The Potter's Niece

by Randall, Rona

  At that her sister-in-law slammed the door and Charlotte frowned, wondering what prompted Agatha’s sarcasm and why the underlying animosity between the pair seemed even sharper tonight, tinged with secret relish on Agatha’s part, a kind of gloating suspicion, and a defensiveness on Phoebe’s.

  No sooner had the door closed than Agatha was at her mother’s side, whispering that there was something she ought to know, something Phoebe was hiding … ‘And it won’t please you, Mamma. It won’t please you at all.’

  ‘Then don’t tell me.’

  ‘But I must. It is right that you should know.’ The voice dropped even lower and when Charlotte turned her head away, the voice came closer, whispering something about Phoebe taking a lover … ‘Right here, in this house! Disgusting, at her age!’

  ‘Be quiet, Agatha. Olivia will hear. Do you want to distress the girl?’

  Agatha threw a glance in her niece’s direction. ‘She is deaf to the world — can’t you see? Totally lost. She’s like Martin where books are concerned. I find that very peculiar in a female. And are you sure she would be shocked? I wouldn’t be surprised if she knew already. Olivia’s a dark horse.’

  ‘She is a dear, warm creature, and I love her. And I’ll listen to no more of your gossip.’

  ‘You won’t be able to escape it if the affair continues, for it will be all over Burslem in no time, and I daresay it is common knowledge below stairs already. That bedroom door wasn’t locked this afternoon for the reason Phoebe gave — ’

  Swiftly, Charlotte called to her grand-daughter, ‘Come and sit beside me, Olivia … ’ and was grateful when the girl promptly discarded her books and came to join her. What a joy she was, with her open smile and frank eyes and total lack of affectation, and how she put the two older women to shame!

  In contemplation of Olivia the old lady’s unease was lulled. She wished her grandson’s personality were equally soothing. Lionel would no doubt lavish compliments upon his grandmother as soon as he heard there was to be no obstacle to his becoming Master of Tremain; he would flatter her and dance attendance, but she would see through it all. But the die was cast. The choice was made. There was no one else on whom the mantle could fall.

  CHAPTER 11

  ‘I assure you, dear boy, I heard every word. Not that either suspected, for I pretended to be absorbed in a mirror — ’

  ‘ — to which no woman pays so much attention as you, dear Mother.’

  ‘With the exception of your aunt.’ Agatha threw her son a sharp glance, suspecting mockery but meeting only bland interest. Reassured, she went on, ‘Of course, Phoebe was quite put about, which pleased me. I was also delighted when your grandmother accused her of wanting Tremain for herself and that this was behind her wish for Olivia to be named as heretrix. And there the girl was, paying not the slightest attention, lost in a pile of dreary books, every word from the other end of the room floating over her head. I swear your cousin isn’t quite normal.’

  ‘She seems very normal to me … ’

  Meaning sexually, of course. Agatha guessed that, but pretended not to. Any hint at sexuality in a conversation was always ignored by her.

  She continued, ‘You should have seen poor Phoebe’s face! Absolutely distorted with rage! She even slammed the door behind her, which one never does in the presence of older people who have influence and wealth. Thank God, my dear mother is at last wielding her power sensibly and letting the inheritance clause stand in your favour. And that is as it should be. Now there’ll be no more talk about Olivia becoming mistress of Tremain — Phoebe will never dare raise the question again. The girl is mad not to want it, of course, but she would be useless as chatelaine anyway. And you won’t even have to marry her to get it. The place will be yours exclusively. Dear God, what a wonderful night this is!’

  Lionel shared his mother’s elation, seizing her ample waist and whirling her cumbersome figure around until she was breathless. When she collapsed, exhausted but laughing, he declared, ‘We must drink to it! You must drink to me, the new master of Tremain, lord of the manor, king of the whole domain!’ He exulted, ‘How people will envy me, how they’ll crawl and curry favour! And women will pursue me even more than they do now.’

  ‘You must be careful, Lionel. Careful in your choice of companions and careful in your choice of women.’

  ‘Aren’t I always?’

  ‘I don’t know. Sometimes I am unsure.’

