by R J Lynch
‘Returned to the house, sir. To tend to the bairn. Who was out of bed when she came, and downstairs, and trying to wake his dead mother. Sobbing his little heart out, as Susannah tells it.’
‘There was no sign of Joseph Laws at this time?’
‘Well, sir, that’s the thing of it. He had been home and found his wife dead, and run to Chopwell Garth to raise the alarm.’
‘Leaving his son of two years alone in the house.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Blakiston shook his head. ‘That is the part I cannot understand. But proceed. Snowball is running hither, and Joseph Laws is running thither. What came of all this running?’
‘Sir, there is no more. What I was able to discover, I have told you.’
‘Very well,’ said Blakiston. ‘The next thing, Drabble, is that Joseph Laws himself must be questioned. But I think you had best leave that to me.’
When the Constable had gone, overseer and rector sat in silence for a few minutes. Kate Greener’s name had made it impossible that either of them could forget the conversation they had had so recently, when Blakiston called on Thomas Claverley to tell him that he proposed to marry.
Thomas had made no attempt to hide his disapproval. ‘She is beneath you, Blakiston. Think what you are doing.’
‘I have thought about it, Rector. Long and hard. I am in love with Kate Greener and I mean to marry her.’
‘In love! Were ever two more foolish words joined together? Oh, Blakiston. I have watched the girl grow up. She is beautiful, I know. More beautiful than any child of Ryton has a right to be. I know not where her beauty comes from. But beauty deceives, Blakiston. Beauty ensnares. A wife is not only someone to look at. A wife is not only someone to lie naked in your arms. No, Blakiston, I see your anger but I will be heard. I owe it to you. I owe it to our class.
‘Who will you have to talk to when you come home weary? Who will raise your children as people like us would have them raised? Who will you know? For it is sure no gentlefolk will receive you when this foolish marriage takes place.’
‘Reverend, you make me speak as I would not. Forgive me, but I am trying to understand the difference between Kate Greener and your own wife.’
Claverley fell silent. Then he said, ‘It is true that Lady Isabella is of common stock. But her father had raised himself, Blakiston. When I married her, she brought me a thousand pounds a year.’
‘So. I ask your forgiveness again, Rector, but what is it that qualifies a woman to raise our children as what you call people like us would have them raised? Is it a pedigree of many generations? Or is it a thousand pounds a year? If Kate Greener had money, would you no longer make objection?’
The Rector’s mouth was a tight, small line. ‘There is no talking to you, Blakiston. I do not wish to call your banns.’
‘I will have you do so.’
‘I will not. The curate shall do it. You are about to make a dreadful mistake. I wash my hands of the matter.’
‘I believe there is precedent for that in the faith you preach each Sunday.’
‘Blakiston, I have no more to say to you. I shall bid you good day.’
That was how it had been. Two men who had been close friends were driven apart by the desire of one to marry and of the other to stop him. Nor had the rector left it there. Blakiston wrote to his sister, Hannah, that same evening, telling her of his good fortune and inviting her to the wedding. He saddled Obsidian and rode to the Crown, a coaching house in Chester-le-Street, to ensure his letter caught the first available post. He could not know that his was not the only letter his sister would receive from the same town.
Hannah’s reply had come more swiftly than Blakiston would have thought possible.
Cromer Castle. 20th August 1764
Dear Brother
Having had no letters for many months, I was surprised to receive two on the same day. Your own, and one from Rector Sir Thomas Claverley who you know. He tells me that you are to make a dreadful mistake and that all his wise counsel can not dissuade you. I must hope, for my own sake, that I have more success. Certainly you may count on me to speak frankly, whatever the cost to my pride.
Forgive me if I say that it seems to me that it is always men who behave foolishly, and always women who must live with the result. It was a man, our father, who ruined my life with his unwise dealings. Now it is you, my brother, who is to condemn me to spend the rest of my days in penniless unhappy slavery.
