The Honeyfield Bequest Read online

  The Honeyfield Bequest

  ANNA JACOBS

  Contents

  Title Page

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Part Two

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Endnote

  About the Author

  By Anna Jacobs

  Copyright

  Part One

  1901–1907

  Chapter One

  Wiltshire Autumn 1901

  Kathleen had never seen a customer look so unhappy. Avoiding other people, the man went to a small table in a back corner of the tea room and sat down with a heavy sigh, staring at his clasped hands. She felt so sorry for him she said to the other waitress, ‘I’ll serve that one.’

  ‘You’re welcome. He comes in sometimes and always looks miserable!’

  ‘Don’t be unkind. Someone he loves might have died, for all you know.’

  ‘Oh! I never thought of that.’

  No, you never think of anything but yourself! But Kathleen didn’t say that. It’d just go in one ear and out of the other; the other waitress was such a scatterbrain.

  She went across to the man and he stared at her blankly when she asked what he would like. When he didn’t respond, she repeated, ‘May I get you something, sir?’

  ‘Oh. Sorry. A pot of tea, please.’

  ‘And something to eat? You look tired and we have some delicious scones.’

  Then he looked at her, really looked, and gave her a faint smile. ‘You’re very kind. You couldn’t join me for a few moments, could you, and cheer me up? I’d buy you some tea and scones, too.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. It’s against the rules, and anyway, I have other people to serve.’

  But she made detours to pass his table when she didn’t need to, smiling at him each time. It upset her to see anyone look that unhappy. He was well dressed, couldn’t be more than thirty, if that, so it wasn’t likely to be a money worry. Unless he’d lost his job, of course, which could happen to anyone.

  When he walked out, he left a sixpenny coin under his saucer for a tip. She appreciated such generosity because her father took all her wages, only letting her keep her tips, and he’d not have done that if he’d realised how much the tips added up to.

  She put most of the money in a savings bank and kept her bank book well hidden, leaving a few small coins in a jam jar she left openly in her bedroom and called her tips jar.

  Her father had never raided the jar, she had to give him that. Her mother had tried it once, but Kathleen had created such a fuss that her father had backed her up for once and her mother hadn’t tried it again.

  When she finished work at two o’clock for her afternoon break, Kathleen found the unhappy customer waiting for her outside and stopped in surprise.

  ‘I asked the other waitress what time you finished and she said you had a two-hour afternoon break,’ he explained. ‘I hope you don’t mind me waiting to speak to you.’

  ‘Why do you want to do that?’

  ‘I wondered if I could walk with you, just for a few minutes? I won’t pester you if you say no, but you have such a cheerful face. Your smile really lifted my spirits today.’

  And she did something she had never done before when other men asked her out walking – she felt so sorry for him she said yes. ‘All right. But just round the park.’

  ‘Thank you, miss …?’ He looked at her questioningly.

  ‘Kathleen. And you are?’

  ‘Ernest Seaton.’

  ‘I don’t usually accept invitations from customers, but you look very unhappy today, Mr Seaton.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Would you like to tell me about it?’

  ‘Not really. I’ll just say that I work in my father’s business and he … isn’t easy to deal with.’

  ‘What exactly do you do?’

  ‘My father owns a carting business. I do whatever’s needed, work in the office or go out with deliveries. I don’t like working in the office, though. He shouts if I so much as lift my nose from the account books or letter copying.’

  Then she realised: this must be the son of Jedediah Seaton, her father’s new employer. She shouldn’t be speaking to him, she should walk away at once. Only … Oh dear, he was looking at her even more unhappily.

  ‘You’ve heard of my father, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes. My father has just started working for him as foreman of the yard. He says Mr Seaton’s very strict, wants things done just so, but he knows what he’s doing.’

  And her father was also good at what he did, looking after horses and managing a big stable. He had never been out of work that she could remember. If her mother wasn’t such a bad manager, and her father didn’t drink heavily, the family would have been comfortably off.

  Ernest snapped his fingers. ‘Fergus Keller. He’s very good with horses and a capable organiser of the stables, too. My father’s really pleased with him.’

  She stopped walking. ‘Da could lose his job if your father saw us together. I’d better leave you. I wish you well, Mr Seaton, and I hope you find something to make you happier.’

  But as she turned away, he grabbed her arm.

  She stiffened, looking down at it and then at him. ‘Let me go!’

  He did so at once. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Keller. But please won’t you come for just a short walk? Because chatting to you is the first thing that’s made me feel happy in a long time.’

  She hesitated, remembering how miserable he’d looked when he came into the café. ‘Oh … Very well. Just for a few minutes. We’d better stay at the top of the park, though. The paths are rougher and not many people go up there. And we’ll be out of sight of anyone passing along the street.’

  As they continued walking slowly round the top area, she asked, ‘Can you not find somewhere else to work?’

