The Flood-Tide

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  The baby stirred inside her as she walked along the passage towards the West Bedroom, and she paused for a moment to put her hand over her belly and feel, even through her clothes, a petulant kick. Another boy, she thought, for it was big and restless. She was surprised to hear Mary's voice coming from Flora's room, and went in prepared to send her away and scold her for troubling Flora, but found her intervention was not needed. Flora was lolling in her bed, with her tray of chocolate and wheaten bread - she claimed not to be able to eat dark bread since she had been in London - watching and advising while Mary, seated before the glass, and wearing a pair of Flora's earrings, attempted clumsily to paint her face with Flora's paints.

  ‘Like this?' she was saying.

  ‘Yes, that would be well for Court, but at a private ball, you know, it would be quite out of place,' Flora replied.

  ‘Tell me again what happens when you are presented,' Mary said, and then turned with a petulant frown as she saw her mother's image in the mirror. 'I wasn't troubling her, Mama,' she forestalled Jemima quickly. 'Flora said she was glad of the company.' Jemima looked at Flora, who shrugged slightly, and smiled. 'Besides,' Mary went on importantly, 'I have to know how things are done, for when I'm presented I want everyone to notice me and think how well I do everything.'

  ‘And what makes you think you'll be presented?' Jemima asked. Mary looked round-eyed.

  ‘But of course I will be. Papa will arrange it. And then I shall live in London, like Flora, and never be in the country.'

  ‘Don't you really mind her prattle?' Jemima said to Flora, resisting the temptation to argue with Mary, whose values seemed to Jemima to need some rearranging.

  ‘She's company for me,' Flora said. 'What brings you up here at this time of day?'

  ‘Edward brought me a newspaper from Sir John Anstey, with his compliments. It is a few days old, but he thought you would be interested in the news. The French fleet has come out of Toulon.' She held out the paper as she spoke, and Flora took it automatically, but her face was pale. Jemima hastened to reassure her. 'Oh, do not be alarmed, it is not bad news. Hardly news at all, really, but he thought you would be interested.’

  Was there a battle?' Flora managed to ask. Jemima helped her by opening it at the correct page.

  ‘There, you see, there's the report. No, Estaing and the whole Toulon fleet slipped out and into the Atlantic, and Admiral Byron was detached with thirteen ships to follow - to America, as everyone supposes.'

  ‘And Isabella?'

  ‘No, I have looked at the list, and she was not amongst them. She must have remained with the Channel fleet.'

  ‘Oh.' Flora pushed the paper away without interest, and Jemima sighed inwardly. Where, she wondered, was the young woman who had read every list of ships in the Gazette for the mere pleasure of repeating the names over to herself? Flora had been more of a naval wife before her marriage than after.

  ‘Well, now I have interrupted you, can I not persuade you to get up and come out into the fresh air? It is a perfect day - a slight breeze - not too hot. Dinner will be late today, because Allen is in York, so I have ordered a little nuncheon for us to take in the rose garden. Won't you join us?’

  By the time Flora was dressed and had made her way down to the rose garden the rest of the party was assembled in the shade of one of the high hedges, and she paused for a moment, thinking how attractive a party it looked. Jemima sat on a rug spread on the grass, looking, despite her bulk, cool and comfortable in a dress of applegreen linen, her dark hair, streaked with silver, drawn back into a bunch of loose curls under a bergere hat. She was standing baby Harry up in his froth of white petticoats, and he was refusing to take his weight on his own feet, and crowing with laughter and grabbing for her hat brim with his fat fists. Beside her, little Louisa sat, leaning against her casually, while she frowned in concentration over the attempt to make a daisy chain when she had not the least idea of how to marry one limp stem to another. Her legs stuck straight out from the hem of her petticoats in the way only a small child's can, and from her dark curly head and her air of belonging one might easily have thought she was Jemima's baby, rather than Flora's.

