Chaff upon the Wind

by Margaret Dickinson

  As she pushed her way through the dancers towards the door, the sound of his mocking laughter followed her.

  He was sitting cross-legged in the centre of his bed, still fully dressed. There was no light burning in the room and the only faint light came from the window where the curtains were pulled back. He was sitting facing the window, staring down the darkened garden, over the wall and into the lighted barn at the far side of the stackyard. The faint sound of music drifted in through the open casement.

  Kitty set the tray down on the dressing table and went towards the window.

  ‘Leave it open, Kitty. I want to hear the music.’

  ‘But it’s draughty, Master Edward . . .’

  ‘Teddy,’ he said gently. ‘Please call me “Teddy”.’

  ‘I don’t want you to catch a chill.’

  ‘I won’t.’ There was a pause before he said very softly, ‘I thought you’d forgotten.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I’m late, Master . . . Teddy, but . . .’

  ‘It’s all right.’ He unwound his legs and slid to the floor. ‘You’re here now.’

  He was standing before her and holding out his arms to her. ‘Dance with me, Kitty. Please?’

  ‘Oh M— Teddy, do you think you should? I mean, won’t it make your breathing worse.’

  He chuckled. ‘Just for once, Kitty, I’m going to risk it.’

  She stepped towards him and tentatively put her hand on his shoulder. She felt his right arm slip around her waist and the hand holding hers was trembling slightly. He pulled her closer to him and they began to dance, moving in time with the faint sound of the music from the barn. They did not speak and only occasionally could she see his face in the dim light. Even then, his eyes were unfathomable depths in the shadows.

  Somewhere along the landing a door banged and Kitty jumped physically and stepped backwards out of the curve of his arm. ‘I – I must go. If anyone catches me here, I’ll be in awful trouble.’

  She could see that he was smiling faintly. ‘Well, I wouldn’t want to cause you any more trouble, Kitty. I reckon you’ve had enough disappointment for one day.’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s all right, really. I can understand why she did it. After all, she doesn’t get a lot of fun either, does she? There aren’t many young people around here she’s allowed to mix with.’

  He sighed. ‘I hope you’ll always be as understanding of my sister, Kitty. Really I do. Now, off you go, and . . . thank you.’

  Still holding her hand, Edward raised it and brushed it gently with his lips.

  Twelve

  ‘Kitty, you’re to pack some of Miss Miriam’s clothes and Bemmy will drive you to the Hall,’ Mrs Grundy told her. ‘She’s gone to stay with the Hardings for the week and you’re to go too, seeing as there’s no mistress in the house to chaperone the young people.’

  Kitty felt herself torn. Part of her was thrilled at the thought of spending a few days in the gracious Hall that lay about two miles off in several acres of parkland, but away from the Manor she would not see Jack. After helping with the local harvesting, Kitty had feared that Jack and Ben would move on.

  ‘Mester Franklin dun’t want any threshing doing until early November and then only for a day,’ Jack had told her, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth as he watched her face.

  ‘So you’re going?’ she had said flatly.

  ‘We-ell,’ he said slowly, ‘yes – and no.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean? Are you leaving the Manor or not?’

  His grin widened. ‘Like I said – yes and no.’

  Kitty gave him a playful smack on his arm. ‘Stop your teasing, Jack Thorndyke, else I’ll—’

  His hands spanned her waist and he lifted her up and swung her round.

  Startled by his sudden action, she gave a little squeal. ‘Put me down, Jack. What if someone sees?’

  He was laughing openly now as he lowered her to the ground again. ‘Let ’em see. They’ll see a lot more soon.’

  Kitty’s eyes widened. ‘Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘I’m going to be around for a while, young Kitty, so you’ll not get rid of me so easily.’

  With a surge of excitement that left her breathless, Kitty put her hands on his chest and looked up into his eyes. ‘I don’t want to. Oh Jack, you know I don’t want you to go away.’

  ‘I’ll be away in the day, o’ course, while me and Ben are working on the other farms, but at night – every night – I’ll be back here.’ He paused and then added, with a note of triumph, ‘Mester Franklin has given me leave to sleep in the room above the old stables, well, garage, I suppose it is now.’

  ‘Oh,’ Kitty cried. ‘The little room Bemmy used to have before he moved into the attic rooms in the house? Oh Jack, that’s wonderful. Wonderful . . .’ And, joyfully, she had thrown her arms about him, uncaring herself now who might see.

