While I Was Waiting
‘A lovely, romantic and historical read’ – Linda’s Book BagJune 1963, Clematis Cottage, Stoke St. Mary, HerefordshireI am really not sure why I am writing this. A foolish whim by a foolish old lady and it will probably sit in a box unread and decay much like its writer when Death makes his careless decision.But perhaps someone will find it. Someone will care enough to read and somehow I know that will happen.April 2000, Clematis Cottage, Stoke St. Mary, HerefordshireTired of her life in London, freelance illustrator Rachel buys the beautiful but dilapidated Clematis Cottage and sets about creating the home of her dreams. But tucked away behind the water tank in the attic and left to gather dust for decades is an old biscuit tin containing letters, postcards and a diary. So much more than old scraps of paper, these are precious memories that tell the story of Henrietta Trenchard-Lewis, the love she lost in the Great War and the girl who was left behind.
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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2015
Copyright © Georgia Hill 2015
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Ebook Edition © June 2015 ISBN: 9780008123253
Version 2015-07-02
For Geoff. I’m so glad I waited.
Contents
June 1963, Clematis Cottage, Stoke St Mary, Herefordshire
I am really not sure why I am writing this. A foolish whim by a foolish old lady and it will probably sit in a box unread and decay much like its writer when Death makes his careless decision. But perhaps someone will find it. Someone will care enough to read it and somehow I know this is what will happen.
Hetty snorted and slammed down her fountain pen. Pompous stuff! She could hear Richard saying the very same thing. He had always hated any whiff of pretension. She smiled. Richard and Edward. The aunts. Papa. Dear Peter. She hadn’t allowed herself to think of them all for such a long time – had been too busy tagging on to other people’s lives. She sat back to ease her stiff shoulders. Gazing at the view from the window in the sitting room, where she had placed her desk, she realised she had always been squeezed into other people’s lives.
‘A veritable cuckoo,’ she said out loud to the emptiness. ‘I’ve never, until now, had the luxury of being myself, of having my own life, as I want it.’ She glanced around the sitting room of her little cottage. ‘And I’ve never had a home of my own until I moved here.’
It was all the fault of that pesky young curate at the village church. He was the one who had suggested that she write up her life. He seemed to think she’d had an eventful one – she’d certainly lived through a time of great change, of great tragedy.
She picked up the pen again.
I was a young girl when I went to the big house…
April 2000, Clematis Cottage, Stoke St Mary, Herefordshire
She was mad, they’d said. Utterly mad.
Rachel stood with her hands on her hips and surveyed her new home. Buying this little house was the only truly impulsive thing she had ever done. She swallowed; there was no going back. It was all hers now. Clematis Cottage belonged to her.
The house in question was tiny: little more than a two-up, two-down but pleasingly symmetrical, with windows flanking a satisfyingly solid red front door. A straight path led up through what must have once been an old-fashioned garden.
That was the good news.
It had been six months since Rachel had seen it last. She’d forgotten the ivy growing up the walls and across the windows – choking the brickwork and stealing the light. She’d forgotten the crazily dangling guttering. She’d forgotten the five-foot-high weeds obliterating the front garden.
She was mad, they’d said. Perhaps she was.
Rachel turned her back on the house and faced its view instead. This was what had sold it. The cottage stood on rising land, some way from the rest of the village of Stoke St Mary and could be reached only by a rutted track. The farmland behind sloped gently upwards, but in front of the house there was nothing but glorious open countryside.
The estate agent had said that spring was when Herefordshire was at its finest. Mr Foster had been a nice old boy, very different from the gelled-up-haired and shiny-suited types in London and she’d dismissed him as eccentric. She’d been wrong. She’d first seen the cottage in October and thought the landscape beautiful then, clothed in crimson and brown. But now, in early April, it was magnificent.
