The Gamekeeper's Wife

by Clare Flynn

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Losing a dog is…’ He wanted to say it was almost as bad as losing a friend or family member, but in the light of her husband’s death that felt inappropriate.

  ‘She was old. And she missed him.’ She gave a little hollow half-laugh. ‘Pined for her master from the moment he set off to volunteer with the rest of them from the estate. Followed him to the gates, she did. Whined night after night. Watched the door all the time as if she expected him to walk through it.’ She shook her head. ‘Maybe she’s with him now. Do you think dogs go to heaven?’

  Christopher was puzzled, uncertain how to reply.

  ‘Well, if they do, she won’t meet her master there.’ She brushed the hair away from her brow again. ‘Can you help me lift her into the hole?’

  Before Christopher could ask her what she meant about her husband not being in heaven, the woman had moved away. He followed her round to the rear of the building where the dead dog was lying on an old blanket. The moment to ask her had passed. Perhaps he’d misunderstood her meaning anyway, but he doubted it.

  Without speaking, they each took an end of the makeshift shroud and carried it across the grass to the hole she had dug under a tree. They lowered the body into the grave and Mrs Walters watched as Christopher shovelled the soil back into the hole. When he was done, they stood side-by-side, next to the mound of earth.

  ‘That was a deep hole. It must have taken you hours.’

  ‘I was in the Land Army. I volunteered as soon as it started at the beginning of 1917. I got plenty of practice at digging.’

  ‘Hard work, I imagine.’

  ‘Not like the recruitment posters where it was always sunshine, smiles and spring lambs to cuddle.’ She gave a sardonic laugh. ‘More like slave labour, in all weathers for next to no money. I did like getting to wear breeches though. And I still wear my oilskin coat when the weather’s bad.’

  ‘I didn’t know the uniform was breeches.’ He was surprised. ‘That must have raised a few eyebrows.’

  ‘It did. There were many who thought it would be better for us to drag through wet fields with our skirts trailing in the mud. We were doing men’s work so we couldn’t wear women’s clothes.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘And the boots were awful. They didn’t fit properly so we all had blisters. I got through so much Vaseline. In fact none of the clothes fitted properly. A pair of upper-class ladies had their own tailored uniforms from Harrods.’ She snorted. ‘All right for some.’

  ‘At least they did their bit.’

  ‘Yes. I won’t deny that.’

  ‘And if it’s any consolation it wasn’t any better for the men. The boots never fitted.’

  ‘Did you get your uniform from Harrods, then?’

  Christopher reddened. ‘My tailor.’

  Pushing the door of the house open, she beckoned him to follow her inside. Wordlessly, she prepared tea, as she had done the day before, while Christopher leaned against the scullery wall watching her.

  When they were seated at the table, Christopher tried to imagine her sitting here night after night, through the years of her marriage, eating an evening meal with her husband. His heart twisted at the loss and loneliness she must be feeling – and now not even the dog to keep her company. He realised she hadn’t mentioned the dog’s name.

  He took a gulp of tea then asked, ‘What did you mean about the dog not meeting her master in heaven?’

  She looked up at him, studying his face as though she was weighing him up, deciding what she was prepared to tell him. He had begun to think she wasn’t going to answer his question, when she spoke, staring into her cup of tea. ‘Harold Walters is burning in hell. At least I hope he is. I’ve not wasted any prayers on him.’ She fixed her gaze on Christopher. ‘I’ve shocked you now, haven’t I?’

  He didn’t know what to say. He was indeed shocked. Not only at what the woman had said but at the tone in which she had said it. Venomous, full of suppressed anger.

  ‘You can’t possibly mean that.’

  ‘Why can’t I? Don’t you think I knew him? Better than anyone? Better than you did.’

  ‘But–’

  ‘I’ll bet he was the perfect servant to you. Attentive to your every need. What did you call him? Your batman? He was always good at tugging his forelock to the gentry, but he’d never a good word for his wife.’

  Christopher bit his lip, wishing he hadn’t come. He was unprepared for this kind of revelation.

