In a Field of Blue Read online

  ALSO BY GEMMA LIVIERO

  The Road Beyond Ruin

  Broken Angels

  Pastel Orphans

  Marek

  Lilah

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2020 by Gemma Liviero

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542009447

  ISBN-10: 1542009448

  Cover design by Faceout Studio, Derek Thornton

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  RUDY

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  MARIETTE

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  RUDY

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  EDGAR

  CHAPTER 30

  LAURENCE

  CHAPTER 31

  RUDY

  CHAPTER 32

  Letter to Rudy from Edgar, dated 17 December 1922

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  I would have poured my spirit without stint

  But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.

  Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

  I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

  Wilfred Owen (1893–1918)

  RUDY

  1922

  CHAPTER 1

  You must come home immediately were the words typed on a shade of disaster, since the Royal Mail’s oatmeal notepaper was too often a prelude to bad news in previous years: a death, an accident, an unpaid debt, or an incident that might shame the family. The words on the telegram I imagined my mother speaking seemed to suggest this was highly personal and must only be discussed within the family home.

  On the train, I scanned the passengers devouring the articles in their morning copies of the Manchester News—where I was in fact employed—about unpaid wages and cuts to public housing and spending. And in between these were continuing stories of war, of rebuilding efforts in France and Belgium, of commemorations, and stories of bravery still emerging.

  My heart had grown weary of seeing headlines about another soldier found buried in the erstwhile mud seas of northern France. For four years I had steeled myself to read the articles written by my cohorts about the discovery of a man, hoping and yet not hoping that it was my brother Edgar. We prayed for even the smallest piece of evidence to suggest a fate that would immortalize him at a particular point in the battlefield. But mostly we sought news of an improbable kind: that he was still alive somewhere in Europe, incapacitated or incarcerated, without a way of contacting us. It is a terrible thing when the mind plays games with the missing.

  Bert, our property overseer, met me at the station in the open, leather-seated Talbot purchased with borrowings by my father shortly before he died, and the debt carried grudgingly long after that.

  Bert was one of two staff left in our household, which, during my early childhood years, had serviced three children, two parents, an aunt, a tutor, a grandmother and her personal maid, and half a dozen house and maintenance staff. The household’s permanent residents as it stood at this time consisted of Abigail (my mother), Bert, Peggy (our housekeeper), and me also, if you included my regular weekend visits. My brother Laurence would only make the odd show, whenever he was short of money in London and needed some other place to entertain friends on Mother’s credit.

  “How is she?”

  “She is as fit as some, Master Rudy,” said Bert in his strong northern lilt that embedded me instantly, and with comfortable familiarity, into the place I called home for twenty-two years. “And still better than many.” Bert had always been an optimist.

  “Then what is it? The message sounded urgent.”

  “We’ve come upon a strange situation that your mother cannot deal with.”

  “Is it my brother?”

  “We’ve heard naught from him in weeks.”

  That was good news at least.

  “I’ll try as best I can, though there’s scant detail,” he said as I climbed into the passenger seat.

  He did try, but I was left with more questions than answers. Apparently, a woman accompanied by a small child had arrived speaking French, and she sought only to converse with me. Though my mother spoke some French and attempted conversation, the woman was reluctant as yet to tell of her purpose.

  We joggled along the well-worn, narrow Lancastrian tracks, through thick woodlands and pastures my brothers and I had explored as children, until finally descending a short rise toward Lakeland Manor, nestled between fir trees and leafy gardens at the southern end of Windermere lake. With most of its shutters closed that day, the normally imposing structure appeared sullen, perhaps growing weary of the current occupants, who did not offer any of the extravagant festivities it had been used to in its former days of excess. After a sharp turn off the lane, a pillared gateway opened onto a gravel drive bordered by formal gardens, stone vases, and fading blooms that bowed us through to the front terrace and the building’s entrance enwreathed with red and green ivy.

  Bert was edging toward seventy then, and the maintenance of the house and gardens was becoming a larger task for him with each passing season. In recent years he had also been spending much of his time helping several of our tenanted farmers cultivate their land. Our family had come to rely heavily on the income from the rents. Despite that he was not paid as well as some on more affluent northern estates, he was extremely loyal, and this made it difficult to question him on the odd patch of weeds and several cracked pavers I spied along the garden paths. I knew that he would be aware of the disrepair.

  Lakeland Manor was symmetrically Georgian in style, though some classical influences such as the Corinthian columns at the entrance and the large arched Palladian windows down the center were applied during the construction at the whims of my great-grandmother.

