Sandringham Rose

by Mary Mackie

  Narnie tried to maintain her cold dignity, but old habits of affection proved stronger and after a moment’s hesitation she said, ‘Come in and let Narnie tend it. Come in, all of you.’

  ‘Oh, Narnie…’ On the threshold, Mama paused as emotion caught at her and she held out her arms. ‘Oh, Narnie…’

  A tearful reunion ended with us all seated by the fire drinking tea and eating Mrs Benstead’s lardy cake while Mama and Grace recounted all the gossip.

  It seemed to me that, while Mama looked younger, Narnie had visibly aged. Her face was more lined than I remembered, her hair greyer. She didn’t pretend to be happy: she said that her neighbours were unfriendly, her rheumatics were bad, she wasn’t sleeping well.

  ‘And that graveyard out there is no easy neighbour. You should hear the trees moaning at night. Like lost souls. Makes me shudder to hear them. Still, it won’t be long before I’m under one of those old stones myself.’

  ‘Oh, don’t say that!’ Mama begged. ‘We shall come to see you often. Shan’t we, girls?’

  ‘If you’re allowed,’ said Narnie dubiously. ‘If that husband of yours doesn’t put a stop to that, too.’ Seeing that the reminder had hurt Mama, she added grudgingly, ‘Still… I’m glad to see you looking more your old self, Miss Flora.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mama said, her mouth trembling in a half smile. ‘I’m much better. Very much better.’

  * * *

  The day of the Great Steam Engine Demonstration loomed imminent. This time, to show his faith in his product, William Turnbull himself was at the footplate of one of his self-moving machines as it drove through the West Norfolk lanes, though tactfully he did not bring it close by Orchards. Even so, I hardly slept that night because of irrational fears of another explosion. In the early hours of an October morning I heard the alien noise in the distance, chugging and rattling on its way to Ambleford. I lay listening, hardly breathing, until long after the sound had faded.

  For a day or so before the show, Turnbull was a guest at Ambleford Hall; Sir Arthur was being most accommodating, probably in the hope of acquiring an engine at cut price. He held a dinner party on the eve of the big day; Turnbull wondered if he should ask for an invitation for me, but, things between Orchards and Ambleford being what they were, my father thought it inappropriate. I didn’t argue. The last thing I wanted was to be forced into polite proximity with Geoffrey Devlin and his fiancée. Besides, to accept such an invitation would have been tantamount to announcing my own engagement to Turnbull.

  ‘I only wish he’d asked me,’ Grace said. ‘Imagine turning down an invitation to dine at Ambleford Hall! Aren’t you just dying to meet the mysterious Miss de Crecy? Everyone’s talking about her. They say she’s horribly deformed. Maria Kinnersley heard that she had huge warts all over her face.’

  ‘Oh, really, Grace,’ I sighed. ‘Not long ago you were telling us how beautiful she is. It’s all silly gossip, just because she doesn’t go out much in public. Use your intelligence, do. Would Geoffrey Devlin marry a girl who wasn’t at least pretty?’

  ‘“Sightings of her are as rare as the bittern”,’ Grace quoted. ‘That’s what they say. Do go to this dinner party, Rose. You can find out the truth, and I’ll be able to tell Maria—’

  ‘With Sir Arthur constantly threatening Father with litigation over some silly disagreement or other, I wouldn’t go even if they did invite me. It’s not as if I were engaged to Mr Turnbull.’

  ‘Not officially, perhaps. But as good as. If he weren’t such a boring bourgeois he’d have asked you before. Everybody knows one only needs six months’ mourning for a brother.’ Seeing my incomprehension, she threw out her hands, exclaiming, ‘He’s waiting for the full year to pass. Good gracious, Rose, didn’t you realise that?’

  I hadn’t realised it, but she was probably right. Being the man he was, William Turnbull would walk the finest edge of convention and respect my mourning for a full year. After that, I had better be ready with my answer.

  * * *

  On the day of the demonstration, Father was in a bleak mood because of a letter he had received from the Prince of Wales’s agent. He didn’t say what it was about; he tried to make light of it, but as he hurried us into the carriage he had hired I sensed his irritation.

