And then Ralph Duggan walked in.
There was a moment when everything seemed to stop: heartbeat, breathing, time itself. Then I said: ‘Thank you, Jenny. Will you bring some fresh tea? And I think in the larder there are some of the cakes that Annie made yesterday. Bring those as well.’
Jenny disappeared and Ralph just stood there, looking at me. It was as though he didn’t know what to say. I didn’t, either. I just gazed back at him, thinking that he was older, thinner than I remembered, and noticing with sadness that there was grey now in his black hair.
Finally, abruptly, he said: ‘I meant to wait a year. To do the proper thing. And I do still mourn for Harriet. I expect part of me always will because no man could have had a better wife. But Harriet isn’t there any more and … I had to come. There are things to talk about.’
‘You’re welcome,’ I said. ‘Sit down and be comfortable. Did you ride from Minehead or take your boat round to Porlock?’
‘I rode. Ned Webster is taking care of my horse. I caught sight of Charlotte as I dismounted – mucking out a stall. She didn’t see me and I didn’t call to her. I know I have no rights in the matter, but’ – he took a chair as invited but didn’t relax in it – ‘though I realize I shouldn’t just walk in here and start talking like this, Charlotte is partly why I’m here. I’ve been worrying about her. I couldn’t … attend to her very well while Harriet was alive but it’s different now, and as I rode in, I saw how remiss I’d been. I should have done more than just send you money for her. It gave me a shock, seeing my daughter all grubby, wearing boots with mud and worse on them and bits of straw on her dress. I don’t want to offend you. It’s not your fault; just circumstances. Are you offended?’
‘No. I feel the same. So do Mr Silcox and Edmund Baker. She goes to school in Exford. They have suggested that she should take up teaching, and begin by being a pupil-teacher for them when she’s old enough. I’m considering it. Charlotte isn’t far off fourteen. It’s been on my mind.’
I had in fact been trying to make plans, albeit vague ones, to see that when she was older, Charlotte should meet the kind of people who might provide a suitable husband, by which I meant a man who would take her into a gentler world than that of Foxwell, and would look after her, so that she could have her own children and not have to make do with other people’s. Life as a teacher could be bleak in some ways, unless one had a true vocation for it. I didn’t want Charlotte to enter it unless she had such a vocation, any more than I wanted her to be a farmer’s wife when she disliked farm life. I wanted her to marry well.
Jenny arrived with the cakes and the fresh tea and while we ate and drank, I shared my ideas with Ralph, who sat nodding. ‘I shall give this a lot of consideration,’ he said. ‘Leave it to me for a while. I know a good many people. She’s young yet.’ Then, as I poured his second cup of tea for him, he said: ‘There’s something else, though I didn’t know it when I started out from Minehead but on the way here …’
He stopped and we looked at each other, and then, suddenly, we were laughing.
‘We’re still ourselves,’ Ralph said. ‘For a moment, I felt as though I’d called on a stranger. I thought you’d changed. But you haven’t, not really. Have you?’
‘No. Not much. I’m older and I know more than I once did,’ I said. ‘Have you changed, do you think? Was it hard, getting used to life without Harriet?’
‘It was dreadful at first,’ said Ralph, and I saw that he meant it. ‘But one does become accustomed. What was I saying just now? Yes. On the way here, I decided to look in at Standing Stone first, to see how it was doing. Well, now that I’m no longer their landlord, the Darracotts talked to me more freely than they would have done in the past. They’re not doing well and they wish they’d never taken on this tenancy. They want to give it up and go back to what they were doing before – keeping a shop in Minehead. What do you feel about that?’
‘They’ve a perfect right to give up their tenancy if they want to,’ I said. ‘And it’s true they’re not doing well though some of that’s their own fault. I do go over there sometimes and I have had to advise them on occasion, not to say bully them.’
‘How do you mean – their own fault?’
‘Mr Darracott’s forever changing his mind about things – when to start haymaking, for instance. He’s done that two years running and created some fine muddles for the neighbourhood. And he fidgets his cows.’
