In Distant Fields

by Charlotte Bingham

Tully and Ben were as tall and open-faced as their father, and they now turned identical bright blue eyes on Kitty as they too whipped off their caps and extended large hands, which Kitty shook. Ben smiled cheekily at Kitty while Tully’s eyes soon slid from Kitty’s face to Bridie who, having waited outside the church during the service, was now stamping her feet to keep them warm.

  ‘Come away with ’ee, lads,’ Jossy said, turning to them both and frowning. ‘Stay in line. We’re next off.’

  The boys replaced their caps, but as they did so Tully made sure to keep his eyes on Bridie, whose dimpled face had caught his eye. There was no doubt that things, courting in particular, might have been a great deal easier had his mother lived, but she, poor woman, had died giving birth to Ben, so the boys had been brought up by their father and grandfather. The two men had been kind and attentive, but there was no real female influence in the house. All the years of their growing they had wanted for female company and the softening influence that mothers and sisters could bring to a household, which was possibly the reason that Tully was still glancing back at Kitty’s maid as he stepped forward to shake the Duke and Duchess by the hand, only to be nudged to immediate attention by his father.

  ‘Happy Christmas to you, Jossy,’ the Duchess said. ‘And to you,’ she turned to Tully. ‘Oh, and Ben. The army let you out for Christmas, did they, Ben?’

  Ben stared into the Duchess’s still beautiful face, which he had loved since he was a small boy.

  ‘Yes, Your Grace, and a fine time I will make of these days, you can be sure.’

  ‘Of course you will, Ben, of course you will. Happy Christmas to you, Ben.’

  ‘Thank you, Your Grace.’

  ‘And a Happy Christmas to you all.’

  ‘That’s for surviving the sermon, Jossy,’ the Duke muttered as he pressed a gold coin into Jossy’s hand. ‘Valour in the face of insuperable odds.’

  It was the same joke every year, but Jossy never minded.

  ‘I thought it was a lovely service,’ the Duchess said to the next in line. ‘The singing was better than ever.’

  ‘Sooner they ban sermons the better,’ the Duke informed his cellar man a minute or two later as he shook his hand. ‘All be able to get to table a dashed sight quicker, eh, Trump?’ He turned back to his butler. ‘I say, Wavell, if this cold spell continues, I dare swear we might be skating on the lake tomorrow.’

  ‘I took the liberty of testing the ice only yesterday, Your Grace,’ Wavell murmured as he passed yet more sovereigns to the Duke to hand out. ‘And I would say that you are going to be proved right.’

  ‘Nothing like a skating party, Wavell, mark my words, nothing quite like it.’

  Soon after the church party, family and servants made their way back to the house, some choosing to walk in order to sharpen their appetites and others availing themselves of the carriages and traps laid on by Jossy. The cavalcade of beautifully turned-out horses, smartly painted carriages and finely dressed pedestrians made a colourful sight against the landscape of the great parkland.

  ‘It’s almost like a scene from long ago,’ Kitty murmured to Partita, looking back at the line upon line of tenants and farmers climbing into their own horse-drawn vehicles, the ribbons on the women’s old-fashioned bonnets and their cloaks moving in the slight breeze.

  ‘Don’t you believe it!’ Partita laughed. ‘Long ago they were all so drunk at Christmas-time the vicar would never have let them in the church. That was what the arch of the lich-gate was for – for them to shelter under.’ She turned back and pointed towards the old building. ‘They were all in the habit of getting so drunk that that was as far as they were allowed, even to get married!’

  Christmas luncheon at Bauders was a brilliant occasion, the orchestra playing throughout the feast, and tea being served in the Great Hall for everyone from the estate, all of whom were waited on by the family.

  Every now and then, at odd moments throughout the day, Kitty found her mind straying to her mother. At best, Violet might be asked to luncheon by her artistic cousins who lived in bohemian isolation on the edge of Holland Park. There would be peacock feathers in large vases, and a permanent smell of oil paint, and a roast capon and small home-made presents, but no gold, no orchestra, no liveried servants, and certainly no real gold animals tumbling from the crackers.

  In the evening the ladies changed into their best gowns and the men into white tie and tails. There was a running buffet for those who were still hungry, then a riot of games from clumps to blind man’s buff, all of which were played with high energy and with much delight. Finally, as Birdie called the midnight hour, everyone made their happy but utterly exhausted way to their beds.

