Past Love (Part Four of The People of this Parish Saga)

by Nicola Thorne

  “He told me. In tin and copper.”

  “Well.” Sarah Jane shook her large spoon at him. “If you take my advice, which I’m sure you won’t, being a stubborn male, you will get the money first. Bart Sadler, in my opinion, is not to be trusted.”

  “Is it about Aunt Sophie too?” Abel asked slyly, and Sarah Jane spun round again.

  “Oh, he told you about that, did he?”

  “He said he walked out with her.”

  “‘Walked out!’” Sarah Jane sniffed. “He did a lot more than ‘walking out’. He all but ruined her reputation. If it hadn’t been for Hubert Turner ...” Sarah Jane turned back to the stove and scooped the eggs and bacon on to a hot plate which she deftly conveyed to the breakfast table, “I don’t know what would have become of your aunt. But enough of this tittle-tattle.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “You had better eat your breakfast and hurry up, else you’ll be late for work.” She then brought her cup of tea over to the table and, sitting opposite Abel, looked solemnly at him. “Please, Abel, have nothing to do with Bart Sadler. I truly believe he’s a bad penny.”

  ***

  Eliza sat looking at the husband of a woman of whom she had once been very fond, her niece, Elizabeth. He fiddled rather nervously with a sheaf of legal documents which he had taken out of his briefcase, trying to put them in order, and she observed that he was sweating. She let him get on with his task, watching him, saying nothing.

  It was true that Elizabeth had been very wronged in her life, and Eliza felt some responsibility for this. After her mother abandoned her, and acting, she thought, in Elizabeth’s best interests, she had her brought up by trusted family servants, Beth and Ted Yewell, as their daughter.

  In the light of hindsight it seemed wrong and when Elizabeth found out her true parentage she was unforgiving, but unfortunately towards Beth and Ted, who now lived in retirement on an estate cottage and whom she never saw. Nor was she inclined to forgive the Woodvilles with the exception of Carson, who had known nothing of the deception. Eliza was relieved she lived so far away from Elizabeth and now saw little of her. She was too like her mother, Agnes, for comfort.

  Eliza was glad when Elizabeth married Graham Temple, a man who gave her the respectability, the lift up in the world she had always wanted. For one thing it enabled Connie to claim Pelham’s Oak as her own domain and not have the prospect of having to share it with a woman she didn’t particularly like or get on with. The marriage between Connie and Carson nearly didn’t take place because of Elizabeth who, Carson had insisted, was owed something by the family who had wronged her. Had it not been for the death of her first husband and remarriage, Elizabeth might still be queening it over Pelham’s Oak and Carson and Connie would never have got married at all.

  Carson was a gentle, compassionate man with a social conscience who had also given a home to Jean Parterre, and taken Deborah in when she strayed and had let Elizabeth and her family live in his house for two years.

  Finally, Graham had his papers in order and, pushing his spectacles up his nose, gave her a broad, reassuring smile. He was a reassuring sort of person, or so Eliza had thought until now. He was not particularly distinguished in appearance being rather short, stout and, although he was only just forty, almost completely bald except for a fringe of blond hair at the back and a few carefully combed wisps remaining on top. But he had moved rapidly up the ladder of promotion at Pearson, Wilde and Brickell and was now a senior partner. He also adored Elizabeth, gave her the comforts she had always wanted, and was good to her three children by Frank Sprogett, in addition to giving her two sons of their own.

  No, one would never have thought Graham Temple capable of deception or duplicity, but Eliza couldn’t help feeling that there was something about all this that was not quite straight. They were facing each other across the table in the small parlour off the hall where she kept the household accounts and carried out her business, and when he handed the papers across to her she took them and began to examine them carefully.

  After a while she looked up. “These papers say your firm are the purchasers.”

  “My clients did insist on confidentiality, Mrs Heering. I told you that.”

  Eliza pushed the contract back across the table.

  “Then don’t expect me to sell you my house. I have already had one person I didn’t like. I’m surprised at you, Graham.”