  Our gray stone home was three stories high in the main building, flanked by additional two-story wings, as well as an extra structure that was once used as servants’ quarters on the far side. From the large foyer, stairways on either side led to the upper levels, and much of the rear ground floor was dedicated to a grand hall for entertaining, surrounded by a viewing platform above on the first story, where most of the bedrooms and some guest suites were also situated. Part of the top floor had served as Edgar’s rooms in his final years at home. The wing on the right housed my parents’ very spacious and private suites, or “the villa” as my mother liked to refer to it. Along with the addition of some modern conveniences, the manor was just as impr
essive in its historical finishes as it was in structural design, with Italian marble fireplaces, turned mahogany balusters, ornate gilded wall lights, and polished oak floors throughout.

  Peggy rushed to meet me in the foyer. She had entered our employ in her early twenties and had been our family housekeeper for over thirty years, and more recently my mother’s personal carer also. Peggy’s role was much more than that of housekeeper; rather she had been the glue that held us together and a stabilizing influence in our lives, who helped care for us through infancy, who groomed my brothers and me to a standard that Mother would approve of, and who saw our faults and loved us regardless.

  When the greetings were quickly over, Peggy revealed that she was just as perplexed as Bert about our guest. Though she wore a more knowing look, and perhaps bore an instinct for the major chain of events to come.

  “The guest is in the drawing room. She’s been there waiting several hours. Your mother is back there now also. And she’s in a mood.”

  “The woman has not given any clue as to her arrival?”

  “Only that it is of much importance she speak to you as soon as possible.”

  “Is she inquiring about purchasing the property, do you think?”

  Peggy cleared her throat. “I do not feel that she is of that persuasion in her current circumstance.”

  I breathed out heavily. Though the work and travel should have tired me, the expectancy and urgency had kept my mind sharp and anxious.

  “I will bring you some tea,” said Peggy, taking my hat and coat.

  The drawing room doors to the right of the foyer were large and heavy and checkered with glass. I could see before opening them that Mother was in a window chair looking toward the gardens and a low autumn sun. Sitting on the floor several feet away from her was a small child, who held a soft toy bear. As I entered, Mother viewed me uneasily, and I followed her shifting gaze toward the other side of the room.

  With her back to us, the visitor stood examining a painting above the mantelpiece. She wore a fitted white dress over a narrow waist, and her dark-auburn hair was pinned high to display her long neck. A travel bag, which had seen better years, sat near her feet. I went straight to Mother, whose expression spoke her feelings. She sighed, relieved to see me, her shoulders slackening with exaggerated drama. I kissed her cheek, and in her usual way, she accepted it with a nod.

  “I wondered if you would get here,” she said seemingly politely, though I recognized the not-so-subtle complaint that she had waited too long.

  I glanced at the woman who was yet to turn.

  “I took the first train,” I told her in a failed attempt to lessen her disapproval.

  I nodded a greeting toward the male child, who upon consideration I thought to be somewhere around the age of four and whose face gave nothing away, blank and waiting for someone to draw some kind of feeling on it.

  “Rudy,” said my mother, “this is Mariette.”

  The woman turned, standing partly in shadow, but even from a distance, I was able to take account of her remarkable features. She wore no powders, her complexion golden-brown and clear, but with a hint of sleeplessness below her large ebony eyes. She had a face not unlike those I’d admired in galleries of ancient Egyptian art, with dark, arched brows and a long, fine nose that stretched almost to her Cupid’s bow lips above a small, pointed chin. She was so striking and rare I found it hard to look away.

  She stepped toward me into a broader patch of late-afternoon light from the window, perhaps even aware of the effect that illumination would have on her, displaying the glorious, rich colors of her skin, hair, and youth.

  “Bonjour!” she said.

  “Bonjour!” I said. “It is nice to meet you.”

  “She speaks no English,” my mother said, side-viewing me to reveal her skepticism as to the reasons for the stranger’s arrival.

  “To what do we owe the pleasure?” I translated in my school-taught French, grateful to have retained the skill. “Madame . . .”

  “My name is Mariette,” she replied in French. “There is no need to address me by any other.”

  “Fine,” I said, and wondered briefly if she was perhaps mad or lost. She straightened the skirt of her white muslin dress, which hung to the floor. She was clearly not a slave to the shorter fashions of the day.

  “Have you moved close by?”

  “No. I have come to meet you.” She glanced cautiously at my mother. Perhaps she was hoping Mother’s prying eyes would not be there to watch. My mother’s somewhat disdainful look put most people ill at ease much of the time. “I have traveled far.”

  The bottom of the stranger’s skirt was muddied, the leather of her shoes worn in places. I was intrigued and asked her to sit down. She did not do so but moved at least toward the chair I had indicated. Closer then I saw there were more cracks in the façade: fingernails bitten low, tiny lines beneath the eyes.

  She looked across at my mother, who seemed a little annoyed, though I guessed she was also in some pain. Mother suffered badly from migraines in recent times, along with melancholia and other ailments that had stopped her enjoying her middle years.