  ‘Gracious, you are asleep already, aren’t you?’ an apparently shocked Partita exclaimed, making her slippered and candlelit way to Kitty’s bedside.

  ‘I’m awake now, Partita,’ Kitty replied, sitting up quickly.

  ‘I really should go back to my own bed,’ Partita murmured, nevertheless climbing in beside Kitty. ‘Brrrr,’ she went on with chattering teeth. ‘This is the coldest I can remember. The lake really must be freezing, so I dare say we shall have a skating party tomorrow.’

  ‘I love skating.’

  ‘Good, then you will stay until the ice melts, won’t you?’

  ‘I would stay for ever if I could. But I must think of Mamma – and Bridie. She cannot spare Bridie for ever.’

  ‘You can send Bridie home,’ Partita said with just a hint of impatience. ‘We can share a maid. As for your mother, do you want me to ask Mamma if your mamma may be invited?’

  ‘No. Thank you.’

  There was a small silence.

  ‘Is your mamma like mine, does she not like the country so much as she should?’ Partita finally asked.

  ‘No, she doesn’t,’ Kitty agreed. ‘No, she is – well, very much a town person. She likes the exhibitions and the museums, and taking tea at Fontenoys.’

  Another small silence followed as they both stared into the darkness.

  ‘If we were to send Bridie back to London …’ Partita began again.

  ‘Perhaps it would not be so bad for me to stay on?’ Kitty conceded.

  ‘Of course you will. Now for some gossip.’

  But it seemed gossip was in short supply, because it was only a matter of minutes later that both girls were fast asleep.

  * * *

  Long before the housemaids could be heard clanking up the stairs with their water buckets, the Duke had decided the ground was too hard to risk his horses, so those gentlemen in the house party who had prepared to go hunting now took their guns to join the large shoot that was preparing to leave. Once they were gone, the Duke and Duchess turned their minds to organising a skating party for the afternoon. Everything was to be made ready: braziers and flares to be lit around the perimeter, plenty of hot food and drink at hand, while pages were sent out on ponies to issue invitations to the neighbourhood.

  ‘Can’t remember when the lake was last frozen so solid,’ said the Duke. ‘I really cannot. Must ask Wavell – oh, there you are.’

  ‘The last time the lake was sufficiently frozen to permit skating was the January of 1908, Your Grace,’ Wavell offered. ‘The fifteenth, if my memory serves me.’

  ‘You should be on the halls, Wavell,’ the Duke replied. ‘As some sort of memory man. You’re infallible, really you are.’

  ‘You are aware that tonight is the servants’ ball, of course, Your Grace.’

  ‘That I had remembered, thank you, Wavell. Haven’t yet entirely lost the old memory marbles.’

  ‘It is just that everyone will need time to prepare, Your Grace.’

  ‘Well aware of that as well, thank you, Wavell. Usual arrangements, of course. Long as there’s plenty of grub for the lake party you won’t hear me grumbling, I do assure you.’

  ‘Thank you, Your Grace.’

  Wavell went away satisfied that, as always on the evening of Boxing Day, the ball that the Duke and D
uchess hosted would take place.

  ‘It’s just like an ordinary ball, except that we dance with the servants – or rather, they dance with us,’ Partita explained as they took a late and lazy breakfast in Partita’s room in front of a roaring fire and to a background noise of distant gunfire as the shoot got under way. ‘Papa always opens the proceedings with Mrs Coggle, the head housekeeper, followed by Mamma and Wavell, who is a very neat dancer.’ Partita stood up and went to the window. ‘We could go skating now, if you would like. We could be the first. Come on.’

  Well muffled up against the bitter wind, the two young women hurried happily out into the parkland.

  ‘Awful thing is, they get stuck in the ice.’ Partita nodded towards some bewildered-looking ducks and swans, as the girls sat on a frozen bench to put on their skates. ‘Papa won’t have it. Sends Jossy out on a ladder to pull the wretched birds out. Ice cracked one year and Papa thought he’d lost his head lad. That would not have done, I can tell you.’

