No Blake had occupied the family pew since Charles had come, a boy of thirteen, reluctant and alone, to sit shyly in its shadows. The village of St. Mary’s had turned out almost in a body in the hope of Jane and William attending. No detail of their behaviour or appearance was missed ‒ not from the exquisite lace that filled the neck of Jane’s rose-coloured gown and the slippers made of green silk, to the fact that neither of them was familiar with the hymn book. But it was conceded that they were a fine-looking pair, red-headed and spirited in the traditional fashion of the family. No one voiced the thought, but they would all have been disappointed if these new Blakes had lacked the touch of wildness that was expected.
For Jane this was remembered as the morning she discovered that she was proud of William. She was proud of the straight shoulders which now strained the seams of the blue coat, of the high intelligent forehead and his bright, quick eyes. Behind his back they might call him ‘The Bastard,’ but it was plain to anyone’s eyes that he was the bastard of the nobleman ‒ there was the evidence of good breeding in every line of his body. His clear young voice bellowed the words from the hymn book with magnificent unconcern for the tune; during the long sermon he kept his hands still and his back straight. Jane knew that he entered with her into a sense of the occasion, and after the service they were like a pair of conspirators going through the ritual of hand-shaking and greeting, William executing his formal bow that could only have been learned in London drawing-rooms. It was almost, Jane thought, too good a performance to be wasted on so small a parish as St. Mary’s. Perhaps if they had gone to Rye …
But there were other things Jane had to learn during those weeks of waiting, of the life of the Marsh and the lands on its borders. Some of the knowledge was bitter and unpalatable.
It was not enough, it seemed, to parade London-cut clothes, and a fine carriage and pair. Nor was it enough to put Blake’s Reach into a semblance of order, and walk to church services up on the hill. Much more was needed before the first of those carriages bearing the wives of the local gentry would turn into the driveway. They had to make sure that she was not Anne Blake all over again ‒ and on the Marsh it took years to make sure.
Anne Blake’s reputation, heightened and coloured, had spread during the twenty years since she had left. In gossip she had been the mistress of half the famous rakes in London, and her only husband had been a commonplace captain of Dragoons from the Folkestone station. True, she had borne a son to the scion of one of England’s oldest and richest families, but since the child possessed neither his father’s name nor money, where was the advantage in that? Nothing was known about Jane … but there was enough speculation. She might possess the family failing of a weakness towards gambling, and set up gaming-tables at Blake’s Reach ‒ such as Anne was supposed to have done in London. Without having seen her they already knew how she was looked at by men ‒ and the low-cut gowns and tightly corseted waist, apart from the famous Blake red hair, were altogether too much competition for marriageable daughters. So Jane waited vainly for the carriages, and gradually she began to understand why they did not come.
There were two which did come. The first brought Roger Pym to her door, and when Kate rushed upstairs to tell Jane of her visitor her old eyes were bright with excitement and remembrance.
‘He’s the one yer mother was t’ marry … the one the Old Master had picked for her …’
Roger Pym was some years older than Anne, a shy, gentle man, clumsy and tongue-tied, wearing expensive, dowdy clothes. His face wore a wistful expression as his gaze rested on Jane. He played nervously with the silver knob of his cane.
‘You’re so like her … your mother. She was very beautiful, too.’
Jane thanked him with a smile, and looked away from his regretful eyes to engross herself deliberately with the tea-tray Patrick had brought in. Pym was in an agony of embarrassment and shyness, and Jane had the impression that he had needed to gather considerable courage to make the visit. But he managed to talk a little of Anne, and even speaking her name was a relief to him. He said nothing more than any other person across the Marsh might have said of her, but his voice betrayed the years of hoping and disappointment.
‘I have children too,’ he said. ‘Some of them round about your age … five daughters and two sons …’ Then he was overcome with embarrassment again as he realized that they would be Jane’s natural companions in other circumstances. He could not offer the invitation which he knew should have been forthcoming. There had been too much talk at home about Anne Blake’s daughter …
‘No doubt my wife and daughters will be calling shortly …’ he said unhappily. ‘They’ve been busy lately … summer is a busy time …’
He went reluctantly, wanting to stay on and indulge the desire to talk about Anne, and yet uncomfortably aware that to stay longer might involve or commit his family. He stumbled off, a shy man with sad eyes, who for thirty minutes had lived blissfully in the past. He would probably never dare to come again, Jane thought.
