She was totally in love with her husband now. Ayear ago she would not have thought it possible to love a man so much that she was willing to let go some of the ideas she felt passionate about.
She was often surprised by her husband’s patience because he had a temper that erupted like a volcano sometimes, but she noticed it was mostly when he was convinced someone or something was completely wrong. He had tremendous patience with the animals and a calmness when he was amongst them or working on the land he loved.
Daniel had taught her so much about many things too. He had a good mind and as a boy had attended the village school regularly, whereas she had almost no learning until Mrs Wallasey took her in hand. But he admitted to her that he had no ideas of fine living, and she had because she had witnessed and been part of it in her first employment.
‘Oh Daniel, that doesn’t matter. What matters is being together, working for what we believe in.’
‘That women will one day rule the world,’ he said affectionately. They were sitting together on the old settee and his arm was round her shoulders.
‘Only if they have the intellect to do it. Then they should have the chance alongside men. Mrs Wallasey used to say …’ she hesitated and his laughter rang out.
‘Go on, then, tell me what this wonderful person used to say.’
‘Now you’re laughing at me. It’s fine for you, men have had it their way for so long, but men and women were born with a brain, some greater than others, and it should be used. In the Bible it says we must use our talents and we all have them.’
He pulled her towards him, ‘I’m not laughing at you, my darling. But you must admit that most of those wenches standing in the market with you had very little brain.’
‘It isn’t their fault, they’ve had no chance.’
‘Maybe, maybe. But you are different. You are special, Betsy. You have something many do not have and it isn’t just intellect.’
She moved slightly and turned to face him. ‘Beauty can be a curse,’ she said.
‘Yes, you are beautiful, but that wasn’t what I meant. I sometimes wonder …’ he broke off in mid-sentence.
‘What do you wonder, Daniel?’ Her tone was gentle.
‘How it is you love me, ugly little Danny boy.’
‘Is that what she used to call you?’
He nodded and for a few seconds she saw clearly the vulnerable little unloved boy whose mother found him ugly.
‘Oh Daniel, my darling,’ she said.
Daniel bought the locket when he went into Canterbury. It was gold and heart-shaped with a scroll of delicate leaves on one side but plain on the other. It had been a good harvest and for some while now he had wanted to buy Betsy something really special. These days he often thought how blessed he was to have such a wife. He knew she was often sad about the baby she had lost. If he was honest with himself he accepted that it hadn’t affected him in anything like the same way.
When she was first pregnant he had been glad that they were going to have a family, and for a while after her miscarriage he felt a spasm of disappointment when he thought about it. But he was much more concerned that Betsy herself was all right. Her unhappiness in the immediate aftermath was something he could only dimly imagine and it seemed that however hard he tried to console her she turned further from him.
He had been a little bothered too when Tom Shooter seemed to be always hanging around the kitchen, lingering after his meals … after all the lad was a shining Greek god compared to himself. He had noticed how Tom watched her at the harvest supper. And I was jealous, he thought now, jealous of his youth, his fair beauty, his tall, fine physique. He saw them talking together at one stage, Betsy’s face was flushed, her eyes sparkling blue fire and the pang of envy that shot through his body was something he had never before experienced. What if she went off with the lad. After all, she’d had no choice when taking him, but if the opportunity presented itself, would she go with the younger man?
Surely not, she loved him, Daniel Forrester, she had often told him so. Yet, seeing them standing together, he knew a devastation of emptiness that made him feel sick. Oh Betsy, if I could I would lock you up where you saw no one who could tempt you.
He knew that was impossible. She was his, not through choice, but because he had bought her, and the wonder of it all was that she gave herself and her love to him generously. In any case he loved her independence. He had never known a woman like her before. His mother was strong, but manipulating. The women he had bedded, and there had been a few when he was a young lad, were pitiful compared to Betsy.
Her strength of will, her intelligence, her sense of the rightness of things, all these he loved, but more than anything she set his pulses and heart racing when she looked at him with love in her own eyes. Love for him. His thoughts returned to the harvest supper and that glimpse of his wife’s animated face as she stood with Tom Shooter. People had moved in front of him while he was watching and when they moved away and he looked to where he had seen them talking both Betsy and Tom had disappeared from his view.
Daniel gave her the gold locket a few evenings afterwards and as he fastened it around her neck she whispered softly, ‘It is too beautiful for me, Daniel, it must have cost so much.’
‘Nothing is too beautiful for you, my darling, you have brought such happiness and love to my life. I would give you anything you wanted if I could, I love you so much.’
Tears filled her eyes as she thought that the one thing she desired now was a child of their own. He could give it to her but she seemed incapable of birthing it. But Betsy said nothing of this to her husband; she simply touched the locket and hugged him tightly to her breasts.
Two weeks later word came that Betsy’s mother had died. They set off for the funeral on a mellow September morning. Betsy did not pretend a sadness she didn’t feel, only an annoyance that she would not now be able to find out if there was any reason for her miscarriages that her mother might have known about.
Afterwards Daniel took her back to the house for the funeral meal with the rest of the family. He felt very strongly that they should go. ‘We do not need to stay long but it is right and proper that you should be there, Betsy,’ he said, ‘but as soon as you say the word after the meal is over we will leave.’
