by Mary Mackie
‘Yes, indeed there has.’
‘Groundless talk. I know that. I never believed—’
I felt chilled suddenly, and angry with him for no good reason. ‘I’d better go. Help me, please.’
He laced his hands for my foot and I leapt up to the saddle, settling my skirts about me.
‘I’ll see you soon,’ he said.
Unable to reply, I lashed the rein against Dandy’s flank and he set off back down the track, where hares ran for cover among undergrowth scented with garlic.
My thoughts ran for cover, too, darting here and there seeking escape from the corner into which Basil Pooley had backed me. I didn’t want him waiting and hoping; I couldn’t bear the thought of having him come calling with that bright, eager look in his eyes. Why hadn’t I had the courage to turn him down?
* * *
After much discussion, Grace was allowed to accept an invitation from the Kinnersleys to travel with them through France that summer. They departed in June, with the result that Mama fretted and grew ever more querulous.
The doctor could diagnose no specific illness, but despite all his efforts Mama had lost weight until she was almost skeletal, her face all eyes and cheekbones, her neck like a chicken’s, her hands mere skin-covered claws. I remained convinced that the laudanum with which she dosed herself was partly to blame, but she and Narnie were adamant that she needed the drug if she was to sleep at all.
Soon after Grace went away, Narnie had a letter saying that her niece in Northumberland was desperately ill and her presence was required to comfort the girl’s mother, her only sister. Since Johnny planned to spend most of the summer with friends, and Grace was in France with the Kinnersleys, the prospect of losing Narnie, too, sent Mama into transports of distress.
‘Now, now, my lamb,’ Narnie soothed her. ‘It won’t be for long. You’ll have Miss Rose.’
‘But Rose is no company. She won’t sit still and talk to me like Grace does. Like you do, Narnie. She’s always wanting to be out in the fields, or off to the village.’
Narnie shot me a look that said, There, now see what you’ve done. ‘Never you fret, Miss Flora. Why don’t you go and visit Mrs Jonathan in Lynn? The change would do you good. You could have some new gowns made while you’re there. You always say Mrs Jonathan’s dressmaker is as good as any seamstress in London.’
This prospect interested Mama so that she put aside her tears. ‘Why, yes. Yes, you’re right, Narnie. I must have some new gowns ready for the Birthday Balls at Sandringham. Rose and Grace must have some, too. Oh, but – we mustn’t have them too early, in case the fashions change. Perhaps we should wait until Grace comes home, and see what she and Maria know of the latest styles.’
‘We can still go to Lynn,’ I said.
‘We?’ Mama looked at me blankly. ‘You mean, you’ll come with me?’
‘But of course. I’d enjoy a stay at Weal House. There’s so much to do in Lynn. The library, the shops, magic lantern shows, concerts in the park, walks by the river… We’ll have a wonderful time.’
My offer was not entirely unselfish. Staying at Weal House would give me an excuse to avoid Basil, and stop me thinking about Geoffrey. Every horseman riding by along the lane, every gig or carriage to and from Ambleford had me gazing from windows, pausing in my work, watching, hoping… I despised myself for it, but my heart wasn’t listening.
I wrote a letter to Basil, informing him with maidenly modesty that he had taken me by surprise, that I needed time to think about his declaration of affection. Besides, I would not be at Orchards for the next few weeks; I was to accompany Mama on a visit to my uncle and aunt in Lynn and we expected to be away probably until Grace came home from her extended trip to France.
However, in the way things have of turning back on one, Mama changed her mind about staying with Aunt Beatrice. On the evening before our planned departure I discovered her feverishly unpacking the clothes which the maids had prepared for her sojourn at Weal House.
‘I cannot go!’ she wept, throwing herself into my arms. ‘Oh, Rose, I cannot go away. I dare not!’
‘Dare not? Mama, what do you mean? What are you afraid of?’
But she wouldn’t tell me. I helped her into bed, pitying her. Poor sick, helpless Mama.
‘My medicine,’ she cried. ‘I must have my medicine!’
