The Flood-Tide

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  The servants, who loved a disaster and an excuse for complaint, approached the whole matter with lugubrious relish, and took such a perverse delight in telling Jemima that any order she might give was impossible to carry out because of the building that she finally gave up on the whole business, and absented herself from the house as much as possible, spending her time with the horses. The grooms at Twelvetrees would find her something to eat during the day, and she returned home to whatever scran had been assembled for the family with the serenity of one who has nothing to hope or fear from developments. The closest Allen got to acknowledging that he wished he had left the business to the next generation to effect was to say to her one night as they climbed between their gritty sheets, 'If I had only been able to arrange it, it would have been a good thing for us to go away for a holiday while the building was going on.’

  Fortunately the weather had stayed fine, and so Jemima was quite happy to be out of doors all day. One day she was lungeing a young colt in the home paddock when she saw a stranger watching her from the rails. She had been so absorbed in her task that she had not seen him approach, and now she squinted against the sun trying to see who it was. He was standing full in the sun's eye, and all she could see was that he was tall, and had white hair, though his body was not an old man's. She checked the colt, brought him in to her, petted him, and then in courtesy led the horse over to the stranger to see what he wanted.

  He stood quite still, waiting for her, and it was only when she moved into the shadow of a tree that she was able to see him properly.

  For a long time she stood looking at him over the fence, while the colt nodded his head and shifted his feet, so that the sound of his bit chinking and his hooves rustling the grass became the accompaniment to that moment which she always remembered. A tall young man, it was, with a face very brown from sun and salt wind; a firm face, used to command; pale bright eyes, with the long steady gaze of one used to watching a more distant horizon than any he now saw; strong shoulders and hands; and fair hair, burnt white by the sun, drawn back into a long pigtail that hung forward over one shoulder, and breaking into soft wisps about the brows.

  She knew, of course, who he was, but that was all: she didn't recognize him in any other way. There was nothing in this young man of the frail little boy she had parted with so reluctantly, with such fear for his life. He was big and strong - he looked stronger and older than Edward by far, though he was a year younger. The colt tugged at her restraining hand, and she let him put his head down to graze, and reached out very tentatively to touch the long silver-blond plait, as if she thought it might not be real.

  ‘I heard that sailors tarred them,' she said. It was heavier than it looked, and felt rougher. She looked up shyly into his eyes. 'William,' she said.

  ‘I left my dunnage at the inn, and walked,' he said, and it struck her with a terrible pang that she did not know his voice. Had she expected him to speak in a child's treble? No, not quite - yet she would not have known him for her son if she had heard and not seen him. It was the resonant voice one might have expected from a more barrel-like chest than his, though of course he had got the trick of pitching it to carry, as an actor does. Where the knowledge of his life should be in her mind, there was a blank. He had walked decks, looked out upon strange places, done things and seen sights, and she knew nothing of them at all. He was a stranger in more than looks: his life had gone so far apart from hers that he was truly a different person, someone she had never met before. She wanted to cry, and she wanted to touch him, and she could do neither, for they were both inappropriate.

  ‘Everything's changed,' he said suddenly, his voice rising a little as if in protest. 'I would not have known where I was - fields - the strips gone - fences and roads where they didn't use to be. And a bridge over the beck where Charlotte and I used to catch guppies.’

  I understand, she wanted to say. You have come home a stranger to yourself. I am as little your mother as you are my son, and we are both bereft. She touched the pigtail again, and then let her hand rest - very lightly, in case it offended - on his shoulder.

  ‘It is the enclosure,' she said. 'It didn't occur to me how different it would look to—' she almost said 'a stranger' -'someone coming back,' she finished.

  ‘Everything's different. The trees are bigger, but the house looks smaller. And you—'

  ‘I know,' she said quickly. 'I didn't recognize you, either.' She searched for something to say to reach him, or comfort him, and could find nothing. In the end she said, ‘The swans are still there, on the moat.'

