We are all spurred into a frenzy of tidying in preparation for our visitors.
‘Go and open the door for your godfather,’ I tell Rafe, when I hear the click of the front gate, and I watch from the window as Ambrose Cotton takes my son’s hand and they walk up the path together, laughing – a sight that makes my heart swell.
In the wake of Father’s death, Ambrose, his dearest friend and mentor, had become our Heaven-sent protector. He was a royal physician then, with illustrious affiliations, and arranged for Melis and me to be placed in service in the Buckingham household, while Hope was taken into the care of Ambrose’s housekeeper at Littlemore Manor. The idea, I suppose, had been that I might attract a well-connected husband at court, but the placement didn’t end well and Ambrose came to regret it.
They spill into the parlour with smiles and greetings, his wife Bette proffering a bunch of wildflowers picked along the route. Littlemore is a good league away and it surprises me they didn’t bring the carriage, but Ambrose is keen on the merits of fresh air and exercise.
We sit to eat early, so they have time to walk home before nightfall. The two have the happy air of newlyweds, though at least five years have passed since they came together. Bette is pale and has a sharp cough that interrupts her as she ribs him about being an untidy eater, plucking a breadcrumb from his beard, while he tells us of the convalescing patient he visited recently with a gift of fresh strawberries that made her come out in hives. ‘The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.’
‘At least your heart was in the right place,’ Melis says.
‘As a matter of fact it is not – literally speaking.’ He launches into a long and convoluted story about how he came to discover that his heart was set to the right rather than the left of his ribcage, and invites Rafe to listen to his chest. I am wondering how it is possible to have known him all my life yet be unaware of this invisible quirk.
‘Talking of matters of the heart,’ Bette says, ‘I met a nice young man the other day,’ she is picking delicately at her plate, not really eating, ‘with fifty acres the other side of Oxford.’ I know exactly what she means by this. ‘He’s in the market for a bride and you’ve been a widow long enough.’
Ambrose shoots me a knowing glance. He has kept my secret, even from his beloved wife. Bette, being uncommonly happy in her marriage, wants the same for me.
Melis laughs. ‘Hester doesn’t want a husband, do you, Hessie?’
‘Probably not. I have enough on my plate, without a husband to look after.’ I make this sound like a joke but it is the truth. Besides, we three sisters are in the fortunate position of having Orchard Cottage, which provides our modest living and leaves us in charge of our own destinies.
‘But a companion – would you not want the companionship of a man? It has brought us such contentment,’ says Bette, taking Ambrose’s hand.
‘Men like Ambrose are a rarity.’ My voice sounds clipped, defensive.
The talk has caused memories of Rafe’s father to flood back, filling me like a storm gutter in a squall. There he is pulling my skirts up, pressing a vast beringed hand over my mouth to quash my protestations until my head swims for want of breath. The smell of his pomade clogs my head. In the wake of that first time, when I railed, he told me it was a privilege to be the recipient of his attentions, that I was his chosen one.
It didn’t feel a privilege to be taken against my will. How much do you want this? he would ask, his voice low and hot with desire. He coerced me, little fool that I was, into saying I wanted him. I quickly learned that the sooner I said it the sooner the ordeal would be over. The only answer acceptable to him was: Very much. Very, very much. And then he would say, I knew you were a filthy little whore, Hessie, as he finished his business. Don’t you have a smile for your George? I would manage to crease my face into an approximation of happiness. If you ever tell a soul about our special friendship, I will wipe that smile off your face quicker than the flick of a lamb’s tail. One day, he discarded me without explanation.
Bette will not let the topic of marriage go. ‘If Hester hasn’t the mind to wed then we might find a husband for you.’ She is talking to Hope, who blushes to the roots of her hair.
‘She’s much too young,’ I say, though I met girls at Lady Buckingham’s who went off to wed at fourteen and Hope is already two years past that. But they were girls of better breeding than us, who were obliged to do as they were told.
‘What about Aunt Melis?’ pipes up Rafe. ‘She is old enough.’