For the sake of peace, I dosed her with laudanum and sat with her until she sank into a snoring stupor. And in the morning I had the servants complete the unpacking.
Naturally Basil got to hear that I was still at Orchards, and naturally he took it ill; he did not come near the farm again for months. His uncle, Farmer Pooley, said that important business had taken Basil to London and in order to deal properly with it he had taken a house and planned to stay in town for a while. I felt guilty for my part in chasing him away, but at least his absence saved me from any further unwanted attentions. Sincere as he might be, I could not take him seriously as a suitor.
* * *
With Narnie away, I was surprised to find how much there was to do – seeing to the ordering, keeping a check on the kitchen, the dairying and the brewing, generally overseeing both domestic servants and yard-workers. Mrs Benstead ruled the kitchen, of course, with Swift and Howlett in the house; an old laundry-woman came in to do the washing; two other women saw to the dairying and brewing, besides a gardener and a man-of-all-work, with various lads and girls to assist them. And there was that mine of miscreance, the backus boy, who received the sharp edge of everyone else’s temper.
I also played companion to Mama, listening to her inconsequential chatter, plans for wonderful marriages for Grace and me, visions of social triumphs at Sandringham Hall. When letters came from Grace, telling of adventures in France, Mama read them aloud, building fantasies from a turn of phrase: Grace had met a rich Frenchman; Grace was invited to stay at a chateau; Grace was obviously in love and would probably be married before the year was out. More and more Mama lived in a world of imaginings; the real world seemed to hold too many terrors for her.
During that summer, men appeared in our fields without so much as a ‘by your leave’, and began planting shrubs and young trees across both crop and fallow. The trees were designed to provide shelter for the prince’s game birds and we had no right to interfere. We were not even permitted to clear the weeds around the saplings, for fear of disturbing nesting birds, though seeds spread among our crops and the resulting wild growth threatened to choke both root and wheat. Our hoers were kept busy dawn to dusk.
Hares were another increasing annoyance. ‘Kangaroos’ the village folk called them or, more often, ‘blasted kangaroos’. They chewed on the choicest swedes, bit tops off mangolds, feasted on corn and battered down leaves. They nibbled the bark of our apple trees, and in our garden they picnicked on freshly-planted rose bushes and finished off with a dainty dessert of flowers.
But protests to the land agent brought the same reply – the game belonged to the prince, who was only exercising his rights, as landowner, to use his acres for the rearing of birds and animals that would provide him and his friends with good sport. The law that allowed him this privilege had obtained for centuries.
* * *
The time of the Royal Norfolk Agricultural Show approached. It always caused a buzz of excitement in the farming community and that year it was of especial interest to me because William Turnbull was to exhibit some of his firm’s latest engines. He had presented me with a printed invitation to visit the Turnbull stand at the show ground.
Father planned to spend a day or two at the show, but he decreed that Mama, even had she been interested in things agricultural, was not well enough to go with him. With both Narnie and Grace away, that meant that I must stay behind too. Much to my irritation, I had to be content with William Turnbull’s recollections, recounted to me when he called the following Sunday.
‘A great success!’ he beamed as we strolled in the dappled shade of the orchards, ducking under branches w
here young fruit swelled. ‘We have several orders already – firm orders for some of our most expensive engines. And, beyond all my hopes, an invitation to hold a demonstration when we shall be able to show what our engines can really do, on the ground, in a real farming situation.’
‘I’m so glad,’ I said. ‘I’ve been afraid that, after what happened to Victor…’
‘I, too.’ Stroking his luxuriant beard, he regarded me gravely. ‘But I believe we have proved that that was just a freak accident – a most terrible, unfortunate accident, but an accident just the same. Now we must put that behind us. Victor would have wanted us to go on. To look to the future.’
‘Yes. Yes, he would.’
There was a pause. During it, I heard him draw a long deep breath. ‘Speaking of the future…’
‘Where is the demonstration to be held?’ said I.
He hesitated, but I feigned not to realise that I had interrupted a portentous speech. His innate good manners came to my aid, obliging him to answer my question and set aside his own intent.
‘Quite near here. On the neighbouring estate. Ambleford.’
