Tyringham Park

by Rosemary McLoughlin

  “There’ll be no more of that now, ma’am,” he had said, reaching up and relieving her of her whip as if she were just an ordinary person, and not the new mistress of the Park, and such was his confidence she had obeyed him. At the time, she was only twenty years old to his twenty-five and had no idea how to assert her authority.

  Movement in the yard. Charlotte on Mandrake. Manus talking to her, using his hands to demonstrate a point. The two of them laughing (laughing?), then becoming serious as she started the course. Manus watching, concentrating.

  The excellence of the riding gave Edwina a pain in the region of her chest. She couldn’t take her eyes off her daughter, transformed, despite her burgeoning plumpness, into a figure of grace. Only nine years of age (Was she nine yet? Or was she ten?), riding with faultless judgement and timing.

  To think her own introduction to riding had been so different – at the age of four being led under the branch of a tree by an older pupil to be scraped off, and hitting the ground, hearing the pupil and her friends chanting “Get back on! Get back on!” and when she ran away, “Scaredy cat! Scaredy cat! Eating mother’s bread and fat!”

  But she had shown them eventually. She was now acknowledged as the most fearless horsewoman on the hunting scene. “She rides like a man,” was finally said about her, and she treasured that compliment above all others, even above “wonderful rider”, the words Beatrice had used to describe her. Soon, if Manus didn’t ruin Sandstorm in the meantime, she would show them that she could ride not just as well, but better than any man. What she lacked in masculine strength she would make up for in training, guile and daring.

  Charlotte was still jumping the course – she seemed to spend all her time down there these days now that Dixon wasn’t around to make sure she returned to the nursery after only an hour at the stables – and there were Beatrice and Bertie, leaning on the rails, watching her.

  At the end of the demonstration Manus lifted Charlotte out of the saddle, even though she was well able to dismount, and Edwina stared at his beautiful, sun-browned hands and face (she knew the ladies of the county referred to him as ‘the divine Manus’ – Beatrice had told her) and Charlotte’s round animated face as he hugged her, twirled her around and placed her on the ground, then patted her on the shoulder as she led Mandrake back to the stable.

  Three years into her marriage that had turned out to be no marriage at all, she had watched Manus handling a newly weaned colt, seducing it with the music of his voice, making sounds that might be Gaelic or might be words without sense, turned half away in an unthreatening stance, all the while soothing and stroking with those beautiful hands of his. The colt leaned in towards him, nudging his arm, while Edwina stood transfixed beside him, unnoticed, burning and grieving at the same time. Without premeditation, she caught his hand in mid-stroke and placed it on the side of her face and held it there. Manus turned towards her and his eyes refocused, reading her intent. When he registered her distress, he put his other hand on her back. “There, there,” he said. “There, there. Don’t upset yourself, ma’am. There, there. It will be all right,” and she let herself lean into him, and she remembered how the foal pushed his head in between the two of them and tried to butt her out of the way, and how she managed to ignore it.

  Best not to think of those times.

  Beatrice was full of apologies about being late when she finally arrived. She and Bertie had lost track of time while watching Charlotte, who showed the most amazing promise for a girl of her age or any age. Edwina must be proud, but then she and Waldron must take some credit, as the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. “Bertie and I both think she is a wonderful rider. Wonderful. Perfect seat, perfect hands.”

  Edwina knew those words by heart, having repeated them often in her mind to give her spirits a boost. She now turned her burning face away from her friend to hide her mortification.

  Fool! Fool! Not only had Beatrice, speaking to Lady Wentworth, been praising Charlotte and not her, as she’d thought, but had placed her at the same level of skill as Waldron. How could she bear the double ignominy?

  21

  Bertie continued to accompany Beatrice to the Park so that he could watch the interaction between Manus, Mandrake and Charlotte, leaving the two women to have their little chats in private.

  “He’s trying to discover the formula,” Beatrice laughed. “Wouldn’t we all? Lord Prothero isn’t the only one who wants to poach Manus from you. Have you seen – of course you have – the way he gets the foals to leave their dams and follow him? Bertie says it’s contrary to nature and he’s never seen it done before. He’d love to know how . . .”

  So would Edwina, though she would die rather than ask him. In her nine years at the Park, Manus had never once acknowledged her superior horsemanship or asked her advice on anything.

  “. . . but Manus himself doesn’t know, apparently. Or at least he can’t put it into words.”

  It was a cold, bright autumn day. The friends sat on either side of a wood fire and leaned back in the armchairs. Edwina, with her feet tucked under her despite Beatrice’s offer of a footstool and warnings that it would cut off her circulation, wondered peevishly why anyone would want to know his main trade secret anyway. Fear impairs judgement, Manus believed. An animal couldn’t concentrate on the matter in hand if it expected a punishment to fall at any minute. Its nervousness would make it unreliable. So wrong to her way of thinking, and if Manus would leave Sandstorm alone, she would prove it within the next two years. Because of the fear she had instilled in him, Sandstorm galloped faster and jumped higher than any of Manus’s softly reared charges.

