The Green Ribbons

by Clare Flynn

  THE GREEN RIBBONS

  by Clare Flynn

  CRANBROOK PRESS

  THE GREEN RIBBONS

  Copyright © 2016 Clare Flynn

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Cranbrook Press 2016

  London, England.

  No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Under no circumstances may any part of this book be photocopied for resale.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and coincidental.

  Cover photography from Shutterstock.com

  Cover design JD Smith Designs

  DEDICATION

  For my parents

  Tom Flynn 1924–1989

  Kay Flynn 1928–2016

  CHAPTER ONE

  I sometimes hold it half a sin

  To put in words the grief I feel;

  For words, like Nature, half reveal

  And half conceal the Soul within.

  (from In Memoriam, Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

  June 1900

  Hephzibah shivered as her parents’ coffins were lowered on ropes into the hole in the ground. A squirrel ran across the grass behind the grave. As she watched it scrambling up a tree, Hephzibah bit her lip, fighting back the tears. How did she have any left to cry? They had been tears of shock at first that both parents had managed to get themselves mown down by a tram. Afterwards came the loss, grief and loneliness that she wondered if she would ever shake off, mixed with anger that they had died such a stupid avoidable death.

  Hephzibah had been at home in Oxford packing her bags for the six month trip the three of them were about to make to Rome. Her parents had been in London making the final arrangements for the journey. They should have been leaving today and instead here she was, alone, witnessing their interment in a shared grave.

  Not only was she now facing life as an orphan, with no other living relatives, but she would be penniless. She couldn’t blame her stepfather. His was a sin of omission not intent. He would never have expected to die so young. He’d probably thought there was plenty of time to make provision for the stepdaughter he adored and had treated as though she were his own flesh and blood.

  Hephzibah looked around at the crowd of mourners. Professor Prendergast, her stepfather, had been a popular and well-respected man. There was a contingent of students and dons, but the stepbrother she’d never met hadn’t deemed it worth his while to make the journey from South America to England to pay his respects, even though she had offered to postpone the funeral until he could complete the voyage. He was an engineer working on the construction of a railway out there and told her that he would leave it to the lawyers to sort out his inheritance. He didn’t enquire about her own circumstances. Now he would get the lot – the house in London and every penny – even the money her own late father had left to her mother when he died, all swept up into Professor Prendergast’s estate.

  Hephzibah didn’t care about the inheritance. It was the realisation that she was now on her own, soon to be homeless and without a clue what to do about it. She leaned over the edge of the grave and dropped two white roses she had plucked from the college garden onto the coffins.

  Tears pouring down her cheeks, Hephzibah turned away from the graveside and ran out of the cemetery past the mourners waiting to pay their respects.

  Over the weeks that followed her parents’ funeral, Hephzibah struggled to know what to do. Her friends were as devoid of ideas as she was. All of them offered to keep a lookout for any suitable employment that also offered accommodation, but she sensed they now saw her as an encumbrance and were just going through the motions, hoping she would fade away and become someone else’s problem.

  The assumption had always been that she would one day marry a don like her father, or possibly one of his students, but marriage had not been a pressing issue. Her father had talked of her studying at one of the women’s colleges first and had been coaching her for the entrance examinations – but there was no chance of that happening now that she had no means of supporting herself.

  The day she had been dreading dawned at last. She had been summoned by the Master of her father’s college. Hephzibah knew he would want to know when she would move out of the house, which was owned by the college and situated within the grounds.

  Over breakfast she opened the post as usual – each day brought a diminishing number of letters of condolence and an increasing number of unpaid bills. She added them to the pile to be sent to the solicitors to be dealt with as part of probate. She opened the last envelope and read the letter inside. Perhaps her prayers had at last been answered.

  Stuffing the letter in her coat pocket she set off for the Master’s house. Ten minutes later she found herself in his office, sitting on the edge of a chair that was too big for her, making her feel small and awkward and out of place. She twisted her hands in her lap nervously as her host spoke the words she had dreaded hearing.

  ‘Miss Wildman, we need to discuss your future plans,’ said the Master. ‘I do not wish to inconvenience you, but the new Dean will want to move into College House before term begins. Perhaps there is something we can do to help? I imagine you intend to live with a relative? Or will you stay at your stepfather’s London house?’ He peered at her over the top of his half glasses.

  ‘I have no relatives,’ she said, wondering why this fact made her feel ashamed, when it was not something over which she had any control. ‘Papa had a son from his first marriage, but he was already grown up and had left home when Papa’s first wife died. My own father had no living relatives and Grandmama, my mother’s mother, died last year.’ She paused for a moment then added, ‘The London house has been let since we moved to Oxford.’

  ‘Dear, dear. That’s unfortunate. But at least you can use the rental income to live on and rent a room for yourself?’