  Eliza rose as if to signify that the interview was at an end. She walked across the room and then stopped, straightening the belt of her dress. “How are the family?”

  “Very well, thank you, Mrs Heering.” Graham got up, palpably distressed. He ran his finger round his collar and swallowed. “I can tell you the name, Mrs Heering. There is no problem in that. A Colonel and Mrs Brent. They are not at the moment in this country and wish my firm to act for them.”

  “And where are they at this moment?” Eliza walked back slowly across the room.

  “In Barbados, Mrs Heering. Colonel Brent is in sugar.”

  “And they want to buy a property they haven’t seen?” Eliza snorted derisively. “Really, I can hardly believe it.”

  “They had the details, Mrs Heering. I assure you they are very respectable people. They are prepared to pay the asking price with no quibble. I have every authority to complete the purchase on their account.”

  “Then why are they so secretive about it?”

  “I have no idea. Some clients do insist on confidentiality. It is perfectly legal.”

  “I shall have to consult with my daughter,” Eliza said, looking at the clock. “She will be back any minute. I’ll telephone you, Graham, and tell you what we decide, but I think the answer will be ‘no’.”

  “Thank you, Mrs Heering,” Graham said humbly, secretly hoping now that she would not go ahead. He had always been a man of honour and this was the first time in his professional life that he had lied to a client. It was a form of deception. He went hot and cold all over as he thought what the consequences of his folly might be. Too late to back out now. He had been seduced by a bribe from Bart that would go straight into his pocket. He gathered up the papers any old how and stuffed them into his briefcase.

  Eliza saw him to the door, managing a smile as they shook hands. “Give my love to Elizabeth. Tell her I’d like to see her.”

  “Of course, Mrs Heering. Thank you,” Graham muttered, making a sideways exit, nearly falling down the stairs in his eagerness to get away.

  Eliza stood thoughtfully for a long time at the top of the staircase watching him drive away.

  Something not quite right. She’d say “no”, whatever Dora advised.

  She then called her dogs and, putting on a coat and boots, went down to the greenhouses which had been her husband’s pride and, perhaps, also his consolation in his last years. Sadness again overtook her at the thought of Julius. She wished now she had made more of an effort to understand him. In many ways he had been a kind man, particularly at the start of their marriage.

  It was easy to say that, she thought as, leaving the dogs to wander round outside, she walked though the long greenhouse with its now empty benches, once so full of rare specimens, fine plants, which he had imported from the East. She emerged at the other end where the black Labradors, Tim and Murgatroyd, who were three-year-old brothers, joined her.

  There were forty acres of land round Upper Park. It was like a small village with its outbuildings, stables and cottages where the grooms, gardeners and some of the indoor staff lived. It was a happy, busy place and suddenly Eliza realised how fond she was of it. She had, after all, lived there for more than a quarter of a century since her marriage to Julius in 1902. She realised that she was very attached to the place, despite its size, the number of servants needed to run it. After all she paid them well, looked after them and, as long as they stayed, she could well afford to keep them.

  She never felt lost or lonely here. So far, thank God, she was in good health. And then wouldn’t it be nice for Hugh and Dora to
own it after her death? It would give them a sense of security, or they could do what they liked with it, sell it if they wished. Sarah Jane and her grandchildren were well provided for after her death as she had provided for them in life.

  In the autumn sunshine Eliza strolled through the lovely grounds on which Julius had lavished so much time and money; the landscaped gardens, herbaceous borders, stretches of emerald green lawn, ponds stocked with carp, huge goldfish, and fountains merrily spraying fine jets of water into the air. It was really rather nice after half a lifetime of hardship to be a wealthy woman, able to contemplate the future with equanimity. Wealth was certainly the cushion everyone said it was and, in a way, she wished she’d had it before so that she could have helped Guy, and certainly Laurence. As it was she had bought Riversmead back from the receiver for his family after his death.

  She could certainly be happy here, and to sell, especially to people she didn’t know, seemed absurd. Or even to people she knew.