  ‘I hated him,’ she said. ‘Couldn’t bear being in the same room as him, let alone the same bed.’ She was plucking at her sleeve again. ‘Years I had to put up with him. Apart from the blessed release when he went to war. A prison sentence would have been better for me.’

  Blood rushed to his face. He didn’t know how to respond. His right hand was shaking and he grabbed his wrist to steady it.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘You probably don’t want to hear this. Not after what you said about him being such a good man, but I’m sick of it. Sick to my guts. Of you speaking well of him. Of the dog pining away in misery for him, while no one knows what I went through with him.’

  Instinctively, he put out his hand and touched her arm. Mrs Walters looked down at his hand, saying nothing, until, feeling awkward, he moved it away, letting it lie on the top of the table as if it had landed there by accident. After a few seconds, she placed her hand on top of his. Her touch was light, her skin cool, resting against his only briefly. His stomach contracted and he wanted to feel her hand against his again, but she had moved it into her lap.

  ‘He worked alongside my father,’ she said. ‘Da took him on when I was thirteen. There were half-a-dozen assistant keepers then and I paid him no more attention than any of them.’

  Christopher listened, fearful of what she was going to reveal, but fascinated by the way she was opening up herself and her story to him. She told him how Harold Walters began hanging around the cottage and the sitting house, checking on the nesting boxes when they had already been checked, hovering around the kennels when they had already been cleaned out, or sitting on a fallen tree trunk watching her as she went about her household tasks.

  ‘My mother died giving birth to me, so there was only ever me and my father. He died fifteen years ago and that’s when Walters got the head keeper job.’

  ‘I remember your father,’ Christopher said at last. ‘He showed me how to peel the bark off a piece of wood and make a bow and arrow.’

  She smiled. ‘That sounds like him. He wasn’t a bad man. He only did what he believed was right for me. Pity it wasn’t.’ She shrugged.

  Christopher drank the rest of his tea, uncertain where she was going with this.

  Mrs Walters leaned forward and filled his cup again. ‘But Da did one thing that was wrong and that I will never forgive him for.’ Her eyes fixed on Christopher’s. ‘He made me marry Walters against my will.’

  ‘Why did he do that?’

  ‘Because Walters had had his way with me. I was only fourteen and he was thirty-six. He forced himself on me. There was a shooting party and all the keepers, my da included, were out beating the covers. Walters slipped away from the shoot and found me in the sitting house, cleaning the nesting boxes.’ Her eyes were hard, defiant. ‘Pushed me down and raped me there in the dark on the stone cold floor, among the bird droppings.’

  Shocked, Christopher was speechless.

  Abruptly Mrs Walters rose from the table. ‘Tea’s gone cold. I’ll make a fresh brew.’ She went into the kitchen, moving about, boiling water on the stove, warming the pot, washing and drying the cups.

  Christopher studied her as she went about these small tasks. Her spine was straight and her movements fluid. He watched, transfixed, his heart racing, afraid of what else she was about to tell him, afraid of why she was doing so, and even more afraid of how he felt. What would it be like to press his lips against the back of her long bare, elegant neck?

  When she had served them both with
the fresh, hot tea, she sat down opposite him across the narrow table. ‘I had no idea about men and what they did to women. I’d no mother and Da was too embarrassed to bring the subject up. I suppose he thought I’d find out same as most women do, once I was married.’

  Christopher frowned, trying to imagine that fourteen-year-old girl, weeping, alone in the dark in the out-building, after being brutalised by a man twenty-two years her senior.

  ‘Da came home and found me weeping and bleeding, still terrified and feeling dirty. Dirty, dirty, dirty. He took a stick and went to find Walters. I wish he’d finished him off, but he settled for giving him a good hiding. Walters couldn’t work for a week and was left with a few scars, but no long-term damage. Unlike me. The damage will last all my life.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Walters.’

  ‘Don’t call me that. How can you call me that after what I’ve told you about him? Call me Martha. That’s my name.’