  “I think Manus is given too much credit,” Edwina said aloud. “After all, I’m the better judge of horseflesh and I’m the one who studies the bloodlines and decides which mares to buy in, and which ones will be covered by which stallions, and then he comes along with a few training tricks and ends up with all the recognition, which hardly seems fair.”

  “I see your point, dear,” said Beatrice quickly to mollify her. “The trouble is we take your expertise for granted. Your memory is a wonder of the age and your judgement faultless.”

  “Thank you for that,” said Edwina, trying not to show how much she relished her friend’s praise. “All this talk brings me to something I’ve been meaning to ask you for ages.”

  Beatrice was immediately alert.

  “Tell me, Bea. Is Manus an illegitimate son of the Park?”

  Beatrice hesitated before answering in a half-shocked, half-amused tone, “I wasn’t expecting that.”

  “It’s been known to happen. It’s not unusual.”

  “In what way do you mean a son of the Park?”

  “I’ve worked it out. He could have been sired by Waldron’s father, or Waldron or Charles, take your pick. At thirty-four, his age fits all of them.”

  Beatrice kept shaking her head. “Whatever made you come up with such a notion?”

  “The way he’s such a law unto himself. His confidence. Being given so much authority so young. It all adds up.”

  “No, dear. I think you’ll find the answer much more mundane. Waldron’s father took a shine to Manus, a boy at the time, at the local horse fair. He was impressed by the way he was handling livestock and he liked the look of him. Persuaded him to come and work at the Park. It wasn’t easy. Manus’s father is a strong republican who said he himself would rather starve to death than work on an estate, but he gave in for the sake of the boy, only fourteen at the time, because of his passion for horses. He realised that working here was the only way Manus would get access to them. Nothing more than that, I’m afraid. Sorry to disappoint you if you were looking for a bit of juicy scandal.”

  “Do you remember if his mother ever worked here?”

  “I can be fairly sure she didn’t, knowing the Park’s policy on not employing local villagers. Except for Manus himself, of course, who’s an exception.”

  Wasn’t that the whole point of the conversation? Edwin
a wanted to ask but decided instead to change the topic, as it was obvious that even if Beatrice did know anything, she wasn’t about to reveal it. “Too much time on my hands, that’s my problem, thinking up fanciful notions like that.” She stretched. “Not long to go now.”

  Beatrice didn’t need more prompting to talk about preparations for the baby, but she soon returned to the excitement of the moment.

  “Charlotte’s very pleased,” she said as she leaned over to stir the ashes with a poker, releasing a burst of heat and sparks. “I love doing that. Hope you don’t mind. Manus has told her she’s good enough to ride with the adults in the next hunt that leaves from the Park. That will be a thrill for you. And us. It’s always a treat to be there when an exciting new rider makes her first appearance. Bertie can’t stop talking about her and is forecasting –”

  “No one likes a show-off,” Edwina interrupted. “She’s going to find it difficult enough to snare a husband with her plainness and ill nature without adding showing-off to her disadvantages.”

  “Are we talking about the same girl?” Beatrice was taken aback, but responded with spirit. “I think Charlotte looks quite attractive when she smiles, and I’ve never noticed any evidence of ill nature. She’s always most pleasant and agreeable when I see her.”

  “I think I’d be the better judge of my daughter than you, Beatrice, with due respect. Add being two-faced to that list. You only see her when she’s toadying to Manus so that he’ll continue to spoil her shamelessly and let her stay at the stables all day.”

  Beatrice’s face became flushed. “I think it’s a bit harsh calling Charlotte a show-off, Edwina dear. She was lucky to be born with a natural talent but doesn’t seem to be aware of how exceptional she is. To see her take instructions from Manus and so conscientiously put them into practice, always keen to learn more, it’s obvious she has no inflated notions about herself.” Despite the cold reception her observations were receiving, Beatrice added, “Isn’t it a bit early to write Charlotte off as plain when she’s only nine? She has plenty of time to turn into a swan.”

  “That will never happen if she continues to take after her father. I see her as a female version of him. She’ll need more than the Dowager’s fortune to entice anyone to marry her with a face like that.”

  “You’ll see a big change for the better when she loses her puppy fat, Edwina dear. She has a good bone structure underneath all that.”

  Edwina was losing her patience. “I’m glad you’re such an expert on my daughter,” she said with sarcasm. “Would it be too much to ask you to change the subject and talk about something interesting before I expire from boredom?”

  22

  So many changes occurred in the Blackshaw household during the last year of the war that memories of the missing Victoria were superseded by less momentous but more immediate concerns.

  Six weeks before her due date Edwina travelled to the fully staffed Blackshaw townhouse in Dublin to await the birth of her child, explaining her early departure by saying she was taking no chances after what had happened to Sid’s wife, Kate. Beatrice would like to have accompanied her but she and Bertie were heading back to England to continue the search for their missing son.

  Edwina gave birth to a boy and called him Harcourt, the surname of her paternal grandmother, officially registering the name before Waldron wrote to direct that, in line with five hundred years of tradition, the boy would be named after him. The postal deliveries could be erratic during wartime, she informed him later.

  She remained in Dublin for three months.

