by Marie Joseph
Margot stopped fluttering her be-ringed hands among the tea things. Once Seth had told her he could watch her doing just that indefinitely, but today she had to accept that she was wasting her time, and it badly irritated her.
‘Not a shop as such. More a discreet establishment where ladies can go to choose their own material from swatches.’
‘From what?’
‘Swatches. Small samples of cloth.’ Margot demonstrated with her hands, showing their approximate length and breadth. ‘The clients can be measured and fitted and Annie will help them choose the kind of thing which suits them.’ She smoothed down the skirt of her lilac silk afternoon gown. ‘Lancashire women have good taste, given the money, of course. I don’t expect many of them wear clogs and shawls from choice.’ She sighed and took a dainty sip of tea. ‘Annie was brought up in poverty, so she knows how to achieve the maximum effect with the minimum outlay. She’ll be a tremendous success. I don’t blame her for turning down whatever you had to offer.’ If she hadn’t known him better she could have sworn he was going to hit her. ‘And don’t go marching hell for leather out of here!’ Her voice stayed him. ‘I expect you proposed to her as if you were doing her a great big favour.’ Her head went to one side. ‘Well? Did you? Am I right?’
Seth stared at her for a moment, then actually beat his forehead with a clenched fist.
‘It was when she was so ill … it was during the long hours I sat beside her bed. That was when I offered her my life, promised to cherish her for ever.’
‘When she was unconscious?’
He lowered his head.
‘And now, just now, upstairs, you talked as if it was a fait accompli?’
‘I’ll come back another day,’ Seth muttered, striding from the room. ‘Today I only make things worse.’
‘Are we taking young Annie to France with us?’ Harry came straight to the point. ‘I’ve just bumped into Armstrong looking jealous as hell. Doesn’t he want the lass to go?’
Margot picked up the heavy teapot. ‘No. I don’t think taking Annie with us would be a good idea at all,’ she said firmly, thumping the pot back on its stand, making her mind up swiftly at that very moment, wondering why she’d ever considered it in the first place.
Harry wasn’t surprised. He knew this dearly loved second wife of his very well. Knew that she had been thoroughly spoilt by fond and doting parents, so that in maturity she took up causes which interested and amused her, indulged herself with them for a little while, then dropped them when she became tired and bored. Annie Clancy had served her purpose. She had interested Margot at a time when she needed to be interested, and now could be discarded just as easily.
‘So what do we do with her now we’ve finished with her?’
Margot had no idea she was being laughed at. She passed a fragile cup and saucer over to him, trying not to feel too annoyed at the way the tea was drunk at one gulp. ‘She can stay here of course till we go away, and until she feels strong enough to …’ the plump hands made vague circular motions in the air ‘… take up the threads of her life.’
‘Do you think she’ll marry Seth?’
A shrug of the plump shoulders. ‘How should I know? After what has happened to her, she may never trust a man again. Never be able to surrender herself completely.’ Margot yawned. ‘I’m not too sure that a dress salon would be the right idea. Seth was quick to remind me that Lancashire mill towns are not in the least like Paris.’
She actually said ‘Paree’. Harry downed a second cup of tea just as speedily. It was always the same. When she tired of anything she became more French than the Eiffel Tower; it was a way of detracting attention from what she was saying. It signified that in spirit she had removed herself from a tiresome situation.
‘Mon Dieu!’ she said now. ‘Can that be ze time?’
Harry was troubled.
If Annie wasn’t to marry Armstrong, then what to do with her? She was back in the sewing-room stitching what looked like acres of flimsy stuff into frocks for the girls to wear in the heat of Menton. Margot seemed to think that the lass would go back home, but from what he’d gathered there wasn’t all that much of a home to go to.
‘So you’re not going into business, lass?’ Standing by the window in the sewing-room, his massive bulk almost blocked out the light. ‘Mrs Gray tells me the bank has advised you against.’
Annie put down the fine lawn neck-shawl she was hemming. ‘If I had the premises and the goodwill, the money Adam left me would be ample to start me off with all I needed, but I haven’t got either.’