  And for the following two weeks, it had been wonderful. Every night she had crept out to meet him in the yard or in the copse across the field behind the Manor. Once she had even allowed him to take her up to the tiny loft room.

  ‘What about Ben?’ she’d asked him nervously. ‘Is he sleeping here too?’

  ‘No. His family – his wife and three kids – live about five miles from here. He goes home every night. That’s why Ben likes being in this area so much. And I . . .’ He had reached out for her then, pulling her towards him. ‘I haven’t any objection to being here either.’

  ‘You going to stand there daydreaming all day then?’ Mrs Grundy’s voice pulled her back to the moment.

  ‘You mean Miss Miriam’s gone there already? I didn’t know. She never said anything this morning. When did she go?’

  ‘Apparently, Bemmy drove Mr Franklin and her there after breakfast. I don’t know any more than that except that he’s brought word back that she’s staying and you’re needed there.’

  ‘But,’ Kitty blurted out without stopping to think how it would sound, ‘haven’t they got servants? A maid who can look after her and chaperone her too?’

  ‘Course they’ve got servants in a great house like that. Far more than we’ve got here.’ Mrs Grundy glanced at Kitty in surprise. ‘What’s the matter with you? Most girls’d give their eye teeth to spend a few nights in such a place. It’ll be like a holiday for you, girl. You’ll only be expected to look after your own young mistress, not do any of the housework like you still have to do here.’

  Kitty was silent, avoiding the cook’s searching gaze.

  ‘They’re very well off, y’know, the Hardings, and with Guy being the only son, well, Miss Miriam’d be set for life if she married him.’

  Kitty tried one last desperate effort. ‘But what about madam? I’m her maid too.’

  ‘Sarah will look after her. Madam won’t mind. You know how good she is, and besides,’ she added, turning back to stir the bubbling stockpot, ‘if anyone wants that girl safely married, it’s her mother.’

  Kitty sighed. She had no choice but to go. She’d wanted the job, she reminded herself, and she should have realized that she would have to follow her young mistress wherever she went. If only it wasn’t while Jack was still here. She’d been so thrilled when she’d learned that he’d be coming back to the Manor and now it was she who was being forced to leave. She bit her lip wondering how she could sneak out to see Jack before she was obliged to go.

  ‘And don’t forget to slip in and see Master Edward before you go. Poor little chap, he’ll be so lonely with both Miss Miriam and you gone.’

  ‘He’s fourteen, for heaven’s sake,’ Kitty snapped. ‘You talk as if he’s about four years old.’

  Since the night of the Harvest dance, Kitty had begun to think of Edward as a young man, though whether it was because of what Jack had said or because of how Edward himself had acted that night, even she could not be sure. She just knew that to her, now, he was no longer a little boy.

  Mrs Grundy sighed. ‘Aye, you’re right, of course. But with him being
so sick most of the time, well, you tend to forget he’s the age he is.’

  Kitty spread a thick blanket and sheet on the end of the kitchen table and picked up the small triangular iron heating on the range. She spat on the smooth surface and when it sizzled, she gave a small nod of satisfaction and moved to the table to smooth the delicate lace collar on Miss Miriam’s morning dress. ‘How old’s Mr Guy then?’

  Mrs Grundy cast her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Now let me think. He must be twenty-two or three now. Yes, that’s it, twenty-three ’cos I remember them celebrating his coming of age a couple of years ago.’

  ‘And his mother died when he was born, you said?’

  The cook’s round face creased in sadness. ‘It was all very sad. Poor Sir Ralph was very cut up about it. He used to spend a lot of time here then. The old master and the mistress were very kind to him and then of course when the present Mrs Franklin married the master, he used to bring young Guy over . . .’

  But Kitty was only half listening to the cook’s reminiscences. Her thoughts, as she carefully ironed the creases from Miriam’s gown, were on her own problems.

  Just how was she to get out to see Jack?

  ‘Is she ready, then?’ Norman Bembridge stood in the kitchen doorway.

  Bemmy, as he was known, was small and stocky with bow legs. His white bushy eyebrows seemed permanently drawn together in a frown above a bulbous nose.

  Kitty turned to smile at him. ‘You can load those on, Bemmy. I’ve just me own bag to bring down now.’ She was dressed in her maid’s uniform with a cape around her shoulders. Perched up beside Bemmy on the motor, it would be cold even on a warm autumn day.