  Father Ramsay sat on the marble bench with James lolling on his shoulder from behind - something no other boy in the history of the world would have been able to do to Father Ramsay - both watching Edward, suddenly very grown up, carving the cold roast duck. Edward had brought the younger John Anstey and he was sitting on the other side of the cloth, next to Mary, holding out a plate to Edward for the first carving, which was evidently destined to become Mary's portion against all other claims. At a little distance Rachel and Alison and Esther and Flora's maid Joan sat with their own feast, keeping an eye on the party, ready to take the babies if they became a nuisance or run messages if required.

  It was a pleasant, peaceful, domestic scene, and for a moment Flora felt oddly lonely, for it did not need her, there seemed no place for her there, not even as mother of Louisa. She wished suddenly that she could be back in London with her friends - only that was impossible, in her condition. She wished she was not pregnant; and she was within a whisker of wishing she was not married when Mary looked up and saw her, and invited her to sit beside her with a heroine-worshipping smile. Well, at least someone wanted her, Flora thought self-pityingly.

  The talk, of course, was all about the fair.

  ‘Mother, can I enter Sorrell in the pony race, or is she too big?' Edward asked.

  ‘Oh no, Mama, don't let him,' Mary cried at once. 'You can't, Edward, it wouldn't be fair.'

  ‘Why ever not?' Jemima asked in surprise.

  ‘Because she wants John Anstey to win, that's why,' James put in quietly, but not so quietly it couldn't be heard. Poor Anstey went scarlet, and Mary glared furiously at James.

  ‘Hold your tongue! You're such a child, what do you know about anything?'

  ‘Mary, please,' Jemima protested, pulling her face back from Harry's groping hand, now sticky with food. 'I think Sorrell might be giving you an unfair advantage, Edward. It is only a pony race.' Edward smiled tolerantly.

  ‘You won't believe what some people are entering, Mother. Down in the village they are almost drawing blood on the question of what defines a pony.'

  ‘Well, never mind. It wouldn't seem right for Morlands to win all the prizes,' Jemima said peacefully. 'Can't you enter for something else?'

  ‘Well, there's the sack race, I suppose,' Edward said. ‘I can't see myself being much of a hand at catching the pig-in-a-lane, or the pudding-eating, and I know you wouldn't let me enter the wrestling or the cudgels.'

  ‘The grinning match should suit you,' Mary said sulkily.

  ‘I shall enter for everything,' James announced. 'And I shall certainly win the bull riding.'

  ‘Only because you know the bull personally,' Edward said, grinning, 'I know where it is you've been going every morning, with a palmful of salt.'

  ‘The cheese-rolling - that's a nice uncontentious competition,' Jemima said hastily.

  ‘I don't see how you can enter for anything,' Mary said to James. 'You'll be playing in the cricket match.'

  ‘Not all the time,' Edward pointed out, but James only looked serene, not even bothering to argue with Mary.

  ‘Well, as the person in charge of the prizes, I can tell you that you wouldn't enjoy them if you did win, which you won't,' said Father Ramsay. The boys at once clamoured to know what the prizes were. 'Let me see,' he said, counting them off, 'there's a pound of tobacco, a round of beef, a truckle of cheese, a black piglet, a new hat—' The boys looked dismayed.

  ‘I shouldn't mind the piglet,' James said at length. 'I could train it to follow me like a dog. It would be a splendid thing, to go around with a pig at your heels. And when it was grown, it would be big enough to fight all the other dogs, and I could teach it tricks, and it would be famous!'

  ‘At all costs,' Jemima said to the priest, 'make sure James does not win the piglet.'

  ‘And after all
these games, what then?' Flora asked.

  ‘Dinner in the house, for us and a few guests, and then a ball at Shawes, and fireworks on the lake to finish up. I wish the long gallery was big enough for us to have the ball here,' Jemima added with a sigh. 'That's the trouble with living in a moated house - there's no room to expand. Allen and I have talked about filling in the moat, but somehow I just couldn't bear the idea of losing the swans. So we must make do. It's only for very big balls, after all, that we feel the lack.'

