the unforgiving pew. My experiences nursing in France with the Voluntary Aid Detachment had exposed faith as a fallacy. I had seen too much barbaric waste to still believe we were being guided by a higher purpose. The vicar’s words now did little to change my opinion. Not for the first time that morning, I wished I hadn’t come, but my parents had made it very clear that my weekly attendance at the Sunday service was an issue of duty, if not belief. My presence, it seemed, was not a matter for discussion.
I let out a soft sigh as I fidgeted again, my impatience and discomfort rising. The respectful attention the congregation afforded the vicar’s words annoyed me. Apart from Old Man Withers, who at ninety-one was forgiven for nodding off during services, my fellow parishioners were focused on the pulpit. I was the only one in this aged church who had seen first-hand the unmitigated destruction of life. Perhaps it was a kindness to allow them their naivety, their conviction in the righteousness of this conflict. Let them be dedicated to their Holy War, to their God’s will, but I could no longer share that dedication.
It appeared I was not the only member of the congregation struggling to endure the service. I spotted our young housemaid, Annie Burrows, crushed into the end of a pew occupied by our few remaining servants. Whilst the housekeeper, Mrs Scrivens, and our butler, Brown, along with a couple of maids, gave the vicar their rapt attention, Annie had become distracted by Mrs Whittaker’s muted sobs. She wore a strange expression on her face as she watched the broken-hearted mother, one I was unable to decipher. She must have felt the weight of my scrutiny, for she twisted in her seat and locked gazes with me. Caught spying, I felt my cheeks blaze as I looked away.
It was, of course, a widely accepted opinion that there was something very odd about Annie Burrows. When I had returned from France, broken and debilitated by Gerald’s death, her surprising presence at Haverton Hall had been one of very few things to elicit my interest. I learned that Mrs Burrows had approached my mother just a few months after I had left, in the autumn of 1914. Emaciated by the cancer that was devouring her, she had come seeking employment for her thirteen-year-old daughter. My mother had agreed at once – given the extent of our debt to their family it was, she told me later, the very least we could do.
It had not been a popular appointment amongst the rest of the staff, that I did know. Even Mrs Scrivens had asked my mother in no uncertain terms to reconsider. Annie had quirks of character that others found perturbing – peculiar distraction, incessant whispering, suspicious furtiveness. My mother, determined to honour her obligation, was unmoved by the housekeeper’s appeal. As the war progressed and the household staff steadily depleted, Mrs Scrivens had little choice but to promote Annie to upstairs work, to which she applied herself with quiet diligence. Over time, the housekeeper’s opinion improved, and Annie learnt to subdue some of her more unusual behaviours. Yet I still found there was something strangely unnerving about the young maid, an otherworldliness to her that I could never quite put my finger on.
Behind me someone attempted to stifle a coughing fit. The vicar finally drew his dreary sermon to a close, casting a stern look over his flock. Upstairs the ancient organ wheezed into life, and we rose as a single body, apparently rallied by words of faith. I opened the leather-bound hymn book, my gloved fingers fumbling through the flimsy pages until I had found the one required: ‘God Is Working His Purpose Out’. I snorted.
Around me, voices blended – my own did not join them. I sensed rather than saw my mother’s disapproving frown. I sneaked a glance down the aisle. Annie Burrows was staring into the open pages of her hymnal. She too was silent.
We remained standing to accept the vicar’s parting blessing, before shuffling from our pews, filtering out into the aisle, queueing for the arched doorway to the rear. There was a murmur of polite conversation as neighbour greeted neighbour, but I chose to fix my eyes on the uneven flags beneath my feet.
When at last we reached the vicar, I hung back while Mother stepped forward to proffer her thanks and my father made some intelligent observations on the sermon. I skirted round them and ducked out into the porch, pressing through the mingling crowd, until I managed to free myself from the throng. I sidled down the path, averting my eyes from the freshly domed grave of Private Tom Whittaker, who had clung onto life long enough to make it home. A wreath of white roses had been laid upon the heaped earth and the tips of their petals were now beginning to brown and curl. I fought to quash a sense of envy that at least his family would be able to set fresh flowers down whenever they wished. A strip of ocean kept me from Gerald’s graveside. It grieved me to think of his resting place languishing unadorned.
