The Ladies

by Doris Grumbach

  ‘Yes, of course, I know all about you. You’re very welcome. I’m Eleanor Butler, Lady Adelaide’s daughter.’

  Their friendship grew rapidly. Sarah adjusted to the transformation of the young man become Lady Eleanor. Eleanor was delighted to have a ready companion for her outdoor life. Sarah shared her pleasure. On rain-soaked afternoons, just before the descent of dusk, when they felt incarcerated too long in the castle, they walked through back paths, as far from the house as they could progress without leaving the desmesne. Eleanor often went a little ahead, her booted feet covering the rough places more securely than Sarah’s more decorous steps. On overcast days, when the chairs they had occupied all day seemed hard and the confines of their rooms oppressive, they set out for what Eleanor called a ramble. She told Sarah she wanted to show her the north end of the property.

  ‘Here we try to grow fruit trees. The trees grow well enough, I suppose, but we have little success with the fruit. What the birds do not expropriate, the tenants’ boys filch at night,’ Eleanor said.

  Sarah smiled and shook her head, indicating wholehearted disapproval of such natural and unnatural assaults upon the property of the gentry. Her steps were prim and careful, for she was afraid she would stumble over the cobbles and look foolish to Eleanor’s cool eyes. Once, her ankle turned, but before she fell, Eleanor was at her side, her strong hands supporting her. Sarah was startled, feeling much as she once had when Sir William had appeared without warning on a garden path at Woodstock.

  Another day, a grey, mooning donkey thrust his furry head at them out of a hedgerow. The suddenness of the animal’s appearance moved the Ladies close together in an act of mutual protection. They collided, Sarah uttered a small ‘oh.’ Eleanor said nothing but made no move away from Sarah. Now they proceeded, their shoulders, their hands occasionally coming together. When they encountered rough places in the walk, Eleanor’s guiding hand was at Sarah’s elbow. Slowly Sarah learned not to be surprised by Eleanor’s abrupt and lordly manner, and to recognize beneath her rough gestures a companion hungry, as was Sarah herself, for the touch of friendship and the unexpected warmth of closeness.

  When unbending sheets of rain came down too hard to allow them to leave the house, they sat before the fire in Eleanor’s sitting room. Eleanor read aloud from her elegantly bound translation of Plutarch’s Lives, and Sarah listened, intent on understanding the difficult prose. Eleanor read to her about Gaius, whose oratorical voice was so extravagantly high that his friend would play upon his pitch pipe to bring the sound down to a proper level. Sarah felt outside the bounds of Eleanor’s formidable learning. Eleanor must have sensed this: she put her book down, went over to Sarah’s chair, and put her hand gently on her shoulder.

  ‘Does all this heavy biography bore you?’ she asked.

  ‘No, not bore me. Frighten me, because there is so much for me to learn, and Miss Parke’s school teaches us nothing of Latin and Greek personages. I’ve never heard of Hadrian. Are you shocked at that?’

  ‘No, I am not shocked. I would enjoy teaching you. Very much.’ Eleanor’s hand hovered over Sarah’s hair. Sarah looked up into her eyes, waiting, wondering what this kindness, this little approach, this almost-caress could signify. Confused herself about her own intention, Eleanor lowered her arm and went back to her chair at the other side of the hearth.

  ‘Very much,’ she said, and Sarah, filled with a rush of pleasure she had not expected, said:

  ‘I would like that very much.’

  After a fortnight of walking the grounds and exploring the nearby town, reading and listening, talking before the fire and in their beds, smiling at each other surreptitiously across the silent supper table and laughing together during their private breakfasts at the prospect of spending the day ahead alone together, Sarah knew she loved Eleanor. It was an unbidden and only half-understood passion, compounded of the accumulated, unused affection of her thirteen loveless years. Trusting in the extraordinary reality of her feelings, she now took Eleanor’s hand when they walked.

  ‘In case a donkey appears without warning,’ she told Eleanor and smiled, pretending that a threat to her security was required to explain her action.

  Before they retired to their beds, Sarah allowed herself to be kissed gently, an act Eleanor initiated as though it was a parallel to Sarah’s reaching for her hand. Sarah then returned the kiss, as gently.