Hope shushes him. A dense silence ensues. We all eat or pretend to. No one ever mentions that Melis’s erratic nature makes her an unsuitable candidate for matrimony. But you wouldn’t know it were you to encounter her this evening, radiant in the full flush of her considerable beauty, her inner torments hidden from view.
I place my hand over hers as reassurance but she hasn’t noticed the awkward hush, has begun to talk about her hives and the quality of the honey this year.
‘It must have been the wet spring,’ says Ambrose, moving the subject tactfully on and serving himself a second helping.
‘What is it that draws you so to beekeeping, Melis?’ Bette is asking.
‘There is a pleasing harmony to a hive. All serve the queen without question, while she ensures the colony survives.’ Melis’s delicate hands flutter as she speaks, her eyes fervid. I cannot help but be reminded of finding her in the orchard, those hands blanketed in insects. I push away the memory.
Hope and Rafe slip into the kitchen and return holding a cake decorated with almonds and wild strawberries, wishing me a happy birthday.
‘I decorated it.’ Rafe is puffed up with pride, happy pink circles lighting his cheeks.
‘So that is what you and Hope were whispering about earlier,’ I say, hauling him onto my lap.
‘What did you wish for?’ he asks, as I cut the first slice.
‘For your good fortune.’
‘If you say it, it won’t come true.’ It is Melis who points this out.
A look of worry flits over Rafe’s face until I declare Melis’s statement nonsense.
‘This is for you.’ Rafe puts a small soft object in my hand. It is a little woman with a child in her arms, crudely carved in wax. ‘It’s you and me. I made it all by myself.’
I want to preserve this moment, sealed tight, like bottled fruits that taste of the sun when the winter draws in. ‘I will treasure it for ever, my darling boy.’ I hug his small body close and he tucks his head into the crook of my shoulder.
Looking around the table, I feel touched by good fortune, surrounded by those I love, all in good enough health, and am brimful of gratitude.
Hope
Hope was in the sun for half an hour without her hat this morning and her complexion has turned – enough for the sour-faced cheesemonger to comment, ‘Been licked by the tar brush?’
Hope stares silently at the woman’s big folded fists, chapped and red, with ridged yellow nails. The church bells start to ring. Hope lets the sound swallow her, counting out each of the ten chimes until the woman’s comment fades to almost nothing in her mind. It reassures her to know exactly where she is in the day.
Reaching out for a cheese, Hope touches its rind to test for firmness. It is velvet soft under the tip of her finger.
‘Hands off,’ snaps the vendor. ‘I know your sort. You’d disappear that cheese into your sleeve the moment my back was turned.’
‘How dare you?’ Melis glares at the woman. ‘We’d rather starve than give you our custom.’
The woman mutters something under her breath, making a sweeping gesture with one of those ugly hands as if the two of them are flies to be swatted. Melis hooks her arm tightly through her sister’s, marching her away. ‘Don’t listen to her. She’s only envious.’ Her tone is clipped with indignation. ‘She has a face like a turnip and you … well, you would make an angel seem wanting.’
Hope knows she’s saying it to be kind because who has ever seen an
angel with hair as black as coal? She silently curses that half-hour in the sun. Sometimes she takes the small looking-glass down from the shelf by Hester’s bed and scrutinizes herself, seeking similarities with her sisters: the high forehead, straight nose, and the shallow dip at the centre of her chin that must all have come from their father.
Hester and Melis have a portrait of their mother. It is the size of a prayer book and hangs in the parlour near the clock. She is a woman folded from finest parchment. At a glance it might be a likeness of Melis but a closer inspection reveals the mud-brown eyes of Hester. There is no portrait of Hope’s mother. She imagines her strong, hewn from oak, like the beautiful carved figures in the altar screen at church, but it is difficult to conjure an image of someone you know nothing of.
Occasionally, more often when she was small, the sight of that portrait would open a void inside her. It isn’t jealousy or sadness or even a sense of loss, because how can you lose what you never had? It is a feeling of unsteadiness, as if she is only tenuously attached to Orchard Cottage, though it is as much her home as her sisters’.
