Amenable Women

by Mavis Cheek

  There is a chill in the air for all those deaths. Anna moves on. Childbirth. Something that Anna was tacitly forbidden once Henry annulled their marriage – for who would marry the divorced wife of unpredictable Henry? He might change his mind, he might take umbrage that one with whom he had shared a bed so disastrously should be seen to share one successfully elsewhere. If she had given birth to a son Henry’s mortification would be complete and public. No man would risk that – nor would Anna. Marriage was forbidden her. And after Henry’s death? Why, it was not something she needed. And there was – if a disappointment – also a relief in all this. Anna knew, as all women knew, that childbirth was a dangerous occupation. In Henry’s case, of course, it could be just as dangerous to be his Queen and barren of boys.

  Anna considers herself lucky. She was godmother to many, she was loved and welcomed, or in Edward’s case respected, by all three of her royal stepchildren – she had her orphanages – and she could live her life – within her own estates – exactly as she chose as the times grew more dangerous. After Edward, while the foundations of the Tudors rocked, Anna made her recipes and tasted her wines in safety, away from London. Good sense kept her quiet and domesticated while little Jane Grey – bright star of humanist intellect – was put up for a nine day’s Queen. Many wept for her as her ambitious parents denied their daughter any last kind word on her way to the scaffold. Anna continued living quietly at her estates during those days of turbulence, fearing the worst, until Mary was safely on the throne. Little Jane Grey – the brave words she spoke from the scaffold melted the hardest of Catholic hearts. To preserve those tormented Tudors, Mary would say that the execution had to be done, as her sister would say many years later with the Scottish Queen. Who would want to bring a child into a world so bloody?

  Anna could justifiably wonder how such a royal line had the gall to call her own Cleves uncivilised. It was not dancing and French hoods that made a court honourable, it was something altogether deeper and lacking in England during Anna’s lifetime. Even Henry’s will was perjured after his death so that the Reformists held power, which was never Henry’s wish. Such upheaval there was on the death of Henry that it frightened them all. To be a Catholic was no longer acceptable and while Anna had learned to be pragmatic in her dealings with the world, and its spies, of whom there were many, her friend, the Lady Mary, Edward’s heir should he die childless was under most savage surveillance. And young Elizabeth, too, had to watch her every step. Both those daughters, whom Anna came to know well as their step-aunt, were remarkable in that they lived and died with huge admiration and love for this cruel, perverse father of theirs. All children were taught to respect their parents in those days, but the feelings both Elizabeth and Mary had for the King were profound and genuine. Another mark of the man – that he could be charming and witty and amusing – and great – and could leave you with affection for him even after he had whipped you.

  So – whenever a goose-wit such as Miss Murdoch stands in front of her portrait and prognosticates about her dullness and her lack of intelligence, Anna longs to point out that by the time the New Year celebrations of 1541 were over she was mistress of the art of Dealing With Tudors and had learned, with the greatest of pleasure, how to please herself. Something that Marillac commented on when he wrote to the French King saying how well and handsome Anna became during the succeeding years. It would be so good if those truths could stand in place of all the continuing calumnies.

  Anna returns to her frame and its gilded security. This gallery of wronged and redoubtable women is as frustrating as it is upsetting. Anna knows – with all due modesty – that she was cleverer than many. And happier than most. But this is not what will be said of her. She will always be the Flanders Mare and the ugly German reject. That Murdoch woman speaks for the world when she says such graceless things. What Anna is not allowed is to be an intelligent, likeable, desirable woman thrown suddenly against the wall of history and left to find her own way over it. Henry – God’s gift to women – was tricked into marrying a harpy. It is the stuff of mythology and contains about as much truth. No wonder she feels that her camel has received its final straw.

  And now, for the moment, the silence and darkness returns.

  10

  The World’s a Stage

  Flora kept her head down and did her research. By the beginning of June the village of Hurcott Ducis regretfully put aside the dashing death of the local steward and his love for the Brownie leader for other more pressing events. The summer season was a busy one in the village. It began and ended, as always, with the summer production by The Players and Ewan was once again in the thick of it.