‘You could always go home.’
She shook her head. ‘When I left my father’s house I left it for good.’
Harry was flummoxed. Margot had told him that Annie’s father had turned her out, and he hadn’t been able to credit it. But now, looking at her sitting there with her hair tucked into a white cap, wearing a blue print frock with a white collar at the neck, she was a picture for sore eyes. How could any man banish a daughter like this from his door? My God, with a daughter like this a man should go down on his knees every day and thank the Lord for heaping such a blessing on him. She wasn’t afraid of hard work, either. Just look at her now, sewing away as if her life depended on it. Fourteen hours she put in some days, he’d been told, straining her eyes just so his wife and two daughters could go to France all dolled up in the latest fashion. Just so they could hold their own.
‘Will the cottage be empty when you go to France, sir?’
Goddamn it, she’d read his thoughts. Harry cleared his throat. ‘’Fraid not. The couple move into it next week. The gardens have to be kept up while we’re away.’
He stomped from the room before he found himself explaining to her about his problems with staffing, with the harvesting, with the animals while he was absent. He marched briskly across the tiled hall. No wonder Armstrong wanted to marry her. That lass had a wisdom, a strength, that went far beyond her years. It was the way she looked at you with those steady blue eyes, not a bold look, certainly not that, but a look of untutored intelligence that said she would understand if you confided in her.
He walked out on to the terrace. One of his favourite gun dogs had got out while in season. Producing her litter had almost finished her off. Now the sheer weight and volume of milk was making it impossible for her to walk. Something would have to be done.
Harry looked back at the tall window of the sewing-room. He reckoned a visit from the animal doctor was definitely on the agenda.
The men were at work with their rakes and pitch-forks when Annie left the house to walk along the meadow paths. The grasses bordering the brook had flowered; elder flowers bloomed in the place of whitethorn in the hedges; a skylark sang high above the bales of hay.
She no longer bore much resemblance to the girl in the greasy flat cap and the long woollen cloak who had trudged the roads looking for a place of work. The long night bound hand and foot to the chair in Adam’s cottage had wiped the bright girlish expression from her face. Now she was fine-boned and achingly thin; her dark blue eyes had a wary look about them, and she kept her long red hair pulled tightly back from her face, tucked up into a serving-maid’s white cap.
The men had gone home and the air was sticky and warm. Her dress clung to her back in damp patches. Over to the west a dark spiral of cloud curled across the sky threatening wind and rain. If it came the bales would have to be balanced against each other, to stop them from getting soaked through.
Annie raised her eyes to the changing sky and prayed that the rain would hold off. Lifting her skirts and bowing her head as if the rain had already begun, she ran back through the meadow, across the paddock and into the house by the back way, failing to look up and see Seth Armstrong framed in the window of the sewing-room. Waiting for her.
As she came through the doorway she snatched off her cap and shook her hair free, but when she saw him she immediately backed away.
‘There’s no need for you to do that.’ She was so lo
vely he could scarcely bear to look at her. ‘Harry tells me you won’t be going with them to France.’
‘No.’
‘He also told me that you’ve dropped the idea of setting up in a dress shop.’
‘That’s right.’ She sat down at the table and took up her sewing. ‘Forgive me for carrying on working, but if everything is to be ready in time I can’t let up.’
Turning a chair round, Seth sat down on it, resting his arms along its back. ‘Annie …’ He tried to speak calmly. ‘Did you really believe that eighty pounds was enough to finance all you wanted to do? If you’d discussed it with me I could have explained, given you some idea …’
‘Eighty pounds?’ She raised her eyes and looked straight at him. ‘Have you any idea just how much eighty pounds represents to someone like me? Eighty pounds would have kept my mother, father and their six children for nearly two years.’ She raised her voice. ‘Two years, Seth! Out of twenty-two shillings a week my father took two for his beer, or more when he felt like it. The rent was seven shillings, clothing club a shilling, boot and clog club another, burial insurance one and twopence, soap and soda sixpence, lamp oil a penny, doctor’s money sixpence … Do I need to tell you how much was left for food for all of us?’ She stabbed the needle into the silky material on her lap. ‘I could reckon things up to the last farthing; I could make a meal out of the dishcloth if needs must.’ She bowed her head. ‘An’ you talk about eighty pounds as if it was nothing.’
