“That is all very well, Sophie, but we are talking about the here and now not the hereafter. And if you will forgive me saying so, my dear, and I speak as a friend of many years’ standing, you should be careful about becoming too wrapped up in religion. I know you are very religious, and as the daughter and wife of churchmen one would expect nothing else. But your religion did not save you from a foolish act that might have killed you. Well, would have killed you had not Solomon Palmer seen you.” Agnes paused. “How did he see you, by the way?”
“He was visiting Riversmead and happened to glance out of the window.”
“Well, there was an act of God if you like.”
“Indeed.” Sophie smiled again and realised that Agnes was actually making her feel better.
Agnes was a preposterous woman, there was no other word for it. She was utterly confident in her own opinions and beliefs. Over the years Agnes hadn’t changed, even if her circumstances had. And her appearance hadn’t changed much either. She was a good-looking woman; when younger she had been considered one of the pettiest young girls in the town. She was not tall, inclined now to plumpness and, at nearly seventy years of age, her blonde hair, carefully waved with a little fringe in the front, owed its colour to artifice rather than nature. Her famous blue eyes, flecked with grey, had in her youth been lustrous but, over the years, they had grown steely as her own nature had hardened due to the realities of a difficult life.
Agnes always dressed as though she was going to town. Even to cross the road to the Rectory she wore a hat and gloves. Today, perhaps due to the solemnity of the occasion, she was a symphony of grey. She had a grey woollen dress, grey stockings and high-heeled grey shoes. Her coat, with its fox fur draped around the collar, was also grey. She looked very elegant and distinguished, and it was hard to think of her as a virtual recluse who scarcely ever left her house except for those vital visits to Yeovil to have her hair coloured and given a permanent wave.
Agnes was looking rather defiantly across at Sophie as if trying to divine her thoughts, a cautious expression in those fine eyes.
“You’re a tonic to me,” Sophie said at last. “I need your practical good sense, Agnes. I’d forgotten just how wise you could be.”
Agnes, flattered, lowered her eyes. “I wish you would let me help you more, Sophie. Life is never as bad as you think, you know. And to be so terribly upset about Deborah is foolish. You know I’m very fond of the child and I must confess I hardly know Mr Sadler, but he is a very wealthy man and that counts for a lot. You must try and forgive her in your heart, and remember how bereft you were when she ran away all those years ago.”
“I do love her,” Sophie said earnestly, “but none of us likes Bart Sadler.”
“You liked him well enough once, I hear.” Agnes put her head knowingly on one side.
“Oh, you know that too?”
“I miss very little that goes on in the town, even though I was not here at the time. My maid, Grace, who has been with me a good many years, keeps her ear closely to the ground. Very little happens in the parish that I don’t sooner or later come to know about.
“There is nothing wrong with falling in love, Sophie dear. At the time I understand you were seeing Mr Sadler you were both free, were you not? You a widow and he a bachelor? Nevertheless we all make mistakes and the course of true love never does run smooth.” Agnes gave a brittle laugh. “And don’t I know it.”
They both paused as there was a tap on the door and, expecting the return of Polly, Sophie called, “Come in.” The door opened and Ruth stood on the threshold, nonplussed as she saw Agnes.
“Oh, Grandmother, I didn’t expect to see you.”
“But it’s lovely to see you, dear.” Agnes put up a powdered and rouged cheek to be kissed. “I see far too little of you now that you’re a married woman. I hear the new house is looking lovely?”
Sophie noted that as Agnes prattled on Ruth appeared flustered and, finally interrupting her, said: “Are you all right, Ruth? Has something happened?”
“Well ...”
“Have a cup of coffee.” Sophie pointed to the tray. “I’ll ask Polly to bring another cup and a fresh pot.”
“No, really, Mother. I came to see how you were and also ...” She glanced across at Agnes as though wondering how much she could say. Agnes, who she used to venerate when she was a child. Grandmother always had a glamour that other members of the family lacked and a rich fund of stories about her exotic past, travels on the Continent and the many years she’d spent in America. Some thought that it was owing to Grandmother’s bad example that Debbie had gone astray.