  A silent pact had been consummated, an unspoken statement was broadcast from the two women to the brocaded chairs and hangings, to the gardens and stone lions of Eleanor’s childhood. Connected thus, they moved everywhere together, saying very little now to each other that was personal, afraid of declarative words and phrases, trusting the annealing power of touch and glance. Sarah was in awe of the alchemy that had translated Eleanor’s mannish angularity into the womanliness of her soft caresses. Now Sarah knew: Under the mannerliness and solicitude of a young man there dwelled the warmth and concern of a woman.

  Near the end of Sarah’s stay, they took a last walk to the elms at the edge of the park. Eleanor moved a few steps off the path to show Sarah a vista through the trees; Sarah followed obediently. There, clearly too surprised by their human presence to move, were two small foxes, their pearly eyes glittering in the early evening moonlight, their severe, pointed noses raised into the air as if they scorned the scent of the two women.

  ‘Don’t move,’ warned Eleanor, putting her arm across Sarah’s chest to keep her from stepping forward.

  ‘I’m not afraid,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Perhaps not. But they are.’ Eleanor’s voice was rough, almost angry. An opportunity to protect Sarah from danger had been denied her, and she could not hide her disappointment. The foxes moved away, their retreating tails grey plumes in the dark brush.

  ‘Do you think they saw us?’ Sarah whispered.

  ‘Of course. They say foxes see very well in the dark.’

  Eleanor gathered her dusty skirts in one hand and took Sarah’s hand with the other. Sarah’s fingers felt crushed in Eleanor’s heavy gloves but she made no move to remove her hand, thinking that Eleanor might interpret this as rejection.

  In their rooms, on the last evening of the holiday, Eleanor threw three giant logs on the fire, creating a rush of flame and smoke in the mammoth opening above the hearth. Sarah shrank back as from a blow, backing into Eleanor, who stood behind her watching the conflagration, pleased with the enormity of her creation.

  ‘Oh dear …’

  ‘It’s fine. Don’t move.’

  Then they laughed together, comfortably, communally, remembering the encounter with the foxes when Sarah froze at Eleanor’s command into absolute attention. Now Eleanor’s arms were around Sarah’s shoulders, as if she were presenting her to the great fire, as if she were offering her for immolation by some devouring fire god. Sarah slipped down through them to the floor. Eleanor lowered herself. One behind the other, they stared at the fire, aware of each other’s breathing and heart beat. Sarah turned to touch Eleanor’s cheek, needing to be reassured of her warm presence.

  Eleanor never doubted, from the moment she looked into Sarah’s eyes, as deep blue as speedwells, and saw her pale slight face and pure sweet mouth, her brows as black and straight as calligraphic dashes, her childlike frame and straight, inky black hair, that, at long last, she had uncovered the mystery behind her own confused emotional life. Now she understood the meaning of the quirky enigmas of her dreams, the fantasies of her girlhood rides on the stone lions. Now knowing for what she had been waiting during her thirty-four empty years, she recognized in Sarah the missing object of her heart. Never again, she vowed to herself, would she be willing to be parted from her.

  For five years letters, notes, cameos, woven locks of hair encased in lockets, keepsakes, and inscribed books passed between Sarah Ponsonby and Eleanor Butler. On holiday, Sarah often came to the castle. In the long months between they wrote daily or, on rare occasion, Eleanor would travel in the marketing chaise and have it leave her a
nd her basket at Miss Parke’s gate. There she announced herself as Lady Eleanor Butler to see Miss Sarah Ponsonby with messages from home, like a lady bountiful come with provisions to a needy tenant.

  Lady Adelaide knew of Eleanor’s fondness for the schoolgirl and considered it salutory.

  ‘She is good for our Eleanor. When they are together Eleanor is less moody and irritable,’ she told His Lordship, who grunted his indifference to Eleanor’s moods, and added more claret to his glass. Lady Betty, when she heard of the visits and the accounts of Sarah’s contented stays at the castle, was glad that her niece was occupied happily, away from Woodstock, pleased that Sarah was being opened to the ways of aristocratic life and manners.