I hurried on, eager to leave the post-service conviviality behind me. Chippings crunched beneath my feet as I moved through the silent congregation of lichen-covered headstones, their platitudes faded, their inhabitants forgotten. I was not the only one to have disengaged from the churchgoers: Annie was crouched before a modest headstone lying in the shadow of the cemetery wall. I knew whose it was, for I had stood beside it myself a decade ago, paying my respects to her father.
Jim Burrows had died saving my little sister Lydia from the devastating fire that had engulfed Haverton Hall all those years ago. It had been deemed miraculous that he had succeeded in finding her when all other attempts had failed, lowering her to safety from an upstairs window before succumbing to the flames. In the end though his sacrifice proved to be in vain: her smoke-charred lungs were so badly damaged she died a few weeks later, but we were always grateful for the precious extra time that his bravery had granted us. However devastating those days had been, as we watched her suffer each painful breath, they had afforded us the opportunity to hold her, kiss her, cherish her – to say our final goodbyes. Annie’s father had been there one minute and gone the next, with barely a body left to bury. How much more difficult it must have been for Annie and her mother to come to terms with such abrupt loss. I often wondered about their regrets, the things they might have said, if they had had but a chance. Instead, all they had was a gravestone. I looked away as I passed by, affording Annie her privacy. It seemed we both sought comfort from the dead.
I broke off from the path and headed to the far side of the church. Our Marcham family mausoleum was Grecian in design, a mini-pantheon. Truth be told was too grand for the size of the graveyard, towering disproportionately over the humble headstones that surrounded it. Its stone walls were weathered, blackened by rain and frost, and the paint was beginning to flake from the wrought iron gates that barred the door. I had seen those gates opened twice in my life: once when I was eight to witness my grandfather being laid to rest, and two years later, when poor Lydia had been entombed.
It had been built for my grandmother. I had never known her, but a magnificent portrait hung pride of place on the staircase and as a child I had been quite captivated by her magical radiance. Thinking of her now, it struck me how tragedy had stalked my family. She too had died well before her time, when my father was still a boy. My grandfather would never speak of her accident, but I remember the yearning sadness that dulled his eyes on those rare occasions her name was mentioned and how his grip would slacken on his ever-present Dublin pipe as she entered his thoughts. I never quizzed him, but I did summon the courage to ask my father about her, late one evening when he had come up to the nursery to bid me goodnight.
A keen horsewoman, she had been thrilled when my grandfather had presented her with a new hunter, but tragedy had struck on their very first outing. Skittish in unfamiliar countryside, the horse bolted and in a moment of madness, before my grandmother could regain its head, it took on an impossible fence. They tumbled to the ground together in a horrifying mêlée of flailing limbs and terrifying screams as my grandfather looked helplessly on. He carried her back to the Hall as grooms tried to catch the traumatised horse, still stumbling about the field. In her last agony-laden hours, my grandmother made him promise not to punish the animal, a promise that was forgotten as the final breath slipped from her parted lips.
My father vividly recalled the harrowing cry that had sounded through the house, a feral keen of mourning. He remembered too the rage and the fury; my grandfather rampaging through the Hall, retrieving his shotgun from the gun room and his ominous journey to the stable block. My father had raced after him, fearful of the impending catastrophe, as the grooms cowered from my grandfather’s path. Only Jim Burrows, then little more than a boy himself, had stood his ground, blockading the horse’s stall.
No one knows what passed between them that day, but when at last my grandfather emerged, the gun broken over his arm, the cartridges in his hand, he was ashen. The hunter wasn’t destroyed, but he was swiftly sold. From that moment on, my grandfather demonstrated an almost deferential respect for the young groom, and they could often be found in quiet conversation, despite their disparity in both age and position.
I always thought it strangely fitting it was Jim Burrows that plunged into the flames that night to save Lydia, though tragedy would result for both our families. It was as if the fates of the Marchams and the Burrows were inextricably entwined. And now some would say I owed Annie Burrows my life, but I chose not to dwell on that.
