When he was young he had been moved by every pretty face too, and had done his best to flirt and pay court to the most eligible. But as the women behind those pretty faces invariably turned out to be far too like his mother, his ardour soon faded. And for the last decade he’d had as little to do with eligible women as possible. It was safer that way, and less demoralizing. Better to admire from a distance, as he was doing now.
But while he was quietly enjoying these private thoughts, he realized with a frisson of heightened pleasure that the young woman he was looking at was little Nan Smithen. Good heavens! His little Nan, no longer the child he had been remembering and imagining, but a woman, a bewitching little woman with gleaming legs and little round breasts …
‘’Lo Mr Easter, sir,’ she called looking up the beach towards him. ‘did you have a good journey?’ And her voice was exactly the same. She might have grown into a little woman during the last three months, but she was still his dear Nan, young and strong and independent and individual. But no threat. Oh no, indeed, no threat to anyone.
‘Passable, my dear,’ he said, walking towards her. ‘One of the horses cast a shoe at Ipswich but we made good time notwithstanding. I trust I see you well.’
‘Passable, sir,’ she teased him, brown eyes laughing.
‘We must talk of your remuneration,’ he said, struggling to be businesslike because she was attracting him so strongly. ‘Would you care to take a walk along the sands?’
She emptied her apronful of fish into the apron of the girl standing beside her, pouring them like water, wriggling and spinning, and her brown hands were deft, and her dark hair burnished by sunlight. Everything about her is so full of life, he thought, admiring her more than ever, as she paddled out of the sea, and straightened her skirt and picked up her clogs. A bewitching child.
But when they had walked right away from the fair and discussed remuneration and were finally on their own among the sand dunes, his pleasure evaporated into melancholy. As it so often did.
She sat with her back against a spiky tussock of marram grass and dried her sandy feet on the edge of her skirt. ‘That’s better,’ she said.
‘Ah, my Nan,’ he said mournfully, thinking how very young she was. ‘I am forty-five years old. How swiftly the years do follow one upon the other. Life’s but a walking shadow, my dear!’
Talking in riddles again, she thought, slipping her feet into her clogs. That’s his schooling, I dare swear, poor soul. And she looked brightly at his sombre face, hoping to cheer him.
‘A poor fool that struts and threats his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more,’ he said, more mournfully than ever. ‘It is all vanity, Nan. Although heaven knows we have little enough cause for vanity. We are like the sands of the shore. Dull, numerous and of little account I fear.’ He scooped up a handful of sand and held it thoughtfully. ‘Here and alive today,’ he said looking at the flaxen heap in his palm. The wind was already blowing the grains away, and he turned his hand slowly as he spoke and let the rest of it plume towards his feet. ‘Gone and forgotten tomorrow.’
That’s a load ’a squit, Nan thought and she rushed to disprove him. ‘That don’t have to be like that, Mr Easter,’ she said, her brown eyes serious. ‘S’pose life was like the sea instead ’a the sand. What then? Never the same two days running. One minute rushing on you so strong it knock the breath out your body, next minute calm as a mill pond. Now that’s exciting.’
‘With the breath knocked out of your body?’ he said, smiling at her despite his depression.
‘That’s exciting,’ she insisted. ‘So what if that old sea do knock you about? He don’t rage forever. Wind don’t blow forever. You pick yourself up again, don’t you? You fight on. The more he blow you down the more you get up again. Right?’
‘Do you never feel afraid?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said, briskly, without even thinking about it. ‘En’t got time for that. I got too much else to do.’
He smiled again. ‘Like running away and hanging between the wheels of the nearest coach?’
‘Better than that ol’ Coppice Farm,’ she agreed.
‘But do you never feel that the ways of the world are too strong for you, too – um – powerful?’
‘No. There’s always ways an’ means, en’t there?’
‘What faith and energy you have, my Nan!’ he said, and he suddenly leant forward and picked up her stubby hand and kissed it. He couldn’t help himself. ‘Ah!’ he sighed. ‘With you as my helpmate, how very different my life could be.’
