by Amy Myers
‘Did you really say going to marry?’ she asked almost shyly.
‘Of course. You didn’t think I’d let Mother stop me, did you?’
Why was he sounding so gruff? Had she annoyed him?
‘On the other hand,’ he continued, not looking at her. ‘I’m the heir to Ashden. You’ll have to live there. Even if you don’t like each other, you and Mother must learn to work together.’
‘Must we?’ Dismay hit her. She hadn’t given it a thought. Why did outside have to intrude inside? Marriage should be private – though Isabel and Robert’s certainly wasn’t going to be that.
‘So what I suggest,’ he turned over on his stomach, supporting himself on his elbows so that he could see her, ‘is that we keep our engagement quiet while I work on her for a time and until she’s got over the shock of Tilly. Could you bear to? Have you told your family?’
‘Only Mother and Father know.’
‘Your father was top-hole,’ he said fervently. ‘He and my father understand each other. If only women were more like men!’
‘I’ll make you regret that.’ She promptly kneeled at his side, and pelted him with a handful of grass. ‘See how you like birching.’
He put his hands up protestingly. ‘Hey, I surrender.’ He lay down with her again and kissed her more lightly, but after a while said idly: ‘There’s no chance of your turning into an Aunt Tilly, is there?’
She considered this gravely. ‘It all depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On what you do to annoy me.’
Agnes dressed with care, even more than if she were off to see Jamie. She didn’t want to look too prim and be laughed at, nor did she want to look too cheap, because then she’d lose the advantage of being morally in the right. She wanted to look, she had decided, as if she might be an ally, even a friend. As if she’d ever be a friend of the likes of Ruth Horner! On Saturday night when Miss Tilda shouted out so queerly, Agnes had only belatedly realised what she might be meaning. She debated whether she should ask Miss Tilda if she knew something Agnes didn’t, but realised that if she did so, the Rector too must know, and would surely have told her. Miss Lilley might only be guessing, but nevertheless it was a guess that sent Agnes’s hopes soaring, if only she could establish the truth. She took one last critical look in the foot-high swing mirror on her dressing table, and departed to fight the foe.
‘Evening, Ruth. Can I have a word with you?’ she whispered. Ruth was setting the table for supper when she arrived, and Nanny, as usual, was snoozing by the fire. Ruth’s shape was very obvious now, and in Agnes’s imagination grew ever larger, a monstrous barrier to be overcome. Suppose that thing in there was part of Jamie? Suppose he had put it there, whispered to Ruth what he did to Agnes, kissed her like he did her, put his hands over those great lumps of bosom – she tried to avert her eyes – like he did Agnes’s own small chest, not underneath of course, over her blouse and stays, but it was nice – or had been till her thoughts had become obsessed with imagining her Jamie and Ruth’s repulsive mountainous flesh together. She struggled for control as Ruth jeered:
‘And I’ve a word for you. Yes. Yes, it was Jamie. That do?’
Nanny’s eyes flew open. ‘You go and talk to Agnes in the kitchen, Ruth. She can’t eat you.’
‘Pity she don’t want this lump.’ Ruth looked down at her stomach.
‘I’ll thank you to remember you’re in a maiden lady’s house,’ Nanny snapped. ‘Get into the scullery, the two of you. I’m listening to me memories, and won’t hear you over the babble.’
Face to face with Ruth it seemed much harder to establish the friendly atmosphere Agnes had planned in the privacy of her own room. ‘I don’t want to be your enemy, Ruth,’ Agnes began. ‘I just need to sort myself out, that’s all. We’re both in trouble. Mayhap we could help each other.’
‘Share his bed?’ Ruth sneered, though only half-heartedly now.
‘I don’t share his bed, but I want to,’ Agnes said firmly, feeling on safer ground now Ruth was talking, ‘so I thought I’d come to ask – well, if it was someone else and you daren’t say who, I could maybe help, get justice done –’
‘I want a husband, and the husband is going to be Jamie Thorn.’ Ruth sounded as if she were reciting her ten-times table.
‘There’s folks saying it’s Mr Swinford-Browne who’s done this to you. Forced you, maybe. And now he’s forcing you into saying it’s Jamie.’
‘See here, Agnes,’ Ruth replied quite kindly, ‘you’re just a bit upset and I don’t blame you, surely. But no men are angels. You’ve got to realise that. Jamie ain’t, Mus Swinford-Browne ain’t, none of ’em. But I love Jamie, I laid with Jamie, and look what’s happened.’