You wish to marry. You say your Kate is the sweetest girl under Heaven and that you are the luckiest man alive. James, I implore you to think what you are doing – to me, if not to yourself. This girl has bewitched you. It is she who will think herself the lucky one – lucky to have cast her spell over a man she is not fit even to look at from afar. You will be cast out from Society. Your wife will be received in no polite home, for she is a girl of the basest origins and you have neither the money nor the position to force people to accept your choice.
This may mean nothing to you now, in the heat of your passion. Then think of me, dear brother. I was born into a good family, with every expectation of an acceptable marriage. Perhaps, even, to a man of title. Now, because through my father’s errors I bring no portion, I am forced to waste my life caring for the unpleasant children of a woman leading exactly the life I should have led. For this I receive thirty shillings on the first day of each year, and a new gown every six months. And I am expected to curtsey and look grateful for it. I take my meals in the schoolroom with the children. I rarely enjoy adult conversation. The very housekeeper looks down on me!
I long for our brother to be raised to the rank of Captain, and for there to be a war, so that he may earn the prize money that will enable him to buy me out of my wretched station. Each time a new man visits this house, I examine him minutely. Is his fortune too great for him to notice me? Or is it possible that my salvation may have just entered my life? If, that is, I can contrive a situation where he even meets me. To make matters worse, Sir Thomas tells me that you were offered marriage into a good family and that the woman in question, one Grace Hodgson, was not only handsome but possessed of an income of five hundred a year. Did you think of me when you turned down this alliance? Did you think that I could have come to live at Hoppyland Hall with you and your new bride, free of the tyranny of the small children of others, until I found a man of my own to marry? The rector even tells me that your bargaining position was such that you could have demanded a dowry for me. I cannot tell you how long I cried when I learned what you had refused.
Love is not for our class, James. Love is for the poor, the labourers in the fields. Look how little good it does them and you will see what regard God has for it.
And now in your mean-hearted selfishness you wish to make the whole family into lepers, so that your sordid lust can be sated with a village girl who I make no doubt would allow you all the liberties you desire with no need to venture near a parson. Jamie, I beg you. If you will not save yourself for your own sake, do so for mine.
I long to hear that you have been restored to your senses. If not, know that I shall not attend your wedding. Nor shall I ever again refer to you as my brother. I shall cut you from my life. If your name is mentioned I shall deny that we are of the same family. In my helplessness and need I can not do otherwise. I have written to Peter. Doubt not that he will take the same line as I.
I close in desperate hope.
Your sister
Hannah
Blakiston had sat over the letter, reading it again and again. Then he had torn it into small pieces which he had scattered to the winds.
Blakiston missed the Sunday night dinners he had enjoyed each week at the rectory, but he saw no solution. Had Jeffrey Drabble not sought instructions from the Rector, he would not have gone there to discuss the murder. But here he was, and his presence reminded him that the loss of this friendship hurt.
‘You have taken it on you to solve this murder?’ asked Claverley. ‘So soon after
the last? What has his lordship to say?’
‘We have not yet spoken on the matter. But how could I not? The dead woman is the wife of a tenant on one of the estate’s farms. Anything that harms it harms us.’ He raised his head and stared directly at the Rector. ‘And she was the sister-in-law of the woman I intend to wed.’
Thomas answered his stare. Then he stood, walked round his handsome escritoire and stood by the window, hands behind his back, staring out into the warm August afternoon. ‘And what has his lordship to say on that? I take it you have spoken of your planned folly to the man who employs you?’
There was a sharp knock on the door, which opened immediately. Thomas raised his head to shout at the intruder, but closed his mouth quickly when he saw that it was his wife who stood in the doorway.
Blakiston stood up and bowed his head. ‘Lady Isabella,’ he said. ‘It is a pleasure.’
‘Is it, Mister Blakiston? Is it really? Then perhaps you will tell me, for it is certain that my husband has not and will not, why it is that we see you no more for dinner on Sunday nights?’