Well, she thought, noticing the flush mottling his pallid cheeks, perhaps Cook with right after all. ‘You caught the eye a’ the master, my gel,’ she’d said when that book arrived. ‘You play your cards right, you could catch yerself a rich lover.’ But Nan hadn’t been interested in a rich lover then and she wasn’t interested in one now. As far as she could tell from her limited observation of life and her extensive reading of Pamela, lovers were nothing but trouble, fickle and capricious and demanding, and giving quite as much pain as pleasure. But a rich employer would be a very different thing, and this kind man would make a very good employer.
‘What sort of helpmate did you have in mind, sir?’ she asked, withdrawing her hand, but gradually so as not to offend him.
He had no idea, because for once in his cautious life, he’d spoken without thought. ‘You have such strength,’ he said earnestly. ‘Just the sort of strength I have always lacked. If I had your strength to help me … Ah!’ And then his attention and his voice drifted away from her.
‘You have only to tell me what way I’m to help ’ee, sir,’ she prompted. ‘I’m certain sure it could be arranged.’
‘I thought of you day and night,’ he said, surprising them both by the confession. ‘All the while I was in Chelsea, with my business concerns in such a parlous state, dear Nan. I do believe it was your strength I missed during those difficult days. You can have no idea how greatly I was cheered by your letters.’
There was a breathy, urgent quality about his voice that alerted her. He was beginning to sound like a man declaring his love. Oh, surely not! Surely he didn’t love her. ’T was not within the bounds of possibility. He was too old, for one thing, and she was too poor. But the suspicion kept her silent. She stared at him solemnly, busy with her thoughts, and in the silence words began to tumble from him again, almost of their own volition.
‘I have come to value your good sense, Nan. You write so well and with such good sense. I looked forward to your letters with such … How can I convey this to you? You were my helpmate and my comforter all summer long. I have never said such things to any woman alive, but I say them now to you. What a blessing it would be to know that you were in my house, near to me whenever I needed you. Nan, my dear Nan …’
‘As a servant do you mean?’ Oh, let it be a servant, for I don’t know how I should answer if he talked of love.
‘No, no. I value you more highly than that. Oh, dear me, yes. Much more highly.’
Herring gulls were wheeling and mewing in the bright sky behind his head. She decided to speak to him frankly, for if he was thinking of asking her to be his mistress, the sooner he was disabused of the idea the better. ‘I don’t intend to take on lovers, sir, I should warn ’ee of that,’ she said.
He was appalled at the thought of what he might have seemed to be implying. ‘No, no,’ he said at once. ‘Nor that neither, I do assure you. I would not offer such an insult to any woman. And certainly not to you, Nan.’
She was relieved to hear it, but ashamed to have thought so ill of him, good kind gentleman that he was, with his honest face so distraught and his blue eyes so strained. ‘Then tell me what you wish, sir,’ she said, gently, because he was upsetting himself so much.
The moment was so full of emotion it was making him breathless. ‘I believe I am asking you to marry me,’ he said. And then he was appalled at his daring, and excited and afraid. To have such a pretty, passionate, headstrong
creature for his very own seemed to him in that trembling moment to be the greatest happiness he could ever achieve. ‘Yes indeed. I am asking you to marry me.’
Marriage! she thought, her mind baulking at the word and the idea. She had always assumed she would marry one day, and somewhere in the back of her mind was a vague impression of the sort of man he would be, young, of course, and handsome and ardent and full of admiration for her. Now she looked at Mr Easter, and wondered. ‘To be your lady?’ she asked. Lady of that fine house, with servants to do all the work, and plenty to eat. What a life that would be! Just like Pamela, when the master married the maid. Only better, because Mr Easter was a real gentleman.
‘To be my lady and my wife,’ he assured her, panting as though he’d been preparing to ask her for months and was desperate for her answer. ‘How say you, Nan? You know my wealth and my family. You know my age and the state of my health. How say you?’
What a chance! She would never get another as good. He was old and dull and ordinary and not a bit like the handsome young man of her dreams, but he was undeniably rich and he was kind and gentle and good-tempered, and he meant what he said. She would be a fool not to accept such an offer. ‘Yes,’ she said firmly, ‘I say yes.’