  Bembridge eyed the huge trunk and the two small bags and sniffed. ‘Staying a month, is she?’

  Kitty laughed as she hurried through the door and ran up the stairs to fetch her own, very small bag.

  ‘Kitty? Kitty, is that you?’

  As she passed Master Edward’s room, trying to make no sound, she heard him calling. She groaned inwardly, sighed and then pushed open the door, pasting a smile on to her mouth.

  He was still in bed, a book propped against his knees, but his gaze was upon the door and met her eyes as soon as she entered the room. ‘You weren’t going without saying goodbye, were you?’

  Kitty swallowed and crossed her fingers behind her back. ‘Of course not, Master Edward. But I can’t stay many minutes. Bemmy’s loading Miss Miriam’s cases into the motor now.’

  The boy’s head dropped back against the pillows and his glance went towards the window and the outside world. ‘What wouldn’t I give for a ride in the motor?’ he murmured.

  Suddenly, Kitty felt ashamed of her selfish impatience and of her own robust good health. She could not imagine what it must be like to be an invalid, shut away in one room day after day. His improvement at harvest had been followed by another bad attack of asthma and he had been in bed for the last two weeks.

  She moved closer to the bed. ‘We’ll soon be back, Master Edward.’

  ‘When?’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘End of the week, I think.’

  His face fell. ‘Six whole days,’ he sighed.

  She walked round the bed, edging nearer the window that looked out over the garden and towards the stackyard beyond the wall at the end, but his gaze followed her, watching her every movement. Then her attention was caught by the sight of Jack beside his engine.

  Kitty whirled round from the window. ‘I must go, I’ll see you at the weekend and . . .’ She paused by the end of his bed and wagged her forefinger at him. ‘When I come back, I want to see you up and dressed and sitting in a chair.’

  Suddenly the boy grinned, the smile lighting up his face and bringing a tinge of colour to his pale cheeks. ‘You’re on, Kitty Clegg.’

  ‘Jack! Jack!’

  As the engine gave a few chugs and burst into life, Kitty’s voice was drowned in the noise that vibrated through the stackyard. Anxiously, she glanced over her shoulder. Bemmy was standing beside the motor car, glowering at her. Kitty bit her lip and then she pushed open the gate and ran across the straw-strewn cobbles.

  ‘Jack . . .’

  As she touched his arm, he jumped and turned to face her, frowning. ‘What is it?’

  Standing on tiptoe so that her mouth was closer to his ear, above the noise she shouted, ‘I’m going away. I’ve got to go. I don’t want to, but Miss Miriam . . .’

  He shrugged and bending close to her ear, said, ‘Have a good time.’

  She stared at him. ‘Is that all you can say?’

  ‘What?’ he bellowed as the noise from the engine seemed to grow louder. ‘I can’t hear you.’ Then he straightened, grinned down at her, lifted his hand in a gesture of farewell and turned away from her. His whole attention was on Sylvie, the engine so dear to him that he had bestowed upon her the pretty, feminine name.

  With a sudden flash of insight, Kitty wondered if he thought more about his engine than he did of any of the girls that rumour said he courted everywhere he went. For at that moment, as his hand rested lovingly upon the machine, she, Kitty Clegg, might not have existed.

  Angry tears stung her eyes. ‘You don’t want to hear me, Jack Thorndyke,’ she muttered, but knew he could not hear her. She blinked back the tears, straightened her shoulders and, head held high, she marched from the stackyard.

  As she pulled the gate shut behind her and walked towards the frowning Bemmy, something made her glance up at the house.

  Watching her from his bedroom window, dressed only in his white nightshirt, was Edward.

  Thirteen

  The motor car bowled along the country lanes, the wind snatching at Kitty’s bonnet and cape. Bembridge gripped the wheel until his knuckles showed white. Neither of them spoke. He was too concerned with negotiating the bends in the winding road and Kitty with clinging on to her clothing and her precarious seat beside him.

  They passed through a hamlet, Bemmy not deigning to slow. Barefoot children ran into the road and alongside the motor, keeping pace for a few yards, laughing and shrieking and pointing, though above the noise of the engine Kitty could not hear what they said. Here and there women appeared in the doorways of their cottages and men working in the fields paused to watch the ‘new-fangled motey car’, as Bemmy scathingly called it, pass by.

