‘So there ain’t no pleasure to be had for a woman, then?’ she finally decided to ask.
‘Not so far as I’ve worked out. And I know a good many women who’d say the same.’
‘But the men enjoy it?’
‘Well, I reckon there’s always one or two that wants summat more…’ she lowered her head, ‘…unnatural but most women I know, have worked out how to keep their husbands happy with only modest effort. An’ that’s why I say the best you can hope for is a considerate man who don’t make unreasonable demands or come at you drunk too often.’
‘Hm.’
‘And I’ll tell you now, there’s nothing but disappointment to be had from wishing it otherwise. Fancies and daydreams are fine for young girls, Mary, but now you’re a wife, you’d be well advised to knuckle down and get on with it. Life isn’t like one of those fairy tales, you know. It’s hard work.’
Well, she had to agree with her mother on that point.
‘For certain it’s beginning to feel that way.’
And, it was also beginning to feel as though her expectations of something more had been unrealistic; her only role apparently being simply to submit to her husband’s needs. At least he didn’t seem unduly demanding. But now there was yet another thing bothering her, too, and it was the notion that from here on, she would always be beholden to him and without question, do his bidding. Surely that made her little more than his servant, to be obeyed in all that he saw fit? In fairness, there was no evidence so far that George would be unjust or cruel but what if he was? What could be done? Suddenly, without the romantic notions of girlhood, marriage looked a lot more one-sided, not that there was any alternative; a girl had to marry. No, all she could do now was hope that the stranger – whose offer of marriage she had so lightly accepted – turned out to be a fortunate choice. As she sat there, though, a shadow seemed to creep over her and it felt like a very cold one, too.
‘How was the randy?’
‘What? Oh, lovely,’ she answered, her mind still on the discovery that apparently, this truly was it; this was all there was to being married. As discoveries went, it made her feel cheated. But becoming aware that her mother was looking at her expectantly, she tried to remember what they had been talking about and added randomly, ‘There was so much food an’ music an’ dancing. You should have come, Ma. It was a real treat.’ She said it lifelessly, though and without much sincerity, her mind still on her mother’s earlier revelations. After all, when it came down to it, Ma had nothing to gain by lying to her.
‘Aye, well…’
‘And everyone admired my dress,’ she thought to say, remembering then the compliments, and sensing that perhaps she shouldn’t hold her mother responsible for everything. Some things might be her fault but not all of them. ‘They all said you must be a real fine needlewoman.’
‘Well, it always was one of my better skills,’ her mother replied with a little more warmth now. ‘And I wasn’t going to let you down for your weddin’ day, was I?’
Chapter 4
Strained Relations
Amid the bustle of Wembridge market, Mary found herself smiling. Barely four months ago, she had stood in front of this very stall with her mother chiding her to act more ladylike since you never knew who was watching. She remembered laughing and asking Ma whether she was expecting an army of suitors to suddenly wheel around the corner. Either way, she’d had no earthly reason to suspect that she would be standing here now, as Mistress Mary Strong. But here she was anyway, waiting for the tallow chandler to finish wrapping her goods – her goods – proof that unexpected things could happen in even the most ordinary of lives.
With the weekly market crowd thronging about her, she idly scanned their number, her eyes coming to a stop at the sight of a shock of hair so apparently windblown and wayward that it could only be Hannah. Of course, she would be on her stall and in which case, she would go over and say hello.
With her purchases in her basket, she set off across the square. She had always groaned whenever her mother spotted someone she knew, since it meant standing quietly by while conversations about weather, children and matters of health dragged on, usually concluding with a remark of astonishment at her own supposed blossoming into womanhood and to which she was required to nod and smile politely. Yes, she really was seventeen now. No, she wasn’t courting. Yes, it must be a blessing for her mother to have such a capable pair of hands about the place. It had been sufficiently tedious, week after week, to make her swear that when the time came, she wouldn’t fall into the same gossipy trap. But going across to talk to Hannah was different. She was her mother-in-law. And she didn’t think that enquiring after your mother-in-law’s day could be looked upon as gossip.
Weaving her way through the crowd, she looked up and then came to a halt. There was the stall just a few paces in front of her but no Hannah; only Annie. Bother. Hannah must have taken the chance to go off on an errand. So now what should she do? Should she go on or not? The last thing she wanted was to try and strike up a conversation with Annie but then they were both part of the same family now, a fact that brought with it certain obligations, one of them being the need to show respect to George’s relations no matter her opinion of their character. And anyway, she couldn’t avoid her forever. It was even possible that they had simply failed to get off on the right foot. Yes, maybe she just needed to make a better effort. Friendship needed two people to work properly but only one to set it on its way. What she had to do now, though, was get her feet to share her conviction. Oh, for goodness sake: it would be fine. Just go and talk to the woman, she told herself. After all, with a bit of good fortune, Hannah would return anyway and then it wouldn’t be such an ordeal.
