‘Okay. Where do we start, then?’ I asked, switching to my practical, professional-yet-compassionate work mode.
‘Like I said, at the beginning.’ Hattie walked over to the trunks, inspecting all three before giving one a decisive pat. ‘Here, I think. If you don’t mind, I’m going to sit down for a minute. You go ahead and open it up.’
She pulled out the chair that had been neatly tucked under the dressing table, wiped off the worst of the dust with her headscarf and repositioned it in a relatively clear section of patterned carpet beside the bed. I dragged the trunk over so we could both see what I found inside.
After carefully undoing the cracked leather straps, I slowly lifted the lid. Resting on the top was a roughly whittled owl, a pair of binoculars in a stiff case and a small bow with a quiver of arrows. I passed the owl to Hattie, and she cradled it on her knees.
‘Ah, yes. This is the one.’
‘Did these belong to your father?’
A quick shake of her head.
‘Oh, no. His part in the story comes much later. The binoculars were my grandfather’s, Cornelius Albert Hood, but we need to go further back than that. What else can you find in there?’
The top layers were knitted blankets, although as I kept digging, I uncovered neatly folded layers of women’s clothing, which I laid on the bed for Hattie to inspect closer. It was a mix of practical wear, including jodhpurs and a riding jacket, and elegant dresses and petticoats, all of them very old. Then, about two thirds of the way down, was a package wrapped in tissue paper, crisp with age. Clearing a space on the bed, Hattie tenderly unwrapped and unfolded it.
It was a floor-length, ivory gown, the empire waist and three-quarter-length sleeves embellished with fine lace and intricate beading. More lace edged the ruffled skirt and high neckline.
‘Is it a wedding dress?’
She nodded, smoothing out a crease in the bodice. ‘It was made for Millicent Hatherstone. The woman who should have been my Grandpa Cornelius’s aunt. I’m afraid this whole story is interwoven with heartbreak and loss. But is there anything sadder than a wedding dress doomed to never be worn?’ She paused to glance up at me, a rueful smile creasing one corner of her mouth. ‘Well, I suppose that depends on who you were going to marry. But again, that’s a whole other chapter.Thisis where Riverbend’s story begins.’
* * *
Riverbend
Millicent Mabel Hatherstone was born in 1896, in the heart of the forest, at Hatherstone Hall. An only daughter preceded by four brothers, she immediately became the sparkling diamond in a house full of hunting boots and cricket bats. Both her father, Lord Hatherstone’s, greatest joy and her mother’s closest confidante.
It was perhaps also inevitable that when required to be working on her embroidery or piano practice, Miss Millie-May was generally found by her frazzled nanny up a tree, on a horse or knee-deep in the river. Always accompanying a gaggle of brothers and other boys from the village, to whom she was determined to prove herself equal, despite being at least two years younger and six inches shorter than most of them. And while she could never run quite as fast or throw a ball as far, she won universal admiration for trying.
As one by one her brothers were dispatched off to boarding school, this did nothing to tame Millie-May’s wild spirit. She point-blank refused to submit to her highly recommended governess. Instead, she employed increasingly elaborate schemes to sneak off to the village school. The first few times, she perched on a tree branch and spied on the lesson through the window, but was quickly discovered by the schoolmaster, Mr Buckle. There then ensued a heated discussion by the end of which, to Mr Buckle’s confusion, he appeared to have been outwitted by a nine-year-old girl. Before he knew what was happening, he’d given up demanding she return home and offered her a seat beside his son, Edgar.
‘I don’t care if that dullard of a governess canes me every day between now and Christmas,’ she pronounced to her parents at breakfast the following morning, the wince as she sat down implying otherwise. ‘I won’t stay in the house all day. I especially won’t if it means listening to her droning on. I’m going to school with my friends and none of you can stop me.’
In the end, they agreed that as long as she achieved top marks, was well mannered in class and otherwise kept out of trouble, Millie-May would attend Hatherstone school. To be fair, she did come top of the class in science, mathematics and history, and Mr Buckle declared her a delight to teach. As for keeping out of trouble… Well. Two out of three was better than nothing. And she’d surely grow out of all this undignified behaviour, wouldn’t she?
* * *
‘What are we going to do?’ Lady Hatherstone wailed, when once again, a fifteen-year-old Millie-May appeared for supper with twigs in her honey-blonde hair and grass stains on her skirts. ‘Why hasn’t she grown out of this by now? What on earth will become of her?’
‘What are we going to do?’ Her father would chortle. ‘Millie-May is perfectly capable at deciding what she will become, and if you haven’t yet learned that nothing we do will make a blind bit of difference, then you’re not half as clever as you pretend to be.’
What Millie-May decided to become, she announced on her seventeenth birthday, was the wife of Edgar Buckle, whom she’d been sitting next to in class since that fateful day eight years earlier. It took a full ten days of ranting and raging, a stern letter being sent to Mr Buckle and a very expensive vase thrown through the morning room window before Lord Hatherstone conceded defeat.
Accepting that the marriage would take place either with or without his blessing, confirmed when his wife found two tickets for a passage to New York in her daughter’s bridal trousseau, Lord Hatherstone decided that he’d rather give his daughter to a local pipsqueak than lose her forever.
He did, however, quash any ideas about crossing the Atlantic by purchasing Millicent’s favourite section of the forest, including the perfect spot for a new house, gifting it to her as an early wedding present.
She would call the house Riverbend.
A week after the final plans were completed, Britain entered the First World War.
Of course her brave and valiant fiancé went off to do his duty, along with all four of the Hatherstone sons and so many of the other boys she’d once scrambled about the forest with. In his absence, Millie-May pressed on with the plans for Riverbend, her father helping to oversee the construction of the house while negotiating the numerous obstacles that were the inevitability of war. The main house was finally completed in the spring of 1916.
Millie-May was supposed to be supervising the draperies in the drawing room when the news came from the village. Her father found her on the little riverbank beach, fishing.
Edgar had been injured on the battlefield in France and died the following day. ‘Tell Millie I’m sorry I’ll not be back for the wedding,’ were the last words on his lips.
