‘What are you talking about, Jessie Ann?’ There was a note of weary impatience in Luke’s voice now. ‘Word can’t possibly have reached him yet that Father is dead.’
‘He knew months ago that he was fading. I informed him myself; I told him he had better come.’ And Jessie Ann nodded from one to the other now.
‘Oh!’ The two brothers emitted the word simultaneously.
‘Yes.’ She kept nodding, and her fair curls hanging beneath her black lace cap bobbed up and down as if they were wired. ‘He’s the heir and he should be here; I told him so.’
‘Yes, I suppose you’re right in one way.’ Luke hunched his shoulders. ‘But then, what is there here for him if he has no intention of reopening the mine? After all these years of lying under water, the thought of that task I should imagine would keep anyone in America. I know it would me.’
‘But there’s the estate.’
Luke now shook his head as he stared at his sister. ‘Estate! What is it after all? A farm, half a dozen houses, two lodges, a few cottages and seven hundred acres; that’s all that’s left; there’s no shooting or fishing. Oh, I think he’s doing the wise thing in staying . . . ’
‘Well, will you tell me what’s going to happen to it?’
‘Yes, I will, Jessie Ann.’ He bowed his head deeply towards her. ‘After the will is read I’ll tell you. But then, of course, there won’t be any need, will there, for you will know too by then?’
‘Oh!’ Jessie Ann bounced from her chair, her short plump body bristling as she glared at the young army officer, the second of her three brothers and the one whom she disliked most heartily.
Returning her look and reciprocating her feelings, Luke said, ‘Be funny if in some way Father has managed to leave the whole damn lot to Trotter, wouldn’t it, Jessie Ann? Then, of course, you would have some reason for venting your spleen on her, whereas as things stand now Trotter, in my opinion, is deserving of our gratitude.’
The two young men both watched their sister now hold her hands palm upwards against her waist, not in the front of it but slightly to the side. It was a stance, dating from her nursery days, which she always assumed whenever she was about to deliver some piece of news which she hoped would startle them. And now the young matron succeeded in doing just that as she gave the reason for her heightened animosity towards her one-time nurse. ‘Gratitude!’ she said. ‘Well, I hope that you are prepared to shower it on her abundantly when she presents you with a half-brother or sister, or perhaps both, in . . . in five months’ time.’ She now savoured the look of astonishment on the faces before her; then inclining her head first to one, then the other, she turned slowly about and went from the room, whilst Luke and John Sopwith turned and gazed at each other for a moment, and while both of them attempted to speak they changed their minds and, turning about, they walked towards the fire and, their hands on the high marble mantelshelf, they stared into it.
Two
Tilly Trotter stood in the library of Highfield Manor looking down on to the face of the man whom she had served for the last twelve years as wife, mother, nurse and mistress. That she had no legal claim to the word wife made no difference for she knew she had been as a wife to this man. The thick grey hair parted in the middle came down to the top of his cheekbones. The face, which in the last three days had assumed a smoothness of youth denying his fifty-seven years, was now shadowed with the blue hue of decay.
She looked at the hands folded on his breast. She had loved those hands. They had been gentle, always gentle; at the height of his passion they had still remained gentle. She could feel them even now combing through the thick abundance of her hair. He had liked to do that, spreading it all over the pillows; then, like an artist, his fingers tracing the bone formation of her face while his deep voice murmured, ‘Tilly! Tilly! my Tilly Trotter, my beautiful wonderful Tilly Trotter.’
He had disliked the name Trotter yet he had called her by such since he had taken her into his service as a nursemaid when she was sixteen, after the McGraths and the mad vindictive villagers had burned down her granny’s cottage and brought on her death.
Immediately after the fire Simon Bentwood, the tenant farmer on the estate, had taken her and her granny to his home, only for her to be confronted there with the further vindictiveness of his new wife, and when her granny died within a few days she herself had refused his invitation to stay on at the farm, even while her heart, full of young love for him, wanted only to be near him.