‘But why, where? It was January. It must have been Mr Swinford-Browne.’ Agnes was beginning to get desperate.
‘In the old gentleman’s cottage. Ebenezer Thorn.’
‘But that’s ours, me and Jamie’s,’ wailed Agnes, unable to believe her last dream had been soiled. ‘You’re fibbing.’
‘You don’t believe me? Listen, the old gentleman’s sofa is green cloth and it’s got red plush cushions with moth-eaten dogs on ’em.’
‘You could have seen the sofa at any time, not with Jamie at all.’ Agnes began to cry.
‘You’re a fool, Agnes,’ Ruth shouted. ‘What more proof do you want? Do you want me to tell you Jamie has a scar just above his johnnie, about –?’
Agnes yelled out, she couldn’t help it, or she knew she’d be sick. She yelled again and again. Nanny Oates had to hobble in to soothe her down. What terrified Agnes most, even through her sobs, was that Ruth wasn’t even triumphant. She was looking as though she were sorry for her.
‘The Rectory!’ shouted Mrs Dibble into infinity as she lifted the telephone from its hook as gingerly as a live crab, after the infernal machine went off. Unable to leave her post, so tightly was she gripping the receiver, albeit held six inches from her ear (Percy having read in the newspaper about the dangers to ears from that electricity hidden inside the howler), she bawled, ‘It’s Squire.’
The Rector came at once. As soon as he had hung up, he shouted for Elizabeth, who appeared immediately. ‘I may miss luncheon, my love. Old Cooper’s barricaded himself into his cottage. Swinford-Browne is there with his men determined to evict him.’ The Rector’s hat was instantly produced for his head, his stick and a Bible thrust into his hands. The latter had been known to help in such cases. ‘If I know Tom Cooper, he’ll have built up his walls like Jericho.’
‘And you’re the trumpet to bring them tumbling down?’
‘I’m the policeman to see Cooper doesn’t tumble down himself.’
‘It’s Phoebe’s birthday luncheon.’
‘Tell her –’ Laurence sought for a way to reconcile the horizons of youth with the agonies of age – ‘it concerns the picture palace.’ He was already debating whether he should take the trap, call to Tilly to beg a drive in the Austin (no, red rags to bulls) or rely on his own two feet in order to travel quickest. He decided on the trap, and rang the bell sharply enough for Percy Dibble to obey promptly. He might be glad of Percy’s stolid presence.
Cooper’s cottage lay on the edge of the hop gardens, reached most easily by a long track from Station Road. The nearest way from the Rectory lay up Bankside and along Mill Lane to a steep track down the hillside, but Poppy was too old to risk her obstinate refusal at steep inclines. As she laboured over the track where lack of rain was exposing the stones and flints, the Rector pondered on his approach. There would be no talking Swinford-Browne out of this one, not with the law on his side. He would be even more determined to win his way over the picture palace to impress Ashden in view of Tilly’s outburst. Tilly had been contrite – naturally not for speaking out, but for breaking her promise to him; the damage had been done, however, and no one could be sure where it might lead.
‘They be good hop-poles!’ Dibble cried, outraged, seeing the barricades Cooper had erected r
ound his beloved, if tumble-down, cottage, and across the door and windows. ‘Hell and Tommy, they got baby hops on ’em. He must have torn ’em out. Tedious waste, that is.’
‘He is an old and bitter man, Percy. We both might feel the same.’ The Rector glanced at the black Daimler drawn up further along the track, outside the pale of the cottage. In front of it, nearer to them, was a wagon, four farm-hands sitting waiting. The wagon appeared to be otherwise empty, save for farm implements, a hop dog, pitchfork … then he saw why, as he stepped down from the trap and went to the gate. The barricade here had been broken down, and round the cottage were bales of dry straw. His heart sank. He would not be called on as mediator, for there was to be no mediation; all he could do was protect the guiltless.
‘Not about good hops, surely,’ Dibble grunted.
From the upper window the Rector could see Tom glaring down at his landlord’s Daimler. He could see a bottle in his hand, not for drinking, but, judging by the number of pieces of shattered glass lying around, ready to be aimed at any intruder. He wouldn’t put it past Cooper to use even more dangerous ammunition when the bottles ran out.
‘Tom,’ he yelled.
‘I hear you, Rector. I don’t be daffy yet.’
