(Part 01)
Henry Beaumont was the only son of the 10th Earl of Dancingdean.
Henry was a strong man, straight backed and powerful with a square jaw and chestnut brown hair, a gifted scholar, sportsman and a natural horseman.
It was early summer and Henry had just returned from Abbottsford University to Dancingdean Hall, the family home overlooking Teardrop Lake.
His lifelong friend, neighbour and fellow returnee Sebastian Blackburn lived next door at Bridge House.
The year was 1914 and they were on top of the world with a bright future ahead of them and only 21 years behind them.
Little did they know as they sailed on the picturesque waters of the lake that glorious June, that their futures would start to unravel with the death of an obscure minor royal of the Hapsburg dynasty on the 28th of that very Month.
Sebastian was destined for a career in his father’s bank and marriage to Lady Theresa Edgson in the following year.
While Henry was to be groomed to follow in his father’s footsteps, which would culminate in his wearing the ermine in the House of Lords as the 11th Earl of Dancingdean.
All through the month of July they carried on with their lives, and the usual round of social engagement totally oblivious to the treat of impending war.
Henry even found time to fall in love.
The object of his affections was Christine Turner a tall auburn haired girl with a smiling freckled face, a sweet nature and a kind heart.
She was three years older than him and she had been employed as his mother’s companion for a year and a half.
And he had been attracted to her for every single day of that year and a half but she had always resisted his advances.
And dismissed his feelings as mere infatuation but she filled his every waking thought on his last year at University and when he was home it was her he wanted to see first.
Christine though was resolute in her opposition, month after month, even though she shared his feelings.
But on the balmy evening of the 3rd of July, when his father was staying at his club and his mother had taken to her bed with the vapours, he kissed her on the terrace and she reciprocated.
“We shouldn’t be doing this” she said
“I know” he whispered and kissed her again.
For the remainder of that month he fulfilled all the social engagements he was expected to attend so as not to arouse suspicion and then they would meet in secret and snatch intimate moments wherever and whenever they could.
But they told no one, because they could tell no one.
On the first of August, the day on which Germany declared war on Russia, was also the day that Henry made a declaration of his own.
It was Christine’s day off and they had arranged a secret rendezvous up at Lovers Leap, a rocky shelf that jutted out above the cliffs, which were an extension of those that formed part of the northern side of Teardrop Lake and formed the natural border between the Teardrop estate and the Dancingdean Forest proper.
Lovers Leap was so called because it was where desperate and broken hearted lovers would leap to their deaths although there was no evidence that anyone actually had.
It was just a promontory that offered a stunning view, but it was a very rainy day so they met at Dancingdean Folly instead.
The Folly was built by the 8th Earl of Dancingdean who had it erected for himself, in the style of a Castle Keep.
He was always prone to delusions of Grandeur.
He had it erected on top of a hill and then had the surrounding Forest cleared so everyone for miles around could see his standard flying high from the turret.
The scene was very different almost a hundred years later as the forest had begun encroaching on the cleared land.
Henry got there first and immediately took shelter and then waited anxiously in the doorway for Christine to arrive.
He had been up there for almost an hour and he was just beginning to think she wasn’t coming when she appeared, running through the trees and straight into his arms.
“I thought you weren’t coming” he said
“Sorry darling, your mother was being difficult” Christine explained and then she kissed him.
(Part 02)
She and Henry ate their picnic sat on a tartan rug in the old Folly looking out at the rain.
When they had finished Henry refilled their glasses with champagne and as he raised his glass in a toast he said
“Christine Turner, will you marry me?”
Henry waited expectantly for her answer but she looked down at the ground and said nothing.
“I’m not joking” he said “I love you and I want to marry you”
“I love you too” she said “but I can’t marry you”
“Why not?” he asked
“Because you’re the next in line to the title and I’m a Lady’s companion” she explained
“But I don’t care about that” Henry said taking her hand
“But your father will, and your mother will, and so will all your friends” she said
“I don’t want the title” he said “I only want you”
“But what will we live on and where will we live?” Christine asked
“I have some money left to me by grandfather and a small house in Abbottsford”
He explained but she was still unmoved
“Its madness” she said “you will be throwing away your future”
“I have no future if it doesn’t include you” he said earnestly
She thought for a moment then held his hand to her lips and said “Yes”
They couldn’t tell anyone, Henry couldn’t even tell his best friend Sebastian, they just continued to meet in secret and bide their time.
But time was not a commodity they had in abundance.
A point that was heavily underlined when Germany invaded Belgium and Britain declared war.
Henry was not a soldier either by nature or profession, he was a pacifist by ideology and content to be so.
However he and Sebastian enlisted at the earliest opportunity and joined the Downshire Light Infantry.
They were both commissioned as Lieutenants and reported immediately to the camp at Nettlefield.