‘I...I...’ Blakiston looked for help to Claverley, who shrugged and turned away.
‘Is it the soup?’ asked Isabella. ‘Are you tired of Rosina’s way with a fish? Has she bored you with too many puddings? Be sure she wishes to know.’
‘Lady Isabella. Please. The food here has always been a delight, and you may tell Rosina so.’
‘Then it is us!’ cried Isabella. ‘Me, or Thomas here. We have offended you. But please, tell me how? And what can we do to correct our wrong?’
‘Isabella,’ said Thomas. ‘These are men’s matters.’
‘Ah!’ said his wife. ‘The important matters of men, too deep and too weighty for a poor woman to comprehend. Then let me tell you what I do understand, husband. I understand that a friendship that brought you great contentment is over, and that you are miserable. I understand that my task as a wife is to look after my husband and to remove those things that prevent his happiness when it lies in my power to do so. I understand that something has come between you and Mister Blakiston and that you are sadder as a result. What I do not understand is why you will not tell me what it is.’
The two men looked at each other in silence. Then, in flat sentences from which he could not hide the sadness or the anger, Blakiston said, ‘I am in love. I wish to marry. Your husband does not approve.’
‘He would keep you single? He wishes you to continue your Sunday visits? Your bride would refuse to grace our table?’
‘He would not countenance her presence as a guest in your house.’
Isabella placed a hand over her mouth. ‘You would marry a papist?’
‘I am engaged to marry Kate Greener.’
There was silence. Isabella looked from one to the other and back. The two men looked away, out of the windows. Eventually, Isabella said, ‘Mister Blakiston, I wish to speak to my husband. I do not know whether your business with him is done, but if it is not I will thank you to come back and finish it tomorrow.’
When Blakiston had left the room, Isabella did the same. Thomas called her back. ‘You wished to speak to me.’
‘I do. I shall. When I have understood what I have heard, we shall speak. When I have truly got into my head the fact that my husband would reject a close friend because he loves a woman my husband does not approve of, we shall speak. Until I can understand these matters, which I confess, husband, at this moment defeat any attempt I may make to follow where your thoughts have gone, I have nothing to say to you.’ And off she went.
Dinner that night in the Rectory was eaten in something close to silence. John hurried into the kitchen to tell Rosina of the obvious rift between their master and mistress, and to ask whether the cook knew what might have caused it. Rosina had no explanation to offer.
After dinner, Isabella left the table without a word. The Rector finished his claret and went into his study where he poured himself a glass of Madeira and lit a pipe of tobacco. There was no further contact between husband and wife. The clock struck ten. He heard John locking, chaining and bolting doors and windows. Thomas would inspect the work before he retired, for that was his task, but he knew the rectory would prove as secure as it had always been.
Fifteen minutes later, he heard Isabella’s footsteps on the stairs as she went to bed. Usually, she would pause for a moment to knock on his door and bid him goodnight. She did not do so tonight.
Thomas did not want to go to bed until he was sure Isabella would be asleep, but his candle was burning down and he would soon be unable to see. He carried it into the hall, which was in darkness, and then into the kitchen. John the manservant, Rosina the cook and Sarah the maid all had rooms on the top floor, which they reached using their own staircase, and the scullery maid slept on a sort of truckle bed which was placed on the scullery floor at night, and so he hoped to find no-one up, but John was at the kitchen table.
‘I thought you would be gone to bed by now.’
‘Sir, I had not heard you check the locks.’
‘I will do it. Go to bed. Wait. Find me a new candle. Then go to bed.’
Back in his study, the new candle providing a comforting light, Thomas lit a second pipe of tobacco. He waited until the clock had struck eleven. Then he waited ten minutes more. Isabella would surely be asleep by now.