  It did not take long for Flora to thaw. She wanted his company and was too sensible to hold a grudge for long. She put her irritation at his crassness about Anna of Cleves to one side on the grounds that some of the best historians in the land had attributed unpleasant epithets to her. Ewan could be excused. He was a good and loyal friend and you gave those up at your peril. So, as they stood silently and awkwardly by the duck pond one evening she asked him to come and call whenever he felt like it, that she would welcome him, that she wanted to talk about Edward’s history, and show him the stone, and she waited.

  By the middle of June Pauline had lost much of her cachet as the heartbroken lover. Her moment of glory was fading now as the village moved on with its life. She was barred from the Brownies but she went with Brown Owl – who was kind and Brown Owl’s husband (who was a steam train enthusiast and safe from women’s charms) to see the late summer production of French Without Tears. French Without Tears was a play about getting your man and it made Pauline cry. Until that moment she had no idea how much she wanted some masculinity in her life again. There was just something so wonderful about seeing her pretty, feminine ruffles snuggled up to a pair of thorn-pulled corduroys. As for Edward’s widow – well – you could never convince Pauline Pike that she suffered at all but she kept the thought to herself. It would not do for people to think her unworthy. Frankly, Pauline found Flora’s new High Moral Ground unfair, and meant to do something about it. It was quite unacceptable that she should now be the wronged, unhappy wife. A man of status, and in the village, with a difficult wife? It was not hard to guess whom Flora’s hidden love might be.

  Flora, out of loyalty to Ewan and nothing else, also went to see French Without Tears. As she walked towards the village hall, past the pond with its ducks settling down for the evening, past the Priory Arms whose glowing windows looked tempting in the half light the timeless, seasonal nature of the scene made her wonder about the days when Anna came to Hurcott Ducis. Was it much different then? In the summer there would have been mummers and masques and visiting troupes, there would have been maypoles and children’s games, and the church – and the people – high-ups and lowdowns – would be the same. Different size, different clothes, different expectations – but in their hearts just the same with their loves and hates and secrets and hopes . . . little and big wickednesses and answering kindnesses. Just as Flora kept her counsel about her true feelings in her widowhood out of a sense of propriety as well as self-protection, she had no doubt that Anna kept her counsel about her feelings for Henry after her divorce, too. Stepping into the porch of the village hall, Flora tried to imagine what it would be like for Anna, if she were alive again, to return to England – she would be back by now – stored and waiting – about to be shown as a work of art and not a dumped princess. As she took her seat, Flora remembered again the dreadful Miss Murdoch. How very good it would be, she thought, as the lights dimmed, to bring that woman to heel.

  As the slightly shabby curtains parted – well. There was Ewan, wearing a toupee, still looking his age but playing a young buck of a teacher. Flora longed to leap on to the stage and drag him away from the humiliation. Be ordinary, she wanted to whisper, do not feel you have to shine at anything. Remember, she sent the message silently. They also serve who only stand and wait. He was in nearly every scene and s
he could not take her eyes off him. If they did waver, just for a moment, and she was brought into reality, she was reminded that The Players could be very bad, and they were. Something about the sets was extraordinarily familiar, but she kept her eyes and her thoughts on Ewan. It was the only way to survive.

  A few seats up from her sat Pauline Pike, whose eyes never left the stage. For some reason this made Flora feel uncomfortable. Ewan – she realised grudgingly – rather suited a toupee – and he moved with surprising agility – leaping about and stretching out on sofas with tremendously engaging style and delivering some of the archaic lines with masculine gusto. All that golf, she supposed. He was, she was sure, quite the best of them, even though she was biased. Flora looked about her but Dilly was nowhere to be seen. How unsupportive, she thought, trying not to smile. On stage Betty from the post office attempted to do elegant things with a long cigarette holder and a maid came in and dropped a tray. Flora returned her gaze to the safety of Ewan. She could not bear, even, to look at the costumes. It took someone who knew how to sew to see how flimsy they were. But she would resist the role of seamstress for the time being. She had other, much more important, things to be getting on with.