  She turned back towards the house and saw that Dora’s car stood in the drive by the front door. Her step quickened because Dora would be sure to give her good advice. Hopefully, to agree with her now that Upper Park should be taken off the market, even if she had suggested putting it on in the first place.

  Eliza ran up the stairs, removed her dusty boots and coat and walked quickly across the hall to the drawing room. Wagging their tails, the dogs padded after her. She heard voices from the other side of the doors, women’s voices. For a moment Eliza paused briefly to listen before turning the handle and entering.

  Dora rose and came to greet her mother, pointing to a woman who had been sitting opposite her.

  “Mummy, you remember May?”

  “Of course I remember May.” Eliza carefully composed her features and shook hands. “How are you, May? How nice to see you again.” May took her hand, but otherwise seemed tongue-tied.

  “May and I met a few weeks ago, Mummy, in the town. I think I told you.”

  There was a distinctly false note in Dora’s tone and Eliza felt a flicker of apprehension. After the unpleasant interview with Graham she felt this was not going to be a good day.

  “Perhaps you did, dear. I can’t remember.”

  In fact Eliza knew that Dora had certainly not mentioned May. It was not something she was likely to forget. May had lived in the house after the war for nearly two years and Eliza had quite come to dislike her.

  “Mummy ...” Dora looked awkwardly at May, “could we have a word?”

  “Of course, dear.” Eliza smiled at May who avoided her eyes and studied the ground. Her feeling of apprehension growing,

  Eliza followed her daughter out of the room and across the hall into the small parlour where she’d had her meeting with Graham. Dora carefully shut the door behind them.

  “Mummy ...” Dora paused, leaning against the door.

  “Something’s up, isn’t it?” Elizabeth gazed steadily into her daughter’s eyes.

  “Mummy, May and I are going off for a while. May hasn’t been well ... she’s very unhappy. Bernard is a pig. We thought he would be, didn’t we, Mummy?”

  “But, darling, it’s no business of yours ...” Eliza began, but Dora interrupted her.

  “It is my business, Mummy. You know how I feel about May. Always have ...” Seeing an expression of anguish in Dora’s eyes, Eliza began to feel thoroughly alarmed.

  “But, darling, she’s married, she’s got children I believe, young children. She can’t just leave them.”

  “Well, she is, just for the time being. Otherwise she thinks she’ll crack up, have a breakdown. She can’t cope any more.”

  “But, Dora, think of the scandal it will cause!”

  “Oh, to hell with the scandal, Mummy. My only concern is May. You can see how pale she is, and thin –”

  “And what about Jean?” Eliza suddenly had a feeling of outrage as she looked at her daughter’s troubled face. Trust May to come back and upset the applecart!

  Dora collapsed into a chair. As usual she wore trousers and she flung one leg over the other.

  “You might as well know, in fact I’m sure you’ve guessed. We don’t have a marriage, Mummy, not in the way that other people do. There is affection, or was. It’s waning a bit.” Dora studied the floor. “That’s why there are no babies, Mummy. Jean knew it when he married me.”

  “No sex?” Eliza’s voice was scarcely above a whisper. Dora nodded.

  “We were great chums. You know how well we got on. He didn’t want to go back to France without me. But it doesn’t really work. I know he’s tense and frustrated. I think he has a mistress; but I can’t do anything about it, I’m afraid. It’s the way I am.”

  “Never, at any time at all?”

  “Never at any time at all.” Dora rose and went over to her mother and put her arms around her. “I’m terribly sorry, Mummy. I know you’re upset. I should have told you before. You see, I thought at one time May and I would live together for ever. Then she met Bernard...”

  “But why did she marry him if you felt this way about each other?” Eliza drew away from Dora, who resumed her seat as if she was suddenly very tired and, indeed, her decision to go away with May had not been easy.

  “She thought she was missing out. She thought she wanted children. Now she realises she was wrong and she wants to be with me. We’re going away together. Frankly I don’t know for how long at this moment in time.”

