The Lost Years Read online

  Table of Contents

  The Lost Years

  Copyright

  Also by author

  Authors notes

  Quote

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  About the author

  E.V. THOMPSON

  THE LOST YEARS

  CHARNWOOD

  Leicester

  First published in Great Britain 2002 by

  Little, Brown

  London

  First Charnwood Edition

  published 2002

  by arrangement with

  Time Warner Books UK Limited

  London

  The right of E.V. Thompson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All characters in this publication are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2002 by E.V. Thompson

  All rights reserved

  ISBN 0-7089-9397-4

  By the same author

  THE MUSIC MAKERS

  THE DREAM TRADERS

  CRY ONCE ALONE

  BECKY

  GOD'S HIGHLANDER

  CASSIE

  WYCHWOOD

  BLUE DRESS GIRL

  TOLPUDDLE WOMAN

  LEWIN'S MEAD

  MOONTIDE

  CAST NO SHADOWS

  SOMEWHERE A BIRD IS SINGING

  WINDS OF FORTUNE

  SEEK A NEW DAWN

  THE LOST YEARS

  PATHS OF DESTINY

  TOMORROW IS FOR EVER

  THE VAGRANT KING

  THOUGH THE HEAVENS

  MAY FALL

  NO LESS THAN THE JOURNEY

  The Retallick Saga

  BEN RETALLICK

  CHASE THE WIND

  HARVEST OF THE SUN

  SINGING SPEARS

  THE STRICKEN LAND

  LOTTIE TRAGO

  RUDDLEMOOR

  FIRES OF EVENING

  BROTHERS IN WAR

  The Jagos of Cornwall

  THE RESTLESS SEA

  POLRUDDEN

  MISTRESS OF POLRUDDEN

  As James Munro

  HOMELAND

  AUTHOR'S NOTES

  The Tremayne family owned Heligan for more than 400 eventful years and it would be impossible to write a credible historical novel around this great Cornish house without making use of their surname.

  Nevertheless, although many of the back-ground facts of my story are a matter of history, and the young men of the family served their country with outstanding gallantry in the First World War, all the main characters depicted herein are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ‘There are some men to whom things just seem to happen. I believe Tremayne is one of these.’

  The Lieutenant Colonel did not add what was in his mind, that such men either became heroes or were soon killed in action.

  PROLOGUE

  In the study of the great house of Heligan, Perys Sampson Tremayne pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. After clutching the edge of the desk for a moment to steady himself, he limped across the room to the window, his slippered feet silent on a carpet that had been rendered threadbare in places by more than two hundred years of wear.

  A number of heavy ledgers lay open on the desk. Among them were smaller notebooks, their cardboard covers bound in red, marbled paper. These were the labour books for the Tremayne estate for the years 1914 to 1918.

  Entered in the notebooks were the names of men who had been employed in and around the extensive grounds of the Cornish manor house during the four years of the war. Against each name was listed details of their daily tasks and the money they were paid at the end of a working week. In most cases the sum amounted to little more than a pound.

  On the first page of the book for 1914 were the names of almost two dozen men. By the last day of war the number had dwindled to eight.

  The names had changed, too. Of the remaining eight, only three had been employed at Heligan at the commencement of ‘the war to end all wars’.

  The reason for the disappearance of those whose surnames had been familiar around the great house for generations was summed up initially in three words written against their names on various dates.

  The words said, simply, ‘Left to enlist’ Their stark finality hid more sorrow than Perys cared to think about.

  Although not an immediate member of the family who had occupied Heligan for centuries, Perys was a Tremayne. He had stayed at the house before and during the war. Many of the named men were known to him.

  This, and curiosity, was why he had been looking through the labour books, seeking names of those it was hoped might soon return to work at Heligan; to resume a way of life far removed from the horrors experienced on the bloody battle-fields.

  There were so pitifully few left alive that Perys had suddenly felt the need to put aside the books. Yet now the view from the window served only to remind him of the world that so many of the Heligan men would never see again. Many who had helped shape the gardens, woods and fields now lay mouldering far from this small corner of Cornwall.

  ‘Killed in action. May, 1915’; ‘Lost at sea, July, 1917’; ‘Died of wounds, November, 1918.’ A few strokes of a pen were all that had been needed to write off the lives and achievements of men who had known the view he was seeing now - and who had loved it, as he did.

  Some of the deaths he took more personally than others. Those of men, mostly older than he, who had shown kindness to him when he first came to Heligan in the year the war began. There were others with whom he had served, and a few who had offered him comfort and solace when it was believed he might never walk again as a result of his wounded leg.