‘The law’s on his side, not yours.’
‘’Tis a bad law, then.’
‘No matter. You will lose all. I’ll find you somewhere else if you don’t like the almshouse for a home.’
‘I got a home. ’Tis ’ere, Rector, like I told Squire, and like I told ’im.’ A contemptuously jerked finger indicated Swinford-Browne, sufficiently emboldened by the Rector’s presence to climb down from the motor-car.
‘See, the Rector’s on my side, Tom,’ he shouted.
‘Then he can have a bottle over his head and all, William,’ yelled the infuriated Cooper.
The Rector hastily backed away. ‘It’s your side I’m on, Tom. But I don’t want to see you hurt.’
‘Good for you, Rector. I won’t be hurt, staying in me own home, biding me own business.’ Another bottle crashed to the ground in the lane just in front of Swinford-Browne, who retaliated swiftly.
‘Smoke him out.’ He turned to his three men, keeping well in the background.
‘You can’t do that.’ The Rector was outraged.
‘Why not? It’s my property.’
‘Suppose he refuses to leave, and the thatch catches fire?’
‘I’ll rebuild. I want him out. Chop down the rear door, Stokes,’ he ordered the bailiff. ‘If the man doesn’t come out then, it’s his own risk and you’re all witness. Hear that, Rector?’
Tom replied for him with a string of oaths followed by a shot fired in the air.
‘Light up,’ roared Swinford-Browne.
Appalled, the Rector watched as bales of straw were dampened and set alight, acrid smoke immediately curling into the air under the open cottage window, its fumes even reaching him at the gate, making him cough and splutter. Angrily, he made his way into the rear door of the cottage, smoke already snaking lasciviously under doors and into windows. He rushed up the stairs to find Tom.
‘Don’t be a fool, Rector.’ Swinford-Browne’s shouting voice outside held a note of alarm, not, Laurence knew, for his own sake, but for Swinford-Browne’s reputation, as the Rector was almost universally popular with church and chapel alike.
Crouching by the window, Tom winked at him. ‘Give as good as I get, eh? I’ll have that bugger in the belly next time.’
‘Your language, Mr Cooper.’
‘Think I should speak nice and behave dirty like that Fat Jack outside, eh?’ he jeered, pulling himself up and making faces out of the window through the smoke.
‘You have made your point, Mr Cooper.’ Coughing, the Rector tried to humour him. ‘Come, now I have joined my lot with yours, so you must at least consider my life and let me lead you out.’
‘You’re as daft as he is if you think I’ll do that. You’ll not be catching me.’
The smoke outside, caught by sudden winds, was fanned into flame, leaping perilously near the thatch, and blowing new fumes into Tom’s leering face that sent him collapsing back in a heap of coughing, gasping for breath on the floor.
‘Dibble, come here!’ The Rector thrust his head out, and Percy, spurred at last into action, rushed into the cottage to his master’s aid. ‘Swinford-Browne, extinguish those fires or you’ll kill us both. The man’s old and he’s sick.’
Smirking, Swinford-Browne said something to his men, who slowly began to fling earth and sand on the burning hay.
‘Help me get him to the trap, Percy. We’ll take him to Dr Marden.’ Percy looked with distaste at the heap on the floor, then at the Rector’s face. He remembered his Christian duty.
‘He can come to the missis, afterwards. We’ll care for him till you get him sorted, Rector,’ Percy offered handsomely, taking half Tom Cooper’s weight as they half led, half dragged him from the cottage.
The Rector nodded. ‘Thank you,’ He had not doubted it. The Dibbles were forever a trial in fair weather but a lifeboat in stormy seas.
‘I showed the old bugger, didn’t I, Rector?’ Tom crowed hoarsely as Poppy plodded into Station Road.
‘You did, Mr Cooper, you did.’
Saturday morning found Tom fully recovered, eating his way jauntily through a plateful of kedgeree with a side plate of kidneys returned from the Rectory dining-room chafing dishes. He announced he would be walking back to his cottage now if that was all right with the Rector. It took all morning to persuade him that a man of his fragile constitution should be in a nice warm almshouse and not in a damp, ill-maintained cottage. At last, unexpectedly, he agreed. He claimed to have been swayed by the voice of God speaking through the Rector, but in fact it was Elizabeth’s apparently casual comment, as she passed through the morning room, that the empty almshouse was the one next to old Mrs Pilbeam, young Aggie’s grannie, that saved the day. On summer evenings they could sit outside their respective front doors and have a chat, Tom reflected. Or inside, come to that. There might be the odd pudding in it, or stew.