The second visitor was Paul’s brother, Sir James Fletcher. This time there was no carriage, but a thoroughbred horse which brought warm glances from Patrick. Jane quickly changed her gown before going to greet him.
Immediately she sensed curiosity of a different kind from Roger Pym’s. It was cold curiosity ‒ cold and examining. He looked like Paul; he was older, with blond hair turning pepper-and-salt, bulkier in frame, a good body going a little to fat. In a rigid, controlled way he was handsome; his clothes were well cut, and looked as if they had come from London.
He never once mentioned Paul’s name, behaving exactly as if he had come on an ordinary social call. And yet he made a few slips ‒ let fall small pieces of information about her that could only have come from Paul. She began to dislike him, sensing patronage in his remarks about the work she had done at Blake’s Reach, and he referred too openly for politeness to the poverty of the estate.
‘You’ve opened this room, I see ‒ well, it’s about time. Haven’t been in here for years. Spencer didn’t like this room …’
He crumbled, but did not eat Kate’s plum cake, as if to point up the heaviness Jane already knew too well; he drank two cups of tea, put his cup down and started to pace the room. He paused deliberately on the frayed edge of the carpet, flicked at it with his polished boot as if it had tripped him. Then he looked across at John Blake’s portrait. He looked at it as if he had seen it many times before, and it was an old enemy.
‘Spencer used to wish he had the money the family spent to build and endow that church up there … Well, I suppose nothing else was good enough for them after John had covered himself in glory at the wars. Strange, wasn’t it, that he didn’t get a title at the same time?’
He looked back at her quickly, seeming to realize now that his words had been insulting.
‘I’ve always thought,’ she said evenly, ‘that titles only went to those who asked for them. John Blake would have been a viscount or an earl, but there’s some story about him falling out with the Duchess of Marlborough. It takes courage of a kind not to care what happens to a title … And who knows? … perhaps he was right not to take it. After all, the Blakes are simple people, and this is a modest house …’
She said this with full knowledge that he had been made a baronet only seven years ago; she knew she took a risk in snubbing him, but it was important that James Fletcher should never be allowed to think she was a spineless ninny, too overwhelmed by his aggressiveness to claim for the Blakes what was their due. She waited for his reaction.
It was as she hoped. He came back to his chair, and settled to talk, more respectful now, attending to her carefully when she chose to speak. He was arrogant and overbearing, but he was a rich and successful man, the owner of many acres on the Marsh itself, and several large farms around Warefield on its border, where he lived. On farming matters he was worth listening to. He told her where to buy stock, and when the time came, where to sell it, which dealers to go to, whic
h farmers she could trust.
He rose to go. ‘You’ll do all right,’ he said heavily. ‘Yes ‒ you’ll do all right. I’ll confess I laughed when I heard a female had come back here to take over ‒ specially a Blake, for they’ve not been noted for their common sense in the past. But you’ll be all right because you know how to take advice. Now … you come to me when you want anything, you hear? I’ll tell you what you want to know. Robert Turnbull’s well enough in his way, but he doesn’t know about farming. Just you send a message, and I’ll come along and set you straight on things …’
Walking with him to the door, Jane tried to hold her rage in check. He had patronized her, snubbed her, and not once mentioned his wife, Lady Alice, or said that he expected to see Jane at Warefield House. He accepted Patrick’s assistance in mounting without thanks. He fixed his eyes on Jane thoughtfully.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘Paul didn’t tell me the half of all this … you … the house … No, not even the half of it!’ He raised his hat briefly. ‘I’ll drop in from time to time … see how things are with you.’
Jane watched him go, her expression angry and distasteful.
‘Pig!’ she said. ‘You overdressed pig! … and I wish you didn’t look so much like Paul!’
