Love Forbidden

Chapter 1 1953-3

“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 pounds 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?