  ‘Martha.’ Her name on his tongue sounded strange. The only Martha he had known was in the Bible. His thoughts wandered for a moment as he tried to remember what that Martha did. All he could recall was that her sister was Mary and one of them – he couldn’t remember which – had washed the feet of Jesus.

  Her gaze was steady, betraying no emotions despite the nature of what she was recounting. ‘When my father returned he told me he’d been to the parish church and arranged for the banns to be called for me to be married to Walters.’

  Christopher shook his head.

  ‘I cried my heart out all that night and all the next day. I got down on my knees and begged him not to make me marry the man, but he wouldn’t listen. Told me that Walters had shamed me and no one else would want me, so I had to marry him.’

  Christopher’s eyes stung with the threat of tears. He breathed deeply and looked away.

  Martha’s inflection remained steady, giving no indication of the turmoil her fourteen-year-old self must have gone through. ‘So I married him and he moved in here into the bedroom and bed my parents had slept in and my father slept in the room that once was mine. Every night that man forced himself on me. Every night my father must have heard my cries, heard my tears, then heard him hitting me when I tried to resist. But he did nothing. He told me it wouldn’t be right to come between a man and his wife. Now that I was married to Walters he was free to do with me what he wished. That’s the way things were. Da was an old-fashioned man. He meant well but he believed there was an order to things. Believed that what happened between man and wife was no one else’s concern. He tried to make up for it in other ways, bringing me little presents, being kind. It didn’t help though. If anything it made me feel worse.’

  Christopher gulped in air, as though the oxygen had been sucked from the room. ‘I’m so sorry, Martha.’ This time when he put his shaking hand on hers he left it there and she turned hers over so they met palm to palm. He laced his fingers between hers.

  ‘I’m sorry to tell you all this but I couldn’t bear that you thought so well of Walters. That you believed him to be a good man, a brave man, when he was rotten to the core and a miserable coward who forced himself onto a child. That’s all I was then. A child, who didn’t even know how babies were made. I hadn’t even started my monthlies. I hadn’t even realised that what I saw the dogs doing was what men did to women.’ She leaned back in her chair and stared up at the ceiling. ‘Except with dogs it’s over quickly and doesn’t seem to cause any pain. Not like what Harold Walters did to me.’ She sighed a long slow exhalation of breath. ‘You’re probably wondering why I decided to tell you all this?’

  He met her eyes. ‘Yes, but whatever the reason, I feel honoured that you chose to take me into your confidence.’

  She smiled at him and he realised it was the first time he had seen her smile. It lit up her face, erased the perpetual frowning and he saw she was beautiful. He swallowed, experiencing a sudden rush of desire. He made himself picture his mother, looking imperious at the dining table, summoning her to help dispel feelings inappropriate to the moment and to what the woman was telling him.

  ‘I told you because you have a kind face. I’ve carried this inside me for twenty-one years and I needed to tell someone. Somehow I felt I could trust you. I can trust you, Captain Shipley, can’t I?’

  ‘Of course.’ He squeezed her hand and felt a small pressure back.

  ‘The nightly rapes continued until he gave up when I failed to produce a child. But the beatings got worse. He used to stay out late, drinking in the village tavern, whoring too no doubt, as he never touched me in bed again. Instead he’d come home drunk and beat the daylights out of me. By then my father was dead so he couldn’t defend me, even if he’d wanted to. Walters was head keeper and a law unto himself. I had no one.’

  ‘Oh, Martha. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Night after night he’d come home drunk and call me a barren bitch.’

  Christopher winced at her words.

  ‘That’s all he thought women were good for. Objects for men’s lust and bearers of their children. He wanted a son and when I couldn’t give him one he punished me.’

  They sat for a few moments in silence. Christopher heard a thrush singing in a tree outside the mullioned window. Her hand was still in his. He began to feel awkward, sitting there like that, hands joined across the scrubbed deal table, tea untouched. His eyes met hers and then they were both on their feet. He moved around the table and took her in his arms. They stood there, locked in an embrace, silent, listening to the sound of each other’s breathing, feeling each other’s chests rise and fall as they pressed close against each other.