Destitute, she had taken up her abode in an outhouse behind the burnt-out shell of the cottage; and it was there that Mark Sopwith, the owner of the cottage, because it too was on his estate, found her and offered her the post of nursemaid to his children.
She had been both thankful and yet feared to accept the situation because she knew that her reputation as a witch had gone before her. The tragedies that she had inadvertently created had, through the village family of McGraths, stamped her as being possessed of supernatural powers; but she knew that anyone less like a witch than herself would be hard to find, for she had never wished bad on anyone in her life, except perhaps Hal McGrath who had been determined to marry her, even if it had meant raping her first, and all this because he imagined that there was stolen money hidden somewhere in the cottage in which her grandparents had lived all their married life.
That her fame had gone before her she soon found out, for the majority of the staff at the Manor both feared and hated her; and it was when the man, lying dead here now, had been indiscreet enough to have an affair with a newcomer in the vicinity, Lady Agnes Myton, that his wife had made this an excuse to leave the invalid couch where she had for so long taken refuge from the obligations of married life and return to her mother at Waterford Place near Scarborough, taking with her her four children, and that the housekeeper, in her turn, then took the greatest pleasure in turfing ‘the witch’ out.
Tilly often wondered what she would have done if it hadn’t been for the Drews, a pit family, most of the members of which, both male and female, worked in Mark Sopwith’s drift mine. Biddy Drew had taken her in when there was hardly space for the ten people already packed into two rooms.
Looking back now Tilly saw the events in her life as pieces in a jigsaw all dropping into place and leading to her sojourn in the mine – that nightmare period of her life, which reached its climax when she was caught in the flood with, of all people, the owner, Mark Sopwith himself. The result of those three and a half days in the blackness was that he lost both feet and she herself narrowly escaped death.
From the time he called her back to the household to be his nurse she had sensed what his ultimate aim was, and when he finally invited her into his bed she had refused, even while knowing that the love she bore Simon Bentwood was hopeless.
That what she imagined to be undying love could be killed at one blow she was to learn on the day she heard of the death of Simon’s wife, actually weeks after the woman’s passing. She had flown to him, only to find him in the barn with the very lady who had ruined her master, and she as naked as the day she was born.
Although her love died at the sight, the death throes stayed with her for some time, right until the night she voluntarily gave herself to the man she was now gazing at through misted eyes.
Her fingers gently touching the discoloured cheek, she whispered, ‘Oh Mark! Mark! what am I going to do without you?’ When her hand left his face she placed it on the slight mound of her stomach. He had been determined to live to see the child. The very day before he died, he had written to his solicitor to tell him that he wished him to call as soon as possible.
She didn’t know what he had put in the letter, she only knew that he had written it after she had promised to marry him. But she wondered now why she hadn’t given in to his repeated request before. And yet she did know why. After his wife left him his friends had shied off for a time; then the notoriety attached to his name when he took herself as mistress did not improve matters, and so, had she co
nsented to marry him she would have been looked upon as a scheming wench, and his position in the county would have been worsened because she would not have been accepted.
This particular fact wouldn’t have troubled Mark, but it would have troubled her. Isolated as he was, he needed friends. He could protest as much as he liked to her that she was all he wanted from life, but she knew he needed other company.
Not even the companionship of the children for the short periods, two or three times a year, they were allowed to visit, nor the daily companionship of Mr Burgess the one-time children’s tutor, she knew, had been enough; he had needed contact with the outside world. Sometimes she thought that he’d had ideas of starting up the mine again. She guessed that when Matthew came into his grandfather’s money he had been tempted to accept his son’s offer to reopen it, but it was about this time that his heart began to trouble him and the doctor advised against all stress. And so the mine remained as it was, flooded, except in those roads where the water had seeped away naturally.
Over the years she wondered why she hadn’t become pregnant; his loving passion had been such that she should have been surrounded by a brood. Then one morning she had woken up to realise with amazement what was causing the strange feeling that couldn’t be placed under the category of illness yet was making her feel so unwell. When she broke the news to him he had laughed until his sides ached, then held her tightly as he said, ‘That’s what you have always wanted, isn’t it? And now you’ll have to marry me.’ And he had added, in a strangely sombre note as if he knew his future, ‘And once that is done I’ll die happy for then, Tilly Trotter, I’ll know that Tilly Sopwith will live in some sort of security to the end of her days.’