It rather upset her that his response was to burst into tears. ‘Come now,’ she said, ‘don’t ’ee cry. If you mean us to wed, we’d best see a priest. There’s banns to be called and arrangements to be made. I’ve only an hour off work and then I’m due back at Plum Row with the fish.’
He dried his eyes and gave her his wry smile. ‘And time, tide and fish wait for no man,’ he said.
When he sat down to dinner that evening in his quiet dining-room at South Quay, William Henry Easter was signed and sealed and irrevocably committed. In three weeks he would move from the settled state of bachelordom which he’d enjoyed and endured all these years into the unknown hazards of matrimony. It made him dizzy to think of it. How could it have happened?
And yet it had. He remembered every minute of it, the rector of St George’s smiling, the date agreed upon, Nan looking so young, standing on the church steps, his own fatuous voice saying how suitable it all was and knowing that he’d chosen St George’s because it wasn’t the parish church and a wedding there could pass relatively unnoticed. Anxiety was already descending upon him then, a lead weight on his presumptuous neck.
Before he parted from his new intended, he pledged them both to secrecy until the wedding. But he knew he was only buying time and a very short time at that, a mere three weeks. Then, Heaven help him, he would have to tell his formidable family. His flesh quailed and shook at the very idea. He knew very well that for an Easter to marry a servant was so absolutely unheard of as to be virtually impossible. And yet … it was high time he chose a wife … and he had as much right to a loving companion as any other man. Oh dear me! he thought, toying with his roast mutton, how would this end? He had no appetite at all. That had receded with his confidence.
Over in the kitchen in Plum Row, Nan wasn’t worried in the least, because despite her extraordinary decision her life hadn’t changed in the least. For the next two weeks she went about her work exactly as usual. The banns were called and she sat in the back pew in St George’s at evening service and listened to them, although the names she heard, William Henry Easter and Ann Smithen of this parish, sounded foreign somehow and nothing to do with her. She met Mr Easter every morning when she went to market, and they smiled and talked politely, about the weather and the price of food and the progress of the Dutch Fair, and now and then Mrs Howkins allowed her to go down to the beach to visit the stalls, and now and then he would join her there and they would walk along the sands together and he would tell her about his literary friends in Chelsea and how very much he had missed her while he was there.
When her wedding day was a week away she gave in her notice to Mrs Howkins. It wasn’t easy, having to keep everything secret the way she’d promised, but after a deal of thought, she found words that were guarded enough without sounding awkward. ‘I been offered a new position, Mrs Howkins, ma’am.’
‘Have you indeed?’ the lady said, looking at her roguishly. ‘It wouldn’t be with Mr Easter of South Quay by any chance?’
‘Yes, ma’am. ’Tis.’
‘Just as I thought,’ Mrs Howkins said triumphantly. ‘Well you are a good gel, in all conscience. You work well. Your appetite is not excessive. I daresay you deserve it. When does he require you to start?’
‘In a week, ma’am.’
‘Fair notice,’ the lady approved. ‘I shall have to find a new maid, drat the man!’ But she was looking pleased, nodding her artificial curls and smiling affably.
Whatever would she say if she knew I was going to marry him? Nan wondered, as she went back down the spiral staircase to the kitchen.
But she kept her counsel, and went about her work as usual, and in no time at all it was her wedding day and she was standing before the attic window in Plum Row, dressed in her old pink skirt and a braided bodice, with her cloak over her arm and a straw hat over her cap, checking her cracked reflection in the looking-glass that hung on the beam. Nan Smithen, lady’s maid, about to become Mistress Easter and the lady of the house. And she still hadn’t stopped to think whether she was doing the right thing or not.
He was waiting for her on the quay, offering his arm in that quaint old-fashioned way of his and covering his lips with a cautious forefinger as though they were conspirators. They strolled easily up the gentle slope of Barnaby Row towards St George’s church, and there in a brown dusk beneath the blue and gilt of the high altar she gave her solemn promise that she would love and obey the stranger standing patiently beside her, and the priest proclaimed them man and wife.