  Martha drew away first. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean that to happen.’ She placed her hands on his shoulders using them to keep him a short distance from her body.

  ‘Don’t say sorry. I’m not sorry,’ he said, his own voice sounding strange to him. ‘I’m not sorry at all.’

  ‘You must go,’ she said. ‘Please forgive me. I stepped across a boundary. Let’s forget it happened.’

  Christopher pulled her towards him again, then conscious of what she had told him, dropped his hands and took a step back.

  Martha’s eyes welled with unshed tears. He was about to draw her into his arms again, wanting this time to kiss her, when she turned away. Her back stiffened and she began to clatter the crockery together and moved with it into the scullery. ‘I’ve kept you, Captain Shipley. You’ll be late for your dinner. Sorry, it’s luncheon you call it at this time of day, don’t you?’ When she turned to face him it was as if a shutter had come down over her eyes.

  He hesitated, waiting for her to suggest he return tomorrow but this time no invitation was forthcoming.

  Embarrassed, Christopher was uncertain what to say next. She held the door open for him to leave, but before he could turn around and stammer his goodbye, she had closed it behind him.

  * * *

  Martha leaned her back against the door as soon as she’d closed it. What had got into her? Telling him all that. Telling him her innermost secrets. Things that she’d never told another living soul and should be taking to the grave with her. Why? Why? Why?

  There was something about Christopher Shipley that was different from anyone she had ever known. In his presence she felt more herself than she did even when she was on her own. Though she hadn’t intended to tell him those things: they had just poured out of her. The caution that had characterised her whole adult life had deserted her. With him this afternoon she had felt calm, peaceful. Her confession of the secret she had carried all these years had felt like a cleansing. Telling him had washed away some of the pain.

  But it was impossible to wash it all away. Some things could never be told. Perhaps she would have been better to tell him nothing. Yes, it would have been better to tell him nothing, than to tell him a partial truth, to open a wound, to let the blood flow, only to staunch it with a dirty cloth, that would not only reinfect her but risk poisoning him too.

  Marth
a moved away from the door and went upstairs. She lay down on the bed, turned her head to the pillow and let the tears flow.

  Chapter 4

  Christopher was troubled by his second encounter with Mrs Walters and unable to stop thinking about her. Her story had moved and disturbed him. He was torn between embarrassment that he had taken her in his arms – hardly an appropriate way to behave with an estate tenant who was his batman’s widow, and a wish that he’d gone a step further and kissed her. Touched by the manner in which she had confided the terrible secret of her marriage to him, he longed to offer her comfort, but didn’t know how. Nothing could wash away such horrible memories, such damage done to her when so young.

  Her face haunted him. The sad eyes, the gaunt features which, when she smiled, were illuminated and transformed into beauty. He felt a sharp longing in his gut, a desire that was almost a physical pain. He remembered how he had felt when he’d held her against him, how he had wanted to kiss her, to keep on holding her, to make things better for her. Yet in evicting her from the only home she had known, he would be making things worse.

  Bending down, he unstrapped his artificial leg, rubbing his hand over the end of his stump, massaging it where it chafed against the prosthesis. How could any woman bear to look at his disfigurement, let alone accept him? He was less than a man now: the war had emasculated him when it had torn part of his leg off but left him to live. Sometimes he wished he’d had a hero’s death like his brother and so many of his fellow officers. Better to die than be left crippled. It felt like failure. Yet so many men had lost much more.

  He thought of his friend, Douglas Middleton, another captain in the same company. Dougie had taken shrapnel in his face. His handsome looks were brutalised, an empty crater in the middle where his aquiline nose had once been. Blind in one hollowed-out eye, tiny shards of shrapnel embedded in the other to cause constant irritation and itching. Poor Dougie was facing a lifetime of pain and surgery, as well as rejection by the very people who once would have envied him his good looks. He had written to Christopher to tell him his fiancée had called off their engagement as soon as she saw the ugly ruin that had been his face. Men like Dougie who had given their all for their country were now asked to hide their faces in tin masks to avoid upsetting sensitive women and small children.