  ‘Who’s that skating over there?’ Kitty wondered, pointing to the figure of a young man who had appeared from the boat-house on the other side of the lake and, hands held firmly behind him, was now skating expertly in ever-increasing circles.

  ‘That …’ Partita replied, looking up and shielding her eyes against the winter sun. ‘Oh, that. That is young Mr Harry Wavell – and would it not just be?’

  They watched him in silence for a minute.

  ‘He’s a very good skater.’

  ‘Oh, Harry is good at most things.’

  ‘Will he follow Wavell into service?’

  ‘Harry? Good gracious, no!’ Partita laughed. ‘Wavell would not want him to become a butler. Besides, Harry would be hopeless. No, Harry wants to be a poet, among many other things.’

  ‘Writing poetry?’ Kitty enquired. ‘Do you mean poetry as in Lord Byron, and Mr Wordsworth and daffodils waving in the wind?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. It makes Wavell despair, apparently.’ Partita smiled and, having finished lacing up her skating boots, she stood up. ‘Ready?’

  At Violet’s insistence, Kitty had learned all the accomplishments required of a young lady, from playing the piano to skating, a skill she had acquired at the fashionable Niagra skating rink in London.

  ‘Heavens!’ Partita called, as she whizzed past her friend. ‘You are really more than a skater, you are an ice dancer!’

  Partita was certainly no match for Kitty, whose natural grace made her a delight to watch. Partita slowed down to idle along on the ice just so that she could watch her friend executing a perfect spin.

  ‘Oh, bravo!’ Partita called out in genuine appreciation.

  Partita began to try to skate a little more quickly, longing to join Kitty, not just because she loved her, but because she knew that skating with Kitty would enhance her own performance. As the two young women skated alongside they were passed by Harry, hands clasped behind his back, long legs pushing him to ever greater speed.

  ‘That’s Harry cutting it too fine as always,’ Partita sighed, as they were passed within inches for the third time. ‘Good morning, Harry!’

  Harry wheeled round sharply, sped back to them and, braking hard, pulled up amid a cloud of ice.

  ‘Forgive me, Lady Partita,’ he said, taking off his cap but, to Partita’s amusement, not looking at her, but at Kitty. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude. I was just trying out something new and my manners went a little blind. Good morning, miss?’ he added, still looking at Kitty.

  ‘This is a friend of mine from London, Harry. Miss Rolfe. Kitty, this is Harry Wavell. How was France, Harry? I haven’t really seen you since your return. Harry went to France to write.’ Partita turned to Kitty, eyebrows raised.

  ‘France was excellent good, thank you, Lady Partita,’ Harry replied, skating along slowly beside them. ‘I was fortunate to find a professor after my own heart.’

  ‘And he is a poet too, by all accounts. Whatever next!’ Partita skated on, turning round and then skating backwards in front of Harry and Kitty.

  ‘Oh, look!’ she cried happily, pointing to something only she could now see. ‘There seems to be a drama!’

  The other two turned on their skates and looked where Partita was pointing, to see a number of beaters running alongside a pony and trap that was being driven as fast as it was possible in the frozen conditions, all of them quite obviously making their way back to the house.

  ‘I wonder if there’s been an accident?’

  ‘With a bit of luck, don’t you mean, Lady Partita?’ Harry muttered as he and Kitty skated after her, causing Kitty to turn and look at him in surprise. ‘Oh, there’s nothing Lady Partita likes more than a fire, or an accident.’

  ‘Gracious …’

  ‘Oh, yes, when it comes to a fight, Lady Partita is the one you want on your side.’

  Partita tore off her skates and was soon running as fast as she could, skirts held up, across the frosty lawns. She caught up with the pony and trap and the party of beaters just as the party reached the circling yard outside Nanny’s door, joined only minutes later by Kitty and Harry.

  ‘One of the beaters has been shot!’ Partita exclaimed, turning back to the other two, thrilled. ‘It’s always happening nowadays, with so many foreigners coming over for the shoot!’

  ‘Is he hurt badly?’ Kitty wondered as she watched the casualty being lifted out of the back of the trap and placed on a stretcher by his fellow beaters, surrounded now by a handful of housemaids bearing jugs of hot water and bandages, all in the charge of the Duchess, dressed in a huge and magnificent fur.