Yes, she decided, Grandmother was close enough to share in the shameful secret.
“My mother-in-law is having a love affair with Solomon Palmer,” Ruth blurted out. “Don’t you think it’s disgusting? Everyone in the town will know.”
Sophie looked shocked, but Agnes’s expression seemed amused.
“Well, well,” she said, “wonders will never cease. Is that not the young man who is the architect of your house?”
“Yes.”
“I hear he is very talented.”
“He is also younger than Abel, Grandmother. Imagine carrying on with a man young enough to be your son!”
“I have a lot to thank Mr Palmer for,” Sophie said slowly. “He saved my life ...”
“But Mother!”
“I’m afraid I can’t think ill of him. I owe him a debt.”
“I don’t think ill of him either.” Agnes poured herself more coffee. “I think, ‘well done’, young man. There is much to be learned from an older woman.” She looked archly about her.
“But what will people say in the town?”
“Who cares what people say in the town?” Agnes chuckled. “They’ve had enough to say about me in the past and it has not troubled me one bit, or harmed me at all, as far as I know.” She looked thoughtfully across at Ruth. “You really must learn to ignore what people say, my dear, and if Mr Palmer and Sarah Jane are happy with each other I say ‘good luck’ to them.”
But Ruth still felt a sense of outrage. “They say they’re going to marry. Can you, imagine having a step-father-in-law younger than my own husband? I think the whole thing is dirty and horrible, and I’m frankly shocked that neither of you seem to agree.” Eyes blazing, Ruth turned to her mother. “You would think as the wife of the Rector of Wenham you would have some standards, Mother, but you don’t seem to. You talk about God a lot, yet you ignore His commandments. You set a bad example yourself. No wonder everyone pities you and talks about you behind your back.”
And with that Ruth ran across the room, wrenched open the door and banged it behind her.
For a moment there was a profound silence in the room. Sophie looked suddenly exhausted and leaned against one of the cushions propping her up. Agnes immediately rose and went over to her couch, taking her hand and sitting beside her.
“Don’t worry. She is very young.”
Sophie pressed Agnes’s hand but still for a while said nothing. Finally, sighing deeply, she murmured: “I have lost one daughter. Do you think I am going to lose another?”
“No I don’t.” Agnes squeezed her hand reassuringly. “It will blow over. Ruth is still very young. It is not so very terrible. If Sarah Jane is happy then I’m glad. All right, there will be tongues wagging in the town, but some people will be jealous!” Agnes turned to Sophie with a mischievous smile. “In their heart of hearts they wouldn’t mind a nice young body to keep them warm in bed at night.”
“I think there is more to Ruth’s attitude than meets the eye,” Sophie said slowly. “Something tells me she is not very happy in her own marriage.” She raised anguished eyes to Agnes. “That all is not exactly as it should be there. Something wrong. I don’t quite know what.”
When Agnes got back to the house that had once belonged to Miss Fairchild, and which Connie had made over to her, she removed her hat and coat and went to her neat sitting-room with its view of her pretty gard
en.
Grace was out shopping and would be doing the usual rounds of the gossip-mongers to report back to Agnes in due course. Well, Agnes could tell her something, but perhaps she knew already.
Agnes felt that in many ways the life of the parish was passing her by, that it was peripheral to her existence there. She had become a recluse who scarcely ever went out. She dressed up just to cross the road in an outfit she might have worn in London in the old days, the good old days just after the war.
She sat down and put her feet up on the pouf.
Few people came to see her. Not even her granddaughters, to whom she had once been close, confided in her. Deborah hadn’t told her about Bart Sadler, and Ruth only told her about Abel when they were engaged.
She had hurt Ruth by not attending her wedding, but she couldn’t face Elizabeth, a daughter she had once spurned and who now spurned her.