With her basket growing heavy on her arm, she swapped it to her other hand and then, drawing a long breath, coaxed her reluctant mouth back into a light smile and forced herself to take the remaining steps towards the Summerleas stall. A pleasant smile and a polite hello was all that was needed to disarm most grouchy people. But when she drew alongside, any chance to offer the pleasantries she had been rehearsing on the way over was forestalled by Annie looking up and offering a greeting of her own.
‘Oh, it’s you.’
Goodness, she was an ill-mannered woman. Perhaps Ma had been right and it was Tom’s fault for letting her get away with it.
‘Um, yes. Hello.’ One thing was for certain: she had never felt so continually wrong-footed by one person. But she would be gracious in spite of it. ‘How are you, today, Annie?’ Surely it would be hard for even the grumpiest of women to fault that for politeness?
‘Does George know you’re out on your own?’
‘What…? He—’
‘Never mind. What are you doing in town?’
‘Oh, just fetching a few needs, you know; soap, candles, sugar…’ You see, she reminded herself; they were more than able to hold a civil conversation together and reaching to her basket, she pulled aside the cover to display the contents.
‘Huh. Proper little housey-wife all of a sudden, aren’t you?’
‘I’m not sure I—’
‘Look, were you wanting summat or not?’
Just because you may have misjudged this by a mile, she found herself thinking, there’s no need to hang your head. Meet her look. She’s no different to you: just flesh and blood and…
‘Um, no, I just thought to come over an’ see you.’
‘Did you, indeed?’ She couldn’t help it; she turned her eyes to the wheels of cheese laid out on the trestle, because looking at them required a good deal less courage than trying to meet such a glowering face. ‘Well understand this,’ Annie was continuing regardless, ‘just because you wed into this family, don’t think it somehow makes us equal. It don’t. Nor do it mean that I have to be your friend.’ Unprepared for quite such naked hostility, she recoiled, an action that served only to draw Annie further over the trestle towards her. ‘Coming to market might be a game for you; like playing at house. But I
don’t traipse all the way down here before dawn each an’ every Thursday for the fun of it. I got real work to do. So while you may want to stop by and prattle on about soap and candles and the like, I got customers that want serving and you, you’re holding them up. So if you’re done wasting my time, why don’t you take yourself off home and play your little game there instead?’
‘I—’ But the truth of the matter was that she had no idea how to respond to such venom and so she simply stood, rigid with disbelief, her heart thumping in her chest and her face crimson with humiliation. How could one woman behave like that towards another? Quite easily, it seemed because already, Annie had re-affixed her charm.
‘Forgive me there, lover. How much are you after?’ she was saying to the elderly woman next to her who had been bending low over the butter. And so, with no wish to prolong her discomfort, she bowed her head, and threading quickly through the knots of customers between the stalls, stole away.
Reaching what felt like a safe distance from the incident, she came to a halt. How foolish to have thought that Annie might actually have wanted to converse with her. Or was it, though? Even just the quickest of glances back to the stall suggested that few people would think her capable of such disrespect, especially standing as she was now, with her head thrown back in merriment and her hand resting sociably on her customer’s arm. She shook her head, it being of no use now that a dozen or so assertive responses were crowding her head and tormenting her with their suitability; not that she would ever have found the courage to deliver any of them anyway. No, there was nothing to be done now other than vow to adopt greater caution next time.
Feeling as though a little of her composure was beginning to return, she crossed the square and turned through Fishlake Arch. It was a mild morning and since it was also dry underfoot, she would take the short cut across Abbey Fields, her quicker-than-normal pace designed to leave her misery trailing in her wake. And it seemed to work, too because by the time she reached the stile onto the cart track, not only did she need to pause for breath but she had also begun to feel slightly less anguished. Behind her, it was pleasing to see that the town’s habitations had already merged into a single, grey-brown entity while up ahead, pale and silvery in the slanting light, the lane towards Verneybrook crested the rises and dipped down out of sight on the other side in the fashion of a sinuous eel in a languid pool. Heaving her basket ahead of her, she climbed the stile, and before long was once again striding along, the gentle warmth of the golden morning slowly repairing her spirits. She even started humming; her spirits further uplifted by the beauty of the countryside in its autumn gown. She spared nothing her smile. She bestowed it upon the bejewelled webs of hunting spiders that sparkled against the plum and claret shades of the hawthorn. And passing the orchards, she smiled as she recognised the heavy smell of the cider apples beginning to ferment on the boughs, their scent reminiscent of the old barn with its winter stores and the drying pummy from the first of the year’s apple pressings. And raising her face to the light breeze, she noticed how the best of the rose hips had gone over now and how even those that the birds had yet to take were starting to properly spoil. Yes, summer’s final bounty was still just about holding out against the advance of winter’s chill; the pungent bouquet of damp and decay bringing back memories of walking home from market at this time of year as a young girl and of being lured by the gloss on those final few berries on the mounds of the brambles. But then came her mother’s warning, as ominous now as then: never pick blackberries after Old Michaelmas Day since the devil will have spit on them. She could remember even now, how peculiar it seemed that the devil should want to concern himself with such miserliness when by all accounts, he apparently had far graver temptations to oversee. But there had never been any point in questioning Ma on the finer points of such riddles, since her response was always one of the same two, it generally being considered pot luck which.