They make their way to the other cheese stall across the square, passing a group of girls gathered on a low wall, talking, laughing and throwing crumbs for a flock of sparrows.
‘See what she’s wearing,’ giggles one girl behind a cupped hand, just loud enough for them to hear. ‘Does she think she’s a duchess?’
Melis is oblivious or is giving a perfect impression of it. She is the object of their ridicule in her silk dress, utterly unsuitable for a trip to the market. But that is Melis, wearing what pleases her, speaking her mind, not wanting to be bound by convention. Hope admires this about her middle sister but not now when it makes her the object of ridicule by association.
They are just the Iffley girls Hope has seen at church every Sunday since she can remember. One flicks a disdainful glance her way. Hope looks ahead. She is not one of them and has stopped agonizing about the reason. ‘Most young girls have a very narrow outlook,’ is what Hester says of it. Hope made up her mind long ago that it didn’t matter.
They buy their cheese and deliver some finished needlework to the tailor on the square, before setting off for home. But as they walk, Melis becomes increasingly quiet, seeming to disappear into herself.
It is not a good sign.
When they are through Iffley and have reached the vast oak a quarter-mile from home, Melis stops dead. Hope shakes her arm, attempting to draw her attention. But she doesn’t respond, appears trapped in some fugue state, staring right through her sister as if she doesn’t exist. The basket drops from her hand, all the produce scattering over the ground, onions and apples rolling away, a pat of butter slumping into the long grass.
Hope does her best to gather everything up, trying to make light of it – ‘Oopsy-daisy’ – in the face of her sister’s strange, dense silence.
Melis stretches her hand to the tree, tilting her temple against the bark, eyes tight shut, lips moving silently.
‘What is it?’ Hope knows what it is. She has seen it before but Hester has always been there and knew what to do. ‘Tell me what’s wrong.’
Melis shushes her brusquely. ‘I can’t hear.’
Hope notices a small crevice in the trunk beside Melis’s ear, like a mouth. She seems to be trying to listen to it, deep in concentration, as if it is telling her a secret.
They are close enough for Hope to run home and fetch Hester but she is loath to leave Melis alone, even for a moment. She has seen Hester sometimes manage to force Melis’s attention to something else, if she catches it early enough, and is furiously wondering what she might do or say to achieve this.
But it is too late as Melis turns to her, eyes snapping open, glaring with a terrifying intensity. ‘So hot.’ Her voice is trimmed with panic and a gloss of sweat blooms over her forehead. She sinks to the ground, as if her legs can no longer support her, skirts billowing out. A bright grass stain marks the place where her knees have met the earth. Hope can’t help thinking it will be impossible to clean.
‘It’s all in flames.’
‘What is in flames, Melis? What can you see?’
Melis begins to gasp, struggling for breath, like a drowning woman. ‘I can’t see for the smoke.’ She is coughing, her body racked, and muttering things Hope cannot hear properly.
‘There’s no smoke, Melis. No fire.’ Wanting to reassure her, Hope crouches and takes her hand.
Melis recoils with a cry, as if scalded. ‘Rafe’s inside. He’ll be burned alive.’ Her arms are flailing, batting away the invisible fire. ‘Can’t you hear his screams?’
Hope is at a loss, fear prodding her.
Then, from one moment to the next, Melis returns from whatever hell she has been in. She is holding her head, and looks up at Hope with bloodshot eyes. There is a red mark on the side of her head where it has been pressed against the tree.
‘It’s nothing to worry about. Only your imagination. You’ve been seeing things again.’ That is what she’s heard Hester say to Melis many times in the past but, nevertheless, an image of Orchard Cottage in flames inserts itself into her uneasy mind.
Her throat tightens as she is sure, now, she can catch the faint smell of burning in the air. She pulls her sister to her feet, running, half dragging her along as fast as she can.
At the bend in the lane, breath short, a stitch jabbing sharply at her side, Orchard Cottage comes into view. The place is intact, no sign of any fire, no smoke emanating from the thatch, only a thin trail rising from the kitchen chimney. Rafe is seated on the front step playing with the cat, while Hester is crouched over the vegetable patch pulling up weeds. Hope bends double, gasping for breath.