  Sarah and Eleanor’s letters to each other were full of an urgency, a longing unknown to the families:

  June 1774: ‘Believe me, my dearest friend, I would come if I could, I will come when I can. My wrenched knee now keeps me in, and makes visits difficult. My company is Lento, who has lost all his wild ways and become a sedate dog, and my thoughts of you. I am unhappy at home, but I cannot always persuade my parents, even when my knee is healed, of my need of the carriage to travel to market to assuage my moods. I suspect they are all too aware that you are the destination I seek.’

  September 1774: ‘My dearest love, I remember as I close my eyes at night how fine you looked in the night shirt I embroidered for you, how it fit your wonderful shoulders and fell to your ankles exactly as I had planned. Miss Parke thought me very diplomatic and gracious to have spent so much time on linen for Lord Butler. I made no effort to correct her mistaken notion.’

  March 1775: ‘How delightful that we shall have the whole time from Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday alone in our rooms! Will your parents return that evening or early Good Friday? I must know quickly because I am making a large card with the days, even the hours, embossed upon it in Gothic with deep blue, almost indigo ink. As the days pass I encircle them with green. I want to make a duplicate for you. Or is it foolish me alone who tracks the time so longingly while I practise my handwriting under Miss Parke’s eye? She does not know what to make of my choice of exercise subjects.’

  May 1778: ‘I am told I must leave school at month’s end and return permanently to Woodstock. My friends have assisted me in placing my clothes and books, my embroidery frames and pens and ink, in wicker boxes. Uncle William is sending the carriage and pair. The vest I have embroidered with gold and purple thread for you will be delivered to the castle by Mary Elton-Casey who passes on her way to her home. I wd, if I cd, be passing yr way too, rather than travelling to Woodstock. I wd have no wish to return home except for Frisk, who misses me and is said to howl at night for loneliness. I shall be in exile from you. Soon after I arrive, you will have word from me. I hope you will reply quickly, O my love.’

  When Eleanor wrote to Woodstock it was to reassure Sarah that somehow a way would be found for them to be together. The distance between them was now great, twenty-five miles on a road often rendered impassable or dangerous by rain, mud, robbers. At first they sent each other daily letters to keep up their spirits.

  Sarah wrote: ‘Woodstock is beautiful now. Frisk and I walk about much of the day, accompanied by a book in which I read while I rest. The gardens are especially fine, the pond full of small leaping fish that glitter in the sun as they rise and fall, almost in one motion. Now and then I catch sight of our stand of partridge. At dusk I often walk in the formal higher grounds. The perfection of this spring makes me sad: wd that you were here with me.’

  Eleanor responded in a burst of hopeful prose designed to hearten Sarah: ‘Not too much longer, my beloved, before we will find a way to be united. As soon as I can devise a plan that will persuade them over the natural objections that will be made against what is in our minds and hearts to effect.’

  Sarah had been home almost a year—eleven months and twenty-one days, according to the elegantly embroidered calendar she made and kept secretly in her clothes press—when she came to the end of her endurance of Sir William. At first, she shielded Eleanor from knowledge of her uncle’s sly pursuit of her, feeling that generalisations about her unhappiness would better serve her friend’s hot temper and peace of mind, but she could no longer disguise her true feelings.

  She wrote: ‘At first I believed it was impossible for so professed a man of honour to throw off his mask so shamefully. I thought if I were prudent I would be secured from appearing to understand his intentions towards me. Believe me, dear beloved, this was my hope, vain now, as I know. To whom can I turn? I must spare poor Lady Betty. Neither my pride, my resentment, nor any other passion shall ever be sufficiently powerful to make me give her any uneasiness, any suspicion of the true state of affairs between her husband and me. Unhappy as I am, I sometimes laugh to think of the earnestness with which she presses me to be obliging to him. How terrible it all is. My love, help me.’

  Eleanor’s shock could be heard in the reply she returned early the next day: ‘Try to avoid his presence, my dearest, until I can rescue you. You must be quick, you must be clever, above all, you must be careful. Now I know there is no time to be lost in my plans. You must think always of yourself, as do I, and of me, so that you do not stumble into his path.’

  Sarah’s most poignant letter was sent not to Eleanor but to Sir William, in his own house. She hoped thereby to rid herself of the pain of her suspicions, to be free of his attentions, to accost him with a letter, because she so feared a personal encounter.