In a way she knew hers was a sad life. Perhaps people pitied her. It didn’t do to be maudlin but, really, she had nothing left now except memories.
But what memories! The heady days in America where for nearly twenty years she had run a successful business in New Orleans; two high-class brothels for well-do-do southern gentlemen who were bored with their wives. She had made a lot of money on the stock exchange, tips from grateful clients of her houses. But she had spent a lot too.
When she sold her business and came home she married a baronet, once her lover, and became the woman of title and respectability she had always wanted to be, her past forgotten. Only all this was dashed when, after Guy’s death, Carson inherited and treated her with, in her opinion, a mean hand.
On the rebound she had fallen for the charms of Owen Wentworth, who had neither the title nor money he claimed to have. Finally he had fled with all her jewels and left her with nothing, back once more on the charity, the patronage of Carson and Connie.
She was quite pleased they had split up. It served them right. They were always lecturing her about her extravagances, keeping her on a tight rein. Always so virtuous, and now Carson had another woman and Connie had gone!
Still, on this grey February day her outfit reflected her mood. She felt sad, depressed, despite her attempt to appear cheerful and optimistic with Sophie. But that really was the trouble with her. She was always putting on an act to hide the void inside herself.
Agnes rose from her chair and, taking the bottle of gin from the drinks cabinet, poured a hefty slug into a glass. Then she lifted it, neat, to her lips and drained the lot, feeling immediately better afterwards, more like her old self.
She was nothing if not a survivor.
Chapter Fourteen
For once Nelly had slept well, that is relatively well for her, waking only a few times in the course of six or seven hours. She thought it was the sound of birdsong that woke her because during the winter months they had been silent. Now, in late March, there was a veritable dawn chorus as the blackbirds, chaffinches, tits and robins, not to mention magpies and rooks that lived in the surrounding trees, loudly advertised for mates in calls that echoed and re-echoed across the valley.
As usual from her bed facing the window, the first thing she saw was Pelham’s Oak about a mile away on the hills: beautiful, grand and timeless. One expected that it would endure forever. The home of the Woodvilles since the seventeenth century. Carson’s home.
Soon she would see him leave, a tiny dot on the horizon, as he proceeded down the hill on his dear old horse Pulver. The dot would get larger and larger as he neared the cottage, and she would get more and more excited at the prospect of seeing him again. Day in and day out it was like this. A great love rekindled, passion renewed.
Later she would watch him go up again, and later still the scene would be repeated except that she never saw him return at night. By then she was asleep, Carson watching tenderly over her.
Nelly felt curiously tranquil this particular morning as she lay there listening to the birds, seeing Pelham’s Oak on the horizon, knowing that, whatever happened, she was safe. At long last she was safe.
It had been a hard life, the daughter of a Covent Garden porter over-fond of drink and a mother who could match him, glass for glass. It was perhaps natural that she had gone to work in a public house, and her life would never have amounted to anything at all had she not met Carson. In the fullness of time he outlined to her a dream that might one day be theirs: a cottage in the country with wisteria and honeysuckle growing on the walls, and a child or two.
Well, she had the cottage in the country, even though it had come twenty years too late. She had the child, even if he didn’t know she was his mother but, above all, she had Carson and the dream had become reality.
Throughout the months of winter Carson was preoccupied with Nelly. One might have called it an obsession. He missed his children but he didn’t miss Connie at all. Her behaviour made him see her in a fresh light. He realised things he hadn’t before. She was, he thought, basically a selfish woman who had everything compared to poor Nelly who had nothing, who had led a life of self-deprivation and self-sacrifice for the sake of her child, Alexander.
Never very strong, she had spent her years in domestic service until she became too ill to work. She could have called Carson but never did until she was in extremis, near the end, and then it was not she who called him but Massie.
Naturally, she had wanted to see her son, and a glimpse of him sufficed as, daily, she drew nearer to death.