  ‘No. Carting is all I know, and anyway, when I suggested it, Father said he would not only cut me off from the family without a penny if I tried to leave, he’d see I didn’t get another job in carting.’

  ‘Oh dear. But perhaps he was just threatening it to keep you there.’

  ‘My father never makes idle threats. He always does exactly what he says he will. When my younger brother left home against his wishes, Father cut him off without a penny and forbade Mother and me to have anything to do with him. Alex isn’t very strong and working with horses makes him wheeze, but Father kept insisting he’d get over it if he set his mind to it. Only the wheezing got worse. It was so bad some days, Alex couldn’t breathe properly. That’s why he left.’

  ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Alex only wheezes when he’s near horses. It turned out he’d been planning to leave for a while and had been saving his money. He’s much cleverer than me. He has a stall in the market now and is making a good living, selling quality second-hand household goods. He calls it Old Treasures.’

  ‘I’ve seen it. He has some nice things for sale.’

  ‘Yes. He’s clever at finding them. I couldn’t run my own bu
siness, though. I’m not good with bookwork and accounts like Alex is. That’s one of the reasons my father gets so angry at me.’

  He shrugged again. ‘Let’s not talk about that. Tell me about yourself.’

  He offered her his arm, but she shook her head and continued on her own.

  ‘There isn’t much to tell. I’m the youngest of five. I have two sisters and two brothers. They’re all married and I’m the only one left at home. I work as a waitress but I’m going to classes in the evening and learning to type. I did accounts last year. Next year I’ll learn shorthand. I’m going to be a secretary one day.’

  ‘Couldn’t your father send you to proper secretarial classes so you can get all the studying done in one year? He’s on a foreman’s wages, after all.’

  Which showed Ernest wasn’t as stupid as he made out, she thought. ‘He refuses to pay for classes and he takes all my wages, except for the tips. He won’t let me go to more than one evening class a year, even though I pay for it myself.’

  ‘Can’t your mother persuade him to let you do more?’

  ‘My mother never goes against him. She’s terrified of upsetting him.’

  ‘My mother does what my father says too. Why is Fergus so against you going to classes?’

  ‘He says women only get married, so educating them apart from the three Rs is a waste of time and money, because employers don’t let married women carry on working. But I’m not going to get married and I am going to become a secretary, however long it takes me.’

  ‘You’re beautiful when your face lights up like that.’

  She stopped dead. ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Give me compliments. I’m not interested in having a young man or courting.’

  He looked so disappointed she added, ‘I’ll be your friend, if you like, but nothing more.’

  He smiled shyly at her, a smile that transformed his rather lumpy face. ‘I’d love to be your friend, Miss Keller. I’m not good with people and I don’t have any real friends.’

  The church clock struck a quarter to three just at that moment and he dragged out his watch from his waistcoat pocket, looking panic-stricken when he opened it. ‘I can’t believe that’s the time already. I’m going to be late back and my father will kill me. May I see you tomorrow?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please.’

  He looked so upset she relented. ‘Same day next week.’

  ‘A whole week away!’

  ‘Yes. I have classes and things to do.’ She usually spent her afternoon breaks studying in the public library. At least her father didn’t complain when she borrowed books, because that was free, though he laughed at what she chose and said she was only pretending to understand them to show off. She’d seen him reading them sometimes, though. He wasn’t a stupid man, just pig-headed about certain things.

  ‘Very well. Next week it is.’ Ernest tipped his hat to her and hurried off down the slope to the street.

  ‘I’m a fool,’ she muttered. She didn’t need more trouble. It was hard enough persuading her father to let her keep going to the evening classes. Of course, her mother agreed with him, she always did, but at least she kept telling her husband it did no harm.

  Once Ernest Seaton was completely out of sight, Kathleen walked briskly down the hill and went into the library, forgetting her new acquaintance as she chose another book about running a shop and hid it under a silly novel about a young maidservant who married a prince.

  The librarian frowned at the business book. ‘Books on this topic are only usually borrowed by men. Are you sure you can understand it, miss?’

  He made similar comments every week. He was as bad as her father. ‘I find them extremely interesting, thank you.’

  He shook his head but didn’t try to stop her borrowing it.

  She smiled as she walked out with it on top of her pile. Actually, she didn’t understand some of the words and ideas in the business books, but she would one day. Whatever her father said or did. She enjoyed learning new things.

  When she went home, her father wasn’t there, of course, but her mother glanced at the top book. ‘What rubbish you read, to be sure. You’ll forget all that sort of thing when you’re married.’

  ‘I don’t want to get married.’

  ‘Of course you do. All young girls do. Your brothers and sisters are all married now.’

  Well, I’m not going to, thought Kathleen rebelliously. But she didn’t waste her breath saying that again.

