Sandringham Rose

by Mary Mackie

  We buried Father at Morsford, with Mother and Victor, as he had requested. The gravestone, removed and leaning against the church wall, was already carved with his details – he had had it done after Victor died, adding his own name and date of birth along with his son’s; all it wanted was the final date: 28 August 1868.

  You never forgave me for being born, I thought, but in the end I was your only hope. You needed me, Father. At the last, you had to admit that you needed me.

  It was enough. Despite hail and storm, wind and fire; despite hares and princes, I would keep Orchards Farm for Johnny. That was the legacy my father left to me.

  * * *

  That winter was one of the blackest periods of my life. Some things stand out stark, others are obscured by the shock and grief which, at the time, I did not recognise for what they were. I thought I was being strong and resolute. In retrospect, some of my actions seem wilfully perverse.

  Father’s death seemed to stun Mama. She couldn’t accept it; she spoke about him as if he were expected hourly. Soon after the funeral, Grace took her back to Thetford, where she and Narnie planned to nurse her through her grief. They left Ellen Earley behind, ostensibly to be my chaperon and companion, but also because Narnie resented the woman and considered that she herself could care for Mama much better.

  Ellen was better than no company at all. She was a good worker, always sewing, looking after my clothes and my personal accoutrements, but she had no conversation; she knew nothing about farming.

  * * *

  My father’s will included a small legacy for me, but he left most of his estate in trust for Johnny to inherit when he came of age. My uncles, and the bank, were the trustees. The estate included the remainder of the lease on the farm, which, having been renewed only three years before, had another eighteen years to run.

  Mr Beck, however, evidently considered this his chance to ease the troublesome Hamiltons out of Orchards Farm. To my fury, he wrote to my uncles and offered to buy the lease.

  Jonathan was for considering it, but Seward sympathised with me: Father had put years of effort, and incalculable capital, into improving the land, the buildings, the drains… And Victor had died there because of his dream of introducing modern methods. The farm was ours by moral right, to hold and keep, so long as we paid our rent in due time. No one was going to throw us out.

  The matter was still unsettled when, at the rent audit, my uncles and I once again demanded fair compensation for game damage.

  ‘I’m sure we could come to some amicable agreement on the sum due,’ Beck said. ‘Now, as to this business of the lease…’

  ‘It’s not for sale,’ I said before either of my uncles could speak.

  Beck appealed to Jonathan, aware that he was the weakest link. ‘Then who do you intend shall take charge of the farm in the interim?’

  ‘My niece will,’ Seward answered. ‘Well, don’t look like that, man, she’s perfectly capable of it. She has a good manager in McDowall, as you very well know, and we shall be here to advise.’

  ‘But a single woman…’ Beck demurred. ‘It’s most irregular. His Royal Highness really cannot be seen to be condoning… I must look into it. I must take advice.’

  I doubt that he bothered his royal master with such a minor matter. Since their Royal Highnesses were about to embark on an extended tour of Egypt and Greece, Beck probably hoped to greet their return with the news that the ‘little difficulty’ at Sandringham had been given her marching orders.

  In November he wrote again to my uncles, two pages of hyperbole embossed with the royal crest: the request had been considered with sympathy, but consensus came down to the view that to allow a lady to undertake such an onerous task without the day-to-day support of a husband, or at least a male relative of an age to take responsibility, would so contravene the spirit of the agreement that His Royal Highness, on whose behalf the writer penned this letter, must deny my right to hold the lease, even nominally. Mr Beck was sure we would understand that he had to consider the whole picture, and for His Royal Highness to be seen encouraging such unconventional practices, when he was already a target for vicious rumour and innuendo…

  What he meant was that I was not wanted at Sandringham and if I persisted he would make things awkward for me. Mr Beck had never forgiven me for making a stand over our game rights.

  I didn’t doubt that he could do what he threatened. With my reputation already besmirched, the gossips would welcome any chance to throw yet more mud.

  Now that I was alone at the farm, those same gossips could not have failed to note Basil Pooley’s frequent visits. He had become my sturdy champion, spending long evenings with me playing cards and helping me outface the gossips, at church or walking out.