A large yew tree grew to the front of the mausoleum below which stood a simple bench. The seat planks were split with age and still greasy from the overnight shower, but I drew my coat around me and sat down anyway, impervious to the damp. Perhaps it was macabre of me, but I always found great solace here, sitting in quiet contemplation of those who had passed: my grandmother, my grandfather, Lydia, and now Gerald.
My fingers were drawn once more to my locket. I fumbled with the intricate clasp, until it fell open into its two hinged ovals. I had no interest in the image captured in the right-hand side, a representation of myself I no longer recognised – youthful, optimistic . . . happy. Instead, I focused my attention on the pale photograph contained in the left. It was a studio portrait, at first glance stiff and formal, but if you looked closely, as I always did, you could see in the eyes a glint of humour, bright enough to shine through the shadow cast by the peaked officer’s cap, and the neat moustache failed to conceal an upward curl of the mouth that hinted at suppressed laughter. I felt the familiar ache in my chest and snapped the locket shut, wiping at the warm trickle in my nose.
‘I saw her come this way. She has taken to sitting under the yew tree when she’s here.’
‘And how has she been?’
I jumped to my feet. The pompous tones of Dr Mayhew had every inch of my body preparing for flight. I had the advantage – whilst I could hear their approach, neither he nor my mother could yet see me. My pulse quickened as I darted out of sight down the far side of the mausoleum, pressing my body against the cold stone, the long, wet grass licking at my stockinged ankles. Closing my eyes, I held my breath. The rim of my hat butted against the stone.
‘Oh!’ Close now, my mother sounded perplexed. ‘I’m sure I saw her come this way.’
‘Perhaps she’s made her way round the church to the front. No matter. I think I should come and see her again though.’
‘Oh yes, I do wish you would, Doctor. She’s still not at all herself you know. I am so afraid she might do something silly again, indeed,’ – her tone lowered – ‘I have good reason to suspect it.’
‘Now that would be a very worrying development.’ His voice was grave, and I could just picture him rocking on his heels, his fingers interlocked behind his back, his chest puffed out with characteristic self-importance. ‘I had hoped after all this time we were beginning to see some signs of improvement. Look,’ he let out a long, exasperated sigh, ‘I’ll pop by and see her. Perhaps we can talk more then.’
I waited in my hiding place, suspicious they might be faking silence as a lure – I’d been caught out by that trick before, but I was more cautious now. Minutes passed. My toes began to ache from the penetrating cold. At last, I opened my eyes.
Annie Burrows stood not more than a few feet in front of me. Her eyes were the most extraordinary shade of blue – violet almost, a peculiar, unnatural shade – set too close to the narrow bridge of her nose, giving the impression she was cross-eyed, though closer inspection revealed this was not the case. Unsettling, all the same.
‘They’ve gone.’
She paused, waiting to see her words register, before turning and walking away across the grass. Bewildered, I withdrew from the shadow of the mausoleum to watch the young maid disappear through the lychgate. A single magpie flew out from the branches of the yew and landed on the path before me, its sleek black plumage glinting in the weak morning light that was only now beginning to penetrate the cloud. He strutted on his spindly legs, his head tilted as he fixed me with his calculating eye.
‘One for sorrow,’ I murmured as I dropped down upon the bench succumbing to a wave of desperate misery that quite threatened to overwhelm me. ‘Oh Gerald.’ His name escaped me as a mournful whisper. I sought comfort from a happy memory: a warm July day before the war, a picnic. I could recall the moment in clear detail: the burbling brook, a tartan blanket, bitter ginger ale – tangy relief to our parched throats – and the brush of Gerald’s arm against mine as we bathed in the sunshine. It had been a perfect afternoon. I could even hear our laughter, hear his voice. Every tiny facet of the day was crystalline, everything, that is, but Gerald’s face. That precious part of the picture proved frustratingly elusive. When I tried to focus on it, I found it clouded – blurred and vague. My heart ached.
What I had always feared was coming to pass: I was beginning to forget him.
(C) Anita Frank 2020