  Hephzibah lowered her eyes. She studied a shaft of sunlight which had carved a line through the Master’s carpet, revealing the previously invisible spatters of ink which peppered its surface. She had never entered the hallowed portals of the Master’s house before and felt uncomfortable and out of place. She swallowed and raised her eyes to look at him. ‘My father’s estate, including the income from his London property, will pass entirely to my stepbrother. Papa had intended to make an allowance to me but had not yet had opportunity to do so.’

  The Master frowned. ‘I see, I see. I suppose Professor Prendergast would not have expected to meet such an unfortunate and early demise. Tragic. Terrible thing to happen. And Mrs Prendergast too. Quite shocking.’

  The elderly man looked flustered. Hephzibah had noticed how some people were embarrassed by death. Losing her own father when she was a child had made her see death as a fact of life. While that didn’t lessen the pain, she couldn’t understand why people were reluctant to mention it. It was as if discussing death somehow risked tempting fate into advancing the time of their own demise.

  ‘I received a letter this morning from one of Papa’s former students, a Mr...’ She pulled a folded letter from her pocket and examined it. ‘Nightingale. The Reverend Mr Merritt Nightingale. He is a parson in a village called Nettlestock in Berkshire.’

  The Master waved a hand in the air. ‘Nightingale. I believe I remember him. A good student. Took a double first. I’ve never heard of Nettlestoc
k though.’ He frowned and Hephzibah sensed his impatience.

  ‘Mr Nightingale mentioned in his letter that the local squire there is seeking a governess for his ten-year-old daughter. I wonder if it might be a suitable opening for me, although I know nothing of Mr Nightingale, nor the place.’

  The Master’s relief showed immediately on his face. ‘Governess. Perfect. Just the thing for a young woman such as yourself. Where were you educated?’

  ‘Mama taught me all I know, including French and a little Latin. Then over the past months Papa had begun to teach me some ancient Greek, but I fear we had got no further than the rudiments of grammar.’

  ‘More than adequate, Miss Wildman. An excellent plan. Do you need a letter of recommendation? I will be happy to furnish one. As you know I held your late stepfather in high regard.’

  ‘But you don’t know me or my competencies.’

  He waved his hand again. ‘No matter. I am sure your mother will have prepared you for all that will be required in the upbringing of a young girl.’ He chuckled and shook his head. ‘No need to worry about the Latin and Greek. Good manners, reading of the Bible and some of the finer feminine skills such as singing and sewing should be more than adequate. And a bit of French never did anyone any harm. If the Reverend Nightingale recommends this family I am sure it will be a good one.’

  The Master rose from his chair and said, ‘Very good, Miss Wildman, very good indeed.’

  She was dismissed.

  The packing was almost finished. The furniture had been dispatched to storage, pending the dispersal of the estate. With the solicitor’s permission, Hephzibah had sent her parents’ clothing to the local workhouse for the benefit of the poor and dispossessed. Hephzibah reflected that she too could almost be classified in that way. Her own worldly goods now consisted of a small trunk, crammed with clothing, her mother’s copy of Shakespeare’s Sonnets and a small daguerreotype of her parents.

  She had been tempted to keep some of her mother’s jewellery but the solicitor sent a man to make an inventory of the contents of the house and he itemised every piece. All she had managed to keep were a pair of her mother’s pearl earrings and the locket her mother had given her when she married Professor Prendergast. It had been a gift to her mother from her first husband, Hephzibah’s father, and her mother had felt it inappropriate to continue wearing it once she remarried. Hephzibah raised her hand and squeezed the small gold heart on its chain around her neck and wondered at the cruelty of God in killing them both just as they were all about to embark on an adventure in Rome, where Professor Prendergast was to research his book on the cult of Mithras. Hephzibah had been looking forward to six months in the Eternal City, perhaps learning a little Italian and spending her days clambering around ruins with her stepfather.

  What a difference one single moment had made, destroying two lives and utterly transforming her own. She picked up the book of sonnets and as she turned the thin, almost translucent, pages of the small volume, Hephzibah felt the tears well up inside her again. As she glanced over the pages a line caught her eye: “My grief lies onward, and my joy behind”. She held the leather-bound book up to her face and gave a little inarticulate cry. Had she the strength to get through this? She had to find it. Nothing would bring her parents back. Nothing would restore her life as it was. Accept that, Hephzibah, and get on with it, she told herself. She brushed a hand over her eyes, took a deep breath and set about finishing her packing.

  The last item to go into the trunk was a pair of double-sided green velvet ribbons, a gift from her mother, just the day before she died. Hephzibah planned to use them to trim a hat or dress her hair. Now in mourning, it would be a long time before she would want to wear such bright colours. She thought wistfully of the pleasure she’d felt when she and her mother chose them in the haberdashery store, hesitating at first over whether to choose a safer blue, but her mother convincing her that the green was more vibrant. They were so vivid in colour that she would not have dared to wear them in Oxford, but they would be perfect for Rome. Now, as a governess and in mourning, it would have to be sober blacks and greys for a while.