  There was, then, an obvious answer to my problem.

  One evening McDowall and I were in the parlour, poring over samples of our wheat and barley to assess the yield and choose seed for next year. When Basil arrived, I dismissed the steward, asked Basil to sit down, poured him a glass of brandy and showed him Mr Beck’s letter.

  He sat in a corner armchair, a page of the letter in each hand as he studied it in the light from a lamp on the bookcase, squinting at it, his lips forming some of the words syllable by syllable – his schooling had been rudimentary, the rest he had taught himself. Another lamp with a pink glass shade shed its soft glow across the plush cloth and the assortment of saucers where lay the corn samples. Rubbing the grains absently through my fingers, I waited. It was quiet in the room, but for the crackle of the fire.

  ‘I suppose this means you’ve got to get out,’ Basil said at last.

  ‘In effect, yes. My uncles have to find a tenant who’ll hold the place until Johnny’s of age. Naturally, if a stranger came to live here Mama and I would have to leave. We couldn’t possibly stay like lodgers in our own house.’

  ‘Would this hold up in court?’

  ‘My uncles think it probably would, given the skill of the prince’s lawyers. Either way, it would make an ugly scandal. I’m already out of favour. If the prince’s minions decide to start another campaign of whispers… As your uncle once said, single ladies do not run farms.’ The idiocy of it made me angry. ‘Presumably my lack of a husband would be too much of a temptation to all the men about me.’

  ‘So what do you mean to do? Will you go to Weal House?’

  ‘That’s one possibility.’ Aunt Beatrice had already told me that, if ever I needed a home, I should find one with her. But that would mean my leaving Orchards. That was unthinkable. To keep the farm for Johnny was all Father had ever asked of me; I had to do it, whatever the cost.

  I sifted the grain, watching it shower through my fingers into the saucer in order to avoid looking at Basil. ‘You said once that you were only waiting for me to say the word…’

  He stared at me blankly, as if working through all the alternative meanings to what I had said. In the silence, the clock tocked to itself, the fire spat. Then: ‘You’ll marry me?’ he asked in a voice fraught with incredulous hope. ‘D’you mean it? You’ll marry me?’

  ‘If you’re willing.’

  ‘Willing?! Blast, Miss Rose, don’t you know…’ Eyes blazing, he came out of his chair and started towards me.

  ‘Wait!’ I threw up my hands, stopping him a few feet away. ‘Before you say any more, you should know… you should know…’ I had sworn that I would let no man marry me without telling him the full truth. I didn’t want to deceive Basil. He deserved better than that. ‘Mr Pooley, I have to tell you…’

  ‘Why, bless you, Miss Rose,’ he put in with an unsteady laugh, ‘you don’t have to say it. I know. I know it’s for the farm. But there’s worse reasons for getting wed. You won’t regret it. I’ll be good to you. Blast, but my uncle George will be pleased.’

  If I told him the truth about myself, he might despise me for it – he might not marry me, and then I would lose the farm. Did it matter if I left him in ignorance? I would be a good wife, a faithful wife. I
would put Geoffrey Devlin from my mind. If Basil was willing to marry me, knowing that my only reason was to keep Orchards, then surely that was all that mattered? Had I the right to hurt him for the sake of my own conscience? The sin was mine; let the hurt be mine too.

  I told him nothing.

  Part Three

  Mrs Pooley

  One

  We planned to marry early in the New Year, when the first three months of my mourning had passed. At first we planned to do it openly, in defiance of the gossips. But when I thought of the uproar that would follow a formal announcement, or a public reading of banns, my courage failed me. There would be gossip enough once folk knew I had married Basil Pooley. And so we decided to do it as discreetly as possible.

  I spent Christmas in Thetford with my family, in the gracious Georgian mansion which William Turnbull had bought when he was courting me. It stood amid wooded suburbs, sash windows symmetrically set either side of a colonnaded entry, fronted by chestnut trees and a lawn dotted with flowerbeds.