‘Why the hurry?’ Hester stands, approaching her sisters. ‘And where is the produce from market?’ Hope realizes that, in her rush, she has abandoned the basket.
As she says this Hester looks at Melis, seeming instinctively to understand what has occurred. She guides Melis inside.
Hope sits on the doorstep beside her nephew. The cat pushes its face onto her hand with a rattling purr. She strokes it absently, the vestiges of fear still jangling through her.
‘Is Aunt Melis mad?’ Rafe turns his round sparrow eyes on her in great seriousness.
‘No, sweetheart. She sometimes has a funny turn, that’s all.’
‘Because I heard the maid at Littlemore say she was mad as a bag of snakes.’
‘Well, we know her better than the maid at Littlemore. Does she seem mad to you most of the time?’ Hope thinks of Melis defending her so robustly from the cheesemonger’s insults in the market earlier.
He shakes his head. ‘But what is a funny turn?’
Hope doesn’t really know any more than Rafe does. ‘It’s like having a bad dream when you’re awake.’
He seems satisfied with this explanation, as he goes back to playing with the cat.
She knows she ought to go and reclaim the basket but can’t bring herself to return to that place alone, as if the great oak, with its whispering mouth, might put a spell on her.
Hester
Melis is sapped of spirit, sitting and staring into the kitchen hearth after supper, watching carefully for stray embers. When one pops onto the floor she reaches with her foot, quick as a frog’s tongue to a fly, to stamp it out. Hope told me what had happened on the road back from Iffley, and I am thankful it is summer so only the kitchen hearth is lit. Otherwise Melis might be in a frenzy of worry, rushing from room to room to check for signs of fire.
Hope comes down from putting Rafe to bed. She is still shaken, casting occasional worried glances towards Melis, hiding it by chatting with forced levity as she joins me in washing the dishes from supper. She then sets to work brushing the dirt off Melis’s overdress, tutting at a grass stain that resists her vigorous scrubbing with diluted white vinegar. It sends a sharp unpleasant scent through the air and I want to tell her to stop, that no amount of scrubbing will make her sister better.
We h
ear the faint rumble of distant thunder, though the evening is still and balmy, and go out together to put the pony into the barn. Outside the sky is a livid purple. The animal is agitated, sensing the coming storm as I lead him inside, while Hope shoos the chickens into their pen and ensures the hatches are fastened.
‘Try not to worry,’ I say. ‘It’s all in her imagination. I know it can be distressing to witness, but her visions never come to pass. You know that, don’t you?’ It is what I tell myself every time, and it is true, or almost true. I have never found an explanation for that first vision – I saw his head hit the ground – which still squats at the back of my mind, like a curse. It has never been discussed, not with Melis, not with anyone, and Hope was too young to remember.
I want to call it coincidence but I have occasionally wondered whether time can fold in on itself and allow some people, if they are sensitive enough, a glimpse of the future. Some are more receptive to the invisible workings of the world, can intuit things in the way a dog can smell fear. It is often called a gift but to me it seems more of a blight.
‘Remember when she predicted the river would burst its banks and flood the village? It never happened.’ I list a few other examples, careful to conceal my own misgivings.
‘She seemed so … so caught up …’
‘I know. I think her visions can be vivid, as if she is living through them. That’s why she becomes so distressed. It’ll pass in a while.’ The first drops of rain are falling and we hurry towards the house.
‘Why is it she only ever predicts bad events?’
‘I don’t know.’ I have wondered about this too and have no answer. Melis is special – that is what our father used to say. Even when she was small it was clear that she was different, more fragile, angrier, as if the world was an ill fit for her.
Melis barely notices us as we come back in and pass through the kitchen into the parlour, where I fasten the front door for the night and close the shutters. Hope winds the old clock. It is a daily job she has taken upon herself since childhood. Hope learned to read a clock face almost before she could read a book. She likes to keep track of the time and the date, always the one to remember birthdays and anniversaries. It appeals to her sense of order, I suppose, to know exactly where we are in time.
The Honey and the Sting Page 2
