Sandringham Rose

by Mary Mackie

  Over an excellent dinner in a panelled dining-room made intimate by candle-light, Basil asked me what I would care to do while we were in the city. He proved to be full of suggestions, mentioning the great houses, the palaces and churches, the museums, the parks…

  ‘You know the city well,’ I observed.

  ‘Oh, yes. I’m here a lot, for reasons of business.’

  ‘And this is where you stay, in this house?’

  ‘Generally. The servants are used to me by now. I lived here nigh on eighteen months after… well, after I made a proper fool of myself that day at Old Fenny’s.’

  He had never mentioned that day before. ‘You didn’t make a fool of yourself. It was I who…’

  ‘Yes, well, that’s done with now. We’re wed, and that’s more than I dared hope for. If…’ His gaze faltered and dropped to the glass he twisted by its stem, watching candle-light dance in the pale wine. ‘If you want me to wait a while before… I mean, I’ll sleep in the dressing-room if you want. For a night or two.’

  I shook my head, pressing a linen napkin to my lips. ‘No, there’s no need for that.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’ I had married him in full knowledge of what it meant, pledged heart and soul and body in return for his name and his guarantee of my tenure of the farm. I would not deny him his rights.

  With a hand that was not quite steady, he lifted the wine glass and drained it. ‘Why don’t you go up? I’ll be there directly.’

  The maid had left my nightgown laid out. Trimmed with lace, its voluminous folds covered me from throat to wrists to ankles as I removed two hot stone bottles from my side of the bed and climbed between stiff starched sheets. I don’t remember feeling anything beyond a numb passivity.

  Eventually I heard the door of the dressing-room open and Basil came in wearing a nightrobe of flamboyant red velvet. He moved about the room pinching out candles, until only a small lamp by the bed remained alight. Leaning over it, he blew it out, leaving the room so dark that phantom images moved across my eyes.

  I heard movement and imagined him disrobing, then his weight came on the bed. Discovering the two bottles which still warmed his side he gave a little grunt and tumbled them out to thud upon the floor. Cool air flooded in as he lifted the sheets and lay down, settling the covers over him.

  ‘Are you asleep?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  Moving closer, he lifted himself on one elbow, touching my face, bending over me to kiss me. I could feel that he was naked, already roused to erection. Alcohol fumes assailed me on breath that came swift and excited. ‘It’ll be all right,’ he said as he reached beneath the sheets, his fingers catching in the fabric of my nightdress, drawing it up. ‘It’ll be all right, Miss Rose. Oh, Miss Rose…’

  Despite my mind’s resistance, my flesh began to respond. I was no untried virgin, nor he an inexperienced boy. He was skilled in the calculated art of rousing a woman and I could feel the excitement building in him as he discovered my readiness. All at once with a great gasp he rose up in the bed like some leviathan from the deeps, throwing back the covers. ‘I can’t wait,’ he groaned. ‘I can’t wait!’ His knee forced my thighs apart as he threw himself on me, all consideration forgotten, muttering, ‘Blast it! Blast it! Aagh!’ With a violence that slammed at me like a fist, he thrust deep inside me.

  Afterwards, he lay exhausted, his head heavy on my breast. Sweat curdled between us where our bodies met, and I felt a sticky warmth trickling out of me. Would there be a child from this night? Dear God, did I want Basil Pooley’s child?

  Letting out a long sigh, he moved away, composing himself for sleep. I pulled my nightdress down to my feet, as if by covering myself I could shut out the memories. My body throbbed, aching for a release that never came. Yes, he was skilled, but for his own gratification rather than mine. He had long desired to possess me. Now he had his wish. But it wasn’t love. Not for either of us.

  He said, ‘Are you in pain? Did I hurt you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No. Not with all the riding you’ve done. It stretches a woman, so they say. But it was good. And it’ll get better. I’ll show you. Good night. Good night, my dear.’

  * * *

  In the days that followed, I often wondered if I had ever really known Basil. He was far more at ease in the city than I was, known in all the best establishments, greeted by name in many places.