  The Turnbulls kept a carriage with a coachman; they employed a butler and a basement full of servants. Grace was happy. She was also pregnant. But, for almost the first time in my life, I didn’t envy her. I should never have been content in Thetford with Turnbull.

  Mama worried us all. She behaved as though she wasn’t quite sure what was happening, or who we all were. I suspected her regular doses of laudanum were back to full strength. Perhaps I should have protested more strongly, but I hadn’t the energy. If she and Narnie chose to go down that road, then how could I stop them? I was only human. Keeping the farm was going to take all my resources.

  Johnny too was with us, so quiet and unobtrusive he often went unnoticed among the company. At sixteen he was already taller than I, with Father’s lean frame and soft brown hair tending to curl, but where Father’s eyes had been ice-blue Johnny’s were hazel, flecked with gold and fringed by long lashes. Those eyes had a steady, enigmatic regard that made him difficult to read.

  ‘I hate it here,’ he confided to me one day when the house was loud with Turnbull’s family and friends, most of them nouveau riche bores. ‘Mama’s not going to stay, is she?’

  ‘Only until she’s well enough to come home.’

  ‘That’s good. I want to spend my summer holidays at Orchards.’

  ‘At Orchards? Or with your friends at East Esham?’

  Johnny looked at me, hazel eyes meeting mine unblinkingly. ‘I belong at Orchards. You have told that man Beck that we’re not selling the lease, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I have. I’ll be holding the farm for you, Johnny. But first you must complete your education. There’s more to farming than knowing the old ways. Our advancement in the future depends on you.’

  ‘Father wanted me to go to university,’ he recalled. ‘He said it would make me a better farmer. But he thought he was going to be there to work with me. Still, there’ll be McDowall, and Ned Plant – and George Pooley…’

  ‘And me,’ I reminded him.

  Johnny slanted a look through his lashes, doubting my efficacy as a source of wisdom. ‘But in the meantime, when I’m not studying… I’ll be there to help and to learn. I’m the man of the family now.’

  Touched by his earnestness, I almost told him that that burden was soon to fall on Basil’s shoulders, at least until he, Johnny, was older. But again I said nothing. Which was another mistake.

  * * *

  At ten o’clock on a bitterly cold January morning, shortly before my twenty-fifth birthday, Basil and I were married by special licence in the Pooleys’ home parish of East Esham. I had played coward, unable to face our own rector, Mr Lancaster. Our only witnesses were George and Eliza Pooley, to whom we had told the news the previous evening. It was a strange wedding, the church cold and echoing, the bride in mourning, no flowers, no music, no guests…

  I felt perfectly calm and clear-headed, knowing exactly what I was doing. Putting the past behind me, giving my future into the hands of a good man who cared for me.

  As he made his vows, in a firm, assured voice which rang around the empty church, Basil watched me with bright eyes, as if he still couldn’t believe his luck. I replied, quietly but steadily: ‘I, Rose Mary Hester, take thee, Basil Joseph, to be my lawful wedded husband. For better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness or in health; forsaking all other… ’til death us do part…’

  We did have a wedding breakfast of sorts: Eliza Pooley insisted that we go back with them to their farm to have a bite to eat and to drink a toast in home-brewed ale.

  Afterwards we returned briefly to Orchards, where I wrote a letter informing my uncles of my marriage and asking them to confirm to Mr Beck that, with their agreement as trustees of my father’s estate, my new husband would lend his name to the tenancy. Legally, Beck had no good reason to refuse the request. And if he tried – if he forced me to it – I was prepared to start another scandal and accuse the prince of persecution. My reputation was about to decline again because of my hasty marriage to Basil. Further fury from Sandringham could hardly hurt me. Legally and morally the farm was mine.

  I had already let it be known that I intended going away for a few weeks. Now I called the house servants into the hall – Mrs Benstead came wiping flour from her hands – and, with Basil beside me, I showed them my wedding band and told them that when we returned from our trip to London my husband would be living at the farm with me.