She bent now and placed her lips against the blue lifeless forehead. It was the last time she would touch him, the last time she would see him, for in a short while they would be screwing him down. She turned blindly away, the pain in her heart not sharp and piercing as it had been when she found him dead in his chair, but dull now and so heavy that it forced its way into her limbs and all she desired to do was to drop where she stood and sleep, preferably the everlasting sleep with him.
She went out of the library, through the hall and upstairs, conscious as she did so that the family were in hot discussion in the drawing room.
Up to four years ago two of the boys and the girl had seemed to accept her position in the household, but not Matthew. Matthew had never countenanced her position, in fact his manner towards her had at times reverted back to that of the insolent little boy she had first encountered up in the nursery. She hadn’t been surprised at Jessie Ann’s changed attitude towards her. At the time of her mother’s death Jessie Ann was seventeen, and she had wished to return to this house, to act as its mistress, but her father had told her that although he would love to have her back, have them all back, the house already had a mistress, and if she returned she would have to accept the situation. It was from that time that Jessie Ann’s open hate of her was born. But Luke and John had taken the situation as a natural event. John had come home, but Luke had gone into the army. Then there was Matthew. Although he had not acted towards her with the same open hostility as his sister, his manner at times had hovered between aloofness and sarcastic jesting. She was always glad when Matthew’s visits ended and more than glad when, after leaving university three years ago, he had gone to America.
Slowly now she went up the stairs, across the gallery, down the broad corridor and into the bedroom, the master’s bedroom, their bedroom. Everything was neat and tidy. She looked at the bed in which she would never again sleep. Then she walked into the dressing room, and from there entered the closet. She sluiced her face in cold water, and as she stood drying herself she looked into the mirror. There was no colour in her cheeks, her eyes lay deep in their sockets and appeared black instead of their usual dark brown. Her wide full-lipped mouth looked tremulous. She was thirty years old. Did she look it? No, not really. Mark had always said she had stayed at twenty. Well, that, she knew, had been a loving exaggeration. Yet she was aware she had the kind of bone formation that would fight age, and she supposed she must look upon this as compensation for her unfashionable figure, for even with the years neither her bust nor her hips had developed. Her body, because of its slimness, had at one time worried her, imagining she was deprived of womanly grace. But Mark had viewed her lack of flesh as something beautiful.
And then there was her height. She was too tall for a woman, having grown to almost five foot ten inches.
But what did it matter now how she looked? She was carrying a child, Mark’s child; in a few months she would be a mother. In the meantime her stomach would swell and, with it, her breasts and her hips. She would at last have flesh on her. When it was too late she would have flesh on her because, whereas a few weeks ago she was delighting in her condition, now it had become a burden and the old fears were rising in her again. What would she do if they didn’t let her stay here? She doubted very much if Miss Jessie Ann would countenance her presence in the house one moment longer than was necessary. She had talked her future over with Mr Burgess and he had said she must go to him. It was kind of him but what would life be like in that book-strewn little cottage?
There was another thing she now regretted, and that was since becoming Mark’s mistress she had refused to take a wage, for that had appeared to her as being too much like payment for her services. Moreover, she knew that it had taken him all his time to pay an allotment to his wife and keep his children at school, and still pay the expenses of running this large establishment. Of course, with regard to the latter she had some long time ago halved these expenses when she had got rid of the thieving staff and brought in the Drew family.
Biddy Drew was still down in the kitchen there, and Katie, now promoted to house parlourmaid, could do the work of two young women. Then there was Peg, who in the last few years had been married and widowed. She had become a sort of female butler, seeing to the door and the dining room. Young Fanny, of the same calibre, now twenty-one, was doing the work of both scullery and kitchen maids. Sam had returned to the pit, and was followed by Alec, and both were married now. But Bill, Arthur and Jimmy still worked in the grounds and between them kept the place spruce. The men slept in the rooms above the stables, and the four women of the Drew family lived in the North Lodge, which after a two-roomed hovel of the pit row appeared like a palace to them.
