She spoke with a sudden passion, her voice vibrating through the room. Her mother looked startled.
“But why…” she began, and then Mona stopped her.
“I’m sorry, Mummy. Don’t take any notice of me, I’m tired.”
“Of course you are darling, and I mustn’t worry you with plans for the future the moment you arrive home. There’s only one thing I want at the moment and that is to have you to myself. Goodness knows I haven’t seen much of you these past years.”
Mrs. Vale put her hand on her daughter’s arm.
“I am so terribly glad to have you back.”
“Bless you!” Mona bent and kissed her mother on the cheek.
“There now,” Mrs. Vale said, putting her handkerchief to her eyes, “I feel quite absurdly sentimental. Mona, dear child, sit down in front of the fire and be cosy. I am going to help Nanny do the black-out. We had to have boards made for the hall windows and it takes two of us to lift them up. Such a nuisance and expense!”
“Shall I come and help you?”
“Certainly not. This is your first night home and you’ve got to rest and let us look after you. I shan’t be long – just look and see if you can find a khaki scarf somewhere in the room. I can’t think where I’ve left it and I’ve got to get it finished by tomorrow.”
“Is it so important?” Mona asked, looking around her.
She knew of old her mother’s habit of leaving things in the most unlikely places.
“Well, we have our knitting party here tomorrow – or is it the W.V.S.? I can never remember.”
“Is there any difference?”
“Difference!” Mrs. Vale exclaimed. “I should think there is! I can’t begin to tell you the trouble there is in the village over the war services. Really, we seem to have had a little war of our own about it. It’s all been very unfortunate, but I’ve managed to compromise the best way I can.”
“We have the knitting party here one afternoon a week and the W.V.S. another. I’m afraid you’ll find them rather a nuisance, except that the W.V.S. sit in the dining room. We have the knitting party in here.”
“Why must they have different rooms if they don’t come on the same day?” Mona asked.
“I really don’t know,” Mrs. Vale replied vaguely, “except the feeling has been so intense between them that I think Nanny and I felt that even the atmosphere might be charged with hostility.”
“How ridiculous!” Mona laughed.
“It is, isn’t it? But after all, when one has to live in the place, I do dislike having to fight with anyone and so I belong to both. The only trouble is I keep muddling them up and taking the socks I’ve knitted for the W.V.S. to the knitting party and vice versa. My gifts are then received in stony silence.”
“As I can’t knit,” Mona said, “I shan’t have to join either, thank goodness!”
“Don’t you be too sure,” Mrs. Vale retorted. “There are some very determined women in both parties. Well, do find my scarf darling, I must have it by tomorrow.”
Mrs. Vale went out of the room and closed the door, but when she was alone Mona made no effort to look for the lost scarf. Instead, she stood staring into the heart of the fire.
Then, as if suddenly stirred into action, she raised her hands to the portrait of Sir Francis Vale above the fireplace. She pressed a hidden spring at the corner of the finely carved frame and, as she did so, a piece of panelling on the other side of the fireplace swung slowly open. Mona hesitated a moment, took a deep breath, and entered the tiny, secret room where Sir Francis had once hidden with the Prior of the monastery while Queen Elizabeth’s men searched the building. The room where another Vale had been concealed while Oliver Cromwell’s men looted and sacked the house – the room where Lionel had first kissed her at that Christmas party long ago.
The room was square and oak-panelled. It contained two old high-backed chairs and a prie-Dieu. It was nearly dark, for it was dusk outside and the light came through skilfully concealed openings in the bricks.
Mona closed the panel that opened into the sitting room and stood still in the twilight. There was the musty smell of age and dust and yet it seemed to her that the atmosphere was steeped in happiness – that ecstatic happiness which had been hers, here in this secret place.
It had been snowing outside – snowing too hard for the party to go out. Someone had suggested playing ‘Sardines’ and Mona and Lionel had chosen to go and hide. It was Lionel who had thought of the hidden room.
“It wouldn’t be fair,” Mona had protested, “the others don’t know about it. After all, it is supposed to be a family secret. They’ll never find us.”
“Never mind,” Lionel had replied. “We’ll go in there for a bit to give them a real run for their money – then, when they think they have looked everywhere, we’ll creep out and surprise them in some quite obvious place. Come on.”
Mona had agreed. She had found it easy ever since he had arrived in the house to agree with her good-looking older cousin. They had pressed the spring in Sir Francis’s picture, the oak panelling had swung and they had crept through, closing the narrow door behind them.
There had been a faint, eerie light in the secret room, they could just see the expression on each other’s faces, and they seemed to stand in a No-Man’s-Land between the centuries, knowing neither age nor period but only a disconnected present. They had been silent and Mona was conscious of some strange tension, of a breathlessness she had never known before. Lionel was looking down at her, and the laughter that had come so easily to her lips all day was stilled.
“Mona,” He spoke her name, hardly above a whisper. She did not answer and he said it again. “Mona, why are you trembling?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, her voice as low as his.
And yet she did know. It was his nearness, the feeling of being softly and steadily overwhelmed, of watching him come nearer, of feeling his arms go round her and her head fall back against his shoulder. With his lips close to hers he had waited just a second longer.
“You’re lovely,” he said. “Oh, God, Mona, how lovely!”
Then he had kissed her. Her first kiss and the whole world was throbbing, pulsating, trembling and quivering, until she did not know whether she was more happy or afraid. He had kissed her eyes, her hair, and the softness of her neck. He was gentle and experienced, aware that she was as tremulous as any captured bird.
His lips were on her fingers and the palms of her hands and again he sought her mouth.
“Oh, my lovely ... my lovely!”
His words were broken now. Lionel, the sophisticated, the assured, the poised young diplomat, was incoherent with emotion. Mona thrilled at the first awareness of her power even while she still trembled.
So this was love? This restless, breathless beauty, this beating of heart and pulse, this unsatisfied seeking of lips and hands? How long they stood in the secret room she had no idea. In sentences half-lost in kisses, they planned their future. They must wait, of course, they’d tell no one as yet...