  Such thoughts w
ere running through Perys’s mind as he looked out of the window, his gaze travelling over gardens that struggled to maintain the glory they had known in those pre-war days.

  In the near distance was the busy little fishing village of Mevagissey. It nestled within a comforting cradle of steep cliffs, at the far end of the valley that sloped down from the house. Here, enterprising fishermen had built houses as closely knit as the fisher-families themselves.

  Perys wondered what deep sorrows were hidden within the walls of those houses, and in so many others scattered about the rolling countryside on either side of the village. Even the genuine sympathy of a caring community would not have been able to assuage the anguish of families tragically bereaved by war.

  His glance shifted beyond the village, to where the sea sparkled with a silver sheen in the early winter sunshine. It was a gentle sea today, dotted with the boats of working fishermen. No longer was there a need to keep a look-out for the sleek, grey menace of a surfacing submarine, intent upon adding a defenceless fishing boat to the list of its ‘kills’.

  Perys tried to shake free of such thoughts, reminding himself that they should now be consigned to history. Europe was once more at peace. It was time to forget the past and go in search of the future.

  It would not be easy.

  Turning away from the window, he glanced at the open labour books and limped to the desk to close them.

  His glance fell upon one of the names, and he paused as it provoked other memories. Memories of someone whose name would not be found in this book - or in any of the others.

  Although inextricably woven into the pattern of the great house and its lands, the incidents he recalled were so far removed from the Heligan of 1918 that they might have taken place a million miles away . . .

  CHAPTER 1

  The train which brought Perys Tremayne from London to the Cornish town of St Austell in the summer of 1914 was painted in the gleaming chocolate and brown livery of the Great Western Railway. A brass plate curving around a wheel arch of the polished green locomotive proudly proclaimed that this was the City of Truro.

  Almost nineteen years of age, Perys stepped down from the carriage dragging a large leather suitcase after him. He glanced uncertainly along the long platform. The Tremayne family had large landholdings in Cornwall, but it was his first visit to the area.

  ‘Can I take your suitcase, sir?’ A uniformed porter put the question to him.

  ‘Yes . . . no!’ Perys contradicted himself and hurriedly explained, ‘I’m expecting to be met by someone from Heligan.’

  ‘Ah! You’ll be the young Master Tremayne. Martin Bray, the Heligan coachman, is waiting for you farther along the platform. He and I were talking before the train came in. He said I was to look out for you.’

  As he was talking, the porter relieved Perys of the heavy suitcase. Picking it up with difficulty, he began walking in a lop-sided fashion along the platform towards a liveried coachman who was hurrying to meet them.

  When porter and coachman met, the suitcase changed hands once again. As the porter pocketed the coin Perys handed him and touched his cap, the coachman said, ‘I’m Martin, one of Mister Tremayne’s coachmen. I trust you’ve had a pleasant journey, Master Perys?’

  ‘It was quite enjoyable,’ Perys replied, ‘but I didn’t expect to have a carriage here to meet me!’

  ‘Ah well, you chose a good day to arrive. As you might know, you have an aunt and her two daughters staying at Heligan at the moment. They’ve had dresses altered for a ball and I was told to pick them up while I was in Saint Austell. They’re in the luggage box of the carriage. I’d have collected them in the pony cart and you with ’em - but it’s looking as though it’s going to rain. Your aunt didn’t want to risk getting the dresses spoiled, so I was told to bring the light carriage.’

  Perys had been unaware that other members of the Tremayne family were staying at Heligan House, and might have been offended by the presumption that dresses were more important than he, but the thought never occurred to him.

  In the eyes of the Tremaynes they would have assumed more importance. Perys belonged to a branch of the family only just close enough to the squires of Heligan to be acknowledged as possessing a right to the ancient family name. What was even worse, his mother had committed the unforgivable sin of loving another cousin rather too much.

  The family had frowned upon their increasing affection for each other, and they planned an elopement. Unfortunately, fate was to play a decisive role on behalf of the family. The cousin Perys’s mother intended marrying died in a tragic shooting accident. Eight months later, Perys was born into a life that would always be coloured by the disgrace his mother had brought upon the family.

  When Perys was eight years of age his mother died of lung fever, but the shame did not die with her. It was transferred to her son.

  His grandparents became his guardians, but they were in the habit of spending a great deal of the year travelling in Europe. They had no wish to assume responsibility for their illegitimate grandson. He was sent away to boarding school, first to a small establishment in Sussex, run by a clergyman, then to a minor public school in Oxfordshire.