‘Why are you always so angry with me, love?’ Seth spoke with a slow deliberation. ‘What do I do that annoys you so much? You are punishing me for the things other men have done to you. Can’t you see that?’
There was an aching need inside her to cry, so she became even more angry. ‘Mrs Gray made me feel that my life was going to be so different from now on. But the truth is she can’t wait to be rid of me.’
‘She doesn’t mean it, Annie. Mrs Gray is fickle, that’s all.’ He tried to keep his tone light. ‘So why not come back with me? For the time being. Till you decide what to do next.’
There were tears glistening on her eyelashes. He saw the way she blinked them furiously away. ‘No thank you, Mr Armstrong … Seth. I’m never going to be beholden to anyone again. Eighty pounds may be a mere pittance to you, but in my way of looking at things it’s a fortune. And with a fortune behind them anyone can do anything. Because money talks!’
‘What does it say, love?’
Her chin was up in a gesture of defiance. ‘It says I never need to be beholden to anyone – to any man – again!’
16
ON THE DAY before Annie left the house Margot’s conscience began to prick a little. Not too much, but enough to get in the way of her preparations for their long stay in France. The girls complained loudly that in their opinion Annie should be going with them.
‘If we are to attend all the parties you’ve planned, who will dress our hair?’
‘Or tell us what to wear with what?’
‘I distinctly heard you tell Annie she would be going with us.’
Dorothea had tucked a torn flounce into the waistband of her skirt, and Abigail was wearing puce with bottle green. Margot could hardly bring herself to look at them, so she left the room and banged the door behind her.
Half-way up the stairs she stopped, a hand dramatically to her heart, not wanting to admit even to herself her real reason for withdrawing her affection from Annie Clancy. How could she explain, even to herself, her feelings about Seth Armstrong? Why did it hurt so much to see him falling more and more helplessly in love? Was it possible for a mature woman to covet, to desire a younger man, while loving her own husband as much as ever? All that flirting and teasing with the animal doctor, had it been half-way serious all the time, on her side at least?
On the stool in front of her tripled mirror she leaned forward to examine her face minutely. Were those fine wrinkles on her forehead the beginning of an ugly furrowed brow? By holding her chin up like this was she deluding herself into imagining that her double chin didn’t exist? Was she turning into one of those pathetic creatures who envied youth its bloom? Was she in fact sending Annie Clancy away for reasons beneath the contempt of the intelligent compassionate woman she imagined herself to be?
She got up and turned her back on the mirror. It was all too deep and complex a situation for her to fathom, particularly today when she was feeling far from well. Lately she’d taken to waking in the night drenched with perspiration, and sometimes her cheeks would flush up as though she had a fever. She was much too young for middle-aged nuisances like that to be happening to her, surely? When they did, if they did, she would ignore them so firmly they would have no choice but to go away.
She had no need to feel this niggling sense of disquiet and guilt. Annie had been treated more than fairly, and now she was ready to move on Margot had freely given her advice she would have had to pay for in some places.
‘To look your best is to feel your best,’ she had said. Who could quarrel with that? ‘To look elegant always understate,’ she had said. She had even bared her soul one day, telling Annie things she had never told before. ‘On the day my husband came to bring me back from the hospital, I spent a whole hour getting ready. The specialist had told me I was never going to bear a child of my own, so I determined that when Mr Gray saw me he would see a smiling wife dressed in all her finery. You would have thought I was going to a Hunt Ball, or even to Buckingham Palace to one of the garden parties. I had my good pearls sent out to me, and I wore a hat with a feather curling all the way round the brim.’
