Chapter 1

Mark Bowers, aged eight, lay rigid in his bed with his teddy bear, Sebastian, clutched to his chest. It was five o'clock in the morning of 20th September 1946. He had hardly slept all night because today he was to start boarding at a Harrogate prep school. He had spent all of his short life here at the family home of Craig Hill with his mother, Elspeth, and younger sister, Selena. Only recently had his father returned from the war and now Mark was going to be taken away from all he loved to go to this horrid boarding school. He blinked back the tears for the umpteenth time. He would not cry. Big boys didn't and big boys couldn't take teddy bears to boarding school either. That was sissy. He wondered whether Selena would look after Sebastian for him. He was not sure he wanted her to. Mummy would take better care of him. His body convulsed as he stifled another sob.

The Bowers had lived at Craig Hill since 1068 when King William I, Duke of Normandy, had granted Claude Bouviers a baronetcy for services in the Norman Conquest of England. It was during the Civil War that the name had changed to Bowers. Landed gentry with Norman names had difficulty proving to Cromwell's Roundheads that they were not Roman Catholics and therefore loyal to Charles I. The estate comprised the house, a granite Georgian building, the farm adjoining it and four hundred acres bordering the south bank of the River Nidd.

Mark's father, Sir David Bowers, Bart (Abbreviation for Baronet), MC and Bar, had had a good war. Although as a farmer he could have avoided call-up, he had a strong sense of patriotism and duty boosted by the fact that his father had been killed in the Great War. He therefore volunteered for service as soon as war was declared and joined The Green Howards, his county regiment. On D-Day he was a company commander in 6th Battalion. That day Company Sergeant Major Hollis of his battalion won a Victoria Cross (VC), the highest award for gallantry, at Mont Fleury. David's company passed through Hollis's position and against a determined defence secured the ground half a mile further on. David Bowers was awarded the Military Cross (MC) for his bravery. He earned the bar to his award, effectively a second MC, some months' later at the Rhine Crossing. It was not until the spring of 1946 that he was demobilised and could return to his family at Craig Hill.

During the war he had had only brief periods of leave at home and the outcome of one was the birth of Mark's sister, Serena, in 1942. In his absence with only the help of the foreman it was Elspeth who kept the farm going during the war. In 1946 she was still a beautiful thirty-five year old but thin as a rake and prematurely lined.

As far as Mark was concerned Spring 1946 brought the greatest happiness he had ever known. All his family was together again. He worshipped his father, loved his mother and tolerated his tiresome sister. He gloried in his freedom round the farm, walking with his parents and the dogs, helping, as he saw it, with the lambs. Indeed he was an adept at bottle-feeding the orphans. Then in July the knell had sounded. He was told he was going to boarding school in September. His mother tried to excite him with the purchase of his new uniform and his sports kit. It worked to an extent but there was still the underlying dread of being separated from all that he loved. His parents were deeply aware of it but saw it as one of the necessary ordeals he would have to face. Elspeth in particular dreaded losing her little boy.

At seven o'clock she knocked on Mark's door and went into his room. Ever since he had graduated from a cot to a bed she had knocked. It just seemed the right thing to do. She was immediately aware of his drawn, white face and convulsive grip of Sebastian.

"Oh God!" she prayed silently, "Give me the strength to deal with this: to go through what I hate but know to be right and to give my darling boy the strength to cope."