He examined the locks, and then went up the stairs as quietly as he could. In his dressing room, he undressed without a sound and put on his nightshirt. Then he blew out the candle, made sure it was completely extinguished, opened the door to the bedroom he shared with Isabella and slipped quietly inside. Treading carefully, he crossed the floor, drew back the bed coverings and climbed into bed. He left as much room between himself and Isabella as he possibly could without falling onto the floor. He was tired and longing for sleep. He closed his eyes.
‘And now,’ said Isabella, ‘you may tell me exactly why you are treating Mister Blakiston in this dreadful way.’
Lady Isabella usually wrote her journal in the evening, when dinner had been eaten, their daughter was asleep and there were no other calls on her time. She began this entry immediately after breakfast.
Thursday, 23rd August, 1764
Really, I am not prepared to set down the reasons Thomas gave me for his break with Mister Blakiston, for they were not reasons at all. For as long as the history of people has been known and talked about, men and women have fallen in love. Sometimes, their families have intervened to prevent marriage taking place. Among the well-to-do, love has not been what decided whether two people should marry. Love is not what caused Thomas and I to wed, for when our parents arranged our match we had not even met.
But love is a beautiful thing, and Mister Blakiston has no parents alive to decide how he should live, and Kate Greener is one of the finest human beings in this parish, poor though her family may have been before Wrekin’s ravishing of her sister Lizzie brought Lizzie marriage to a farmer so that Lord Ravenshead’s illegitimate granddaughter should have a decent place to live.
Nor are we like the French, who draw such rigid lines between aristocracy and peasantry. It has always been possible in England to move from class to class – I am an example! Why, Lord Ravenshead is another, for he is a baron but his father was a baronet and, if he looks back but three generations, he will see a family only raising itself into the middling sort.
And why do those who have money and position resist marriage of others of their kind with those who have them not? It is because they are afraid! Not of the poor themselves, though they have that fear too and that is why the Law has such dreadful penalties to keep the poor in subjection. No; what strikes fear into their hearts is the knowledge that money may be lost and position may be transitory. The poor remind them that they, too, may one day go from wealth to painful necessity.
I told these things to Thomas, and he cried. I felt so moved when I saw the tears come. For Thomas had taken his stance as a defender of Society’s laws withou
t thought, and the loss of this friendship has caused him such grief. I had intended to tell him that he must give in and marry Mister Blakiston to Kate but I had no need. For Thomas said that this was what he wanted to do, but that he had seen no way to retreat from his foolish position and make his peace with Mister Blakiston. And he said that he would do it, and that he would do so on Sunday. I promised to help him.
Thomas was so happy to have given up his stubborn foolishness, and I put my arms around him and we held each other close, and I felt signs that he had other wishes that might be satisfied. And then I had an idea. I told him to wait for a moment and I got out of bed and went into my dressing room and put on the drawers I made after I heard of Mistress Wortley’s daring but never had the courage to wear myself. I shivered with excitement when I thought that I might be, after her, only the second woman in Durham County to wear drawers. And then I thought, “How can I know that? How many women are setting themselves free to excite their menfolk in this way?” And then I found myself wondering who the widow Wortley had meant to please, and I realised it was herself alone. And I resolved to be more attentive to pleasures that are for me and not for my family. But that will be difficult to put into practice, for it goes against everything we women are taught from our girlhood. Be that as it may, I lit a candle and carried it into the bedroom and said to Thomas, “What do you think of my new garment?”
Thomas’s reaction was all I might have hoped, if not more. And very soon the drawers that I had only just put on were taken off again. And I hope that what we did then will have reminded Thomas that there is more to marriage between a man and a woman than adherence to Society’s rules.
But I do hope that this experience will encourage him to be less pompous in future.
Chapter 5
‘Calm down, man,’ said Dick Jackson. ‘Your face is redder than yon James Galley’s when he heard Maudlin Seam was flooded and couldn’t be worked after he’d rented it for three year from Mister Martin. He dropped down dead of an apoplexy brought on by his fury. And that’s what’ll happen to you.’