‘In what way?’
‘Cows like a quiet life,’ I said. ‘They like to graze with companions they’re used to, and they don’t like having to absorb strange cows into the herd every five minutes. It upsets them and that affects the milk yield. Darracott keeps on selling off cows he thinks aren’t good enough, and bringing in others. So he never gets the milk yield he expects. I’ve tried to tell him but he doesn’t listen. He doesn’t like being advised.’
‘There are new shops opening in Minehead and Dunster now,’ Ralph said. ‘Both places are well on the rise. I suggested to Mr Darracott that that this might be his chance.’ He grinned. ‘There’s that ship’s chandlers in Minehead that Laurence Wheelwright has. He doesn’t have much competition, and Mr Darracott was a seaman during the war with the France. He would take to life running a chandler’s, I think. He might set up as a rival.’
‘Does Wheelwright still engage in free trading?’ I said. I probably sounded distasteful, but free trading had wrecked my marriage and killed Harriet. I had once taken it for granted; now I knew I hated it.
‘Yes. We both do, even together sometimes,’ said Ralph. ‘Never mind about that. The thing is, there are possibilities there for the Darracotts. And that opens up possibilities for you. Do you know how worn out you look? I saw it, the moment I walked into this room. Would you like to escape from here? Because if so, if the Darracotts go, what’s to stop you from moving into Standing Stone, taking it over for yourself?’
‘To live there alone?’ I said. ‘To run Standing Stone on my own?’
But the thought of getting away, not from Foxwell exactly, but from the life that had become so disturbed and exhausting was tempting. I had been so happy to come home but now … yes, I was tired through and through, not just the tiredness of a busy day but all the time, deep inside, even when I woke in the morning.
Sarah was capable. She could take charge of William’s family. Only, did I want to be alone quite that much?
‘You wouldn’t be alone,’ Ralph said, reading my mind. ‘You would have Charlotte with you, at least for the time being. There are also two young maidservants at Standing Stone and a big fat cook and several farmhands, including the foreman Dickie Webster and that lively family of his. You would bring your knowledge to the place, but other people would do the work. That applies to Charlotte too. This could be the first move towards improving her prospects. Besides … it need not be for too long. It would be good for Standing Stone to have you there for a while, perhaps till the end of the year, straightening it out, but then, well, there are other possibilities.’
Across the decorous display of tea and cakes, our eyes met.
‘You have eyes the colour of rich, dark molasses,’ Ralph said. ‘I remember noticing them, the first time we danced. You know why I really came here today, don’t you? Yes, I wanted to see Charlotte, and yes, I must have had Standing Stone in the back of my mind, at least. But the real reason … when I have given Harriet her due, by waiting a whole year, will you marry me, Peggy Bright?’
The evening was coming on and when we stepped out of the kitchen door to stroll in the open air, it was growing cooler. Ralph had suggested that I fetch a coat. I had it over one arm while the other was comfortably linked in one of his.
The world was quiet. All our hands had gone home. William would make a last careful round later on, after supper. For now, no one was about. As we walked across the farmyard towards the hay barn, Ralph said: ‘When we were young, and you stayed with us in Minehead, I used to long so much to be allowed to make love to
you. I knew I never would be, not until we were married. And I had another ambition too, one I knew you wouldn’t let me fulfil even after we were married. But now … I wonder.’
‘Ralph, what in the world are you talking about?’
‘I didn’t just want to make love to you. I wanted to do so as lads and lasses have been doing since the first hayfield in the world was mowed. I wanted to love you, illicitly, in a hayloft.’
I said: ‘I have a coat to keep the hay from prickling, and there’s no one watching. Oh, and there is no danger now of any unwanted results.’
‘In that case,’ said Ralph, ‘what are we waiting for, sweeting?’
In those far-off days of our youth, I had sometimes wondered what it would be like when first we came together. Then it had happened, but in such a curious way, in the night, with fear and danger behind us and perhaps ahead, and it was a frenzied business, on cold ground, under the trees of Culbone Wood, encircled by the rustles and mystery of a woodland in the unearthly darkness that precedes the dawn.