  “But Dora –”

  “Just until the fuss dies down, Mummy. It won’t be very nice for you, but I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Eliza said with a note of bitterness in her voice. “I’m used to scandal. I seem to have been dogged by it most of my life.”

  Then she walked to the window and stood for a long time looking out. The autumn leaves were beginning to fall. The landscape seemed suddenly bleak. Soon it would be winter.

  She was going to be very lonely without Dora.

  ***

  Wenham hadn’t known a scandal like it since the rector’s stepdaughter, Deborah Woodville, went off with an unknown workman and had a baby by him. Some memories went even further back to when Eliza Woodville eloped with Ryder Yetman in the year 1880 and they lived openly together for a long time before they were married. In between times, Sir Guy’s widow, Agnes Woodville, married a man who was supposed to have a title and money and proved to have neither. He ran off with all her jewels, and some said she had never recovered from the shock as she lived a very reclusive life these days in a small house not far from the church, and seldom received visitors.

  If the Woodvilles were not so prominent, so important, not so much would be made of their misdemeanours. But they were important, they were prominent, and whatever they did was magnified ten times over and became the talk not only of the town but of the neighbourhood, as far as Blandford and beyond.

  Bernard Williams had lost no time in trumpeting to the world that his wife had left him with two young children and gone off with Dora Parterre who, of course, was as Woodville as they come, Eliza’s daughter. Like mother like daughter some people murmured, and not only to themselves. The gossip went on furiously: at street corners, across hedges, over garden gates, at meetings of the Women’s Institute and, particularly, at church gatherings which seemed to attract all the most spiteful gossips in town.

  Although both women had been very popular in the community, and Eliza remained so, there was no gainsaying the fact that there was bad blood in the Woodvilles, a reckless streak.

  Dora, after all, was a married woman too and should have known better. Her stock in the community fell. May was not in the same class as the Woodvilles and Dora had demeaned herself. After all, the little Williams children, Dorothy and Simon, only five and four, had been left motherless, in the care of a father who was nearly sixty and cantankerous to boot. Everyone knew that May’s life with Bernard Williams could not have been easy, but she had chosen it. No one had forced her, and even if she didn’t care for h
im one would have thought she would have cared for her children, poor mites.

  In vain, Eliza tried to tell everyone that Dora had only taken May away for a holiday, as she was on the brink of a nervous breakdown, but it wouldn’t do. It wasn’t enough, not where children were concerned. Dora and May were unanimously condemned.

  ***

  Elizabeth Temple had managed to avoid scandal in her life, even if her existence was the cause of one. By the time it was discovered who her mother and father were she was over thirty and a lot of people had guessed anyway because she looked so like her mother, with airs and graces that did not become a mere serving girl. Scandals only whipped up attention if they were fresh, and the Guy Woodville and Agnes Yetman scandal was very old indeed.

  “Well I never,” Elizabeth said when Graham first broke the news. “What a to-do that will cause.”

  Often, these days, Elizabeth, to her chagrin, was the last to hear gossip because she did not live in Wenham and regarded herself far above the ordinary folk. In a way she lived in a world of her own, a fantasy world, but it suited her. She had worked so hard all her life that she enjoyed doing nothing, or as little as she could given that she was mother to five children.

  “It has already caused a ‘to-do’,” Graham said, sitting down beside his beloved who was polishing her nails, feet up on the drawing room couch. “People can’t talk of anything else.”

  “I expect they can’t,” Elizabeth said with a sniff, and regarded her spouse. “I’m not surprised at Dora. I mean that marriage of hers was a sham, anyone could see that.”

  “How do you mean, ‘a sham’, my dear?” Graham asked innocently.

  “Well ... she was so mannish. Always in trousers and riding boots. Didn’t she remind you of a boy? She did me. And that May was living with her at her mother’s home after the war. I knew there was something funny about it then. Eliza couldn’t stand her.”

  Graham Temple scratched his shiny bald pate in bewilderment. “I don’t really understand ...”