‘You have been very kind to me.’ Annie had looked grave. ‘What would I have done without you?’
‘Survived,’ Margot had said promptly. ‘Like me.’
The next morning Margot came downstairs early wearing a pale green floating bedwrap. She smiled at Annie and held out both hands.
‘Bartram is waiting outside with the trap.’ She looked Annie up and down with a critical eye. ‘Yes. You’ll do, but you still have to learn how to put up your hair properly. It looks in a state of collapse already.’
To stop herself from crying Annie smiled. ‘The first time I saw you I wondered how you got your hair to stick up for itself like that, and I’ve been wondering ever since.’
‘The next time we meet I’ll show you,’ Margot promised insincerely. ‘Now you’d better go if Bartram’s to come back tonight.’
When the clip-clop of the horse’s hooves died away, Margot took off the pale green wrap and got back into bed.
‘Well, no one can say we didn’t do our best for her,’ she whispered, then smiled as Harry grunted and turned over without waking up. Yes, there was no reason to feel like this. Kindness had been showered on the gardener’s girl. Her own conscience was clear. She was blameless in every way.
So why couldn’t she go back to sleep? Why, when the cock crowed three times, did she almost die of fright?
When Annie chose to sit up front with the driver he took a blanket and tucked it round her knees before laying another smaller one across her shoulders.
‘You can throw them off when the sun gets through, but there’s a nip in the air that’s more like autumn, lass. It’s more like back-end than summer; it’s a case of three fine days then a thunderstorm. You can’t rely on nowt. Still, they’ll be well out of it abroad, though it beats me why the master goes year after year, but I expect his missus takes a lot of pleasing. The money’s on her side, tha knows …’
According to the pit doctor Ed Bartram’s lungs should have been finished long ago. He was as sparse and wiry as a hungry whippet. Since working for the Gray family – mostly outdoors – his already pock-marked skin had taken on the consistency and colour of seasoned leather, but his back was still stooped from his days of crouching underground. In many ways he reminded Annie of her father, but the eyes were different. Where her father’s reflected only bitterness, Ed’s brown eyes twinkled with contentment.
He chatted on,
stopping only now and again to draw a necessary breath. ‘You can tell a horse’s age, up to about eight years old, by looking at its teeth,’ he said, a couple of clip-clops further on. ‘Then you look at their legs to see it hasn’t got windgall.’
‘What’s that?’ Annie’s nerves felt so tightly drawn she was sure she would have twanged if anyone had touched her. She was grateful that Ed didn’t seem to mind in the least that the conversation was totally one-sided, in fact she had more than a suspicion that he preferred it that way.
‘Windgall? It’s a spongy swelling on the side of the leg; it makes a horse lame if it’s not watched, and if it gets a corn that’s no good neither. You can’t cure a horse with a corn. At least not many can. But I’d put me money on that animal chap who sees to the mester’s horses any day. I’ve seen him cut a canker from a diseased horn wi’ nowt to see by but a spluttering candle in a barn with a leaking roof. It were a pity his wife had to go that way. It’s bad enough folks starving when there’s nowt to eat in the house, but starving when there’s a full table – that’s another thing.’
‘I used to work for Mr Armstrong,’ Annie said in a small voice, but Ed wasn’t listening to any other voice but his own.
‘Aye, them hills over yon look as clean cut as if they’d been cut out with a pair of scissors. Mebbe it won’t rain after all.’ His burst of optimism seemed to depress him. ‘Them mountains make up their own minds about the weather. Depends on their moods. Allus has and allus will.’
During the next hour Annie discarded the blanket round her shoulders, sitting up straight on the wooden seat and holding on to the side as they turned into a rutted lane.
With every mile she was nearer to home. Home? She adjusted the brim of her hat to keep the sun from her face to ward off the freckles so frowned upon by Mrs Gray. It was hard to believe that so long had passed since she walked this very way, wearing boots too big, with her mother’s cloak trailing in the mud, and a man’s flat cap pulled low down over her forehead.