  Lionel dropped a light kiss on his mother’s cheek, assuring her that he knew well enough how to pick and choose — and how to discard, as well.

  ‘Nevertheless, my son, you must be even more selective now. More particular, more shrewd, more discreet.’

  ‘I am always so. I learned discretion long ago. And now we will drink the best Bordeaux in Pierre’s cellar — if he hasn’t finished it off himself.’

  Agatha declared that Pierre would never do such a thing. ‘He wouldn’t even open a bottle without my permission.’

  ‘Wouldn’t he, Mother dear — wouldn’t he?’ Lionel tinged the words with wry amusement as he reached for the bell rope. Then on second thoughts he decided to take the man by surprise and promptly headed for the kitchen.

  As he expected, Pierre was sprawling at ease in the settle beside the vast oven range, where a fire roared in the grate. His unbuttoned shirt trailed outside breeches which were half undone. His boots had been kicked off and Rose lolled against his shoulder, drowsy and content, her skirts disarrayed and her gaping bodice exposing buxom breasts. An empty glass dangled from her slack fingers, spilling dregs down her petticoat. An abandoned skirt lay on the floor beside Pierre’s high boots.

  Both turned fuddled glances toward him — slowly, indifferently, until they saw who had entered. At that, Pierre smiled insolently and Rose made a fumbling attempt to button her bodice.

  Lionel gave the man a flying kick.

  ‘So this is how you behave when there’s no evening meal to cook! Let me warn you, wretch — things will change around here when I am master of Tremain. There’ll be no helping yourself to my best wines or sprawling with whores beside the fire or in your bed, and no stinking kitchen litter left lying around. You’ll have to clean this place up, or be gone.’

  Pierre, voice slurred, answered smugly, ‘Your mother would never part with me, young sir. It is she who employs me, not you. You’d do well to remember that.’

  ‘I’ll remember your insolence and see you through the door myself, neck and crop, and not all my mother’s stupid pleadings will avail. I will start by opening her eyes this evening. I’ve kept silent about you long enough, but the time is coming — has come — when you’d do well to realise that the future master of Tremain will be the real authority here.’ Irritated by Rose’s furtive attempts to edge toward the door, he turned and gave her a so hard a shove that she tottered against the kitchen table, scattering meat bones and cooking utensils to the stone-flagged floor, where they bounced and clattered. He laughed and ordered her to pick them all up.

  ‘And then you can clean those stinking pots and stack them away. Since you seem so much at home in quarters you’ve no right to enter, you can make yourself useful. As for you, you thieving Frenchie, you can fetch me a bottle of the best Bordeaux, if you haven’t drunk the lot. If you have, I’ll see that the cost is docked from your wages.’

  Dodging another kick, Pierre weaved his way toward the cellar door.

  Later, when his mother had gone to bed, Lionel rode into Stoke in search of amusement, too excited to sleep. It was midnight but, to him, the night was young and the stimulation of the evening merited greater celebration than toasting the future with his mother. There were several hostelries where better stimulation could be found and several addresses where he was not unknown, but before progressing around the town he stopped at the Duke’s Head in search of cronies. There was a discreet room in which gambling for high stakes could be indulged, and that was as good a way as any in which to start a night’s indulgence.

&nb
sp; To his annoyance his arrival, which usually brought an ostler hurrying into the yard, attracted little attention, for a private coach seemed to be monopolising all of it. And no wonder, considering the amount of luggage being unloaded. The mud-bespattered vehicle appeared to have travelled far.

  The owner was descending the steps, helped by a youth of very dark countenance, on whose shoulder he leaned. Master and servant, presumably. Flickering lamps revealed a swarthy face which, coupled with the youth’s Latin looks, aroused Lionel’s anger. Bloody foreigners, why should they be attended to before himself? Pushing past them, he shouted for someone to attend his horse and be quick about it, then made his way to the tap-room, ordered a flagon to be sent to the ‘gentlemen’s parlour’, and embarked on his night’s round of pleasure.