  A thick wet mist blanketed the landscape, making the autumn trees drip, churning the ground to mud under wheels and hooves and boots. Mama, Grace and I were all garbed in waterproofs and galoshes, with umbrellas at the ready. The Ambleford park was crowded, half the landowners and farmers of the county turning out. Some brought their wives, though most of the ladies elected to remain in the marquee, out of the inclement weather. The Prince of Wales’s duties obliged him to be elsewhere; however, he sent his land agent Edmund Beck to take notes. Father kept watching the agent, seeking a chance to speak to him, but among the crowds Mr Beck proved elusive.

  To my delight, Farmer Pooley joined us, and we met other friends. There were a few labourers present, too, come to watch and assess how much of a threat to their jobs the new machines might be.

  Sir Arthur Devlin played host in his eccentric way, making an enthusiastic if incoherent speech to welcome his guests and raise hopes of a bright future with machinery to aid the farmer; then William Turnbull had his turn on the dais, telling us what we might expect to see. I must confess that I felt immensely proud of him that day, though some of my attention was elsewhere, watching the crowd, wondering if Geoffrey might appear.

  Perhaps he was away. I hoped he was, for I certainly didn’t wish to encounter him. Or so I told myself.

  But I did glimpse another familiar face, this one totally unwelcome. I had forgotten that Father’s old adversary Amos Chilvers now worked for Sir Arthur. I hid myself among the crowd before he could see me.

  Mama and Grace decided to stay in the shelter of the marquee, where the chance to gossip and criticise other women’s clothes was more to their taste. It suited me to be out in the mist and the mud, watching the fun. Some of the Ambleford men acted as marshals: Amos Chilvers seemed to be in charge of them. As we moved about, he often came quite close and once I heard him say loudly to his companion, ‘Blood will out. Like father, like child.’

  From the corner of his eye, he surveyed me insolently. What was he doing – spreading rumour about Father and me? Or was it my own guilt that read too much into a comment overheard out of context?

  Demonstrations began in the barns, with smaller engines that could chop roots and hay, implements for digging drains and laying pipes, for reaping and mowing, and a noisy threshing machine that separated the grain, lifting the straw on an elevated conveyor belt that rattled and pulsated. The damp conditions were unfortunate – threshing is best done on a dry, breezy day – but as Turnbull pointed out to his audience, the machine took only hours where men with flails took weeks to accomplish the same result.

  ‘And where’ll that leave us, then?’ a man behind me muttered.

  ‘Out o’ work, bor,’ came the laconic reply. ‘That’s where.’

  The labourers misliked this whole show, foreseeing the workhouse for themselves and their families if these machines took over. But then, as Farmer Pooley often said, men always grumbled, if not about wages then about their cottages, and failing anything else they’d grumble about the weather. It was their way of making conversation.

  The misty air was thick with the smell of smoke and hot coals, the hiss of steam and the tooting of whistles. It was exciting, but I half feared the engines, their noise and their heat, their contained power. Every time one expelled steam with a whoosh and a hiss I jumped and backed off, my heart thudding. One of these monsters had killed my brother. I should never entirely trust them.

  At lunch in the crowded marquee, smelling of crushed grass and clammy with the steam from wet clothes and umbrellas, William Turnbull was surrounded by would-be buyers all wanting to ask questions. Mama looked a little tired, but a bright-eyed Grace watched everything with the condescension of one who had seen wider hor
izons.

  ‘The English are so terribly provincial,’ she remarked, and, ‘Dear me, isn’t Mr Turnbull the thing today? Quite “je ne sais quoi”.’ Despite her facetious tone, she was eyeing William with interest. ‘Victor always did say he was a coming man.’

  ‘And you always said he was a pompous bore,’ I reminded her.

  Grace merely pulled a face at me.

  Summoned back to the business of the day, those of us who were following the demonstrations made for the fog-shrouded field where a double-engine plough was getting up steam, ready to show how it could haul a coulter back and forth without need for horses. The far side of the field was lost in grey mist, so that the cables, strung between the engines to pull the ploughshare, appeared to vanish into nothingness. Several blue and red wagons had been ranged along the headland for spectators to have a grandstand view, and kind hands helped me up to stand with Pooley beside me and others crowding round us. I had lost sight of Father.