  Perys quite enjoyed the clergyman’s school. He was quick to learn and the cleric’s wife was kind-hearted and motherly. The public school was far less pleasant. Somehow, details of his birth were discovered and the other boys referred to him as ‘the bastard’.

  As a result of the bullying he received, Perys learned to fight, and fight well. He became a skilful and determined boxer and, in due course, the bullying and name-calling ceased. Unfortunately, by this time he had earned a reputation as ‘unruly’ and was classified as ‘unable to relate to his fellow pupils’. It meant he was punished far more often than any other boy in the school.

  Only in his final year, when there was no one remaining who would dare take him on, did things improve and he was left to enjoy his studies.

  It was then Perys showed that, despite all the problems he had suffered, his schooling had not been wasted. Albeit grudgingly, the headmaster conceded that Perys had finally ‘settled down and showed considerable promise as a scholar’. He recommended to Perys’s grandparents that he should be allowed to go on to university in order to develop the promise he was belatedly exhibiting.

  Perys’s grandfather had other ideas. He and his ailing wife intended to take up permanent residence in Italy. Perys had become almost a stranger to them. They had no wish for his company between university terms. Further-more, they were determined to waste no more money on his education. It was time for him to make his own way in the world.

  It was decided he should join the army.

  Because Hugh Tremayne of Heligan, a distant relative of Perys, had close associations with the Duke of Cornwall Light Infantry, Cornwall seemed a good place from which Perys should embark upon a military career. They acted upon their decision right away.

  ‘You’ve come to Cornwall to join the army, I believe, Master Perys?’

  The coachman put the question as Perys helped him to lift the heavy suitcase onto a rack above the luggage box at the rear of the coach. There was room for it inside the compartment, but the coachman would not risk crushing the carefully boxed ballgowns.

  ‘I think that’s what’s been planned for me,’ Perys agreed.

  ‘You should do well. Master Perys. You belong to a family with a proud military tradition. My grandfather was very fond of telling how he watched the brave charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava in the Crimean War. Arthur Tremayne, uncle of the present squire, was leading his men in the charge that day. Grandpa always thought it the most wonderful thing he’d ever seen. Said it made him proud to be British. He was even more proud to be able to say he was a near neighbour of Captain Arthur.’

  Perys had studied details of the battle and was aware of the Tremayne involvement. A misunder-stood order had been responsible for an ill-conceived charge in which more than six hundred cavalrymen rode to almost certain
death for no good reason. Almost three hundred of the men became casualties, together with as many good horses. The charge had been an act of crass stupidity.

  He said nothing of his thoughts to the coachman.

  ‘. . . I had an uncle who fought in the Boer War with the Cornwall regiment too, sir.’ Suddenly less enthusiastic, Martin added, ‘He was killed at Paardeberg. My aunt never got over losing him.’

  Perys murmured a few suitably sympathetic words and Martin returned his thoughts to the present. ‘We’d best be on our way, sir. There’s a nasty storm in the offing.’

  Checking the luggage was secured, the coachman saw Perys safely seated inside the carriage. A few moments later the two-horse vehicle trundled up the steep slope from the station yard, heading for Heligan House, some six miles distant.

  CHAPTER 2

  Rain was already falling by the time the carriage reached the outskirts of the town of St Austell. Suddenly, the coachman brought the vehicle to an abrupt halt.

  Climbing to the ground, he opened the carriage door and said, ‘We’ve just passed my sister Annie, Master Perys. She’s on her way back from market to my father’s farm. It’s at Tregassick, just up beside Heligan. I think this rain will become very heavy before long. Would you mind if I allowed her to ride with me on the outside of the carriage? It would get her home a lot quicker than if she walked.’

  ‘By all means let her ride with us,’ Perys said, ‘but not on the outside of the carriage. She’d be soaked by the time she arrived. She can come in here with me.’

  For a moment it seemed Martin might put up an argument against Perys’s suggestion, but it was raining harder now and he wanted to don the waterproof coat kept in the box beneath the coachman’s seat. Besides, as Annie would be dropped off before they reached Heligan, he was unlikely to be in trouble from those at the great house.

  ‘Annie, young Master Tremayne says you can ride in the coach with him. Quickly now, get in before the inside gets wet. It’s tipping with rain already . . . No, not with the basket. I’ll tie that on the back.’

  Moments later, a young woman scrambled inside the carriage. She had been sheltering beneath a tree so was not too wet, but the carriage had come along just in time. As the door closed behind her, rain began beating a noisy tattoo on the roof of the vehicle.