by Alis Hawkins
‘But Mr Ormiston isn’t following your father’s instructions, Harry. He’s following yours. Because the one instruction you have given him countermands everything your father ever said. You’ve told him to raise as much money as possible this quarter so that you can invest it. Do you honestly think you can save the estate with clever investment?’
‘If it’s the right investment, yes! How do you think the likes of the Colbys at Ffynone came by their wealth? Not by cropping rotations and better cattle! No, by investing in industry. Iron. Coal.’
She did not reply. What was she thinking? I could feel her gazing at me. When she finally broke her silence, her voice was low, sombre.
‘Do you know that they’ve gone out today – Mr Ormiston and John – to throw half a dozen families off their farms? John’s distraught.’
Before I could respond, there was a soft click as the library door opened, and I heard Elsie’s voice. ‘Is it all right to take the tray away now?’
The question had obviously been directed at Lydia, who ushered the girl in with a gesture and began helping her to stack the crockery on the tray while I tried to take in what she had just said. Six families to be thrown off their farms? I did not think my father had evicted six tenants in half a century. Ormiston would not take such drastic action, surely? He must understand that I had never intended that my request for money to invest should come before the welfare of Glanteifi’s people?
In the corner of my eye, I watched Lydia hold the door open for the departing girl then close it before sitting down at the fireside.
‘I think you sometimes forget who John is, Harry. Where he’s come from.’
I sank onto the chair opposite her, keeping my eyes on the faded colours of the carpet beneath our feet. I would let her say her piece without trying to catch fleeting, invisible expressions; the effort rarely did anything but remind me how little I could see that was of any real use.
‘Before he met you, John had very little prospect of ever being anything but a solicitor’s clerk, however bright and promising he might be. You’ve raised him up in a way he could never have imagined, and you treat him like an equal, but,’ she had obviously seen me look up, ready to defend myself, ‘has it ever occurred to you that he can’t afford to see himself in the same way? You may consider yourself his friend, but you’re also his employer. And in making him under-steward, you put Ormiston between you. You’ve made it clear to him that Ormiston’s word is law on the estate, so because he knows Ormiston is making mistakes, instead of coming to you he’s trying to battle it out with him face to face.’
In my mortification, I could not look at her. ‘What should I do?’
‘Involve yourself, Harry! Talk to John, then sit down with him and Ormiston.’
‘But how can I suddenly insert myself into estate affairs without giving Ormiston the impression that John’s come tittle-tattling to me?’
‘I don’t think the news that six families have been given notice would be seen as tattle. Now’s the time to be squire, Harry. Glanteifi needs you.’
John
‘Beg pardon for asking, but are you all right, Mr Davies?’
I turned to look at the groom who’d spoken. Twm. I’d asked him a hundred times to call me John, and today of all days, I wished he had. I didn’t want to be a gentleman today. Not when gentlemen could throw people off their land.
‘Tired,’ I said. ‘Up late working.’
‘Suppose you had a lot to catch up with, after you’d been to London then over the river to Mr Probert-Lloyd yesterday.’
‘Is he back?’
‘He is, sir.’
I nodded. ‘What’s your surname, Twm?’
‘Same as you, as it happens. Davies.’
‘Right, well from now on I’m going to call you Mr Davies, unless you call me John.’
He stared at me. This isn’t right. I could see him thinking it. But what did right have to do with it – it was all luck, wasn’t it? It’d looked like terrible luck when my parents’d died, but if they hadn’t, I’d never have gone to Mr Davies’s school as an orphan scholar, never ended up clerking for Charles Schofield, never had a chance to work with Harry or live in the mansion.
‘I can’t,’ Twm said. ‘What would Sarge say?’ Sarge was the head groom. As far as I knew, he’d never been a soldier; somebody must’ve just given him the nickname because he was such a stickler for people following his orders.
‘Tell him I told you to.’
‘He still won’t like it. He’ll say you don’t know your place. That you shouldn’t be encouraging me to behave as if I don’t know mine.’
‘All right then. We’ll both be Mr Davies.’
I left him standing there wondering whether he’d won or lost, and went into the house. The front of the mansion faced east, and with no sun on it since midday, the hall was on the cold side of cool. I shivered as I took my coat off, and was just going into the cloakroom to hang it up when Wil-Sam appeared at my side. He had keen ears and he could hear the front door opening from anywhere on the ground floor.
‘I can hang up my own coat, Wil-Sam,’ I said, though I knew that wasn’t why he’d come so quickly.
‘I know, Mr Davies.’ His voice shook. He was terrified that his family’d lost their farm.
‘Everything’s all right, Wil-Sam,’ I said, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘Your father’s got another quarter to find the rent.’ If I hadn’t been able to persuade Mr Ormiston to give Wil-Sam’s family another quarter’s grace, I wasn’t sure I’d have been able to stay as under-steward.
Wil-Sam was eleven years old, and his top teeth still looked too big for his mouth when he beamed. He liked to swagger about in the decent clothes he’d been given when he came to the big house, pretending he was a young man, but just at that moment he looked like the child he was.
‘Your father’s agreed to sign a new contract,’ I told him.