This was quite different.
The new hay, mingled as it was with clover, smelt sweet and felt soft. There was a window, for formerly some of our farmhands had slept there and James had made sure that the place was comfortable. Slanting sunshine came in, turning the hay to gold, showing the motes that danced in the air around us. And Ralph, dear Ralph, was with me and I had been waiting for him for so long, and he for me.
If it was nothing like our union in Culbone, it was nothing like any of my unions with James, either. They had never been fully satisfactory. This began slowly, gently, and then burst into an eagerness that was both fierce but also kind, ending in a climax like the sudden rain that bursts forth in a thunderstorm. When we parted, gasping and laughing, we were spent, yet filled with energy; amazed and yet quite certain that this was how it ought to be, and should have been, long since.
We tidied our clothes, shaking the hay out of them, resuming things we had taken off. We combed our hair with our fingers. And then, after peering warily out, just as though we were still two young things who must make sure their parents didn’t catch them, we descended the ladder and walked to the house as we had left it, arm in arm.
Annie was in the kitchen, stirring stew. She turned as we came in and although I don’t know what she saw, something about us made her eyebrows rise, and caused a smile to hover at the corners of her mouth. She didn’t speak, but her face did it for her.
Only …
As we sat down in the parlour to talk for a while before I went to the kitchen, there were things to be said. The golden tide in which we had been drowning had receded. ‘Before we went out,’ said Ralph, ‘I asked you to marry me. You didn’t answer. Will you give me an answer now?’
‘I would have to let Standing Stone again,’ I said. ‘If I joined you in Minehead.’
‘Yes. We shouldn’t actually marry until it’s a year since Harriet died. You could stay at Standing Stone for a while as I said and get it into order. Then you would live with me in Minehead. I’m not retiring from the boatyard yet.’
‘And the free trading?’ I asked. ‘You would continue with that?’
‘I don’t do as much as I did before the war,’ Ralph said, grinning. ‘But it’s still profitable, if one goes about it rightly. Not as profitable as it was – but it brings in a fair amount, just the same.’
‘It killed Harriet!’ I said. ‘And one day … think what happened to Luke and Roger Hatherton! That could be you! And the worry I would have, just as Harriet had … Ralph, I can’t marry you while you’re still free trading.’
I hadn’t known I was going to say that. It came out by itself. I couldn’t face it; that anxiety, knowing, every time he went out to sail after contraband, what he was risking. I would be frightened all the time and not just while he was at sea, but also afterwards, when we had contraband in our possession, in the cave or in our own cellars. Always afraid of the hammering on the door, the arrival of the law …
‘You surely don’t mean what you’re saying,’ Ralph protested. ‘Darling, my beloved Peggy, after what we did in the barn just now … you can’t mean … you can’t refuse me! We belong to each other, you know we do!’
Yes, we did. But …
I tried to tell him. About the fear I would have to live with, about my longing for quiet, for repose now that I was no longer young. He himself had said I was tired – could he not understand that to be married to a free trader would be even more exhausting?
No, he didn’t understand. And so, for the second time in our lives, we quarrelled.
We were reasonable, middle-aged people. Well, we had not been either reasonable or middle-aged in the hayloft, but in returning to the parlour we had in some way returned to our everyday selves. Our dispute was therefore not noisy, at least, not at first. It was no less bitter for that.
I tried to explain that I could not bear to live with the fear, every time he went out to fetch contraband, that he would not come back. I tried to explain that Charlotte would have to share that fear, would worry as much as I would.
‘To find her father, and then live in dread of losing him!’ I said.
‘I haven’t been caught yet!’ said Ralph, as though I had insulted him. ‘Wifely fears are natural enough,’ he added loftily. ‘The wives of honest fisherman feel them too. The sea can be every bit as dangerous as any Revenue vessel. Harriet stood it. Why can’t you? Never mind about Charlotte – it’s your fear we’re discussing.’
‘Perhaps I’m just not young enough any more.’
