Read Broken Music for Free Online

year’s growth not cut back, the gravel was grass-grown and weed-infested; the roses on the walls, taking advantage of neglect, lolled unsupported and unpruned; the shaggy yews nearly touched each other, almost begging for their annual clip into the neat candle-flame shapes Lady Sybil had always been so particular about. Trimming them was a four-man-and-a-boy job and there was only Hughes and his garden boy now, where once there had been six men employed to look after the gardens, three of whom would never return.
    Hughes had left a basket of vegetables for her outside the potting shed. Despite all the odds, he’d managed to keep his kitchen garden in good shape. The glasshouses might be empty of the peaches, nectarines and grapes, the hothouse roses and stephanotis which had filled them before the war, but the neat rows of cabbages, potatoes and onions were what mattered now, and kept the family in fresh produce, with some to spare. Compared to those unlucky beings in the towns and cities, Broughton Underhill, accustomed to being self-sufficient, had never gone hungry in the wartime years; they’d never had to queue miserably for even the bare necessities as food became scarcer and dearer. Sugar and tea rationing had hit them as hard as everyone else, and meat and dairy produce had been commandeered by the government, but what farmer was going to deny his family and friends a bit of butter, enough milk? In one or two backyards the odd clandestine pig rooted, hidden from officialdom – while snaring rabbits and hares and taking a game bird or two for the pot was an inherited skill for some in Broughton, and easy enough when lame old Scuddy Thomas was the only help the head gamekeeper had, and they both turned a blind eye, anyway.
    Nella picked up the basket of parsnips and carrots and let herself out through the wicket gate that opened onto the ancient oak woods which had given the house its name. She hurried on, and as she reached the stile, the clock over the old stables chimed the half-hour and for a moment she hesitated, but then she climbed the stile steps and perched on the top rail, pulling her red-lined cloak around her. It wouldn’t hurt to snatch some time to herself.
    A strong, cold wind blew across the fields and she impatiently tucked back into the confines of her uniform cap some escaped strands of the slippery dark chestnut hair, less red than that their mother had passed on to all the rest of the family. Her mind jumped back again to what had happened this morning, when she’d first heard from matron the name of the doctor who would be arriving within the next day or two to replace the present MO, who was leaving the army for good. Captain AD Geddes. Duncan Geddes. Yes, of course it was him, no mistake. And in a world which had for so long been so very dark and grey, a secret warmth flooded her.
    She’d done her best to put the implications of his imminent arrival out of her mind while she worked, without conspicuous success, it had to be said. Panic touched her every time she thought of how she might react when they met. Even his name had stirred up feelings she thought she had controlled, despatched firmly into the past. What fate had sent him to Oaklands, of all places? Fate? Surely not. The thought that she might be working here must almost certainly have entered his mind.
    She gazed, seeing and yet not seeing the familiar view which had shone like a glimpse of remembered Heaven beyond the mud and devastation in Flanders: rolling pastures and meadowlands extending to the ha-ha which protected the gardens of Oaklands from wandering cattle; to the left the big house itself, the figures on the terrace made tiny by distance. A tranquil, timeless scene. Transformed in autumn by the gold and amber of beech and oak, the trees were as yet bare and leafless, waiting for the true spring and the haze of bluebells that would spread beneath their feet. The dying sun was low and red in a cold