The White House Connection Read Free

in the family mausoleum.
     
     
Major Peter Lang, MC,
     
     
Scots Guards, Special Air Service Regiment
     
     
1966-1996
     
     
Rest in Peace
     
     
Helen held her husband's hand. He had aged ten years in the past few days — a man once spry and vigorous now seemed as if he'd never been young. Rest in peace, she thought. But that's what it was supposed to have been for. Peace in Ireland, and those bastards destroyed him. No trace. It's as if he's never been, she thought, frowning, unable to weep. That can't be right. There's no justice, none at all in a world gone mad. The priest intoned: 'I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord.'
     
     
Helen shook her head. No, not that. Not that. I don't believe any more, not when evil walks the earth unpunished.
     
     
She turned, leaving the astonished mourners, taking her husband with her, and walked away. Hedley followed, the umbrella held over them.
     
     
Her father, unable to attend the funeral because of illness, died a few months later, and left her a millionaire many times over. The management team that controlled the various parts of the corporation were entirely trustworthy and headed by her cousin, with whom she'd always been close, so it was all in the family. She devoted herself to her husband, a broken man, who himself died a year after his son.
     
     
As for Helen, she gave a certain part of her activities to charitable work and spent a great deal of time at Compton Place, although the one thousand acres that went with the house were leased out for large-scale farming.
     
     
To a certain extent, Compton Place was her salvation because of its fascinating location. A mile from the coast of the North Sea, that part of Norfolk was still one of the most rural areas of England, full of winding narrow lanes and places with names like Cley-next-the-Sea, Stiffkey and Blakeney, little villages found unexpectedly and then lost, never to be found again. It was all so timeless.
     
     
From the first time Roger had taken her there, she had been enchanted by the salt marshes with the sea mist drifting in, the shingle and sand dunes and the great wet beaches when the tide was out.
     
     
From her days as a child growing up in Cape Cod, she had loved the sea and birds and there were birds in plenty in her part of Norfolk: Brent geese from Siberia, curlews, redshanks and every kind of seagull. She loved walking or cycling along the dykes, none of them less than six feet high, that passed through
     
     
the great banks of reeds. It gave her renewed energy every time she breathed in the salt sea air or felt the rain on her face.
     
     
The house had originally been built in Tudor times, but was mainly Georgian with a few later additions. The large kitchen was a post-war project, lovingly created in country style. The dining room, hall, library, and the huge drawing room, were panelled in oak. There were only six bedrooms now, for others had been developed into bathrooms or dressing rooms at various stages.
     
     
With the estate leased to various farmers, she had retained only six acres around the house, mainly woodland, leaving two large lawns and another for croquet. A retired farmer came up from the village from time to time to keep things in order, and when they were in residence, Hedley would get the tractor out and mow the grass himself.
     
     
There was a daily housekeeper named Mrs Smedley, and another woman from the village helped her with the cleaning when necessary. All this sufficed. It was a calm and orderly existence that helped her return to life. And the villagers helped, too.
     
     
The laws of the British aristocracy are strange. As Roger Lang's wife, she was officially Lady Lang. Only the daughters of the higher levels of the nobility were allowed to use their Christian names, but the villagers in that part of Norfolk were a strange, stubborn race. To them she was Lady Helen, and that was that. It was an interesting fact that the same attitude