  ‘He’s hardly hurt at all,’ Partita continued, hurrying round the other side of the pony and trap to get a closer look. ‘He’s apparently just got it in the beam end!’

  ‘Sorry about this, Your Grace,’ the stricken beater groaned from his stretcher as they prepared to carry him in. “Tis only a bit of buckshot’

  ‘I trust you were not wounded by anyone in the house party?’ the Duchess said, taking his wrist and feeling his pulse. ‘That would be too much to bear, Huggett, really it would.’

  ‘I’m afeard it was not a foreigner this time, Your Grace,’ another beater informed her. ‘Someone in Lord Bultash’s party – Mr Balfour was it?’

  ‘That would make perfect sense,’ the Duchess replied, letting go of the wounded man’s wrist. ‘Mr Balfour can be the most wayward shot. Now come along with you all,’ she exhorted the stretcher party. ‘We have to get the shot out of this poor man’s rump.’

  ‘Should someone go fetch the doctor, Your Grace?’ one of the bearers enquired.

  ‘No, absolutely no need for Dr Jones,’ the Duchess replied. ‘Besides, I doubt that he’ll be quite himself, seeing the time of year. No, no, this is something that can easily be dealt with here.’

  ‘Poor man,’ Harry muttered to Kitty as the invalid was decanted into the house. ‘I dare say he’d much prefer to hang on to the buckshot than endure what he’s about to endure.’

  ‘I don’t quite understand.’

  ‘Her Grace likes to keep her hand in practising minor surgery,’ Harry replied. ‘She has a small place prepared that she keeps for operating on the ground floor here. Do you feel like spectating?’

  ‘There was really quite a lot of blood,’ Partita ran back to tell them, with some satisfaction. ‘Much more than you might imagine, given the spread of a shotgun cartridge. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go and help Mamma.’

  ‘The Duchess isn’t really going to perform surgery on that poor man?’ Kitty wondered as Partita disappeared once more inside the house. ‘I mean, surely not?’

  ‘Don’t worry – she has a supply of chloroform. Not that she’ll spare it for such minor surgery, I shouldn’t have thought,’ Harry returned with a straight face. ‘Probably get the poor lad to bite on an old chair leg.’

  ‘You’re teasing me, Mr Wavell.’

  ‘I wish I were, Miss Rolfe.’

  ‘But he’ll be in agony!’

 
‘One of my grandfathers was in the Crimea, Father told me, He had his leg amputated without anything at all. No whisky, nothing, not even a chair leg.’

  ‘How purely dreadful.’

  Harry and Kitty glanced at each other momentarily.

  In the distance the sound of guns came towards them, carried on a winter wind. Kitty pushed aside the image of dead birds falling silently from a sky that had now lost its bravely determined sun, and seconds later she excused herself and hurried into the house, leaving Harry standing by himself, staring over the familiar parkland, which now, for some reason he could not say, suddenly appeared to him to be vaguely different from before.

  Kitty scratched on Partita’s door.

  ‘Come in, come in, do,’ Partita called. ‘I am so glad you are here, I am in seventeen different minds as to how I look.’

  ‘You look stunning, Tita,’ Kitty assured her, before noting Partita’s day dress that was still lying where she had discarded it on a chaise longue. She turned away and then turned back as she saw there were bloodstains all down the skirt. She was so squeamish, the very thought of what must be the beater’s blood spilling all over Partita was enough to make her feel quite faint.

  ‘You really will enjoy the servants’ ball,’ Partita continued before noticing Kitty’s expression. ‘Are you all right?’ She peered at Kitty. ‘Gracious, you look white to the lips. Don’t tell me, it’s my dress! Don’t mind it, really, it is only blood,’ she reassured her, taking Kitty’s hand. ‘Fellow didn’t die or anything. He just had the shot taken out of his beam. Mamma did a first-rate job, as usual. She really would have made a number-one surgeon – but there you are – instead she mends and patches here whenever she can. So don’t worry – if you break an ankle dancing tonight, Mamma will have you back on your feet again as soon as you can say Viennese waltz!’

  With one final look at her reflection, Partita swept out of her room, pulling Kitty after her.

  Kitty found that Partita was right. There was no ceremony, no protocol and no precedence at the servants’ ball, other than the usual pattern of general polite behaviour that was always observed at Bauders.