  Hephzibah was to make the journey from Oxford to Nettlestock by train. It was a distance of only around forty miles as the crow flies, but the train required her to travel two sides of a triangle via Reading and involved a lengthy wait between trains.

  It started to rain as soon as the train left Oxford and the water ran in torrents down the windows of the carriage, blurring the landscape as the train passed through it. She had lived in Oxford her whole life and felt bereft about leaving her city, probably for ever. As the rain pelted down she shivered in the draughty coach and tried not to think about her parents or her miserable situation. But it was hard to think of anything else, as little icicles of grief had frozen her heart over and made the rest of the world appear pointless and trivial.

  Hephzibah took out the letter she had received from the Reverend Nightingale in response to her request that he petition Squire Egdon on her behalf. He had beautiful handwriting: confident, broad, bold strokes in black ink. His letter confirmed that the squire was more than happy that Hephzibah was to take up the position, expressed his delight that he had been able to arrange things to the satisfaction of all concerned and was full of assurances that she would not regret her decision to come to Nettlestock. Hephzibah sighed. What decision? To describe it as a decision implied she’d had a choice. She scrunched the letter into a ball and dropped it back into her bag. It was tempting to dislike the Reverend Nightingale for his unbounded enthusiasm, but she told herself it was hardly his fault that her parents were dead and her life turned upside down. It would be unfair to take against a person before even meeting him, particularly one who had acted as her guardian angel and sent her a lifeline.

  The train from Reading was a slow one, a branch line, stopping frequently at towns and villages on the way. When it finally pulled into Nettlestock station and Hephzibah climbed down from the carriage, she stepped into a puddle, drenching the hem of her woollen gown. She looked around the empty platform, wondering what she was to do about transporting her trunk and bags up to Ingleton Hall. She couldn’t even see the village, so feared it would be a long walk and it was still raining heavily.

  ‘Miss Wildman! It is Miss Wildman?’

  A young man was hurrying along the platform towards her. His black coat billowed out behind him as he ran, then fell back to cling damply around his legs.

  ‘I’ve been listening for the train. I had a feeling you would be on this one. There are only two a day. Please come and take some tea with me at the parsonage. It’s very close. I’ve arranged for the carter to deliver your bags up to the Hall. He’ll be along to pick them up from here in a few minutes. Squire Egdon will be expecting you in an hour. The carter will come back and collect you from the parsonage, once you’ve had some tea.’

  She looked at him. He had a shock of thick reddish-blond hair and a friendly countenance, notable mainly for its rash of freckles. Perhaps she had met him before as he had been Papa’s student – but if she had it was not surprising she didn’t remember, as, freckles aside, his face was very nondescript. Pleasant enough but unremarkable.

  ‘Mr Nightingale.’ She nodded in greeting, then hesitated, looking at her trunk, uncertain how to respond to his invitation.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Escape me?

  Never–

  Beloved!

  While I am I, and you are you,

  So long as the world contains us both,

  Me the loving and you the loth,

  While the one eludes, must the other pursue.

  (from Life in a Love, Robert Browning)

  The parish of Nettlestock comprised one hundred and forty-two souls, all of them resistant to change. This was despite the fact that the village had been exposed to much in the past decades, with the coming, first of the Kennet and Avon Canal, and then the railway. Perhaps it was the village being in the vanguard of modern tran
sportation that had caused the inhabitants to arm their defences against any other form of change, as they battled to keep things “the way they’ve always been done round here” in a last-ditch attempt to keep the twentieth century at bay. It was not that difficult. Canal traffic passed through the locks, some of the product from the whiting factory was loaded at the dock, but otherwise these days the canal left the village untouched. The passenger trains mostly passed through without stopping and when they did stop, it was for gentry from the large houses of the surrounding hinterland, rather than for villagers, who rarely ventured beyond the bounds of Nettlestock, except for the odd trip to the nearby market town at Michaelmas and Candlemas for the agricultural hiring fairs.

  Merritt Nightingale was a new incumbent at St Cuthbert’s, his predecessor, who had served the parish for more than thirty years, having fallen victim to influenza eighteen months earlier. The clergyman’s youth and lack of history with the parish meant that he was viewed with deep suspicion by his flock, who believed no outsider capable of fitting in with the customs and practices of Nettlestock and no man of such tender years – he was twenty-four – capable of understanding them or ministering to their needs. This lack of faith in their spiritual guardian manifested itself in passive resistance. They attended church services, but neglected to include the Reverend Nightingale in any social activities and went out of their way to avoid bumping into him around the parish and thus being obliged to pass the time of day. Merritt knew his parishioners avoided him but he hadn’t a clue how to go about winning their trust. He had raised the subject with his bishop, who brushed Merritt’s doubts aside and told him the parishioners would accept him, given time. How much time, Merritt wondered?