  ‘Oh Mother,' he said, and began to laugh. He wasn't laughing at her - it was just his way of not crying, and in a minute she laughed too, for the same reason.

  *

  The household greeted William boisterously, or heartily, or tearfully, according to individual character, and there were endless exclamations of how he had changed and grown and become a man, but no one else, she thought, felt the strangeness as she had. Even for her, of course, it soon wore off, and the tall blond sailor took the place in her heart and thoughts labelled for 'her son William'; yet even so, through the evening, she found from time to time that she and William would steal glances at each other like shy young lovers, hopeful, but unsure.

  Abram, who had been sulking quite frightfully since the beginning of the building works, refusing either to cook himself or to let anyone else do it for him, pronouncing, like one affirming an Article of Faith, that no food fit to be eaten could be prepared under such conditions - burst into almost simultaneous tears and smiles and rushed off to prepare a supper worthy of such an occasion. Allen gave the cellar keys to Oxhey with directions as to which bottles to open, and while they waited for the feast to appear, the family gathered in the drawing room to hear all William's news.

  The first thing he wanted to tell them was that he had been made lieutenant. By the favour of the new captain of the Daring, he had sat for his examination in Kingston as soon as he attained the age of twenty, and, as Thomas had predicted long ago, passed it with the highest marks of the batch of candidates. A lucky combination of events - the fourth lieutenant of the Daring dying of the fever at a time when the Admiral was on hand to make the appointment - had led to his being given a commission just before his ship was recalled to England to be paid off.

  ‘For you know, as soon as we knew the peace was signed we knew that the navy would be reduced. If I hadn't been made then, there would have been no chance at all of it. At least now, if I ever do get another ship, I shall go in as lieutenant.'

  ‘You think it unlikely, do you?' Allen asked. William shook his head.

  ‘They were saying in Portsmouth that four in five ships are to be laid up. I went to the Admiralty as soon as I could get to London, but so did everyone else, of course. Now they can pick and choose, it will be the fellows with rich patrons who get the commissions. But I'll keep trying -you never know, we might go to war with someone else by and by. And at least I'll get a lieutenant's half pay.'

  ‘You want to go back to sea, then?' Allen asked the question, for Jemima's sake rather than because he doubted it.

  ‘Oh yes,' William said. It was not much, but the way he said it was all.

  Other things he had to tell were not so cheerful. They naturally wished to understand the circumstances of Thomas's death, and he recounted the matter and the rest of the battle in Chesapeake Bay; which naturally led Allen to ask if he had heard any news of Charles.

  ‘We thought he must be dead, since we have heard nothing for so long. Did you happen to find anything out?’

  William stared. 'Don't you know? I made sure you must have heard by now, from them or from Angus.'

  ‘They are alive then?'

  ‘Oh yes,' William said. 'I came across them in New York. There's an agency there set up to deal with the exiles—'

  ‘Exiles!' Jemima and Allen exclaimed at once.

  ‘—to succour them, and send them on to the new settlements. There was talk of a
settlement in Australia for them, but nothing has come of it so far. Most of them are sent to Canada, and given land, and some compensation -money to help them set up. A few come back to England, but it isn't encouraged.'

  ‘Good God! I had not thought of anything like this,' Allen said. 'Exiled, indeed! For remaining loyal to Britain, I suppose?’

  William, who had heard the whole story from Charles -his relief at meeting someone he knew had made him more than usually voluble - wondered how much of it to tell Allen, and decided in the end to keep his peace. 'That's right. It happened all over the country. The agency reckons there have been about fifty thousand so far, and more to come. It will change the structure of their society in the new United States, but I don't suppose they care about that.'

  ‘And Charles has chosen to go to Canada?' Jemima asked.

  ‘Yes. It seems that the compensation in land if they go to Canada is very generous, and he did not think they would settle happily in England now. He has written to Angus to ask him if he will find a way to release his share of their father's fortune to him - I thought Angus would have written to you by now, but perhaps the letter is on its way. They need almost everything - he and Eugenie and the children were banished with nothing but their clothes, and Eugenie is with child again.'