  Nathan Perry was born in 1884 to a comfortable life as an accountant’s son. By 1901 he had shown that he was going to be tall like his father, which he was pleased about. He had a shock of wavy, light-brown hair, which didn’t please him, because it would never stay tidy and that got him into trouble with his father. Even his face was wrong and he often heard people say it looked too old for a child.

  When he grumbled about this, his mother always told him he’d grow into his face, but that was no consolation because she couldn’t say when that would happen. Every time he looked in the mirror and saw that sharp profile with its scimitar of a nose, he wished desperately that he was more normal-looking.

  The strangeness wasn’t just on the outside; it was inside his mind too. He found out by chance that he had a gift for finding lost people and objects. If he’d known how angry it’d make his father, he’d have kept quiet about it the first time it happened, but at eight years old who was wise enough to understand that people didn’t like those who were too different?

  He’d simply blurted out that his father’s favourite penknife had fallen out of his pocket in the back garden, and when challenged, led his parents straight to it. As he hadn’t been out in the garden all day that earned him a frown.

  He followed up this success with several others over the next few months and one day his father took him into his study. ‘From now on, son, you’re to hide your ability to find things.’

  ‘Shouldn’t I help people who’ve lost something?’ Nathan asked in puzzlement.

  ‘No. Better leave them to do that themselves. How else will they learn to be more careful in future?’

  Nathan frowned, not understanding the reason for yet another rule that seemed designed to hem him in.

  His father harrumphed and said, ‘Look, other people don’t know where to find lost things. It’s … unusual and it makes you look strange when you take someone straight to the object they’re searching for. Your life will be a lot easier if you fit in and do as others do. Trust me on that.’

  As Nathan started to protest, his father held up one hand. ‘I have said my last word on this. Kindly do as you are told.’

  Whenever his father spoke in that staccato tone, Nathan knew that beating his head against the wall would be easier than trying to change his father’s mind. He’d watched his mother sigh and give in to her husband many a time, and had gradually worked out that life would be easier for him if he did the same. So he simply said, ‘Very well, Father.’

  The voice softened. ‘Good lad.’ A flap of his father’s hand sent him out of the room.

  The new orders didn’t make sense, so Nathan sought out his mother, who was far better at explaining the complications of daily life.

  She sighed when he asked her. ‘Oh dear. I was afraid of this.’

  ‘Afraid of what, Mother?’

  She bent her head and he waited, realising she was thinking what to say.

  Then she looked up and gestured to the seat beside her on the sofa. ‘Close the door and sit down, dear.’

  He did as she asked and she took his hand, patting it absent-mindedly, which meant she had something important to say.

  ‘What I’m going to tell you must be kept to yourself, Nathan. You’re not to speak about it to anyone, especially not to your father. Promise me.’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘You got your gift for finding things from my side of the family, more specifically from my maternal grandmother. Occasionally member
s of her family have a … a mental gift, though you can never tell what it’ll be until it suddenly, well, appears one day.’

  He knew the family’s genealogy but he hadn’t heard about anyone else with strange talents before. ‘Go on.’

  She explained about the Latimers and their big country house called Greyladies. ‘And …’ She hesitated and looked over her shoulder before she continued, even though the door of her small sitting room was closed. ‘The house is haunted and the women who inherit it see the ghost of the first Anne Latimer from time to time. They think she still watches over her descendants and the house she loved. Sometimes we—they know things they can’t possibly know.’

  ‘You started to say “we”, Mother. Are you able to know things in that way?’

  She stared down at her lap. ‘Sometimes, yes. But I promised your father when we got married that I’d try not to do it any more and that I’d not tell anyone about the Latimers. He thought I was making things up at first, about knowing things, and when he found I wasn’t, he grew angry with me. As if I had any choice in the matter! I was born like that but I’ve been able to suppress it, thank goodness.’

  He knew why she had said ‘Thank goodness’. Because she always did as her husband wished. It seemed a strange way to live to him.

  ‘And now it seems you too have a gift of some sort. You’re part Latimer, after all, even if it’s only a distant connection. Your gift is for finding things.’

  ‘I can’t help it any more than you can.’

  ‘No. I can see that. I feel you need to understand the … the situation, which is why I’ve broken my promise to your father never to speak of it. Please don’t tell him and please try to stop doing it.’

  She looked so uncomfortable he decided not to mention the other things he had experienced, like sensing the presence of a ghost in one house they’d visited or occasionally knowing when something bad was going to happen.

  ‘And you won’t try to discuss it with your father, will you?’

  ‘No. What good would that do?’

  She sighed. ‘No good at all.’

  ‘I’m not going to make a fool of myself or upset Father, but I’m very relieved to know that I’m not alone in being different. What’s more, I don’t think it’s a bad sort of difference, so thank you for telling me about your family, Mother.’