‘That ain’t for the likes of us to ask,’ seemed her favourite, although depending on the precise nature of the seemingly innocuous question, it might just as easily have been, ‘Nice folk like us don’t talk about that kind of thing.’ Whichever it turned out to be, an airy wave would always signal that she considered the matter closed.
Thinking about it now, though, she had the strongest of suspicions that given the chance, there was a very great deal indeed that Ma would find to say about Annie Strong, nice folk or not.
*
‘Annie don’t like me, you know.’
Glancing across to where George was working alongside her in the vegetable garden that Saturday afternoon, Mary saw his hand hover above a tuft of groundsel and a deep frown spread over his forehead like a crease across linen. She hadn’t set out to raise the matter with him but something about the mood between them at that moment had felt right.
‘Aye? What makes you say that?’
Reaching for her trowel, she dug at a clump of clover.
‘A good many things.’ Noticing that he made no further comment, though, she ventured to elaborate. ‘She’s always very cold toward me.’ To her mind, cold sounded better than spiteful and also ran a lower risk of making her sound childish.
‘Well, she don’t know you very well yet.’
She watched him pull out the groundsel and toss it onto the pile. Until the other day, his reply would have seemed entirely reasonable.
‘Maybe not. But if you ask me, she don’t make much of an effort to, either.’ She waited, determined not to look expectant or badger for an answer. That he didn’t seem about to respond, though, was disappointing. Perhaps she needed a different approach, and taking her trowel to a rosette of plantain leaves, she racked her brain for one. Perhaps he could be persuaded to tell her something about Annie’s family. She could probably ask an innocent enough question and after all, to show a modicum of curiosity about her new family was only natural. ‘Where’s she from?’
‘Where’s who from?’ She watched him reach to pull at a wispy thistle only to see it snap off at ground level. ‘Damnation.’
‘Annie. Where’s her family?’ She stood up to straighten her back. Don’t press him too much, she reminded herself. ‘These butter docks are devilish tough,’ she instead pronounced of the weeds. ‘Where’s she from, though?’
‘Lord, Mary, I don’t know.’ It was his tone rather than his words that made her glance towards him; not cross so much as weary. And he seemed to prefer to continue digging rather than look up at her. ‘All I can recall with any truth, is that she lost her ma when she was little… and then not much later her pa died in an accident and so she ended up living with Ellen’s family. By all accounts they’re distant cousins or summat.’
‘Oh. I didn’t realise they’re related.’
‘No, you wouldn’t know to look at the pair of them, would you? One’s as dark as the other is fair.’
When she caught his eye, he did at least give her the briefest of smiles.
‘She definitely don’t like me though.’
‘Look, I’m sure that ain’t so. I’m sure—’
‘It is,’ she insisted without waiting for him to finish. ‘She’s made that real plain.’ Recalling the incident in the market a few days previously, the hot feeling of humiliation washed over her afresh and although having decided to proceed with caution, her words tumbled out in a rush. ‘She’s so much older than me and she’s been here so much longer and she’s down in the farmhouse all cosy with everyone. So you’d think with all of that she wouldn’t mind me being here, ’specially since I’m not likely to want to… what’s that thing – usurp her. But from the way she’s behaving, you’d think I was her most feared enemy or… or in her way or summat.’ So much for her intention to go about it in considered fashion, then.
‘How do you mean, in her way? In her way… how?’
She regarded him carefully, watching as he affected interest in a dock leaf; turning the mottled, leathery foliage this way and that in his hand.
‘Oh, I don
’t know. I just know that she makes me feel real unwelcome.’
‘I’m sure she doesn’t mean to.’
‘Oh but that’s just it, she does. You can see it in her eyes and she’s so rude sometimes, too. And she don’t care who it’s in front of, neither.’
‘Mary,’ he suddenly said, driving the trowel firmly into the soft earth and turning to look at her, ‘it don’t do to talk about people behind their backs, especially if there’s a chance that… well, that maybe you’re mistaken.’
Struck by the weariness of his tone, she thought carefully this time before opening her mouth.
‘So what are you saying, then? That I just let her go on being mean to me?’
‘Look, are you sure you ain’t… well, you know, imagining it? You sure that—’
‘Definitely. I never bothered you with it before since I knew you’d think it tiresome but the other day she—’
‘All right, all right. Spare me the details.’ Closing her mouth, she pressed her lips together. The exasperation in his voice was obvious and the last thing she wanted was to rile him as well. ‘Next time I see her, I’ll speak to her for you.’
‘No! You’ll only tell her what I said and that’ll make it look like I been telling tales.’
‘Very well. If that’s not what you want.’ The speed with which he acquiesced took her by surprise. ‘Just try not to fret so much. Even if what you say is true, Ellen likes you well enough.’
‘Aye, I know, and I like her too; she’s real nice to me but that don’t make up for the fact that Annie makes me feel so—’
‘Look, Mary, please stop belabouring the matter. If you don’t want me saying anything to her, then why are you still going on about it?’
‘Sorry.’
A Country Marriage Page 9