‘Ambleford?’ My dismay must have shown itself.
‘Have I done wrong?’ Turnbull asked anxiously. ‘Sir Arthur Devlin was most accommodating. I could hardly refuse his offer to allow us the use of his estate. He visited our stand at the show more than once. His son was agreeably interested, too. They stayed for hours.’
‘Indeed?’ Troubled by thoughts of Geoffrey, I moved away to lean on the fence that separated orchard from meadow.
Benstead and his boy, both dressed in Sunday best, were driving heavy-uddered cows across long grass merry with buttercups. I hardly noticed the familiar sight. My thoughts elsewhere, I nudged the toe of my boot against the sacking barrier nailed taut along the bottom of the fence in an effort to keep the nibbling hares out of the garden.
‘I’m conscious that your father has certain problems with Sir Arthur,’ Turnbull said, following me. ‘Will he raise objections to my accepting the invitation? A good many West Norfolk landowners are eager to watch our engines in action, but… I thought it hardly tactful to suggest trying again at Orchards.’
‘And you were right! Father wouldn’t want that. Nor would I.’
‘Then… is Ambleford too close? Will it raise too many painful memories for you? Sir Arthur plans to make it a gala day. I had hoped that you and your father would do me the honour of attending the event, as my personal guests.’
His anxiety not to cause offence, to Father or to me, revealed a sensitive nature, but it also irritated me beyond reason. He was pompous, a man of little humour or imagination. But he was also considerate, steady and reliable, and he had excellent prospects. One day he would be a wealthy man. And he cared for me – he kept coming all the way from Thetford just to spend a few hours in my company. I ought to be flattered to be courted by such a man. He would make a fine husband.
A visit to Ambleford in his company might not be a bad thing; it would show Geoffrey Devlin that I was not still yearning after him. Turning with a smile, I said, ‘You’re right. Victor believed in your engines. He’ll be there in spirit, cheering you on. I can’t speak for my father, but… I shall be honoured to be your guest, William.’
His eyes lit up and his beard parted as he smiled with genuine delight. ‘It will be a special day, Miss Hamilton – Rose. A most special day, if you are there beside me.’
Flattered by his evident devotion, I promised myself that, before the day came, I would make up my mind about William Turnbull.
* * *
Since Narnie had departed for Northumberland, I had been trying a remedy for Mama’s indisposition: I watered down her phial of laudanum, just a little, hoping in time to wean her off the drug. One of her doctors had recommended this course to Narnie, but she, swayed by Mama’s frantic pleading, had ignored his advice; she thought she was helping Mama, believing that her ‘lamb’ really needed the medicine.
Aware of the responsibility I had assumed, I remained alert for every change in Mama’s emotional stability. I propped my door ajar and, most nights, lay awake until after I had heard Father go in to her. In the morning I was ready to tend her as soon as Father left at dawn. Often she would still be sleeping, under the influence of her medicine, and when she woke her mind remained fogged by the drug.
‘I do wish you would try not to take the medicine every night,’ I frequently told her. ‘I’m sure it’s not good for you to take so much.’
‘I try,’ she would say in her helpless little-girl way, with a shrug and a quick touch to my hand. ‘I do try. But then I lie awake and my heart pounds so and I get palpitations and I think I’m dying and… I can’t do without it, Rose. I can’t!’ Her voice would rise, her thin hands clutching at me.
Surreptitiously, I added a little more water to the phial, though I had begun to think that curing her of her unhealthy addiction was beyond my powers. Yet if she didn’t stop she would surely die of it.
‘I’m afraid she’s really sick,’ I told my father, who was poring over the books in the office. ‘Perhaps we should send for the doctor.’
Drawing deeply on the glowing nub of his cigarette, he pressed it out in an ash-tray full of stubs and let the smoke trickle from his nostrils as he watched me over the half-moon spectacles he had lately affected. ‘She’s seen more than one doctor, Rose. You know that. They find nothing wrong. This sickness… it’s in her mind, not her body. My wife, your stepmother, is a hypochondriac, and since the state is of her own choosing she must live with it, as must we all.’