‘You were no doddering ancient in the barn just now.’
‘No, but …’
‘But?’
I made a serious mistake at this point. I said: ‘Free trading – smuggling – is against the law, and people these days are starting to feel differently about it. If you were imprisoned or transported, Charlotte and I might be pointed at. Might be …’
‘Rubbish! Of course you wouldn’t be. You would just be imagining it – because you were ashamed of me? And who has protected you and Charlotte all these years? Because of me, you have been able to keep untouched the money your father left you, a bulwark against an uncertain future, and safely hidden from James – oh yes, I saw the letter your father left you, saw how he warned you about the law. And how did I manage it? Through free-trading. I could never have afforded it, but for that. Have you ever really loved me, Peggy dear, or was I just a passing passion, which accidentally resulted in Charlotte and so bound you to me?’
‘Of course I loved you! I always have, I still do – oh, Ralph, can’t you see that it’s because I love you so much that I can’t endure the fear, the sleepless nights, awaiting your return, dreading to hear the law pounding our door …’
‘Harriet endured. She accepted both the proceeds and the fear …’
‘She never asked you to give the smuggling up?’
‘Hinted at it once or twice. But nothing more. Harriet was a good, obedient, faithful wife …’
There was a faint emphasis on the word faithful. Very faint, but it was there. And that was his mistake. ‘And I wouldn’t be?’ I snapped. He stared at me but didn’t reply. ‘Because I was unfaithful to James?’ I demanded. He still didn’t speak. ‘Well if I was,’ I shouted, ‘it was with you! You were unfaithful to Harriet then, or have you forgotten? There’s a saying that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones!’
Our voices had risen after all. ‘So you’re turning me down,’ Ralph barked. ‘Even after what happened this evening! Because of the trade that’s helped you and Charlotte all this time. My God, you hypocrite!’
‘I could say the same of you!’ I shouted. ‘I’ve been as true to you as I could be. I never forgot that I promised myself to you in the first place – before we were wrenched apart.’
Ralph picked up his hat, which had been lying on a stool. ‘Charlotte’s allowance will continue,’ he said. ‘I will not take it out on her. It will go on until she is twenty-one or
wedded. And Standing Stone is, of course, legally yours. When I give, I do it with an open hand. I’m off now. I’ve never in my life been so hurt, so disappointed. I’ll find a room for the night at the inn in Exford. Goodbye!’
‘Ralph!’
It was a cry of despair but he had already gone out of the door. Moments later, Annie came in, saying that Mr Duggan had gone out to the stable; was he just seeing to his horse or was he leaving? She had supposed that he might stay the night.
‘No,’ I said bleakly. ‘He – won’t be staying.’
The Summons
I cried myself to sleep that night, grief-stricken. I told myself I was behaving like a lovelorn maiden of sixteen instead of a woman of fifty but I didn’t feel like a woman of fifty and certainly hadn’t behaved like one during that episode in the hayloft. I felt hot all over when I remembered that. How could I … how could I possibly have …?
Only I had, and I had loved it and if only Ralph had been willing to give up the free trading, I would have married him without a second thought. When I was younger, I might have borne the worry and strain of life with a husband who could be transported to Van Diemen’s Land at any moment. Now I could not. Even Harriet, who had been younger, had been worn down by it. Had died in the end because of her fears for her man.
Tossing restlessly, I thought about Charlotte. I would have to tell her something of what had passed. She had still been out somewhere on the farm when Ralph left but she would soon hear most of it. Annie or Sarah would let it out to her. They were both gossips.
She was thirteen now and had become a woman two months ago. She was old enough, I hoped, to understand, at least up to a point. Better that she should hear it from me. That her father had asked me to marry him and I had wanted to say yes, but could not face life as the wife of a free trader. I thought she was capable of understanding that.
Ralph had promised to continue her allowance. Thank God for that. But if I had agreed to marry him, he could have done so much for Charlotte. Oh God, should I have refused him? Why must Ralph be such a fool? If only he had given me one kind word as we parted.
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