‘What for?’ Wil-Sam knew what a contract was. He’d put his mark on one when he came to work at the mansion, and he’d be able to write his name when he signed the next one. Mrs Griffiths’d seen to it that he went to school.
‘To say what crops he’ll grow and how often he’ll change them round.’
‘But it’s his land! You can’t tell him what to grow!’
I sighed. ‘It’s Mr Probert-Lloyd’s land, Wil-Sam. And your dada could take a lesson from you and learn some new ways of doing things.’
I pulled my riding boots off and handed them to him. ‘There you are. I might hang my own coat up, but I’ll let you clean my boots.’ Then, before he could dart off, I added, ‘Could you ask Ianto and Fred to bring some hot water up, please? I need a bath.’
* * *
The bath didn’t exactly wash my sins away, but I felt better after dipping the jug into the water again and again and pouring it over my head. There was something about sitting there with the warm water running down my face. Soothing.
When I finally got dressed and went downstairs, Harry and Lydia were in the library. That morning, I’d been all in a knot about how to face Lydia after the things I’d said last night, but after today, those worries seemed stupid, childish.
They both looked at me as if I might break, so I knew Lydia must have spoken to Harry about what I’d told her. If I’m honest, I’d half hoped she would. But I didn’t want to talk about any of that now. I couldn’t face it.
I went and stood in front of the fire, hands out to the glow of the culm. I’d thought about staying in my room till dinner, but that would’ve brought on all sorts of questions.
As it was, neither of them said anything, which was worse. In the end, I had to turn round.
‘You look tired, John,’ Lydia said gently.
‘Up till all hours,’ I mumbled. I was glad she hadn’t asked what had happened with the tenants. Just the thought of the tears running down old Matthew Thomas’s face as he asked me why we were doing this to him was enough to stick a lump like a crab apple in my thro
at.
Harry made a small movement, and something in his face told me that he was about to say something important. And I didn’t want him to.
‘You were late back from Cilgerran,’ I said, trying to sound normal. ‘Did Dr Reckitt find out what killed Lizzie Rees?’
That brought Harry up short, like a man greeted with a handshake instead of a slap. ‘Uh… no. There was nothing suspicious. But that’s not what—’
‘Not even poison?’
He tried a smile, but it was strained. ‘You know Reckitt. Won’t say absolutely not. But no, no poison.’
I turned back to the fire. My hands were damp with sweat. How could they be cold and sweaty at the same time?
‘Anyway,’ Harry said, ‘as there’s no inquest required, I don’t think there’s anything more to say about the death of Lizzie Rees.’
If I turned round, he’d ask me about our visits to the defaulters, I knew he would. ‘There might be one more thing to say about Lizzie Rees,’ I said, still looking at the fire.
‘Oh?’ Harry sounded surprised.
‘Something I got from the Rhosdywarch girls, Ann and Gwen.’ An image of the two of them sitting on the grass flashed into my mind, Gwen making her daisy crown, Ann trying to stop her telling me what their big sister had done. ‘I know why Lizzie didn’t go with her mother and sisters to Ffynone,’ I said.
Then I turned to face them. ‘Do you know what washing the midnight shirt is?’
Harry
I stayed in the library long after Lydia and John had retired and I had sent the last maid up to bed. I kept telling the servants they did not need to stay awake in case I wanted anything, that I was perfectly capable of fending for myself. But habits are hard to break, I suppose, and my father would not have dreamed of making tea for himself or fetching more fuel to keep a fire burning into the small hours.
Over dinner, John had finally been persuaded to provide us with the bare bones of the visits to last quarter’s defaulters. Thanks to his efforts, only three families had been given notice rather than six, but nevertheless, I had heard tears in his voice. For his sake, I hoped they had remained unshed – he would not wish to appear unmanly in front of Lydia.
The hall clock started to chime midnight and an old reflex in me waited for the rest to join in. As a young man, my father had been a horological enthusiast, and there was a long-case clock in virtually every major room downstairs. It had been his lifelong ambition to persuade them all to chime simultaneously, but however hard he tried, and whatever minute adjustments he made, there had always been a cacophonous half a minute or so while the various clocks went about their ill-synchronised business. Since his death, I had seen to it that only the clocks in the hall and the study were wound. It made for a quieter house.
Midnight or not, I was wakeful, my mind darting restlessly from one thing to another. The estate and my failures in its stewardship. The odd questions still clinging to Lizzie Rees’s death. The viewing of the body that John and I would oversee in Cilgerran the following day. Life seemed determined to set my responsibilities to the estate at odds with my duty to the dead.
I stood at the library window as Lydia had done earlier, the darkness of the whirlpool merging into the darkness beyond, rendering me totally blind. I could not see the weak light of the candles on the mantelpiece reflected in the glass.
A wave of smothering claustrophobia threatened to engulf me, and I turned around, took a pace or two into the darkness of the library; I needed to feel movement, action, to throw off the black deadness. One of the great losses that blindness had brought in its wake was an inability to move swiftly and surely. All movement now had to be careful, considered, lest I run into things, knock them over, fall headlong. Blindness had prematurely aged the way in which I navigated the world, and I bitterly resented the caution that had been forced upon me.