  ‘A sad business,' Jemima said. 'It will be hard for them to start again with nothing, though Charles is used to living rough, from his expeditions. But from what he told us of his wife, I don't suppose she can ever have known hardship.'

  ‘She's much stronger than she appears,' William said with a certain respect. 'She has pirate blood, and I suppose it will out.'

  ‘Pirate blood? What can you mean?’

  But at that moment Oxhey came in to announce that supper was ready, and the subject was abandoned for the moment. Conversation was lively through the meal. Father Ramsay joined them at table, and was eager to examine his old charge and determine how far his influence had shaped the young man; everyone, but Edward and James in particular, was anxious to hear William's adventures and stories of the battles he had been in; and William was determined to have all the details of the changes that had taken place in his absence. One thing Jemima discovered about her son was that shipboard life had given him a capacity for liquor which, though he seemed able to carry it like a gentleman, reminded her uneasily of her first husband. She had never liked to see wine quaffed like ale; and when the port was brought, William asked apologetically if there was any brandy.

  ‘I know there won't be any rum,' he added, trying to make a joke of it, but his words reminded Jemima that on shipboard the daily rum ration, which was all that made life tolerable for the tars, was served even to the midshipmen hardly out of boyhood. Well, it was his first day home, and no doubt he would drop the habit once he had settled in. For the moment she let it pass without fuss, and caught Allen's eye to nod consent to the notion. Father Ramsay greeted the brandy with more cheerfulness than he ever greeted the port, for he had been brought up in Scotland, where it was almost as common as their own usquebaugh, and drank along with William, which took the edge off the situation.

  They were so deep in conversation that it was only Oxhey ringing the bell that reminded them it was time for night prayers and bed, and they all went to the chapel, where Father Ramsay offered a special prayer of thanks for William's safe return. Jemima, who had William kneeling beside her, touched his hand at that moment and smiled at him, and when he smiled back at her he was a stranger again, and it made her shiver.

  When prayers were over, Father Ramsay called William to him to say goodnight before he went up to bed by his own stairs from the vestry. Jemima walked out with Allen but lingered in the hall for the same reason. But when William came out, he was with Edward, the latter's arm draped about his shoulders, and Edward said, 'We're going to sit up and talk for a while, Mother. The fire's still good in the drawing room.'

  ‘I'm sure William must be tired,' Jemima reminded him. William gave again his stranger's smile. He was taller and heavier than Edward, and it looked strange for him to have Edward's arm about him protectively like that.

  ‘Oh no, ma'am, I'm not tired at all. I couldn't sleep now, if I tried.'

  ‘I suppose you're used to sleeping in four-hour stretches,' Allen said pleasantly. 'Come, my love, let's leave the young people to it. You and I know where we belong.'

  ‘Very well,' Jemima consented, but a little uneasily, though she did not know why. 'Goodnight, my sons. God bless you. James—?'

  ‘I think I'll stay up a while too,' James said with superb nonchalance, but with a pleading look in his eyes that begged her not to shame him in front of his big brothers, so she merely nodded and turned away with Allen.

  ‘They'll want to hear the bloody details that he doesn't like to tell you,' Allen said to her when they were out of earshot. 'And perhaps they also suspect that William knows a little more about the ladies of Kingston than he's admitted to us.’

  Jemima gave him a tired smile, and leaned against him a little. 'I doubt if there can be anything he can tell James on that subject, after that business with Maggie Henshaw.’

  *

  William did not come down to Mass the next morning, but Jemima thought he was probably tired after all, and did not send for him. He came in while they were breakfasting, looking fresh and trim, and she felt a thrill of pride in him, that he had grown so fine and handsome.

  ‘I was thinking, William,' she said, 'that you might like to ride over the estate today, and see some of the changes for yourself. I've got a very nice young horse up that you could have.'

  ‘Lord, ma'am, I haven't been on a horse in eight years,' William said with a faint tinge of dismay in his voice. 'You know, the last time I rode, it was on old Dove - is he still alive? Dear, stout old fellow!'