  Bembridge had served the Franklin family all his working life. He had started as a young stable lad for the present master’s father, rising to the position of head groom until that disastrous day when Henry Franklin had sold all his horses and bought a motor car. Now he doubled as Mr Franklin’s valet and chauffeur but he still left no one in any doubt as to the fact that he bemoaned the loss of his beloved horses.

  ‘It’s the transport of the future, Bembridge. You must learn to drive it. You’re a chauffeur now, not a groom,’ the master had boomed.

  ‘But I like grooming ’osses,’ Bemmy would mutter frequently to anyone who would listen. ‘I’m not cut out to be pandering after gentlemen at their toilet. He should have a man trained proper in that sort of work.’

  ‘Can’t afford it, now can he, Bemmy?’ Mrs Grundy would remark reasonably. ‘You know we all have to double up. What if I started grumbling that I’d only one kitchen maid to help me instead of two or three and a scullery maid, an’ all? And I don’t get any extra help on special occasions, but I’m still expected to cope and come up with a lot of fancy dishes.’

  ‘Tweren’t like that in the old master’s day,’ he would mutter, still determined to have the last word. ‘He had a valet who did nowt else but valet.’

  ‘Well, them days is gone now, Bemmy,’ Cook would say and not without a trace of regret in her own tone at times.

  So Bemmy, who was not yet quite ready to retire, had no choice but to drive the motor car and learn how to be a ‘gentleman’s gentleman’. Though he didn’t have to like it and his reckless handling of the vehicle showed his resentment.

  Mrs Grundy would shake her head. ‘You’d thin
k the master would tell him off, but he sits up there in the back being thrown about and just laughs. I reckon,’ she nodded sagely, ‘he eggs Bemmy on to drive like a lunatic. Well, I ain’t ever getting in that there motey car with him, I can tell you.’

  But Kitty had not been given the choice.

  The motor sped down an incline, bucketing from side to side, scattering hens dawdling in the open gateway of a farm in a squawking, flapping flurry. Bemmy wrenched on the wheel and swung the vehicle in between two high wrought-iron gates and along a winding drive. Rounding a corner, they saw a square Georgian-style house overlooking a tree-dotted parkland, where deer raised their heads, eyes bulging with alarm, thin legs poised for flight. Passing the front of the house, Bemmy turned down the side and round to the back of the building and drew the vehicle to a halt outside the servants’ entrance.

  Without a word to Kitty, or any offer to help her down from the high seat, he clambered down and went to the rear of the vehicle to untie the trunk and bags. Kitty climbed down and stood on the ground, not surprised to find that her legs were shaking and her head was swimming.

  As he lugged Miriam’s trunk towards the back door, Bemmy said, ‘Ya’ll ’a’ ter mind ya p’s and q’s here, gel. ‘Tain’t like the Manor, y’know.’

  Sir Ralph employed more than twice as many servants as the Franklin family. A cook, two kitchen maids and a scullery maid, two housemaids and a tweeny, a butler, a footman and a chauffeur. The list seemed endless and, in addition, Kitty learned, both Sir Ralph and his son, Guy, had a valet of their own who accompanied them wherever they went. With no mistress of the house, there was no lady’s maid; the housekeeper was in overall charge.

  The moment she stepped across the threshold on to the red tiles of the kitchen floor, Kitty could feel the tension. She was appalled to hear the cook shouting at the scullery maid, a tiny creature who looked scarcely more than ten years old, but who must be thirteen at least.

  ‘Haven’t you got those taties peeled yet? Why, ya useless—’ The tirade paused as she became aware that someone had entered her kitchen. ‘What you staring at, me girl? Ah, Mr Bembridge . . .’ The sudden change in the woman’s attitude made Kitty’s mouth drop open in surprise. The woman, tall and thin and not at all like the comforting, round little body of dear Mrs Grundy, came towards them. ‘This is Miss Miriam’s maid, is it?’ She cast a fleeting, disapproving glance over Kitty, who held her head high and returned the look. ‘Looks a bold little madam, to my mind,’ she remarked to no one in particular. ‘Well, girl,’ she addressed Kitty. ‘You’ll know your place here, let me tell you. Mrs Bembridge runs this household with a rod of iron. A veritable rod of iron . . .’ She turned her thin smile upon Bemmy. ‘Isn’t that right, Mr Bembridge?’