  ‘I’ve got a finger in many pies,’ was his explanation. ‘Property, merchandise… My interests change, depending what pays best. Don’t worry your head about it. Didn’t know you’d wed a wealthy man, did you?’

  He enjoyed my astonishment at his revelations, as he enjoyed spending his money on me. He took me about the city, showing me the sights despite the fogs and sleet of the chill January days. He sat patiently while dressmakers pinned and tucked, their assistants bringing pattern after pattern, bolt after bolt of cloth for our approval. There were hats, and shoes, wraps and shawls and gloves such as I had never hoped to possess. And there were jewels – every day he found excuse to buy me some new gewgaw, as if I were a concubine to be rewarded for her favours.

  By day he seldom touched me except to offer his arm or extend a helping hand. By day he played the old-fashioned gallant, even when we were alone. And at night, in darkness, he made love to me with a sensuous, half-violent enjoyment.

  My physical self responded to the assault he made on my senses, though most nights when he fell into exhausted snoring I was left wide awake, my body on fire with frustrated need. On other nights I felt nothing at all, except a faint disgust. And every morning I took a bath or a strip wash and scrubbed myself clean. More and more my mind revolted.

  London was exhilarating with its noise and bustle, its streets full of costermongers and traders in all kinds of goods, from old clothes to cat-meat to muffins and live eels. And the traffic – cabs and coaches, omnibuses and wagons, crammed wheel to wheel in a dense stream along all the main streets. People of all classes rubbed elbows with each other, young and old, rich and poor. Urchins swept the street crossings, held horses, ran errands for pennies – and picked pockets, so Basil warned me.

  We saw a hue and cry one day, a well-dressed gentleman gasping after a skinny, sickly-looking lad who skipped away into an alley and was lost, along with the gentleman’s purse. The lad looked familiar to me, but rack my brains as I might I could not decide whom he reminded me of – one of our old backus boys, probably.

  Apart from wishing to acquaint me with the city’s sights, Basil had business to conduct; some mornings he went out early, leaving me to myself until lunchtime, but for the rest of the time he was attentive, always ready with some idea for my amusement and delight. We spent hours poring over exhibits in museums; we visited the waxworks and the menagerie; we saw extracts from Shakespeare and attended the music hall; and one evening we dined in a private room at an exclusive eating house patronised by the Prince of Wales. ‘Good job he’s abroad,’ Basil said with a grin. ‘Wouldn’t want to run into him with one of his doxies, would we?’

  The days were interesting and varied. It was the nights that troubled me.

  I began to wish we could go home, face the gossip, put it behind us and make a start on the rest of our lives. I half-believed that our relationship would revert to the old comfortable ways once we were at home, when Basil had to put his mind, and his physical energies, into helping me run the farm.

  On a particularly raw morning when the fog hung thick and sour, causing people to hold their scarves across their noses, Basil and I crossed Piccadilly, our way through the horse muck cleared by a small child of indeterminate sex, dressed in clothes three sizes too large, with a cap tilted to one side of its greasy locks. Hooves clopped in the mist, hansom cabs looming up like black ghosts; even the bawl of the street traders was muffled. Outside one of the shops, a lad was holding the reins of a fine Arab horse whose master was evidently inside the emporium. The lad looked to be about te
n, though thin and half-starved, shivering in inadequate clothing. He looked ill, dark shadows under sunken eyes, his lips near blue with cold. I recognised him as the boy who had fled with the gentleman’s purse. More than that, I recognised him as—

  ‘Basil…’ I caught his arm to draw his attention to the lad, but as I did so a well-dressed man came striding out of the store in a fine temper, shouting at the boy to bring his horse. He leapt up to the saddle, and would have ridden away at once had not the lad hung on to the bridle, saying weakly, ‘Sixpence, mister! You said sixpence!’

  ‘Six penn’orth of good leather!’ the man snarled, and lashed his riding crop across the boy’s head, his boot kicking out to land in the lad’s ribs and brutally shove him away.

  ‘Don’t interfere!’ Basil grasped my arm as I started forward, and in the same moment the horseman was away, hooves striking sharp on cobbles. The boy fell into the streaming gutter, thick with dung and some indescribable liquid ooze whose origins I didn’t care to guess.