Henry and Christine saw little of each other over the coming weeks and had to conduct their love affair via the mail.
Their engagement remained a secret and she had to wear her engagement ring on a chain about her neck.
Which she would kiss each night before she slept.
The training at Nettlefield was intense and rigorous and was completed in under six weeks and when the boys returned home on their pre-embarkation leave they were resplendent in their uniforms.
When they presented themselves to their respective fiancée’s they were viewed with a mixture of pride and sadness.
Christine broke down and cried when he told her he only had 4 days leave before he left for France.
Henry’s father, George’s reaction was slightly different.
“For God’s sake boy you don’t have to go” he yelled “you are my heir”
“I have to go” Henry replied
“No you don not” his father argued
“I have to go” Henry repeated
“Then let me pull some strings and get you a staff post”
“No father I don’t want any special treatment” he said
In retrospect he should have said “ok pull your strings on condition that I can marry Christine Turner”
But he didn’t.
Sebastian Blackburn allowed his father to pull strings on his behalf however, but not to get out of the firing line, Seb wanted to marry Theresa before he left for France.
So a hastily arrange ceremony was performed at Olwen’s Chapel.
Olwen was an Anglo Saxon Lady who was one of the early converts to Christianity but her pagan husband’s tribe would not accept the new faith and she was forced to worship secretly in the forest.
Her chapel actually appeared to me little more than an assortment of stones on the forest floor arranged around a granite altar stone in a woodland clearing, the wooden structure long since rotted away.
It had been rediscovered early in Queen Victoria reign and had been lovingly maintained ever since by a local society.
So on September 13th 1914, Sebastian Blackburn the tall, blonde, classically handsome lieutenant with the dazzling blue eyes, wed the petite, dark haired Theresa, she dressed in ivory silk, he in his dress uniform.
With best man Henry by his side.
(Part 03)
After the reception Henry crept to Christine’s room and knocked lightly on her door.
She opened the door in her night things
“What are you doing here?” she whispered through the crack in the door
“I just wanted to say that on my next leave you will be the bride” he said and kissed her goodnight.
Three days later they checked into the Railway Hotel in Abbeyvale as Mr and Mrs Beauchamp on the eve of his regiment’s embarkation, when their love was made manifest.
On the platform of Abbeyvale station the next morning he saw her onto the Shallowfield train and as he held her hand through the open window he said
“I love you Christine and I promise we will be married when I return”
“Just come home safe darling” she said as train pulled slowly out of the station.
He stood on the platform looking on and waving until she was out of sight.
They wrote to each other every few days over the weeks he was away, each letter more heavily laden with romantic sentiment than its predecessor.
Even when the First Battle of Ypres began on the 19th of October his romantic fervour was not abated nor did it, by its end on the 22nd of November and all through that winter it was his love for Christine that kept him warm.
In his letters to her he didn’t mention all the harshest realities of life in the trenches and in return Christine didn’t burden him with the knowledge that she was pregnant with his child.
As winter faded into spring the conditions in Belgium had not improved and the Second Battle of Ypres commenced in April and Christine was fast reaching the point that it was going to be difficult to conceal a pregnancy in her Edwardian outfits.
Then on the 2nd of April her worst fears were realised when the telegraph boy arrived at Dancingdean Hall.
The telegram read
“We regret to inform you that on the 29th of May Lt H G M Beaumont was killed while trying to rescue a mortally wounded comrade from no man’s land”
Christine hadn’t seen the boy arrive but was alerted to its contents when Lady Dancingdean went hysterical and started throwing things around her room.
The Earl was unable to calm her so he left her to Christine and dealt with the news of his only son’s death by going out to the woods to shoot things.
Christine wanted to scream out in grief at her loss but felt compelled to placate her mistress instead.
That afternoon however she was taken to the asylum in Pepperstock which she would never leave.
George, 10th Earl of Dancingdean never returned from the woods either because after he tired of shooting the wild life he turned the gun on himself.
That evening as darkness fell so did Christine Turner’s mood.
She sat in a leather chesterfield in George Beaumont’s study, a large glass of brandy in one hand and the telegram in the other and tears streaming down her cheeks.
Dancingdean Hall was not the only recipient of the Telegram boy’s grim correspondence.
The inhabitants of Bridge House were informed of Sebastian Blackburn’s death.
How typical of the man she loved to risk his live to save his wounded friend.
Christine fell into a black despair and could see no way out.
She would soon be unemployed and as soon as the baby showed she would be unemployable and she had lost the man she loved and the father of her child.
The burden was too great to bear and so she drained her glass.
Her heart was broken and there was no future for her and her lover’s child, weighed down by grief in her heart and rocks in her pockets Christine walked onto the terrace where she had first kissed Henry and then crossed the lawn from Dancingdean Hall and jumped off the east cliff into the black lake below.
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