It felt strange being back in the old kitchen where she had toiled away while her brother and sisters seldom did any work. Certainly not any dirty work. She looked at the floor she had scrubbed so many times, remembered the scrubbed kitchen table and the uncomfortable stool where she had sat to peel potatoes and slice and wash vegetables.
She thought of her life after she left to work for Mrs Wallasey and of her life now in her own pleasant kitchen and around the farm with Daniel.
Her body was alive with the injustices she had suffered as a child, she even ducked out of the way when her brother walked in; she half-expected him to take a swing at her as he always used to. At first she had tried to fight back but it was an unequal contest and he made so much noise it always brought her mother along to side with him and clip her daughter’s other ear, so in the end she gave up and simply endured it. Well, her mother would never again side with her brother, and she had Daniel to stand with her against them all. The only emotion she hadn’t felt since returning here this morning was sorrow for the mother she had never loved and whom she was sure had never loved her. Her mother had not said so, like Daniel’s mother who had undermined his confidence so cruelly, but it had been obvious by her attitude. Betsy had been just a servant in this house, a servant to them all. She had fought against the injustice of it but Daniel, in his childhood, had accepted and bowed down beneath it.
She seemed to hear her beloved Mrs Wallasey’s voice saying, even as she had in life, ‘We are all different, that’s what makes humans so interesting Betsy – no two people ever tackle things in the same way.’ Certainly she and Daniel had reacted quite differently to their environments and treatment.
Standing next to her mothe
r’s sister Agnes, Betsy thought, well Aunt Agnes hasn’t changed – she looks as sour as ever. Agnes was her mother’s only sister, the other three of that generation being boys. Even as a child Betsy had felt miserable whenever Agnes was present. The boys, her uncles, were mostly cheery men, but Agnes seemed to bring an aura of darkness with her. Once Betsy had left home she seldom thought about her aunt, but now, seeing her again the old feeling returned.
‘So, you have a husband, eh? With your looks I would have thought you could have done better than him. What did he do – buy you in the market-place so he could parade a young and beautiful wife? Are your children like you or him?’
Determined not to be drawn into losing her temper on this occasion Betsy turned slightly as though she hadn’t heard, but Agnes touched her arm and pulled her round so that they were face to face. ‘You’re like him, of course; not a touch of the Saldens in you.’
Agnes lowered her gaze first, as Betsy stared unbelievingly at her aunt. ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’ she said, fixing Agnes with the midnight blue of her eyes.
Ignoring her question her aunt said, ‘He looked at me with your eyes once, until that night, crazy with drink, he bedded her.’
‘Who? What are you talking about?’ She gripped her aunt’s arm until she made the woman wince.
‘Get off. You’ve inherited his temper too. I don’t know why you’ve come back here today, you never had time for any of us before—’
‘What did you mean about his eyes and the Saldens? What are you hinting at?’
In her frustration she pinched her aunt’s arm even harder and the woman pushed her roughly away. ‘He was mine until she let him have his way with her. Just that once and I’ve hated you ever since.’
Wrenching herself free Aunt Agnes turned her back and went out of the room. Betsy stood perfectly still, a thousand thoughts chasing themselves around her mind. Not a touch of the Saldens in you … the night he bedded her …
Who? Her mother. The venom in Agnes’s voice made her shiver. Did that mean she had a different father from the others? Is that why she was always treated so badly?
She hurried after her aunt, determined to find the truth. She caught up with her in the kitchen. Everyone else was in the other room, chatting and reminiscing with each other as they ate and drank. ‘You must tell me – you’ve said too much not to finish now. Who was my father, why did my mother hate me so?’
With her back to the door in an effort to prevent her aunt’s escape, her breath suddenly coming in short sharp bursts and her lovely eyes glittering with passion, she faced Agnes.
‘Keep away. Keep away from me or I’ll scream and they’ll all come running. They know what he was like and you’ve inherited it. You’re not one of us, you never have been.’
Betsy took a step closer. ‘Go on.’ It didn’t sound like her own voice and Agnes looked round, but they were completely alone.
‘All right. I vowed never to say but you’ve asked for it. Your father was my lover before he was hers. He took her one night in a drunken stupor. She did everything she could to lose you but nothing worked. When you were born she made us all promise not to tell the truth of the affair. You were her last fling – you were forced on her and she never forgave you or him. Now let me out of here.’
‘One more question, then I will,’ Betsy said with authority in her voice. ‘Who was he? What was his name?’
‘I can’t – I won’t tell you.’
‘You will tell me. I have a right to know.’ She took a step towards her aunt.
‘All right, all right. His name was Choicely. He was the son of Sir Benjamin Choicely of Eccleton.’
Betsy realized that she was holding her breath and she let it go now in a rush of release. Moving from the door she waited until Agnes had scuttled through, then she sank on to the nearest chair.
Daniel found her there a few minutes later. ‘I wondered where you were,’ he said, ‘suddenly I couldn’t see you anywhere in the room. Are you all right?’
She grabbed his hand, ‘Yes, I’m fine, Daniel, but let’s go home now. I’m tired.’