  The little street-sweeper looked on dispassionately. ‘He shoulda stayed wiv Gypsy Jim. Won’t last long wivout a guv’nor.’

  I had no idea what the child meant, except that the sick boy had no one to turn to. None of the passers-by even bothered to break step to help him.

  ‘Leave him!’ Basil ordered.

  ‘How can I leave him? He’s ill. Can’t you see?’ And I bent beside the boy, who was all but unconscious. ‘Jack. Jack Huggins! Can you hear me?’

  ‘You know him?’ Basil asked in astonishment.

  ‘He used to come with a work-gang from Castle Acre. We must help him. Basil, please let us help him!’

  * * *

  We took the boy Jack back to the house in Camden Town and put him to bed. I tended him myself, with the aid of Marcie, and it soon became apparent that rest, warmth and good food would work the miracle of restoring him.

  ‘And he’ll repay you the way he did before,’ Basil snorted.

  ‘No, not this time.’ I was confident.

  ‘Well, at least keep his door locked. I’m not having him wandering about the house. He’d be away with all the valuables. He’s not Oliver Twist, you know.’

  I wished I had never told him how much I had enjoyed Mr Dickens’s story of the poor lost boy.

  Jack’s story was similar in many ways. When his mother came to London she had hoped to keep her family together, but poverty had forced her to send the oldest boy away. She had descended to prostitution, dragging her two daughters down that same road. The girls vanished – Jack didn’t know where. Then his mother had taken sick and he had been forced to beg and steal, which had brought him into the orbit of ‘Gypsy Jim’, a villain who kept a band of youngsters doing petty crimes to keep him in gin. When Jack’s mother died, the boy had moved into the rookeries – the crowded stews of the city’s backstreets where families lived ten to a room – and there he had continued to thieve and lie for his meagre bread until Gypsy Jim caught him trying to conceal a golden guinea with other coins he had secretly been collecting. Jim stole his treasure, beat him soundly and threw him out to fend for himself. He had been living on scraps and sleeping rough for two months when I found him.

  All of this emerged slowly as he learned to trust me. At first he was too sick to care, then as he began to recover he was like a wild animal, fearful and distrustful. When he discovered himself to be locked in he accused me of keeping him for the police. He didn’t remember coming to Orchards, not at first, but as I sat with him and talked with him about Norfolk his memories of his childhood expanded. Yes, he recalled the lady who had taken him and bathed him; he remembered running naked, jumping off the stairs – he had hurt his ankle; it had been swollen for days. And, yes – with a furtive, sidelong look – he remembered stealing the food and the spoons. But he had needed them, for his mother!

  ‘Why didn’t you tell on me?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘Because I understood why you’d done it – you didn’t know any better. You still don’t. But there’s a better way, a better life, Jack. If you’ll let me, I’d like to help you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I believe it was intended. Have you heard of fate? Do you know what it is?’

  He didn’t, but he was eager to learn. He was an intelligent boy, if only someone would give him the chance.

  One thing intrigued me – when he had been living in such poverty, half-starved and poorly clad in the tender care of Gypsy Jim, why had he been trying to save money? Why hadn’t he spent it on extra food and warm clothes?

  ‘It was my escape money,’ he said. ‘I was going to get away. I was going back home. To the country. To look after horses.’

  Such a simple wish to have. ‘We have horses at Orchards. Would you like to come and work for me? But if you do I must have your word – no more stealing. No more lies. First time I catch you taking something that doesn’t belong to you…’

  ‘Oh, I won’t, Miss Rose!’ he promised. ‘I swear I won’t!’

  * * *

  We had been in the city about three weeks when a letter came from Basil’s uncle, George Pooley. Among ill-spelled and hardly legible comments on the weather and happenings in Norfolk, he included the news that Cassie Wyatt was ‘ailing bad’.

  ‘I must go back,’ I said at once.

  ‘What?’ Basil looked up from his breakfast. ‘Why must you? Cassie Wyatt’s been ailing for as long as I can remember. He doesn’t say she’s dying, does he?’