  It was rewarding. He won substantially at Faro and the addresses he proceeded to later gave him so warm a welcome that it was long after dawn before he rode back to Tremain. Scarcely had he tumbled into bed than the chapel bell began to toll, summoning the household to morning prayers. He groaned and buried his head beneath the bedclothes. He abominated Sundays; always deadly, always boring. He was damned if he would trail across the park just to listen to his grandmother’s incumbent spouting drearily. The man came on alternate Sundays, combining the duties of a private chaplain with the responsibilities of a small parish a few miles away. Secretly, Lionel thought of him as the half-time-half-pay priest, and despised him. He had no time for men who were content to scratch a living. Only the big rewards were worth striving for.

  Charlotte noticed her grandson’s absence and guessed he was lying abed. She wished he wasn’t so easy to sum up, so obvious in his attitudes; she also wished that Agatha would stop pretending to be unaware of her mother’s questioning glances. It was obvious that Lionel was playing truant but, as always, Agatha was ready to excuse it. She had always been lax about disciplining her son — even more than I was with Maxwell, Charlotte insisted to herself — and a lack of discipline didn’t augur well for his future authority here. A slack master meant slack servants; equally, a self-indulgent master meant disrespectful servants, pandering to his self-indulgence and emulating it behind the scenes — as did that French cook of their daughter’s, Ralph suspected.

  Much troubled, Charlotte leaned on her husband’s arm as they walked back across the park, heading the procession of family and servants. Agatha always protested against this, regarding it as unnecessary exercise, and Phoebe protested against walking through grass or along paths which stained or scuffed her dainty slippers. The complaints of both women always goaded the old lady into choosing the longest route, declaring that the walk was health-giving and that taking Holy Communion on an empty stomach was not only good for the soul but for their appetites. Think how much you will enjoy your breakfasts as a result!’ she would declare, well aware that Agatha’s love of food needed no stimulus and that Phoebe only ever toyed with it because she considered that the elegant thing to do.

  The only person excused from this ritual walk to and from the family chapel was Ralph, when his gout was bad. Refusing to stay at home because receiving God’s blessing at his wife’s side meant a lot to him, he would insist on being driven, but when free from gout he enjoyed the walk as much as she did, and so did Olivia, who left her mother’s side this morning and slipped a hand within the arm of each grandparent, walking between them for the rest of the way home.

  ‘Your mother complaining, as usual, m’dear?’ Ralph said with a wry smile. ‘What is it this time? The ground too dusty or the paths too rough? Since there’s no rain, at least she can’t grumble about the wet.’

  Olivia shared his amusement, but pleaded that her mother was tired.

  Why? wondered Charlotte. And was it really true that Phoebe was behaving like a middle-aged fool, as Agatha said? And why did some women, vain women, succumb to male flattery, even to the extent of admitting them into their beds? More than forty years of marriage to Ralph Freeman had taught Charlotte that physical love alone wasn’t the biggest compliment a man could pay a woman, that it was just one ingredient of loving and that the rest comprised patience and loyalty and humour and tolerance and ever-increasing affection until it went so deep that it lasted a lifetime. Vanity had no part in this, nor had flattery.

  She supposed she should feel sorry for her daughter-in-law, being robbed of a husband so early in her married life. The world regarded widowhood as a state to be pitied, never as something to be thankful for as, Charlotte suspected, Phoebe viewed Maxwell’s departure. With Phoebe, despite her display of tears in public, there had been no grief, no mourning, no sighing over lost happiness — only an immediate self-seeking, a demand for material reassurance, after which she had settled down with an air of smug gratification which had jarred on her mother-in-law and continued to jar ever since.

  Phoebe had never loved Max; she had loved only the idea of making a successful marriage. Even her child had been regarded as a toy, not for amusement, but for self-adornment, like a Pekinese or a fluffy Pomeranian. She had been the pretty little widow who looked too young to be a mother. The child could be brought to her to be petted and played with, then handed over to the nurse as soon as she became a nuisance. And what a nuisance Olivia had become, daring to grow into the very opposite of her mother’s idea of what a daughter should be! The girl had never been docile, never obedient, never a decorative asset, never likely to marry young and so move out of her mother’s life. She was an embarrassment, an encumbrance, something no youthful woman wanted to be saddled with, an unwelcome advertisement for her mother’s age. Without a daughter who had reached her twenties, Phoebe could have passed for much younger than she was.

