Page 83 of The Gathering Storm (Morland Dynasty #36)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Peace descended on Morland Place with the departure of the film company.

Furnishings were brought back, pictures rehung, rooms restored to order, routines re-established.

The servants gradually descended from their exalted state, like autumn leaves whirled up by a wind falling gently to rest. They would talk about it for the rest of their lives, but almost as something out of a dream.

Excitement would re-emerge when the film came out, but for the moment, things were back to normal.

The fine weather held, and Polly kept to her promise of riding with Lennie around the estate, pointing out changes, reintroducing him to the tenants and neighbours, who remembered him kindly from his salad days.

She saw how instantly liked he was by the younger ones who had not known him, how instantly trusted.

She watched him interact with them, seeing him with fresh eyes.

She had borrowed a horse for him from Jessie, a safe one, unsure how much riding he did in California.

Very little, was his cheerful answer when she ventured to ask.

But he rode confidently, though in a rather American style at first, sitting well back, with loose reins that encouraged his mount to misbehave.

He seemed amused when she corrected his seat and told him to shorten his reins, calling her ‘schoolmarmish’, but he adjusted easily enough, especially as the English saddle was not designed for the American seat.

Sometimes Alec, still on holiday, rode with them on Shady.

He was interested in but a little wary of Lennie – or perhaps, Polly corrected her perception, a little in awe of this tall new ‘uncle’ with the strange clothes and accent, the air of coming from an infinitely larger world.

She noticed that Lennie didn’t press his attentions, but responded fully and seriously to Alec’s comments and questions without either condescending or trying to ingratiate himself.

Like most children, Alec was quick to perceive inauthenticity, and he responded to Lennie’s quiet and genuine worth.

He was surprised and intrigued when Lennie told him he had been there at his, Alec’s, birth, and over several days teased various details out of him.

His heart was won when Lennie bought him, as a belated birthday present, a Telsen wireless construction kit, and further, when he didn’t immediately offer to help him build it, but waited until Alec asked.

The round table in the drawing-room, of an evening, was a place of pliers and snips of wire, and the air pulsed softly with murmured conversations about tuning capacitors and valves, circuits and coils.

Martin and John were soon drawn in. While Harriet read and Polly played the piano, Ethel would look up from her sewing and ask John what a grid bias battery was, or a high impedance load, secure in her confidence that he could explain, seeing he was an engineer or as good as.

And when John, tongue-tied and shy, stared at her in dismay, turned red and stammered, Lennie would catch Polly’s eye across the room and they would share a complicit grin, before Lennie stepped in and rescued him.

‘What John’s trying to say is …’ Soon he was John’s hero too.

Though he was a trained motor-mechanic, John had a natural feeling for any sort of machinery, and the radio fascinated him.

Lennie was happy to answer his questions, and was encouraging when John shyly confided that he wouldn’t mind changing careers and ‘going in for’ radio electronics instead.

It would be a good move, Lennie said. It was the science of the future.

He opened his mouth to suggest that if there was a war, it would stand him in good stead, but then he saw Ethel’s pink and proud face and didn’t say it.

Meanwhile, on their rides and whenever they were alone together, Polly and Lennie talked.

They shared their memories of Morland Place during the war, of Teddy and Aunt Henrietta, of Jessie when she was young, of Robbie and Frank and Ned.

They talked about New York, and common acquaintances, Polly’s fashion business, Lennie’s first forays into the world of radio.

They remembered his early radio broadcast channel, and how he had given Rose her first break, acting in radio plays.

They talked about his political career under President Hoover, which led them naturally to talk about Ren, and Polly found she could discuss him with Lennie without hurt or embarrassment. It was all so long ago now.

They talked about Lennie’s first ventures into cinema, and his early investments at the urging of Joe Kennedy.

In March that year Kennedy had arrived in London with his family, having been appointed American Ambassador to the Court of St James.

Lennie told Polly how Joe had boasted to him that he would get an ambassadorship.

‘You ought to go and see him,’ Polly urged, half joking.