However, in recent weeks, Lydia had provided me with a partial remedy. In preparation for a season of balls, she had decided that I must learn to dance. Or rather, relearn. For I had been a proficient and enthusiastic dancer before losing my sight.
Despite the fact that she was not here, I found my feet moving now of their own accord; shuffling at first as I moved sideways up the library towards the table, then more fluidly back towards the window. Becoming bolder in the open space, I tried to skip and turn, but blindness is not conducive to good balance and I found myself staggering and almost falling.
Righting myself, I took a deep breath. No. I would not be thwarted. I would try a polka, even if I ended up flat on my back. I was twenty-seven years old and needed to feel the blood singing in my veins.
New to me on moving to London, the polka had quickly become my favourite dance. Now, cautiously, at half-speed, I tried skipping and dipping with an imaginary partner. And even slowed as they were, the familiar movements brought with them joyous memories of the open-air dancing platform in Cremorne Gardens, where Gus and I had danced away many a carefree day; young gents and slightly less respectable young women whirled up into a dancing frenzy by the music of strings and woodwind, the pleasure gardens green and lush around us, studded with the jewel colours of flowers whose shapes had blurred as my vision declined.
The waltz had its enthusiasts, but I had always been a polka man.
Suddenly, the music in my head stopped, brought to a halt by a different sound, the clicking of the library door catch. I swayed to a standstill.
There was a candle. Dim, almost imperceptible above the whirlpool, but I saw it because I was looking for it. And faint, almost silent footsteps that suggested slippers or bare feet.
The blur of light moved closer and closer until I could see the faint paleness of a face behind it.
‘Harry?’
Lydia.
I do not know what possessed me; I held out a hand. ‘Come and dance with me.’
‘Dance?’
‘Yes. It’s no fun on my own.’ As I waited for her response, I could feel my heart beating. Had I been exerting myself so much?
Eventually she stepped forward.
‘Do you know the polka?’ I asked.
‘No.’
‘It’s not difficult. Even a guardsman can do it.’
She laughed softly, understanding that my weak joke required some response in lieu of a smile, and after turning aside to put her candle on the table, came and gave me her hand.
Was it the darkness that made the placing of my arm around her back, my hand on her waist so very intimate, or the simple fact that it was many, many months since I had held a woman in my arms? I tried to fix my mind anywhere but on the sensation of Lydia’s warmth, the closeness of her body. I did not want my inconvenient arousal to alarm her.
‘I know several waltz tunes,’ she said, ‘but I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a polka. Can you hum a tune?’
Even as I began to hum the first polka that came to me, memories flooded back. The thrill of moving as one with another person, their feet following yours, their body responding to every move of your own. The in and out and round and round of dancing so as not to collide with other couples, holding your partner’s gaze with the laughter and recklessness of it all, catching the eyes of other young men, exchanging triumphant or envious looks depending on the attractiveness of respective partners.
But Lydia’s unfamiliarity with the steps, coupled with the darkness and my disinclination to hold her too close lest my body betray me, made for a stumbling, clumsy attempt. I stopped, released her hand.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘If it wasn’t dark, it might be easier.’
Suddenly consumed by a painful, physical longing for the blithe days in Cremorne’s sunshine, I moved away from her. ‘Why did you come down?’
‘I didn’t hear you come upstairs. After our conversation earlier, and John’s distress, I thought you might be in need of company.’
I stared into the darkness where she stood. ‘I don’t know what to do, Lydia. Should I visit those farms myself tomorrow, tell th
em I’ve changed my mind? Or would that make me look weak?’
‘Oh, you men!’ I saw a swift movement as she picked up her candle once more. ‘Why must it be weak to change your mind and show compassion?’
‘Changing your mind and showing compassion are two different things.’
‘Don’t you dare split hairs!’
‘I’m not.’
‘Yes. You are. Like every other man in the world, you think there’s a time to be compassionate and a time to be businesslike. As if compassion has no place in business. But that’s not the Radical line, is it? That’s pure Tory.’
I felt as if she had slapped me.
Held in place by the darkness around me, I watched her candle move towards the fire and come to rest as she put it on the table next to one of the wingback chairs. I heard the hinge squeak as she raised the glass on the mantelpiece lamp and lit the wick, its light combining with that of the candles to restore a measure of sight to me.
As she sat down, I moved cautiously over to the hearth, one hand tracing the outline of the wingback chair, the other searching the air around the fire for the poker. I thrust it into the banked-up fire, revealing a sullen red glow and allowing air in under the blanket of coal dust that Lydia herself had thrown on before retiring so as to keep the embers alive until morning.
I poked and prodded at the fire until I felt calm enough to speak.
‘Precisely what would you have me do, Lydia?’ I asked. ‘How can I be compassionate but not let the estate go bankrupt?’
‘By doing what I advised earlier – talk to John.’
‘Just to him? Are you saying I should exclude Ormiston?’
‘Mr Ormiston will be gone in a matter of months. He only promised a year to train John, didn’t he? Agreeing new policies with John now will make things easier when Ormiston leaves.’