  ‘I must go, Basil. I have a feeling I’m needed.’

  He muttered something, but when I asked him to repeat it he said only, ‘I can’t go yet, I haven’t finished my business.’

  ‘You don’t need to come with me.’

  He stopped and frowned at me. ‘That would look fine – coming home alone from your honeymoon. What do you take me for? I’m not just a name on a marriage certificate.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘And don’t you forget it. You’re a married woman now, with a married woman’s responsibilities. Your husband comes first – ahead of your fancy friends.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. Of course you come first. But if Cassie’s ill, then—’

  ‘That’s just an excuse to get away. You’ve been fretting for one – no, don’t deny it. I’ve known it ever since we got here. You’re sorry you married me, aren’t you?’

  ‘No!’ How had the conversation become so hostile?

  ‘Well, that’s good, because it’s too late for regrets. Married we are and married we’ll stay. I’m the best husband you’ve got and you might as well make up your mind to it, for you’ll not get another.’

  He was adamant. So it was another week before we started home.

  The boy Jack Huggins travelled back with us, warmly wrapped in decent clothes. It was a long, slow, bitter journey. A great tree had fallen across the railway line outside Ely and in other places there were floods, though by the time we arrived in Lynn it was freezing. Basil hired a carriage to take us home through lanes whose ruts were thick with ice.

  At Orchards, Mrs Benstead greeted us with a sad face.

  ‘You’ve heard, then, Miss Rose?’

  ‘Heard?’

  ‘About Miss Wyatt. Miss Cassie Wyatt. God rest her sweet soul… She passed away, day before last.’

  Hardly able to look at Basil, hating him for keeping me away too long, I went alone to Feltham.

  * * *

  In the morning-room at the Grange, heavy drapes were drawn against the daylight. Candles lit the scene, and Cassie lay peaceful, free of pain at last, doll-like in a box lined with blue satin. Mrs Wyatt and her five remaining daughters sat keeping watch over the coffin, but my aunt remained apart, moving restlessly about the room amid shadows, occasionally stroking back her curtain of grey hair to send a bright darting glance at me.

  With tears glinting under her eyes, Mrs Wyatt removed the square of white linen, allowing me to see Cassie’s face, pale as marble but wonderfully serene. ‘We don’
t like to leave her alone,’ Mrs Wyatt said. ‘While she’s still with us, we’ll stay with her.’

  I stood beside my oldest friend, unable to believe she wouldn’t move, breathe, open her eyes. But what lay there was not Cassie, only the empty shell she had used. Cassie herself – the essence of Cassie – was free at last from pain and earthly shackles.

  ‘She’s gone to a better life than this,’ Felicity murmured as we embraced in our mutual sorrow.

  ‘Had she been very ill?’ I asked, head and heart heavy with the pain of losing yet another dear friend.

  Mrs Wyatt wiped a tear from her eye with a man’s linen kerchief. ‘Not especially. But she was tired. She simply slipped away from us. In her sleep. We should be glad it was so easy, for her sake. Oh, my child. My poor child!’

  As tears overcame her, Felicity gestured to a brocade settee. ‘Sit down, Rose. It was kind of you to come.’

  ‘Kind?’ I managed. ‘No, not kind. I only wish I had come sooner.’

  We sat like figures in a play, some of the girls employed in sewing mourning bands as we talked of Cassie, of the details of her passing. But eventually an awkward, expectant silence spread. None of them liked to voice the questions that were in their minds.

  I found myself toying with my wedding band, twisting it round on my finger. ‘You will have heard that Mr Pooley and I are married,’ I said, looking from one to another of the waiting faces. ‘I know it may appear that it was done in unseemly haste, but… The fact is, we should have been obliged to leave the farm if Mr Pooley hadn’t offered to take on the tenancy. Poor Mama was already so distressed, I couldn’t add that burden to her woes.’

  That was enough for Felicity, who smiled a tearful but sympathetic smile. ‘So that’s the answer. My dear, we did wonder. But… you would have married him in time, anyway, would you not?’