  Hence the need for a lover, to reassure her that youth had not passed?

  That thought didn’t trouble Charlotte so much as Phoebe’s sudden questioning about her husband’s finances. Let her take a lover if she wanted one, let her become enamoured of some paramour who would flatter and please her, let her do whatever he wanted so long as she didn’t embarrass her daughter, who had been embarrassed enough, in the course of her life, by her mother’s kittenish posturing — as at Lionel’s birthday celebrations. (Had it been there that the affair had begun, beneath this very roof?)

  Let her make a fool of herself as much as she likes, Charlotte finally decided, but not to the extent of being hoodwinked by a man with an eye only for money, as her recent questions regarding the state of Max’s finances suggested. Phoebe lacked for nothing, and so long as money flowed freely her avarice had hitherto been satisfied, therefore the more she thought about it, the more convinced Charlotte became that there was truth behind Agatha’s story. Not that she admired her daughter for passing it on. Discretion was a more admirable quality than tale-bearing, which was always prompted by malice,

  As for the man’s identity, the less one knew, the better. Other people’s love affairs were always best ignored, but it was impossible to do this if they were carried on beneath one’s roof and apparently so serious as to necessitate financial considerations. What was the man trying to do? Blackmail her, or ascertain her financial position for his own betterment?

  Beside her, Ralph and Olivia were chattering in their usual fashion, enjoying each other’s company. ‘And how is my grand-daughter progressing at the pottery?’ he was asking. He was proud of Olivia’s talent and appreciated her independence — as, indeed, did Charlotte herself now she had become reconciled to it. She smiled down at her now, welcoming her affection, glad of her company. She and Amelia made up for all the headaches Phoebe and Agatha caused.

  Sadly, Charlotte reflected that she supposed the day must come when Olivia, like Amelia, left Tremain Hall — as indeed she herself would one day, leaving Lionel in control, therefore she should be glad that the question of the inheritance was settled. But still she was not.

  Walking across the lawns toward the main entrance, Charlotte felt a deep sadness, for she loved this place, was immensely proud of it, and wanted nothing so muc
h as to pass it on to someone who would feel for it as she did. Involuntarily, she sighed, and her husband, sensitive as ever to her moods, glanced across in concern. She saw the glance and was grateful. She also knew that he was about to say something to comfort her and that it would be better said in private, not here in front of Olivia, who would be distressed to realise that her grandmother was still uneasy in her mind.

  It was at that precise moment that the sound of wheels on gravel drew everyone’s attention. In unison, family and servants turned to watch a carriage travelling up the long drive. At this distance the occupant could not be seen, but a driver with cockaded hat and tiered coat sat on the box, not uniformed like the driver of a hired vehicle, thus indicating that this one was privately owned.

  The sight of an unexpected visitor quickened Charlotte’s footsteps. It was early for a call, but she welcomed this break into her thoughts.

  ‘Let her go, my dear,’ Ralph said to Olivia when she matched her steps with her grandmother’s. ‘A visitor will take her mind off things

  His own curiosity was sharpened. No one of their acquaintance had a coach quite like this one, which appeared to be of new design. Here in the country they weren’t so familiar with the latest, which suggested that the newcomer was possibly from London or one of the big cities.

  Behind him, he heard Agatha saying, ‘Who can possibly be calling at this hour, and of a Sunday morning?’ and Phoebe sulkily replying, ‘How should I know? And who cares, anyway?’

  As he watched his wife’s erect figure hurrying to greet the guest, Ralph saw the driver climb down and open the carriage door. A youth descended, slim, agile, holding out his hand to someone inside. A heavy figure then emerged, a portly, unfamiliar man who leaned on the younger one, then stood waiting for the mistress of Tremain to reach them.

  Voices echoed across the park, Charlotte’s light and welcoming, the man’s hesitant and deep toned. Then Charlotte’s footsteps stumbled, and her hand flew to her throat. Ralph hurried to her, damning his gouty foot and urging Olivia to go ahead. ‘Quickly, miss, quickly! Something has shocked her!’ Olivia was already running, but even when she reached her side Charlotte was unaware of her. With stunned eyes, the old lady was staring at the stranger.