‘There must be some cause,’ I said.
‘There is: her overworked imagination.’ He sounded ineffably weary as he removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘She’s always been afraid of illness. You know that as well as I. Rose, don’t bother me with this now. I’ve tried. There’s nothing I can do.’
‘But surely—’
His hands came down flat on the desk and he rose to his feet, glowering at me. ‘I said don’t bother me with it! Why will you never learn when to leave well alone? I have work to do. Don’t burden me with women’s problems. You see to it. What else are you here for? I allowed you to stay – much against my better judgement, when many another man would have sent you from his door. I allowed you to stay because my son begged me to forgive you and for the sake of his memory—’ His voice grew rusty and his mouth snapped shut as he fought to hide his emotion. ‘The least you can do is shield me from these petty household concerns,’ he finished, and sat down, beginning to sort irritably through his papers.
I felt as though he had slapped me. So this was why he had let me stay – because Victor had pleaded for me. Unable to find words to express my feelings, I spun on my heel and snatched the door open, slamming it behind me.
‘Rose!’ he shouted after me. ‘Damn you, Rose…!’ The words caught in his throat, and as I climbed the stairs I heard him coughing.
* * *
In the darkest hours before dawn, something woke me. Still half asleep, I listened to the wind in the woods tossing summer leaves, whispering like the sea; then as I came further awake, I heard the sound that had really disturbed me – Mama was weeping.
Barefoot, I crossed the hall, dragging a wrap about me as I hastened to her door and knocked there, calling softly, ‘Mama? Mama?’
The sobs lessened, as if she were trying to hide them from me, but her distress was too deep to be silenced. As I opened the door I saw the bedroom dimly lit by a low-burning lamp at her bedside. The bed was empty, the covers thrown back. Small snufflings, interspersed with wrenching shudders of breath, came from beyond the darkened doorway of the dressing-room.
In the edge of light from the bedroom, I saw her kneeling by the couch, lying half across it, her arms outstretched to embrace its leathered seat. Her night bonnet drooped askew over trailing, tumbled hair, and her thin body looked pitiful in its voluminous, lace-trimmed cotton nightdress.
‘Mama!�
�� I hurried to her, laying a hand on her bird-thin shoulder. ‘Mama, what is it? Are you ill? Where’s Father?’
She raised a wan face that, even in the almost-darkness, looked haggard with tragedy, and her hand fastened about my arm like the teeth of a man-trap. ‘He has not come home!’ she cried, her voice so wild with despair that I scarcely recognised it. ‘He has gone to her!’
Resorting to practicalities, I lifted her to her feet – not a difficult task when she was so frail – and half carried her back to bed, where I tucked her in much as Narnie would have done. All the time she wept inconsolably, throwing her head from side to side, mopping at her face with a sodden handkerchief which I wrested from her and replaced with a fresh one from her drawer.
I pleaded with her to try to rest, but still she thrashed from side to side on her pillows, wailing and exclaiming incoherently.
Concerned as I was, yet a part of me seemed to stand back and watch, mind wrestling at the inconsistencies of what I had found. Where was Father? Why had Mama been embracing the couch in the dressing-room? As for the reference to some unknown ‘her’, I refused even to believe that I had heard it. Mama was evidently more sick than I had realised if she had begun to imagine such things.
I found the smelling salts and held them under her nose, making her wince and push the bottle away. But at least it broke through the hysterical tossing and wailing into which she had worked herself. She lay still, her head turned away from me, sobs dredging up from deep inside her, as I wet a cloth in the ewer and wrung it out, to cool her brow. The room seemed stiflingly warm and I went to open the window, seeing the muslin curtains billow gently in a breeze. I also saw, with relief, that the eastern sky was lightening.
‘It’s almost dawn,’ I remarked, leaning over the bed to turn the cloth so that a cooler portion lay on her brow.
She seemed calmer, staring up at me with eyes buried deep in bruised sockets – eyes from which tears still seeped to trickle down her temple and into her hair. ‘I don’t think I can bear it, Rose. If he doesn’t come home—’