  ‘Tha’s a expensive old do,’ someone remarked. ‘Spend a fortune to plough a few field? Why, here in Norfolk all you need’s a brace o’ rabbit an’ a clasp knife.’

  A ripple of amusement passed through the listeners, all of whom knew the notorious lightness of Norfolk soils. Most of us had seen a March gale send top soil, seeds, and guano dressing drifting like snow against hedges and along lanes. However, the power of the engines, slicing the blade through the wet ground, and the way the ploughshare and its rider kept appearing and disappearing in the fog, was better than a magic lantern show, the spectacle appreciated even if the machinery was beyond the pockets of most.

  As the crowd began to disperse back through the gateway and down the lane, I waited on the wagon as George Pooley climbed down, going slowly and awkwardly, stiff from standing still. Puffing with pain, he gained the ground and paused there, groaning, forcing his bent back to straighten while I watched in concern.

  ‘May I…?’ Offering a hand to help me, someone else stepped in – someone whose grave slate-blue gaze made me stop, as if all the breath had been driven from my body. So he was here, after all. He had grown a moustache. It suited him. All at once I was conscious of the inelegance of clambering about in my crinoline, my skirts all muddied. I wished I had never got up there.

  Convention stepped into the void, causing me to say, ‘Thank you.’ Reaching a foot to the wheel-rim, I used Geoffrey Devlin’s hand to steady myself as I climbed out, searching with my other foot for the hub and cursing my hampering skirts, which had caught up on the wheel and hidden everything below me.

  ‘Allow me.’ Geoffrey’s hands came at my waist and with easy strength he conveyed me to the ground. Discomposed, I made a show of straightening my cape and skirts, unable to look at him.

  ‘Blasted arthritis!’ Pooley cursed. ‘How I hate getting old!’

  ‘You’ll never be old, Mr Pooley,’ Geoffrey said, a smile in his voice.

  ‘Don’t you believe it, bor!’

  ‘Well…’ Doffing his hat, he made us a bow. ‘If you’ll excuse me… A pleasure to see you again, Miss Hamilton.’

  He walked away, leaving me with the burning imprint of his hands at my waist, and in my heart a fresh memory of the way he looked, with a smile on his lips and sorrow in his eyes. The neat dark moustache gave his face a new maturity. How I wished my heart would stop its silly galumping.

  ‘Fine young gentleman, that,’ said Pooley. ‘No side to him at all.’ Then he laughed aloud, teasing me, ‘By gar, gal, you’re blushin’ like sunset. Don’t let Turnbull see.’

  William Turnbull, however, was occupied with several of the more prosperous landowners who had gathered to question him about the plough. Suddenly aware of the thick mud weighing down my hems and clodding my boots, of the damp state of my hat and hair, and my general lack of grooming, I started for the gate. I felt bitter and angry, irrationally furious with my beau for being so preoccupied.

  ‘Made up your mind to have him, have you?’ Pooley said.

  Well aware that my answer would go back to Basil, I glanced back at the bulky, bearded figure of the engineer, seeing him in command, impressive, at ease with the gentlemen around him. One of those gentlemen was Geoffrey Devlin, making some point that made Turnbull and the others roar with laughter.

  ‘Yes, I think I have,’ I replied, and moved on.

  In the gateway, my father was arguing with Mr Beck, the agent for the Sandringham estate. Father barred his path, gesticulating angrily with a letter he held in his hand.

  ‘…too much! Those damn coverts… weeds all among the crops… hares destroying everything… I wrote and asked for compensation before next year’s rent was settled, but you didn’t deign to reply. And now you’re asking me to pay for…’

  ‘You sound surprised,’ Beck replied. ‘Yet you agreed that—’

  ‘When? I don’t recall signing any paper.’

  ‘It was a gentleman’s agreement. A handshake with the prince. I’m amazed that you can have forgotten.’

  ‘There was no mention of five per cent—’

  ‘You expect His Royal Highness to quote figures?’ the agent exclaimed with a lift of eyebrows. ‘My dear sir, he employs others to deal with such details. Five per cent on the cost of the house and buildings. Another three hundred pounds for carting.’