He looked at her closely, but she turned her gaze away from him and stood up. Hand in hand they left the kitchen. She refused to return to the parlour where her brothers and sisters, aunt and uncles and cousins were. The din they were making was so great that none heard or saw Betsy and Daniel as the horse and cart rattled across the cobbles.
‘Do you want to tell me what’s happened?’ Daniel said once they were moving gently through the countryside.
‘When we’re home. I can’t talk about it now,’ she managed before lapsing into silence. He whipped the horse into a trot, anxious to get her back.
She told him that evening. He held her close and said it didn’t matter, she was Betsy, her own woman, that she had everything he had ever wanted. She looked at this man who had bought her in the market-place, and knew now that if things had been different he was exactly whom she would have chosen to spend the rest of her life with.
In the early hours of the morning Betsy felt a great need to go to the lavatory. As she stumbled from the bed the movement woke Daniel and when she hadn’t returned after ten minutes he went after her.
She was crumpled in a heap on the floor of the closet in the yard and quickly he knelt beside her. ‘Betsy.’ Gathering her in his arms he realized she was breathing. He carried her back to the bedroom and gently laid her on the covers. ‘My darling, speak to me,’ he whispered, rubbing her hands gently in his, ‘what happened, what is it? Betsy, Bet …’
Her eyes opened – she seemed to have difficulty focusing on him but eventually she did and then her beautiful dark-blue eyes widened even more before filling with tears. ‘Our baby. I’ve lost our baby,’ she wailed.
The following night Betsy was delirious. Daniel sponged her hot face and body and tried to get her to have sips of water, but by morning he thought she was going to die. The raging temperature had gone but she lay limp and pale, and the only time she roused herself at all was when great bursts of sobbing racked her. After two days like this Daniel went for the doctor. He was worn out himself, with looking after her and the farm and getting very little sleep. As he harnessed the trap he said to the faithful farm-hand, ‘I have to go out Jim, the missus is poorly. I’ll fetch the doctor.’
Jim nodded. ‘I’ll stay around ’til you’re back,’ he said.
The doctor, a brisk no-nonsense man said it happened all the time in childbirth and she simply needed to rest a bit, work a bit and stop feeling sorry for herself. ‘And have another go quickly,’ he added.
Very slowly Betsy recovered. Daniel tried to get her to talk about the baby. ‘It was my fault for persuading you to go to the funeral,’ he said one evening when they were sitting together. ‘You hadn’t wanted to go and none of this would have happened if—’
For the first time for weeks Betsy roused herself to something like her old passion. ‘No Daniel, you were right that I should go. It’s no use dodging unpleasant things. I’m glad now that I know the secret of my birth. I had no idea and it was a terrible shock but I’ve come to a decision.’
‘And what’s that, my darling.’
‘I shall find my father – maybe not to tell him who I am but I want to see the stock I came from.’
‘One question, Betsy. Why?’
Her beautiful eyes searched his face, then she said quietly, ‘I never belonged in my family and I never knew why. This reason never entered my head, but now I do know I want to see the man who messed around with two sisters and fathered me. How many more of us are there? Has he a wife and family – a family who are half-related to me? I don’t want to know them but I do want to know about them.’
Daniel sighed. He recognized the determination in his wife’s voice and thought her search would probably bring her more anguish, yet he was so glad to hear her sounding more like his Betsy, fighting back instead of blaming herself for the loss of the baby he had not known she was expecting
.
‘I was going to tell you in another week or so,’ she said the day after the miscarriage, ‘it was at such an early stage and – and I wanted to be sure …’ Her pale tear-streaked face haunted him still and if searching for the father she had just found out about would give her back her spirit he would go along with that.
Once Betsy had made her mind up to search for her father all her energies were directed towards the project. She returned to helping Daniel on the farm and all the while she was planning her next move in her quest. At first Daniel was co-operative but after a while he grew impatient with her. ‘Why don’t you leave it alone, Betsy?’ he said one night. ‘It’s taking you over.’
‘Can’t you see I need to know?’ she said. ‘Maybe that’s where this restlessness comes from, this need to get on. Perhaps it’s inbred in my bones. Sir Benjamin Choicely. He’s not from round here, is he, Daniel?’
‘I’ve never heard of the man. I expect your aunt made the story up.’
‘No,’ she cried loudly, ‘it was true. You can tell when someone is telling the truth. Well I can and Aunt Agnes was speaking the truth that day. Sir Benjamin Choicely’s son, she said.’
‘All right. I accept that. I can’t see what finding him is going to prove or disprove.’
‘I need to. I just need to. I never felt part of the family but I didn’t know why. I don’t look like any of them. And yet I never wondered, never thought. Now I want to explore the life of the man who fathered me. Is that wrong?’
‘Not wrong Betsy,’ Daniel said gently, ‘but maybe not wise.’
She wrapped her arms around him, ‘But I need to do this Daniel. I need to know, I really do.’
‘Why?’ But she had no answer for him.
She returned from the fields one day the following week and went into the farmhouse kitchen to find Daniel’s brother Joseph there.
The Straw Halter Page 5