Her brows knit together as she turned to go indoors. ‘And there’s something here that’s not right … he knows more about me than he should, and yet he and Paul pretend they hardly see each other …’
The answer occurred to her suddenly, and her eyes widened with comprehension. The pieces fell into place with startling precision. She pondered the possibilities, and they carried too much weight to seem untrue. Was it, she wondered, James Fletcher who was putting up the money to finance Paul’s smuggling runs, and that this was the reason Paul had come back to the Marsh? James Fletcher had known his whole financial situation, and when the plantation in the Indies had been lost, and the years in the Navy passed by without promotion, had he been the one to wave the money before Paul’s eyes, and promise him enough of the spoils of the game to compel him back here even though he hated it? He knew Paul’s seamanship, his ability to organize ‒ and his crying need for money to start in trade again. Among the seafaring men of the Marsh, only Paul could appear at his brother’s house without question or suspicion. He would be the perfect front for a man who had looked for a way to operate in the smuggling game on a large scale.
‘It’s possible,’ Jane said aloud. ‘It’s possible … and it may be true. And that’s why the money on the church was raised to twenty guineas without a fuss ‒ he just couldn’t miss the chance to patronize the Blakes! I wonder did he enjoy sitting here thinking that he was paying the wages of my servants … or the cake he didn’t eat! Oh, damn him! … the pig!’
She started to gather up the tea-cups, rattling them irritably and then was annoyed to see that she had managed to chip one of them. She scowled at the Blake portraits on the wall, the calm unanswering faces which belonged to her family; for the first time the sight of them gave her no pleasure.
II
She was not subtle when she took the story of his brother’s visit to Paul. She questioned him bluntly about things she had already half-guessed.
‘So he talked too much, and you could fill in what he didn’t say? Well … he always was a fool in dealing with people who weren’t his inferiors, and I suppose coming to Blake’s Reach was almost too much for him, and he had to talk …’
‘What do you mean?’
Paul shrugged. ‘It’s an old story … some snub Spencer gave him long ago, and people got to know about it. James looked like a fool, and he’s never forgotten. He’s always disliked any mention of the Blake family ‒ they’ve been here too long, they’ve held too many offices and posts, they’ve had time to become gentlefolk, and would have been aristocracy if they’d used their heads … Oh, yes, he thinks about it all, and it rankles. He’s even jealous of that church, and the endowment, and the fact that the Blakes have the right of presenting a parson to the living there.’
Jane smiled wryly. ‘How he must enjoy paying for it as a storeroom for his contraband …’
‘Of course he does!’ Paul snapped. ‘He wouldn’t give it up if it cost twice the money … it’s the kind of stupid joke he enjoys.’
‘You dislike him very much, don’t you?’
‘I could hate him if he were worth sparing the thought and effort to. We’ve always been like this ‒ he the elder son with the estate to inherit, and I the poor fool who had to earn his way. He didn’t like it when I cleared off to the West Indies …’
‘But you came back … you came back to work for him!’
‘Only a greater fool than James himself would have let his feelings stand in the way there. I was in debt, and James knew that. He believed that somehow if he could get me back here, working for him, no matter how much money I earned, I’d never keep it. He believed I’d always be in debt, and that I’d never be able to get back to the Indies. In his mind he saw me here forever ‒ being paid by him, listening to his damn-fool instructions, tipping my hat to him and clicking my heels. The few times he’s visited me here he can’t believe his eyes … he doesn’t know what happened to the old Paul, the one who spent money on fourteen silk waistcoats, and Brussels lace for his shirts. He suspects, of course, that I squander it on a fancy woman I keep somewhere ‒ Dover, maybe.
‘Most of the time I manage to ignore the fact that he’s my brother. I try to think of him as the man who provides the money, and whose commission I take because I’ve earned it. In seven months here I’ve paid my debts, and I’ve put nearly six hundred pounds towards our cargo … does that sound as if he’s generous! ‒ well, he’s not! He knows what he has to pay in commission for my risking my freedom, and perhaps my neck five or six times in the month. He’s bought the finest luggers, and he pays the top price for porters … and he makes a sweet profit. If I make two runs in a week he can land upwards of two thousand half-ankers of brandy, and seven or eight tons of tea. There’s money in that, Jane ‒ money for me, as well as him.’