  My father’s eyes blazed. ‘Damnation, man! The work isn’t even properly finished.’

  ‘Indeed. His Royal Highness has mentioned the unkempt look that disfigures your property. Your pond needs digging out. There’s that unfinished wall… And all the sacking draped about your fields.’

  ‘To keep the blasted hares out!’

  ‘It was His Royal Highness’s opinion that it looks like a laundry. Get it tidied up. The prince likes to find his estate presentable when he shows his guests around. Good afternoon.’

  With a nifty side-step, he got past Father and hurried on down the lane. Father made to go after him, but stopped and slammed the side of his fist against the gate. Shoulders sagging, he leaned on the gate as if all his strength had drained away, defeat written in every line. My heart contracted with anxiety as I read his weariness, his despair. He no longer had the reserves he had once been able to draw on. He looked old, and he looked ill.

  ‘Tek no notice, Mr Will,’ Pooley advised. ‘It’s the organ grinder you want to deal with, not his monkey. Talk to the prince when next he come.’

  * * *

  The chill, clinging dampness of that day at Ambleford gave me a fever that confined me to bed. I did not feel well enough to entertain Turnbull when he called the following Sunday to see me. Grace told me later that, it being a beautiful day, she and the engineer had taken a stroll through Poacher’s Wood. They had found an injured hare, an escapee from the shooting, and at Grace’s pleading Turnbull had bound its injury with his handkerchief. However, as they carried it home the ‘poor creature’ expired. One less pest to decimate our crops, thought I. But the incident of the dying hare proved to be more significant than I thought: it formed a first bond between my sister and my gentleman friend.

  Unsettled by three months of high adventure in France, Grace found the farm dull; she needed novelty. The Birthday Balls might have provided the necessary excitement, but there were to be no Birthday Balls at Sandringham that year: the Waleses didn’t come to Norfolk. The prince was in Russia, being fêted, going hunting, generally enjoying himself, and also attending the wedding of his sister-in-law, Princess Dagmar of Denmark, to the Archduke Alexander of Russia. The Princess of Wales did not accompany him; being pregnant again, and unwell, she remained in London with the Queen. The news of their enforced absence came as a disappointment to many of us, but poor Grace, who had set her heart on social triumphs, was desolated. She raged and wept every time she thought of her beautiful new dresses going to waste. How could she ever face Maria Kinnersley again?

  Needing some other diversion, she started to flirt with the susceptible William Turnbull. She always swore she didn’t deliberately set out to st
eal him away from me. Perhaps that was true. But whether she did it consciously or not, the result was the same.

  * * *

  Around the turn of the year, we were all stunned to learn that our dear Princess Alix was seriously ill. She had contracted rheumatic fever. Her symptoms were exacerbated by the difficult birth that February of her third child, the little Princess Louise. And then she developed ‘white leg’, one of the many dangers attendant on women after childbirth. As she told me in later years, she had several times been sure she would never see her beloved Sandringham again.

  Bland bulletins assured the nation that she was ‘improving’, but in fact she was bedridden for months; it was well into the summer before she regained anything like her usual strength.

  That winter my relationship with my father was fraught. He suffered feverish colds, but he kept working. When a bout of influenza forced him into confinement, he left his bed much sooner than he should have, which sapped his strength and left him with a dreadful hacking cough. He relied on me to act as his assistant, but he resented me for it.

  At times I pitied him; at times I loathed and despised him. My father, the man who, throughout my life, I had both feared and loved, but always respected… I could not decide what I thought of him now.

  Though I could not forgive him for betraying his marriage vows, I could see that Mama was no sturdy helpmeet for a man to lean on: she was a weak vine, needing constant support. Was it so strange that Father had turned to Jane Stead? Even in that one brief meeting, I had sensed her warmth, her gentleness, the quiet strength that was part of her nature. I believe Father sorely missed the comforts, both physical and emotional, that she had given him.

  Being in no position to cast stones, I came to understand and even sympathise with his dilemma. It’s painful to realise that one’s father is not a superior being, all-knowing, all-powerful, all-prescient, but a mere mortal man, weak and vulnerable like the rest.