  Her letter, in beautiful script that she entrusted to Mary-Caryll to deliver, was this: ‘I desire to be informed in writing, and only in writing, whether your motive for behaving as you do towards me is a desire that I should quit your house. If so, I promise in the most solemn manner that I shall take the first opportunity of doing so, and that my real motive for leaving shall ever be concealed from my dear Lady Betty, and from the world. Sarah.’

  To Eleanor she sent a copy of this letter. Nothing she might have done could have made her situation so clearly desperate.

  Eleanor was aghast. From Sir William came no response. Sarah watched him anxiously at table, at their brief encounters in halls and on landings. When their eyes met his seemed blank and uncomprehending, as though he had received no communication from her or had misplaced it before he had time to read it. For three days Sarah waited for a reply. The writing that came to her, by messenger, was from the castle in Eleanor’s close-lettered, crabbed script: ‘I shall come Friday night next. We will meet in the old Chippery barn. At close to ten, if I do not fall off the horse. I will bring my love, my love.’

  Mary-Caryll had served in the Fownes household since her dismissal from Sheepshead Inn at Inistiogue, where she both tended to the bar and kept the peace. She was a woman built like an oak tree, almost thirteen stone, and three inches more than six feet tall. During an altercation at closing time one night she threw a lethal candlestick at an unruly patron who had reached into the dress of a young barmaid and then been told to leave by Molly, the Bruiser, as Mary-Caryll was called in the pub. After the funeral she appealed to Sir William and was given a chambermaid’s berth at Woodstock: Lady Betty was touched by the towering woman’s quick defense of virtue.

  Mary-Caryll had no family, so her move to Woodstock was easily accomplished. Her arms were as broad and strong as a ploughman’s. Her chambermaid’s duties seemed too light, too easy to her. But she went about them willingly and was especially devoted to the care of the person and room of small, quiet Sarah Ponsonby, whose plight in the house she sensed was not unlike that of the barmaid she had so staunchly defended. Her fidelities had always been simple, direct, and on behalf of the weak: a deserted cat, her overworked mother, who died in her arms after a fire that destroyed their cottage, the homeless thirteen-year-old barmaid who slept on a shelf behind the bar of the Sheepshead Inn, and now the orphaned and threatened Miss Ponsonby.

  It was a cold wet evening early in April in the year 1778, in the same year that British so
ldiers in another hemisphere began to taste the bitter food of foreign defeat. Sarah Ponsonby said goodbye to Mary-Caryll, pressed upon her a small purse of coins, and then stepped out of a downstairs window into a flower bed. Mary-Caryll handed out Sarah’s portmanteau and basket containing Frisk, his muzzle bound up with a silk scarf. They whispered farewell, waved; Sarah put Frisk under one arm, her bag in her hand, and set off in the half light down the road towards Waterford.

  It was a hazardous way of departure, but Sarah feared the giveaway noises of the great front door and preferred to risk a twisted ankle. Outside the high hawthorn hedge, she met a labourer with a lantern whom Mary-Caryll had hired. He relieved her of her portmanteau. Together they set out to cover the three miles south to the old barn, deserted since the Chippery family had moved to Tipperary to try their fortunes with sheep. A thin steady rain fell. By the time they reached the place, Sarah’s cape was sodden. The rain had run down her neck to soak the worsted shirt Mary-Caryll had removed without permission from a houseman’s trunk. Her long skirt, one of Mary-Caryll’s own, was in danger of falling down, so wet was it, so insufficient the cord belt Mary-Caryll had devised. The labourer held the door open for her. She gave him a gold piece and thanked him for his services, and he went on his way to his home near Thomastown.

  Eleanor was not there. Sarah huddled in a corner and lit the candle Mary-Caryll had wisely sent with her. She took out the loaded pistol obtained by the provident maid from Sir William’s study and placed it beside her. She took off her wet cap, another Mary-Caryll borrowing that covered her hair, but she was too cold, too weary to remove her wet cape. She lay back against the truss of old, acrid hay, hoping it would absorb some of the moisture. Was Eleanor waylaid? Had she fallen as she rode? Had she been prevented from leaving the castle? Where was she? Would she come at all? Sarah’s fears and doubts multiplied. She clung to her little dog though his frail, furless body offered small protection. The sounds overhead, and beyond the barn door, were strange to her. They rang with menace: retainers of Sir William? A band of curious and hungry foxes? Owls? Robbers?