Carson felt that his life was wholly absorbed by Nelly and her approaching end. He spent a great part of the day with her. He would return to the house after his morning visit and then go back to her in the late afternoon and sit by her side until she fell asleep. Several times there were crises when she seemed near the end and he slept by her bedside on the floor while Massie kept awake by the fire to ensure it was alight all night. They watched after Nelly with love and devotion, but by the time that the buds began to appear on the trees it was clear poor Nelly would not see the summer.
She and Carson were completely engrossed in each other’s company, as if no one else existed. Finally Carson had a bed made up in her room and when her condition caused anxiety hardly ever left her. Life at Pelham’s Oak went on but in a curious vacuum, the servants not quite knowing what to do or when to expect their master. His valet, James, brought him down clean clothes, and fresh produce from the farms was delivered to the house: bacon, eggs, butter, meat, fresh vegetables, flowers from the greenhouse, and cream, plenty of cream to try and fatten Nelly up as, daily, her frame grew more skeletal.
How they reminisced! About when they were young, twenty years before, and about the little room in the City of London in the shadow of St Paul’s where they had made love. Star-crossed lovers, once separated, they had never met again until Massie wrote to him.
Now he was making up for lost time.
“I worry about your wife, Carson,” Nelly whispered, her hand entwined with his. He had to sit very close to her in order to hear what she said; but he didn’t mind. He loved her and he felt he always had. He had been on the verge of telling his parents about his intention to marry Nelly in the year 1910, and then bad luck had intervened.
“You must not worry about Connie,” he said, stroking back her thick dark hair from her forehead. “She is quite capable of taking care of herself, and she has a grand home in Venice. Connie wants for nothing.”
“But your children? Don’t you miss them?”
“Yes!” Carson grew sombre.
“After my death ...” she began but he put a finger firmly on her lips.
“Don’t speak of it.”
He took her in his arms cradling her head on his breast and that was how Massie found them when she came to bring Nelly her broth for lunch.
“Here,” she coaxed, pulling a table to the side of Nelly’s bed. “Drink a little.”
Massie had loved Nelly from the day she met her in the Lady Frances Roper Home where they were both awaiting the births of their babies. For Massi
e it was quite a regular event and she gave the babies up for adoption without another thought. But Nelly had been different. She had wanted to keep Alexander, and when she knew she couldn’t, that he would be forcibly taken away, she and Massie had stolen out at night with the baby well-wrapped in a shawl and left him on the doorstep of Carson’s aunt, Lally.
After that they had found various means of employment but had always stayed together. Massie had a number of men and two more children; but Nelly had learned her lesson and never became involved with a man again. Besides, she was never very strong.
She would often talk about her son and about Carson, and when she saw his picture in the paper, emerging from the church with his bride on his arm, and read of his war record, Massie urged her to write to him. But she wouldn’t, refusing to spoil his happiness; however, she kept the paper as one of her most priceless possessions. She was a simple woman and Carson had been an important event in her life.
Thus it was only much later, when Nelly became so ill and was sacked from employment and unable to work, that they decided on desperate remedies.
Massie knew that Nelly felt guilty. Connie had not taken to her, and the dislike was mutual. Undoubtedly it was based on jealousy; but Nelly knew she had not long to live and, being only human as well as very sick, she was content to seize the moment, luxuriate in the love she had been denied in the knowledge that after her death Carson would return to his wife.
Meanwhile Nelly was happy, and that was all that mattered to Massie.
Carson held Nelly as Massie put the spoon to her mouth but she had only taken a few mouthfuls when she choked, put her hands to her throat as though gasping for air as a stream of bright red blood gushed out and she fell back on her pillow.
Massie quickly put down the soup and got out the bowl kept under the bed for the purpose. But, unlike other times, the blood continued to pour from Nelly’s mouth and Carson, gazing at her in horror, desperately tried to staunch it.
“Run to the house, Massie,” he commanded. “Run all the way. Tell them to telephone Doctor Hardy and ask him to come at once.”
Past Love (Part Four of The People of this Parish Saga) Page 21