After that the day acquired the drifting inconsequence of a dream. She had a vague recollection that they were both required to sign their names in a book and that the curate and his wife signed too, and said they were honoured. Then she and Mr Easter were out in the pale October sunshine, walking sedately back to South Quay, where Matthew was waiting beside the front door to greet them, and all the servants were lined up in rank order in the inner hall ready to be introduced to their new mistress.
The expressions on the faces gazing towards her gave her an unexpected sense of triumph. They were all so obviously surprised, and some of them were cross and trying to hide it, and some looked envious. She drew herself up, straightening her spine and trying to make the most of her five short feet and their envy, playing up her pride to have achieved so much, so young. You couldn’t ’a done it, she thought, looking boldly back at them. But she knew she was putting on her bold face because she was feeling so vulnerable, and it could never have done to have shown them that, not now she was the lady of the house.
Then Mrs Mather came gliding forward from the head of the line, as befitted the senior servant of the household, to name all the others one after the other, her face frozen with disapproval.
‘If,’ as she said to the clerk later that evening, ‘the master has so far took leave of his senses as to marry a common little maid, ’t would ill behove us to complain.’
‘Or comment,’ the clerk said with the most aggrieved expression.
‘We know how to behave,’ Mrs Mather agreed.
‘More than may be said for that bit of a girl,’ the clerk grumbled. ‘Did you see the haughty look she gave me? Insupportable! I cannot imagine what she thinks she is doing here.’
The bit of a girl, standing in the master’s panelled bedroom with a new maid called Lizzie to wait on her, being dressed in the new yellow gown she’d found waiting for her on the bed, and a new lace cap that billowed above her hair like a cloud, and new embroidered slippers that pinched her toes, wasn’t at all sure what she was doing there either. She walked down the grand staircase, carefully for fear of disturbing her finery, and sat in state in the panelled dining room, and ate the dinner that Matthew served to her, without tasting a mouthful, and made conversation
with this man who was now her husband, without knowing what it was she said.
Then they sat beside the fire in his splendid drawing-room, while the servants bustled about in the bedroom next door, warming the bed and emptying the closet and sweetening the air and doing all the things she’d always done for Mrs Howkins, and he tried to teach her to play backgammon. But she was too inattentive to be a good pupil and he was too amorous. And presently Mrs Mather put her stony face round the door and begged to inform him, ‘Mr Easter sir,’ that his room was prepared. She didn’t look at Nan, and after a first curious glance, Nan didn’t look at her.
‘We will prepare for bed, my dear,’ he said, and he sounded so courteous about it. ‘Is Lizzie ready to assist my wife, Mrs Mather?’
It appeared that Lizzie was. The silk gown was folded and laid in the linen press, stays unhooked, cap unfastened, curls unpinned, slippers brushed, stockings and underlinen taken away to be washed, warming-pan swung away from between the sheets, and the new lady of the house, stripped to her chemise, snuggled down into a warm bed for the first time in her life.
‘Leave the curtains!’ she ordered, when Lizzie offered to enclose the bed in its draperies. She wanted to watch while her servant made up the fire and swept the grate, because a fire was such a pleasant thing when all you had to do was enjoy its warmth, and because tonight she felt unaccountably cold.
The fresh coals were just beginning to glow when the door to the dressing-room opened and Mr Easter emerged into the firelight. He looked odd without his neat wig and his gentleman’s clothes. His hair was mouse-brown, shaved to within a quarter of an inch of his skull and swathed by an old-fashioned red flannel nightcap. The ankles rising bonily from the velvet of his slippers were white as paper, and mounding underneath an ill-fitting nightshirt was a belly as round as a barrel. He cut a poor figure, and for a moment, sitting up in his bed, with her back against his comfortable pillows and the warmth of his blankets all around her, she felt quite sorry for him, but then her mind was filled with the image of that other, handsome, young man she might have married, and for a few hesitant seconds she knew she was regretting her decision. But it was too late for regret. She had made her choice and given her word. Now she must go through with it, no matter what.
Tuppenny Times Page 5