  To replace Nurse Dixon, Beatrice’s niece, who knew everyone and everything, recommended Holly Stoddard, a properly trained nanny from a good family, not a stray, untrained orphan like Dixon. Anyone who met her, according to the niece, would warm to her on sight with her soft round smiling face, her erect posture and her white-blonde hair hanging in a single plait down her back. Edwina said she couldn’t care less what she looked like as long as she was competent and could take over the care of the baby from the day it was born.

  The following September, with the war over, Charlotte was sent to her mother’s old school in England to make suitable friends, to separate her from Miss East and Manus who were indulging her, and to rid her of the Huddersfield accent she had picked up from Dixon. The fact that she would be riding on her first hunt during the Christmas break sustained her during her lonely first term. A pony was supplied at the school, as Mandrake was considered too valuable to travel.

  Miss East hadn’t told Charlotte about her forthcoming marriage to Sid, planned for the following August, a year and a month since the death of Kate. By that time Charlotte, with three terms completed and surrounded by friends, would be able to accept the separation with composure, so she persuaded herself.

  Waldron stayed on in London to tie up all the loose ends in the War Office. He sent word he would be home in time to host the hunt from the Park on New Year’s Day. A hero’s return, Edwina commented to Verity when she read the letter. Waldron’s long-running absences were an affront to her, but were preferable to his brief appearances, which caused her nothing but irritation. She wondered if he was considering retiring from the army now that he was sixty-two years of age.

  In October she reclaimed Sandstorm who, as she had predicted, had lost his fire. She and Les, the middle stable lad, put in many hours of secret training in a field out of sight of Manus’s suspicious eye. The New Year’s hunt would be her first since her confinement, Waldron’s first since the War, and Charlotte’s first ever. Edwina could feel a build-up of vitality on the estate.

  The servants were glad to have the Park come back to life, and began to prepare months in advance. Fires had to be set in the twenty-five bedrooms, and every room was aired, swept, polished and dusted. Miss East supervised the transformation.

  Waldron was in full uniform when he returned at midday three days before Christmas with the young soldier, Thatcher, walking two paces behind him. The staff lined up in front of the house to cheer him home.

  Edwina received him in the hall.

  “The first thing I want to see is my son and heir,” he beamed after they greeted each other with a kiss on the cheek. “Get him brought down at once. And the second thing: I’ve decided to have our portraits painted in the New Year by that fellow who did yours when you were younger, only this time,” he laughed in Edwina’s direction, “I’ll make sure there aren’t any missing hands, so you can show off the family heirlooms.”

  23

  Tyringham Park

  1919

  It was New Year’s Day, the day Edwina had looked forward to for eighteen months. To mark her return to normal life after Victoria’s disappearance and Harcourt’s birth, she told her maid to prepare her black taffeta dress and the diamonds to go with it. She intended to shine at the evening entertainment while receiving compliments about her riding during the hunt. ‘Better than a man’ was what she expected to hear this year. Sandstorm was well prepared and so was she. After today, she expected Beatrice and Bertie to be more effusive in their praise of her than they had ever been in their raptures over Charlotte.

  The maid returned to say the dress was ready but the diamond necklace and ring were not in the box.

  “That’s ridiculous. Did you double check?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Tell Miss East to go to my room immediately and I’ll meet her there.”

  Edwina checked the box herself and saw that a sapphire set was also missing. After being summoned, Miss East affirmed what Edwina had already guessed. Teresa Kelly used to have access to her room – she had been sent up on many occasions to gather up articles that needed altering or mending. Miss East remembered specifically sending her there shortly before she left the Park to collect an antique coverlet that was fraying around the stitching.

  “And I suppose you’re going to say Nurse Dixon had access as well.” Edwina spoke through closed teeth and did not look in the direction of the servant.r />
  “No, I can’t say that,” said Miss East. “She had no reason ever to come to this part of the house.”

  “That will be all.”

  After Edwina turned her back and Miss East left, Edwina cursed the untrustworthy Teresa Kelly who had not only stolen a child, but jewellery as well. For once Waldron was right. The only way to deal with such people, if one only knew where to find them, was with force.

  The day before the hunt, Charlotte chose a riding jacket from the equestrian room. To ensure it would fasten at the waist she was limited to one that was two sizes larger than her previous one. She hoped no one would notice the overlong arms or the four moth-eaten holes along the left side near the waist.

  The courtyard was packed with visiting grooms when she arrived early to saddle up. To the disappointment of the visitors and guests, Manus stayed away. Those who came from a distance for the first time since the war knew him only by reputation and wanted to see this legend for themselves.

  Les was walking Sandstorm to warm him up for Lady Blackshaw.

  Although it was nearly midday, the breaths of horses, hounds and riders were still visible in the frosty air.

  “It’s not a race and it’s not a competition,” were Manus’s final encouraging words to Charlotte the previous day. “Take it easy. Mandrake won’t make a mistake and neither will you. I’m sorry I won’t be here in the morning, but I’ll try to look in during the afternoon to see how you got on. I know you’ll be grand so don’t worry. You’re a champion, so you’ve nothing to worry about.”

  It didn’t occur to her to ask why Manus never took part in the hunt despite his outstanding horsemanship.