  The child had become restless and put his face against his mother’s skirts.

  “Would you like to sit down?” I asked again.

  She looked at the chair that I pointed to but remained where she stood.

  I waited while she seemed to brace herself to face me once more.

  “I have brought you your brother’s son,” she said, surprising me in English.

  “Laurence’s?”

  “No.”

  There was a period of silence while I sought to make sense of what she was telling me.

  “Edgar’s?” I said.

  She nodded.

  My eldest brother, Edgar, was presumed dead, missing since the final year of the war, four years earlier.

  I did not have the will to look at Mother.

  There was more, of course, to come that I would learn in the days to follow. But in order to progress this story, it is necessary to go back briefly.

  CHAPTER 2

  1900

  Peggy brought in the finely woven cream angora-wool blanket, stored with dried rose petals in a blue-dyed linen bag while awaiting my arrival, along with several woolen and linen dresses stitched with pastel-colored animal motifs, to be worn for the third time.

  “It’s a boy,” said the midwife after another long and arduous labor, and my mother did not turn her head to verify and marvel as I was placed in a basket, apparently “yowling like a cat in heat.” This was described to me by my second-oldest brother, Laurence, who had likely exaggerated such description from elsewhere and took great delight in reminding me that I was the last male in the pack and therefore without any rights at all. A third child, my brother also relished telling me, had been a nuisance to everyone, especially Mother. Though experience with my mother has told me that there was some truth to his words, I believe that any indifference at the time wasn’t because my mother didn’t love me on sight, but it was that she was simply tired of difficult births.

  For our earliest years of education, Mother hired a tutor from London to ensure we spoke as close to the same King’s English as she did. At the age of ten, we were sent to complete our education at the boarding school my father had attended at Bedford. At school, my academic skills were ordinary. I was ordinary. But of course, teachers didn’t tell me that. Not at first. They only told me I was ordinary when my father was late to pay the bills. Then they could tell me I was ordinary as much as they wanted. But by that stage I had already numbed myself into my own sense of mediocrity, where I could dwell undisturbed.

  There was one thing that made me stand out, and not by an act of bravery or by an award for excellence. But by one small defect that would partly explain my preference for solitude. And it was Laurence who highlighted it to me.

  I did not become aware of my stuttering until I was six. When I saw a fox one day, I proceeded to alert my
brothers, who were outside with me. The word would not eventuate, though I thought it was normal that others often filled in the remaining syllables for me. Laurence began mimicking me, running around calling out words that I had previously had trouble with. “Kitchen,” “pillar,” “octopus,” “rabbit” . . . and on they went, and on I went trying to say them, unaware of his intent, the first letters becoming one long, insidious snake until Laurence could not contain himself anymore and rolled around laughing on the lawn. Time and exercises healed the worst of it by the time I reached thirteen, and occurrences were now rare, but in stressful situations the “snake,” as I simply named this beast that lived within me, would still slither around my tongue to take its strangling hold when I least wanted it to.

  My brother Edgar, the oldest, was my favorite brother and, I had always suspected, my mother’s favorite son. I had looked up to Edgar, who was five years my senior. He had taken me under his wing from an early age, and I felt much loss when he left for boarding school. And though I preferred a solitary life, for the times that I wished to discuss a species of birdlife, a sense of the weather for sailing, and many other things we had in common, I dearly missed him.

  Edgar was someone who knew what to say, how to say it, someone who excelled at most things. When we were small, it was always Edgar who fixed the problem, and always Edgar I went to if there was something I needed explained: medical curiosities, astrological wonders, or sums. He almost always had the answers, and if not, he would find the book that did. I didn’t begrudge that he was special, that he was everyone’s favorite. Rather, I felt every achievement he did, as if we shared the same heart at times. During each of his long absences, I missed hearing the soft tones of his voice and the light laughter it brought from Mother. Our world seemed less complicated when he breezed through the door during school leave.

  It was Edgar who, during my second-to-last year at school, came to tell me that our father had died and to collect me for the funeral. It was a shock of course that our father was gone from a heart attack so quickly, but it was perhaps then we realized how little we knew about him; how absent he’d been from our lives, spending most of his time at his wine import business in London; how little he’d known about finances; and how the situation had been cleverly covered up by extemporary loans over several years. Stuart, our father, had overcapitalized, over-purchased, and over-assumed his own business sense. We discovered that he had put all his money into French grape production to create his own wine to sell, which had set about the decline, never once considering that such an enterprise would not thrive. Mother, suspicious about some of the dealings but unaware of the whole situation, had passed on Father’s accounting books to Edgar, who was forced to sort out the mess: selling Father’s London apartment and some lands to pay off debts and reducing other expenses. If it weren’t for Mother’s personal funds and assets, our circumstances would have been much worse.