  They greeted the news in silence, staring at me in disbelief. Only Ellen showed no sign of surprise, but then she rarely showed sign of any emotion. I could see Mrs Benstead frantically thinking it through, posing questions and reaching conclusions, but all she said was, ‘Good luck, Miss Rose. And you, sir.’

  Within a day or two, the whole of West Norfolk would know that I had become Mrs Basil Pooley.

  * * *

  London was in the grip of a fog that clung to the windows of the crawling cab and gave no hint of the city outside, except for the strangely muffled sounds of hooves and wheels and the occasional distant shout. Once the cab rocked wildly and three small, grinning faces appeared as three boys leapt to the side of the vehicle and clung there, pressing their noses against the glass so that they resembled gargoyles. Basil’s shout of anger mingled with a roar from the cabby as he cracked his whip. The urchins vanished, their raucous laughter following us.

  ‘Blasted beggars!’ Basil said. ‘The city’s full of ’em. They didn’t frighten you, did they?’

  ‘Startled me a little,’ I admitted. In truth, I was beginning to wish we had stayed at home instead of venturing to the city. I was cold to the bone after the train journey, heading to a place I couldn’t visualise, with a man who was now my husband.

  My husband. So far he had been considerate, diffident and almost shy. Would he know that I was no longer a virgin?

  The house where we were to stay lay in Camden Town. It belonged, Basil told me, to an acquaintance of his who no longer came up to town very often but who liked to have his house occupied and kept aired. A carriage would be at our disposal, too, and servants to ensure a comfortable and pleasant stay. My husband, I was discovering, had connections in many unexpected areas.

  It was almost dark when we arrived. Gas lamps glowed through the swirling mist, making the street even more murky. When Basil helped me down from the cab I incautiously breathed too deeply. Lungsful of dank, smoky fog made me choke, and I was still coughing, tears in my eyes, when a butler opened the door.

  A huge aspidistra stood under an ornate gilt mirror, but that was all I noted as a solicitous Basil led me upstairs, into a bedroom with a four-poster bed, silken tassels adorning rich blue hangings. Blues repeated everywhere, on the sprigged wallpaper and the patterned carpet, contrasting with the deep red of mahogany furniture. A fire blazed bright in the grate, and with lamps gleaming, curtains drawn against the foggy dusk, it was a cosy, welcoming place, far more splendid than I had expected.

  ‘Oh, my… my goodness!’ I croake
d. ‘How lovely!’

  As I made for the hearth, wiping streaming eyes and taking off my gloves to warm my hands at the blaze, Basil stood regarding me with a slight smile, enjoying my surprise. ‘I told you you’d like it.’

  One of the servants, a tall, lanky man in a black jean jacket, came in with some of our luggage, and behind him a maid appeared with a tray of tea.

  ‘I’ll go and have a word with cook,’ Basil said. ‘You drink your tea and settle in. Marcie will unpack for you. Won’t you, Marcie?’

  The maid bobbed a curtsey, aimed somewhere between us. ‘Yes, sir.’

  Left alone, I divested myself of coat and hat and sat by the fire, feeling cold to the soul. Not only because of the season. I seemed to have become trapped in a strange dream, going through the necessary actions like a puppet, with no will of my own, nor real feeling.

  I would have liked to question the maid about the house and its owner, but one did not cross-question servants unless one wished to raise untoward speculation below stairs. So I sipped my tea in silence while Marcie unpacked.

  ‘Will that be all, madam?’ she asked at last.

  ‘Yes. Thank you, Marcie.’

  She bobbed another curtsey and went away. She hadn’t looked directly at me once.

  Now I finally sat down and wrote one of the most difficult letters of my life, to Mama, telling her of my marriage and the reasons for it. Putting it into words, seeing it written in black ink on white paper, made me realise at last what I had done. I had rushed into this marriage while still in a state of shock. What had seemed like rational thinking now appeared to be madness. But it was too late now to go back. It was done. I was Mrs Basil Pooley.

  Adjoining the bedroom was a dressing-room, which Basil used to wash and change for dinner, allowing me the privacy of the main room. I donned my best black silk with its big, pointed white collar.