This Cold Country Read Online Free PDF Page A

Day. Anyway Emily Haverley set her cap at the poor curate. First she developed some religious doubts and he was consulted. They had long discussions and at the end of it he was in love with her. She apparently led him on for the remaining few weeks of the term, then school broke up. She went on to be the most beautiful deb of her year while he had some kind of nervous breakdown.”
    â€œWhere do you think she is?”
    â€œThe same place that he is, I imagine, having traveled there by a more comfortable route.”
    â€œChristmas Day seems a strange time to decide to arrest him—them—Were they after her, too?”
    Rosemary leaned over and turned down the wireless, now broadcasting the weather forecast.
    â€œWhat could be a better day to disappear?” she asked. “The day on which no one is really paying attention.”
    â€œThe best day for him to escape, but not the best day for them to catch him, surely?”
    â€œNot completely an accident, I imagine.”
    Daisy looked shocked and Rosemary smiled, with the pleasure most of us take in a display of greater worldly wisdom or justified cynicism.
    â€œHe wasn’t the only Englishman to believe that fascism was the political system that would save the country. And he did, you know, attempt reforms as a member of another party and other political organizations. It was just that when it became clear what Hitler and Mussolini were up to he didn’t revert to the poetic heroism and self-sacrifice of the generation who perished in the Great War. There are plenty of former Fascist sprigs in the Foreign Office who would rather see him spend the rest of the war out of harm’s way than in a prison cell.”
    â€œWhere do you think he’s—they’ve—gone?”
    â€œIt’ll be interesting to find out. It’ll give a pretty good idea of how much help he had from the top. I hope it’s Germany.”
    Daisy looked surprised. The wireless was now playing popular music, unheard by either woman.
    â€œIt would serve him right. Just imagine—he’d have burned his boats here and it isn’t as though he’d be of any use to the Germans or that they’d trust him. During the last war there were a few Irishmen who thought of England as the enemy and so regarded Germany as an ally.”
    â€œWhat happened to them?”
    â€œThey were used and discarded—sick, lonely, and unhappy. Some of them tried to get back to Ireland—most of them died. Casement, of course, was hanged.”
    Something in Rosemary’s voice made Daisy say, “But he was a traitor, wasn’t he?”
    â€œNot everyone in Ireland thinks so.”
    But Daisy still saw things in black and white. Traitors were shot or hanged—you felt sorry for their families, provided they weren’t traitors, too. Although it was horrifying to execute one of your own countrymen, there wasn’t any choice.
    â€œHow about another slice of cake?” Rosemary asked.

Chapter 3
    T HERE’S POST FOR you, Miss. Two letters,” Elsie said as Daisy used the step outside the kitchen door to prize off her muddy gumboots. Daisy came inside and hung up her jacket, wet from a warm early summer shower. “On the hall table.”
    Elsie had not been instructed by Rosemary on how to treat the two young women who now lived in the house. Had it only been Daisy, it would have been easier for the staff. They could place her socially—Daisy’s father was a country rector, her grandfather landed gentry. Her family’s lack of affluence or her position as paid manual labor did not affect the attitude of household employees at Aberneth Farm. They thought of her as employed by the Crown, rather than by Rosemary. And she had a uniform; she was part of the War Effort. Lunch in working clothes, in the kitchen; dinner in the dining room. But the presence of Valerie clouded the issue. Elsie and Mrs. Thomas knew that, in