  When it was over and they had clapped and clapped and Ewan seemed to look directly at her as he bowed (which he could not do because the lights were dazzling – she knew this really) Flora left her seat feeling very happy. She wasn’t quite ready yet to stop the flutter Ewan’s presence caused her (though if he continued to wear the toupee she might get there considerably quicker) but maybe the flutter was enough? And then, with a smile that she just could not stop, she saw Lucy across the crowded porch. Lucy. Here? Flora dared to nod to her one-time cleaner and she nodded back but that was all. Now they were as remote from each other as were the Hebrides. Why, Lucy did not even notice that Flora was wearing a new swirling blue skirt, or if she did she disguised her interest.

  It was turning to dusk. As she walked home from the village hall the deepening blue sky was star-filled, the air was balmy and Flora had the feeling that – if the world was a stage – then Hurcott Ducis was her world – and she had just seen into the very heart of it. Here was her community and here she was, walking back to Lodge Cottage all alone and safe feeling and quite unafraid. Anna would have felt the same down here . . . Though it was unlikely that she shared Flora’s other thoughts which were that she had a tin of hot chocolate in the cupboard and a packet of shortbread that needed application and sometimes such things were enough. Would Anna have known chocolate? Unlikely. How sad. But she would presumably have known other dainties to enjoy alone. It was absolutely true, the hearts and hearts’ desires of people did not change down the centuries. All the trappings did, and the politics, the rules, the language even – but not the central beat of the human pulse. For Flora that was what lifted history out of dry dullness – the human connection – and it was what Edward chose to ignore. Flora worried, occasionally, that she had just simply gone barking mad in the Louvre – what was she on about with portraits whispering to her and messages coming out of the paintwork across the centuries? But now she knew that it was a perfectly sane reaction – a desire to connect and respond. The big difficulty for Flora was how to connect herself back.

  Behind her she heard the pitter-patter of little feet. It was Pauline Pike who had left her companions to hurry to Flora’s side. Flora knew it was Pauline before seeing her. Odd emotions went through her, but mostly she felt irritation. This was not helped when Pauline, slightly breathless, caught up with her and said, ‘I wondered how you were getting along,’ as if Flora were a geriatric after an operation.

  Flora was still suffering the gauntlet of pitying kindness. Only yesterday the long-time widowed Stephanie Blount, now restored to good works and no bad language, stopped her on her way to the library for a chat. ‘I remember how hard it was,’ she said, standing there looking youthful and pretty for her sixty-odd years – ‘when I suddenly realised that it was for ever. I’d been out into the garden for the first time since winter and dug a bed over and was pleased with the result – then I came in and Gerald wasn’t there – no one was there to say Well Done, or to admire my achievement. That’s one of the hardest things, isn’t it?’ She went on, ‘Learning to praise yourself instead of having someone there to do it for you?’

  All Flora could think – and a tear came into her eye (which was a suitable reaction after all) was that it always had been like that for her – Edward never once told her she had done something well or prettily or cleverly . . . She had not even been given the space to be a good mother, a good parent. It was after that little encounter with Stephanie that Flora telephoned Hilary and gave her a – marvellously convincing – update on her father’s history. She had thrown most of it away but she said only that it was coming along well – fair enough and a sensible equivocation – and Hilary was pleased. Carpe diem, thought Flora, for she had an immense maternal bridge to build. ‘Oh yes,’ she added brightly before Hilary put down the phone, ‘It’s shaping up just fine and we’ll be all the further on when you get the information back from those Wordiform people.’

  ‘I’ll be on to them tomorrow,’ said Hilary in a voice Flora knew well. Flora suddenly felt rather sorry for those Wordiform people.