‘You done me a lot of good, Rector,’ Tom informed him generously. ‘So I’ll do something for you now. That new cemetery you want. Tallow Field. Rented to Swinford-Browne, ain’t it? I heard tell he won’t give it back and you can’t force him.’
‘Correct. Gossip, it seems, is the speediest means of travel in Ashden.’
‘You can tell him it’s yours any time you like. He reckons because he pays his rent it’s his for aye. Not so. ’Tis glebe land held by candle auction. That’s why ’tis called Tallow Field.’ Tom paused to pour tea daintily into his saucer and slurp it approvingly.
‘I’ve never heard of it. What is it?’
‘’Tis your right to hold one every two years. He who makes the last bid before the candle goes out gets to rent it for two years. No more. The old rector afore you came, he were a lazy blighter. Liked his fishing more than attending his faithful flock, and he couldn’t be bothered to keep holding auctions. He fished on the Towers estate so he let the owner rent the field without troubling about him. It’ll come as a shock to Silly Billy Swinford-Browne, won’t it?’ he cackled.
‘Is there any proof of this?’ the Rector asked doubtfully. ‘I’ve seen no records.’
‘You wouldn’t. I got ’em. I’ve always been one to let sleeping dogs lie, and besides, me son had his eye on Tallow Field for new hoppers’ huts. But now he’s been given the order of the sack, why should I care? Him being a lettered man, my dad were churchwarden, see, at the time o’ the last auction, and he kept all the papers, and I found ’em arter he were gone. The old Rector weren’t interested, so I hung on and forgot ’em till this ’ere cemetery come up.’
‘Where are the papers?’ A sudden thought struck the Rector.
‘There’s a china ornament my old mother won at Brighton. A cottage, tedious noble it is. Lift the roof off and there’s all the papers. I’ll be off now to pick it up.’
&
nbsp; The Rector started to laugh. He couldn’t help it. He almost doubled up with the pain in his sides, as tears of mirth rolled down his cheeks.
‘Smoke still getting to you, Rector?’ Tom asked anxiously.
‘No,’ the Rector spluttered. ‘I was thinking of your former landlord. His last threat was that he was going to carry all your possessions over to the almshouse today. I trust he takes care of the china.’
‘He will surely,’ Tom said gloomily, unable to see the joke himself. ‘Mus Swinford-Browne won’t want to pay me no compensation, will ’e?’
The day of the tennis match had turned the cranking handle to the summer. The cool cloudy days of early June had ignited into the resplendent sun and warmth of the later half. A strawberry half June, Elizabeth had announced with satisfaction, as the first punnets appeared in the village from Hector and Eileen Roffey’s market garden.
For Caroline June was blazing a trail along which she moved supremely happily, swept along by the special momentum of the Ashden summer this year made glorious by her own personal joy. The month was crowned by Reggie’s birthday on the 27th, following the village pageant in the afternoon. Every year the Manor held a midsummer dance with a real band for Reggie’s birthday. No uneven paving slabs here, but, unless they were very lucky, no Huggie Bears or ragtime either. Even Lady Hunney, however, could not stamp her aura over the entire evening; it was as if the Manor permitted her to indulge in her role of social hostess, then persuaded her to step back and allow the real Hunney atmosphere to take over.
Aunt Tilly’s Austin lurched up the long drive to the Manor. The others were walking, but her aunt had declared that Caroline should arrive in style. Perhaps she had guessed? Oh, May is for the lilacs, but June puts forth the roses. Caroline sniffed appreciatively as the Austin crunched to a stop. No roses were allowed to ramble here where they would, as in the Rectory. Here, before the Manor, they stood to attention like the liveried footmen, a household cavalry drawn up to salute their monarch. It didn’t seem to spoil their rich smell. Nothing could spoil tonight’s glory. Sir John made a special point of coming forward to greet them in the entrance hall, and not to be outdone, Lady Hunney herself. How odd the dictates of society were. You are not good enough to marry my son, Caroline, and I thoroughly disapprove of everything you do, Miss Lilley, yet I shall greet you as though you do us the greatest honour imaginable by visiting our home. Social life was like a stately dance: when the music stopped one found oneself alone, she reflected.
