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CHAPTER ONE

Laura was too young to remember the day on which her mother died although she was certain she had a faint recollection of the sombre hearse and the solemn faces of grieving relatives.

Charlotte Penfold had been a woman with natural grace which had endeared her to those with whom she came into contact: her marriage to Laura’s father Edward, had been a successful affair pleasing both to her poor but landed Scottish family and her new in-laws. Despite the slaughter, which was taking place on the fields of Flanders, the wedding had been solemnised with a degree of muted celebration.

Most of Charlotte’s uncles and aunts had attended the ceremony with doubtful pleasure, anticipating that the beautiful bride would, by the loading of dice against young subalterns in France in 1915, be a beautiful young widow before the end of the year. Yet, miraculously, Edward had survived the mud, the damp and the rats and it was Lottie who had succumbed to the influenza epidemic, which ravaged Europe after the cessation of hostilities. She left a daughter just over two and a broken-hearted husband.

Edward and Laura were very close: it was, therefore, all the more surprising to Charlotte’s family and upsetting to his daughter that, in 1921 Edward had remarried. Margaret was a straightforward sensible woman from a county family who had made no bones of the fact that, when she was widowed towards the end of the Great War, she was seeking a wealthy suitor to rescue her and her two little daughters from respectable impecuniosity. When she met Edward Penfold at a garden fete in the grounds of the local stately home she knew, with the instinct of survival, that her search was at an end. The only question was how long would it take her to move from her rented accommodation in the village of Fingest to the Edwardian house on the banks of the Thames?

Edward had been dragged, somewhat unwillingly, to attend this function which was to raise funds for the military nursing establishment set up during the war in the great Palladian pile now towering over the tents and stalls of the garden party. Laura, for whose sake he had been persuaded to make the effort was accompanied by her nursemaid and was fascinated by the competitions and side shows scattered on the lawns. Happily, she threw quoits over wooden pegs, fished among sawdust for small presents wrapped in brightly-coloured crepe paper and dropped pennies into a zinc bucket in the hope of covering the elusive florin winking at her from the grooved base.

She had no recollection of being presented to her future stepmother but remembered exactly what the two girls were wearing for they were both dressed in plain, cream tussore and had equally plain cream straw hats on their bobbed, mouse coloured hair.

For reasons she did not quite understand Laura suddenly felt not unlike a fairy on a Christmas tree as she looked down at her white voile dress, smocked from neck to waist in pale blue. The white hat wreathed in cornflowers which Nanny had considered quite riguer for attending a garden party at the home of a peer of the realm, felt too fussy, while her hair, which was the same resplendent chestnut of her dead mother seemed too long and too obvious.

Neither did she recall, if she witnessed it, the meeting between her father and Margaret but she did remember too poignantly, when she was barred from sharing her usual supper with her father because he was giving a dinner party. She could still feel the cold pane of the nursery window as she watched the small procession of cars which came to the front door, and did not sleep until the last guest had been driven away. She was gripped by some nameless fear which might change her comfortable companionship with her father for ever; even the nightlight burning in its saucer of water on the washhand stand failed to comfort her.

In the event, it was not as bad as it might have been. Margaret, in her flat brogues and seated tweed skirts was far too pragmatic to antagonise her new stepdaughter and she made sure that Laura had as much as possible of her father’s company. Margaret also made sure that her new stepdaughter’s nanny was retained and saw her smoothly into the sharing of the governess who came daily to the schoolroom.

Things were not quite so happy after the birth of Teddy: the not so unusual outcome of the union of two rather plain parents producing a Penfold heir possessed of almost dazzling good looks. It was inevitable that he would forge a bond between Margaret and Edward and had he been an unpleasant child it would have been easy for Laura to hate him, but he was as good-natured as he was personable. From infancy he doted on Laura and she was drawn unwillingly perhaps to this unexpected half brother. When he went away to a preparatory school somewhere near Salisbury, she was heartbroken and took comfort in the piano lessons she had enjoyed from an early age.

It was Margaret who rescued her from this loss for she had long had her sights on an Ascot establishment for the twins, Joanna and Clarry, and it was obvious that Edward would not foot the steep fees unless Laura was included. So, soon after she was thirteen, the chauffeur drove Laura and the other two girls to the rarefied atmosphere of Beechwood.

Laura found she was not as homesick as she had imagined she would be, and if her letters to Nanny were slightly blodged, they were soon filled with the names of her new friends and the activities with which wise schoolmistresses of the late twenties kept their teenage charges occupied.

The twins were in a different form despite the closeness of their ages and shone at games of all descriptions while Laura did moderately well academically and found that her piano-playing commanded interest. To her surprise, after the first lesson with a very young and junior tutor she was assigned to the senior music mistress, Miss Newark.

Margot Newark made no bones of the fact that Laura had talent. ‘Mind you’ she said in a forthright manner which belied an introvert personality displayed in the pale colours she wore and the wispy hair which inevitably escaped from her sandy bun. ‘Don’t imagine you’re a Paderewski or anything like that: you have a small gift which, with a lot of hard practise, might just succeed in not disgracing you at a local musical evening.’ Nevertheless, she gave Laura extra coaching for which she was unpaid and made sure that she was always included in parties which visited Queens Hall or watched performances of Hiawatha and Messiah.

After she had passed School Certificate with moderate distinction Laura stayed on in the small sixth form to take Highers in Music and Literature. When the twins were despatched to a Lausanne finishing school, Laura attended the Royal Academy and managed to acquire an LRAM; she took part in a small concert at the Wigmore Hall in the following year.

By this time she had been in and out of love with several fellow students and had, for some months, nursed a secret passion for her senior tutor. However, on discovering that despite his seemingly advanced age, he had an exceedingly attractive wife, Laura shied away from this hopeless dream, comforting herself with the thought that the disparity in their ages would have made their relationship unworkable. With this behind her, she flirted with almost all the young men whom she and the twins met at the parties of the summer of 1938.

In August she was invited to attend a house party at her aunt’s house in Sutherlandshire. Laura looked forward to the long journey north with great pleasure for she loved her comfortable, rosy cheeked aunt and always enjoyed the lavish food and the company which Aunt Bessie attracted to the gaunt Victorian lodge on the Firth of Dornoch. Laura could not have known as she caught the night sleeper from Euston that the world she left behind her would never be quite the same again.

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