Tilly had no fear that the Drews would be dismissed; they kept the place running smoothly. Of course, there was no butler now and no footman, but Fred Leyburn still saw to the coach and the horses and the yard in general. But Phyllis Coates, who had been first housemaid and who had married Fred Leyburn ten years ago, had no more time for work inside the house for she had filled one of the cottages on the estate with eight children.
Together with herself, the entire staff only numbered nine and, as Mark had often pointed out, must be the smallest staff running a manor house such as this in the county.
Tilly now went out of the closet and along the corridor into what was still known as her room but which, until the past few days, she had only used when the family was visiting. Sitting near the window she looked out into the lowering sky, and as she did so there came a tap on the door and she turned and said, ‘Come in,’ and was surprised to see Biddy Drew with a tray in her hands. It was usually Katie who brought her tea up.
Having placed the tray on the table, Biddy proceeded to pour the tea out from a small silver teapot, saying as she did so, ‘Sitting in the gloaming, lass, ’ll do you no good, you should light your lamp. Here, drink that. And look, I’ve brought you some sandwiches. You’ve got to eat because, whether you like it or not, you’ve got to go on, and if you don’t want to damage what’s inside you through starvation you’ll make yourself eat.’
‘I’ve got no appetite, Biddy, I don’t feel like eating.’
‘I know that, lass; but we’ve all got to do things we don’t want to do.’ She now sat down on the
edge of the window seat opposite to Tilly and asked quietly, ‘Have you heard anything more?’
Tilly shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, ‘and I don’t suppose I shall until tomorrow after the funeral.’
‘She’s turned into a little madam, that one, hasn’t she? My God! a proper little upstart if I’ve ever seen one, you wouldn’t credit it, knowin’ what a canny bairn she was. Marrying into that family I suppose has given her ideas. Dolman Cartwright, my God! what a name. She’s bad enough now, but when the old fellow dies and she becomes Lady Dolman Cartwright there’ll be no holdin’ her.’ Biddy’s tone changed as she said quietly, ‘She’s determined to have you out, lass. Katie heard them going at it in the drawing room. The lads are for you, but not her.’
‘I know that, Biddy; but the house, the estate isn’t hers, it will go naturally to Matthew. The only thing is, I don’t know who’ll be in charge until he comes home, likely Luke. But then he’s got to return to his regiment. That only leaves John, and I doubt if he’ll leave university to look after the place. So we are left with Miss Jessie Ann, aren’t we, Biddy?’
‘Well, she won’t be able to stay here and see to things.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, she will if she has to. Anyway, she could engage a housekeeper.’
Biddy got to her feet. ‘Never on your life! she wouldn’t dare.’
‘Oh, she would, Biddy, and she can. And she’d be within her right.’
‘My God!’ Biddy stamped down the room and came back again before she said, ‘After all you’ve done: you kept the master from going barmy; you’ve run this house like nobody else could. The place is a credit to you.’
‘I’ve had a little help.’ Tilly gave a weak smile.
‘Aye, I suppose so; but you were the instigation of the help in the first place. If it hadn’t been for you gettin’ us here this place would have been like a ghost house. Aye, my God! the things that happen in life. ’Tisn’t fair. All your young days you had your bellyful of one an’ another, then although you may have been happy with him and I’m not sayin’ you weren’t – he wasn’t an easy man to get on with; I know you had your work cut out at times to pacify him and then for this to happen. You should have married him.’ She brought out the last words on a low growl. ‘I told you years ago. I said the door was opening for you and you should grab everything inside it. But what do you do? Leave it until it’s too late. You’re daft. Do you know that, Tilly? You’re daft. One side of you is business-like and this makes for a good manager, but the other side, the bigger side, is soft, as soft as clarts . . . You should have married him years ago.’
Tilly Trotter Wed (The Tilly Trotter Trilogy) Page 2