He ran his hand through his hair, pulling the loose ends from the pigtail. He looked worn and desperate as he talked, and his hands were tense.
‘He doesn’t know, of course, that I’ll go as soon as there’s enough money. It’s a dirty, ugly business, and I’ve no mind to go on with it at another man’s bidding ‒ least of all my brother’s!’
He threw his hands up suddenly. ‘Oh, Jane, you don’t know what sweet relief it will be to be free of him, to breathe the air again knowing I’m my own master. I walk the decks of his ships, and I hate even the smell of them ‒ I, who’ve loved the sea for longer years than I can remember. For me, there’s an odour about my brother James and all his dealings that befouls even the ships he owns …’
He brought his clenched fist down into his palm. ‘I’ll be free, Jane! … just wait a little longer and I’ll kick myself free of this bog he has me in! There’s a whole world out there in the Indies you don’t know of yet ‒ there’s freedom for a man to be what he can make of himself, self-respect ‒ gold if you’ve the skill to take it … I mean to get back there if I have to land every one of my brother’s blasted brandy kegs with my own hands!’
III
The daily round of Jane’s life was open for the whole Marsh to see, for Appledore and St Mary’s to gossip about over their ale-pots. The other side of it, secret and hidden, concealed from curious eyes, was known to herself and Paul Fletcher. It was known also to Patrick ‒ and it was guessed by Kate Reeve.
Before dawn broke she would leave the house silently, saddle Blonde Bess, and take the now-familiar route to Old Romney, the route which Paul had shown her, across the fields and dykes, away from the roads and cottages and farms, away from the chance of gossip or speculation. The meetings with Paul were violent with an ecstasy that was heightened because they were brief and stolen. Here she entered a world completely apart from the planned routine of Blake’s Reach; this was a world
of love and pleasure and pain, to be lived only in the racing moments between dawn and the time when the Marsh folk began to stir abroad.
The rides were lonely, and sometimes dangerous as she set off in the half-dark. But it seemed to Jane that only for the space of time she spent in Paul’s arms did she escape from the sense of loneliness and struggle; his presence banished consciousness of fear or time or danger. The memory of being with him sustained her through each succeeding hour of the day.
At first Paul made an effort to keep her away ‒ and found that he was weak and powerless to forbid her to come. Long before dawn he was awake and listening for her. The days she did not come he counted as lost. He raged against the furtiveness of their meetings, and yet he knew there was no other way he might see her. Too many people suspected him of involvement in some way in smuggling ‒ his solitary existence, the irregularity of his comings and goings, and above all his knowledge of the Channel and its ports, of ships and seafaring, of the Marsh itself, were suspect. He knew there was danger to Jane in an open friendship with him. He dared to do no more than stand in the stable yard at Blake’s Reach from time to time, ostensibly talking to William and Patrick, or to bow formally if he and Jane happened to meet in the streets of Rye. He tried to deny himself the sight of her, and was not able. She had become an obsession, and he could not discipline himself to stay away from her; he was swept towards her with a fierceness of passion that gave him no peace. Jane was not peace or finality to him; she was pleasure and joy and torment. She was love and she was also despair. She was a volatile, elusive creature, whose body was given to him, whom he did not yet possess; his rival was a crumbling house on the edge of the Marsh, and a worn tradition in which he had no faith. They quarrelled and they loved with equal violence; for neither of them was there victory or defeat.
She came to know that chart-strewn room at Paul’s cottage as if it were a territory mapped on her own soul; she knew its dust and untidiness, the books stacked upon its shelves. She watched Paul spin the globe and his fingers trace the names of the Caribbean Islands, while his excited words spun a dream for her of blue-green seas, and a lush vegetation. Paul’s clothes carried the smell of salt-water; there was sand in all his pockets, and the cuffs of his sleeves. She rested her face against his shoulder and heard him talk of trade in the Indies, of fortunes won in trade, and how they could be won, and lost again. She smelled the sea-water on his coat, and wanted fiercely to make him look at her, and to forget his dream. For a space of time she could succeed, and he was bound to her closely and strongly; the bright dream faded, and she possessed him and Blake’s Reach as well.
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