  She was almost at the pond when Pauline Pike caught up with her and Pauline Pike was not looking at her with kindness. She was looking at Flora with – if anything – resentment stamped upon that little daisy face. Flora had a very dreadful desire to knock her petals off. What was it about this woman that made Flora, usually so mild, feel so pugnacious?

  ‘And I wondered how you were getting along, too,’ said Flora sweetly.

  Pauline shrugged. ‘Oh I have good days and bad days’, she said, ‘But I’m getting along. There is a life to be lived, after all.’

  Flora said that she was very glad to hear it.

  ‘Yes,’ said the little Pink Pike cheerily. ‘And I’ve just decided to join The Players. So that’ll give me something to do. People to meet. You know. Take myself out of myself.’

  Flora’s heart, for some odd reason, contracted. ‘Really?’ she said, ‘The Players. What a good idea.’

  ‘Yes. And you? How are you getting by without him?’ How tempted she was to say, ‘Brilliantly well, thanks.’ She missed it by a whisker. Instead she also shrugged and said, ‘Oh you know – this and that.’

  ‘I don’t see you out and about much. I thought you might still be in mourning.’

  They both looked at the fabric of Flora’s shirt, brighter even than the skirt. It was an old Jacquard print – she’d made it herself years ago – highly coloured. One thing about her looks and colouring was that whatever shades and tones she wore they never improved anything much. Flora said nothing, just gave an attempt at a brave widow’s smile and wished the Pike would go away. She did not.

  ‘They said in the post office that you were finishing off that history of Edward’s. The one we worked so hard on together.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Flora, ‘I am.’

  The post office? How on earth did the post office know that?

  ‘I could take it on for you. I did so much of the research anyway. Though I never got round to finding out about the royal and transatlantic connections.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Flora noncommittally.

  ‘That queen. The one who lived here?’ She had the annoying habit of making every statement a question. No wonder Flora found herself becoming violent.

  ‘Anna of Cleves,’ said Flora, shortly. ‘Was that her name?’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘You’ve been finding out about her, too?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Flora, not wishing to share her. ‘Well, she came here from time to time.’

  ‘Well, I know that.’

  As they walked Pauline pulled a handful of honeysuckle from an overhanging bush. It was a casual gesture but reminded her of Edward. If he found a rare plant he took it home to ‘nurse’ it.

  Pauline waite
d and then said, ‘How long ago did she live here?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Flora, ‘long ago. About five hundred years.’ She did not want to discuss Anna with the little Pink Pike. For some reason it seemed beneath her dignity.

  ‘We discovered that she lived in a big house round here.’ Pauline looked about her vaguely as if expecting a Tudor queen to pop out of the shrubbery at any moment. ‘And that she was divorced for being too ugly. That’s as far as we got.’ Having delivered this she looked very smug and infinitely more slappable.

  There was a short and weighty pause. Flora breathed in deep and said happily, ‘Yes. That is what they say. That she was far too unattractive to be married to a king . . .’ She wanted to steer the conversation away from Anna so she added, vaguely, ‘It needs a lot of research.’

  ‘Surely not,’ said Pauline Pike as another blossom fell to the floor.

  Flora kept her smile. ‘Anna of Cleves was replaced by a very silly girl called Catherine. Who had her head chopped off. I’m enjoying the research very much.’

  She smiled even more broadly, in fact, she positively beamed goodwill and approachability while Pauline stood in the dusky shadows and gave her a very penetrating look. There was a short silence while Flora held on to the beaming and tried not to feel jealous of Pauline’s dimity little figure, her very short summer dress with its skimpy straps and lemony flutterings. And her overfull pink pout. She looked, Flora could see, quite irresistible if you liked mousy little faces and not much in the way of limbs. After the petal-knocking Flora had a very dreadful desire to reprise the doctor’s wife and push the little pink person into the pond. But a mature woman can control herself. Just. Perhaps, like Anna, she should just curtsy low instead?

  ‘I don’t really need any help, thanks. I find it seems to bring me nearer to Edward.’