  ‘I suppose everyone will be there,' Flora said. 'It does seem hard that everything happens when I am in this condition and unable to join in. There was that ball at the Assembly Rooms last week, too.'

  ‘At least you can go and watch,' Mary said peevishly. ‘I am not even allowed to go, though Mary Loveday will be going, and I'm much taller than her.'

  ‘You are too young,' Jemima said, repressing a smile. ‘Mary Loveday is sixteen. It has nothing to do with height.'

  ‘No one would know I'm too young,' Mary began, but Father Ramsay silenced her with a look, and John Anstey tried to comfort her.

  ‘I'm sure you will be much missed,' he said. 'I'm sure I shall have no pleasure in the ball, if you are not there.'

  ‘Well then, why do you not refuse to go?' Mary asked, rather too much to the point.

  Edward grinned and said, 'Don't worry, Mary, I'll make sure he doesn't dance with Mary Loveday in your absence.'

  ‘I'm sure it is a matter of indifference to me,' Mary said, tossing her head. 'He may dance with anyone he pleases. Tom Loveday said he will refuse to go to the ball at all if I do not go, and Horatio Morland said he would much sooner sit and talk to me than dance with a princess of England. But men are all so fickle, I do not pay any heed to anything they say.’

  John Anstey's attempted defence was drowned in the laughter of Jemima, and Edward's comment of 'Well, if you have learnt that, Mary, you have learnt all that is necessary.' But Flora felt a strange sort of sympathy with Mary. The dancing part of a young woman's life was all too short. She remembered when she had been fourteen how she had been wild for balls, and at fifteen, wild for marriage. She had fallen in love with Thomas, as she now realized, not because of anything in his character, but because she wanted to be in love, had rushed through their marriage because she was desperate to be married. How she wished, now, that Charles had not come home that Christmas, that she had had time to be young and attractive before becoming a wife and mother. Here she was, swollen up like a woolsack, with all the pain and inconvenience of childbirth before her, and over there was little Louisa, to whom she felt no attachment at all. For the moment, in her self-pity, she forgot the pleasant two years she had had in London.

  It was such a lovely day that even when they had finished eating they sat on in the shade of the scented Edward and John and Mary disappeared on some business of their own; Father Ramsay fell asleep, and James took the opportunity to slip away; the babies dozed on the rug beside Jemima, while she talked to Alison about the rearrangement of the nursery to accommodate the two new occupants. They were still there when Allen returned home from the city and came to find them.

  ‘What a pleasant picture you all make,' he said, appearing in the gap in the hedge. 'I wish I could have a portrait made of you, just as you are.’

  Jemima greeted him. 'You are early - I am glad. I was afraid once you got talking you would be tempted to linger and take dinner with the other trustees.'

  ‘I have hurried back with some good news for you,' he replied. 'I hope it will please Edward, too, and Flora. John Carr tells me that he has some guests arriving today, to stay for a week or two - Lord Meldon, and Lord Calder. Naturally I begged him to bring them to our midsummer festivities, and especially to the dinner and ball. Carr said that Lord Calder especially asked to be remembered to you, my dear, and Edward, and that both young men will do themselves the honour of calling tomorrow, if you permit. Naturally, I assumed that you would.'

  ‘How lovely,' Jemima said. 'I shall be very glad to see them - and Flora, you will be happy to meet your old friends, I know.’

  But Flora stood up, almost in tears. 'Oh sir, how could you! How can I meet anyone in this condition? I should be shamed - I cannot receive them, I really cannot. To have the people I have known in London staring at me - and as for the ball, I certainly cannot go if they will be there! This is an end of it for me.’

  She ran away towards the house as rapidly as her bulk would allow, leaving Jemima and Allen in a distressed silence.

  ‘Oh dear,' Allen said at last. 'I am afraid I have - but I did not think - my dear, can you understand her distress? I thought she was missing her friends.'