  ‘Yes, he's still alive, though we don't work him much any more. He potters about in the home paddock, and sometimes carries a load for someone, but he's - well, he's older than you, I know, but I can't quite recall how old,' Jemima said, completely diverted.

  ‘I was thinking of walking up to Bachelor Hill this morning with a gun - the rabbits are becoming a nuisance,' Edward said. 'Would you like to come, and stretch your legs?'

  ‘Yes, indeed, what a good idea,' William said.

  ‘You get a good view from the hill, too, of the new enclosures,' Edward added as a sop to Jemima, who knew herself ousted, and just for a moment was hurt. But of course, a young man wanted the company of other young men, not his elderly mother. She pushed down her unreasonable feelings, and forced herself to smile.

  Allen, who always knew exactly what was going on in her mind, rewarded her efforts and said, 'I have to go in to York today, my love. Shall we take the carriage? If you can find something to amuse you while I attend to business, we could have dinner together at the King's Arms, and then take a stroll along the riverbank. I dare say you should like to eat something without brick dust seasoning?’

  She smiled her gratitude at him. It was a scheme to delight her, to spend most of a day with him, and eat out. ‘I haven't been into the city in an age,' she said happily. ‘And there are dozens of calls I ought to make. I never seem to have the leisure for formal calls, and one ought not to neglect them.'

  ‘Well, Mama, if you are dining out, shall not we take our dinner at the Hare and Heather, or somewhere, so that the kitchen need only provide a nursery dinner?' Edward suggested. 'Then the workmen can get on with the kitchen wall today.'

  ‘Yes, certainly. I'll tell Mrs Mappin to tell Abram,' Jemima said, automatically getting to her feet to go and call for a servant.

  Allen caught her hand as she passed and said, 'When this work is all finished, you will only need to reach for a bell-rope to do that.’

  Jemima smiled down at him. 'Somehow I can't imagine I'll ever get used to it.’

  *

  That day's outing to York was doubly welcome, for autumn was always the busiest time of the year, and it was the only time she and Allen had alo
ne together for weeks. After the first day, Jemima also rather lost sight of William, for she was too busy to notice very much what anyone else was doing. When she saw him, he seemed happy enough, and did not evinc any need for her attention, and so she simply smiled and passed him by. The only thing that worried her was that he had only once come to Mass in the Chapel, although when the whole family went into the city on Sunday morning for the weekly service he accompanied them. But she assumed - perhaps because it was convenient to assume - that Father Ramsay would tackle him about it, and that it would right itself in the end.

  At Michaelmas they gave a ball at Morland Place, and with three handsome and unmarried young Morland men at home, there was an eagerness on the part of mamas with unmarried daughters for invitations, which caused Jemima to be troubled by a great many formal callers, just at a time when she had no leisure to be polite. The ball could not, in any case, as she found herself explaining again and again to successive callers, be very grand, nor could there be the usual dinner beforehand, on account of the disruption caused by the building works, but there would be a buffet supper, and everyone assured her that an invitation of any sort to Morland Place was an honour, dear Lady Morland, even if it was only to take tea.

  The Ansteys had successfully married off their eldest, Augusta, but they had two more daughters 'out' - Celia who was eighteen and Margaret, seventeen - for whom they were anxious to find matches. The Fussells had Amelia, seventeen, and Caroline, sixteen, amongst their brood, and then there was Tom Loveday's younger sister, Mary, who since she was not very handsome, and rather too clever, was Celia Anstey's particular friend.

  It amused Jemima enormously on the evening of the ball to see the different attitudes of the young belles to her three sons. Edward, though he had beautiful manners, had been to Oxford, was really quite handsome, and was the close friend of an earl's son, was the least pursued of the three, for he had been at home too long to be a novelty. All the young ladies were at one in agreeing that he was incomparably the best match - he was, after all, the eldestson - and that his air and countenance were the best of any young man in or near York; but their eyes were always sliding off after the other two.