‘Perhaps he’d introduce you to the King. ’

‘I wouldn’t put it past him,’ Lennie said.

‘If ever a man had an excess of brass neck, it’s him.

And a complete lack of diplomacy – why on earth Roosevelt thought he was ambassador material I can’t imagine!

He’s put me in the way of one or two things in the past, and I’m grateful, but I can do without him now.

No, if I were to go and see anyone, it would be Sir John Reith.

I’d like to find out how broadcasting is going to be organised in this country – quite differently from back in the States, I guess. And then there’s radio detection.’

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a way of bouncing radio waves off moving objects so that you can tell where they are and which way they’re moving.

It’s being developed in several countries at the moment, the States and here, probably France, probably Sweden – the Swedes are very good at that sort of thing – but everyone’s working in secret, for fear that some other country will get there first. Whoever has a working system will have an enormous advantage if there’s another war. ’

‘Why?’

‘Because they’d be able to detect enemy aircraft approaching in time to shoot them down.’

‘Oh,’ said Polly. She didn’t want to think about the possibility of war.

‘They’re pretty sure back home that the Germans are working on it too. So it’s vital any advances we make don’t get to them.’

They were out riding, and had reached Cromwell’s Plump.

She led the way up onto it, and slid from the saddle, looping the rein over her elbow.

Another thing she’d had to cure Lennie of was the tendency to drop the reins when he dismounted.

American horses, it seemed, were trained just to stand still when that happened; English horses might stand still, but they were more likely to head off at a brisk pace for home, leaving the rider with a long walk back.

He reached her and dismounted; they sat on the ground on the edge of the Plump, and the horses grazed on the short grass behind them.

‘You’ve gone quiet,’ Lennie remarked, after a moment. ‘Was it something I said?’

She debated inwardly the wisdom of speaking, and finally said lightly, ‘Oh, you called America “home”.’

‘It was your home once,’ he reminded her.

‘That was when James was the heir,’ she said.

‘He was going to be Master of Morland Place, so I could go anywhere I wanted.’ She was silent a moment.

‘I can’t forget that I let Papa die without seeing me again.

’ He reached out and took her hand to comfort her.

‘He never saw Alec – his only grandchild.’

There was nothing to say about that. Instead, he said, ‘Do you think James will have children?’

‘I don’t know. It’s hard to imagine. He’s never even been married.

He had a – an affair , I suppose you’d call it, in Paris, with a Russian émigrée, and she died.

Was murdered actually – it was really shocking.

Well, he told me he’d intended to marry her, but I don’t know.

Perhaps that was just his reaction to her death.

He’s very romantic, though people don’t realise it.

It would be wonderful if he were to marry and have a family, but somehow one can’t imagine him ever settling down. He’s always off having adventures.’

‘So it all depends on you,’ Lennie said, ‘to keep the line going?’

‘Yes.’ She sighed. ‘And there’s just Alec. I don’t think Papa would ever have expected the family to hang by a single thread.’

Her hand was warm in his. Behind them they heard the steady tear and crunch of grazing with the accompanying clink of bit-rings, the occasional thump of a hoof: comforting sounds, the essence of happy horses and normality.

Before them, her land spread, green and peaceful; somewhere far away a sheep bleated.

Next to her she could feel the safeness of Lennie’s size and quiet presence.

She would have liked to stay like this for ever.

‘Do you think you’d ever like to marry again?’ he asked, very delicately, so that the question slipped out onto the air as though without human agency.

She didn’t answer for a long time. It came too close to a painful place. Then she said, very quietly, ‘I’d like to, if the right person asked me.’

The question, But who would be the right person? , hung between them, unvoiced.

It took a great leap of courage – only afterwards did Polly appreciate how great – for Lennie to go on, only helped by the fact that they were not looking at each other, and that she had not withdrawn her hand.

‘You know, don’t you, that I’ve always been in love with you?

I didn’t make any secret of it when we were young.

But I’ve never changed. I’ve never felt any differently about you. ’

‘You got married,’ she said – not as an accusation, but because she didn’t know yet what to say.