  ‘I seem to know Flora as little as any of my children,' Jemima said sadly.

  In her own room, Flora stood at the window, staring out at nothing, her hands held against the hard bulk of her swollen abdomen, forced most unwillingly to come to grips with her feelings. I care nothing about Thomas, she thought. I wish I had never married him. I shall not be sorry if I never see him again. No, that's not true. I am fond of him, for he is a good and kind man. But I don't miss him, I don't want to be with him.

  That was the first stage of self-knowledge; the second was harder still. She had to ask herself why she was so upset at the thought of the young lords seeing her in this condition when they had known when she left London that she was with child. I have missed him, she thought. I have been looking forward to going back to London after I am delivered, so that I can see him again. I do not want him to see me large with another man's child. I do not want him to know, more than he does already, that I am another man's wife.

  Perhaps if Thomas had not been a sailor things might have been different. She had spent so little time with him that she had never got to know him, in the way she had Lord Meldon. She might have enjoyed his company as much, cared as much for his opinions, missed him in his absences as much, had they been shorter and less frequent. But as things were, there was no use in denying it to herself any longer. And she did not want Charles to see her like this, in case the sight of her pregnancy turned him against her and made him decide he did not want to see her again.

  *

  The young men called as promised the next day, and were received kindly by all, but Flora would not come down, and for the length of time they were in the country she remained in retirement, resisting all persuasion to join in any of the entertainments, and venturing out of her room only when she was assured that none but the family was present. Jemima observed it all with her private thoughts kept private, and did not urge Flora to join them, thinking that if she had discovered in herself a preference for the young men's company, she had better not be in their presence more than necessary.

  Edward's delight was a pleasure to see in his friend Chetwyn's arrival. He had finished at Eton, and in the autumn was to go to Christ Church, much in advance of his age, for he was so forward in his studies. Jemima had some doubts as to whether it was wise for such a young man to be exposed to the influences of Oxford, and was glad when Chetwyn reassured her.

  ‘I greatly regret that I shall not be at the university myself,' he said, 'but as you know, my father's place at Wolvercote is less than three miles from the House. I shall be very often there, and I will undertake to guard over your son like a mother hen and keep him from harm, and if you will only charge me to, I shall take upon myself also the delightful task of reporting to you that he is not ruining his health or plotting to elope with the Master's daughter.'

  ‘You are very kind, sir,' Jemima said. 'I shall part with him with an easier mind, knowing he is well cared for.'

  ‘And I can help you further in telling you what he will need to take with him, to make him good and popular; and I shall bring him home to you at the end of each term, with a full report on his progress.’

  The festivities went off excellently well, and the dinner and ball were both successful occasions, except as far as Mary was concerned, for all three of her beaux not only atte
nded the ball, but danced as often as they could, which provided her with most unwelcome confirmation of the fickleness of men, and made her determined to punish them when laggard time at last released her from the confines of the schoolroom.

  On the second day following, Calder and Meldon left York, calling at Morland Place on their way to make their adieux, still without having the pleasure of seeing Flora's face. When they had gone, Edward went up to her room and tapped on the door. At his second knock, a listless voice bid him come in. Flora was sitting by the window, her elbow on the windowsill and her chin in her hand, and she did not move or look up as he came in.

  ‘They've gone,' Edward said at last. 'Back to London for a few weeks, and then to Oxfordshire. You're safe to come down now, if you want.’

  She looked at him resentfully. 'Have you come to torment me?’

  Edward looked at her steadily. 'No, to bring you a letter - from Lord Meldon.' Flora started at the name, and then flushed angrily.

  ‘Do you mock me? Why should Lord Meldon write to me? And if he did, why should he send the letter by you?'

  ‘It's all right, Cousin,' Edward said kindly. 'Charles has no secrets from Chetwyn, and Chetwyn has none from me. It was the only way to get a letter to you without anyone knowing.'