Theirs Was The Kingdom

by R. F Delderfield

  “No,” said Edith, smiling, “you don’t, but I’ve often wondered whether you resent it. Do you?”

  “Not really, seeing the person he is, can’t help being, and will always be to the day he dies. I read somewhere—I forget where—that Napoleon's last words were ‘head of the army…’ and thought of Adam at once. His last words will be ‘did Tybalt double-check that forage bill from the Crescents?’”

  Edith laughed and Henrietta, after a moment, joined in. The conspiracy that had existed between them since the day the one had bullied the other into taking the Swann helm, and piloting the enterprise through a bad winter against the spring of his return, persisted to an extent. In a way they were still plotters, conspiring together for his own good and for their own peace of mind.

  Henrietta said, by way of an epilogue, “A man like him could never devote that much nervous energy to anything as small as a family. That's why I take upon myself the job of directing everything that happens here. I make mistakes from time to time, but who doesn’t? He does, and Stella was the worst of them. It was that, I imagine, that finally decided me. He accepts it gracefully. At his time of life a man wants something more of a woman than a bedmate, and that's all I was for long enough.”

  “I don’t think so,” Edith said, “but maybe, looking back, it seems that way to you. It's a problem I never had to face with Tom, seeing that I was…” but she stopped, remembering Adam would choose his own time for telling her about Tom Wickstead's past.

  Henrietta did not press her, as most women would have done, and this encouraged Edith to add, “When you’ve got rid of us all, and peace descends on the place once more, remind Adam that he has my permission to tell you something remarkable about Tom and me. I think it will interest you because…” But then, to their mild embarrassment, Adam popped his head in the door. His flushed face indicated that he had had more than his share of the champagne.

  “What the devil are you two gossiping about in here?” he demanded, jovially. “Am I expected to entertain a hundred guests singlehanded while my wife and her crony sip tea in seclusion?”

  “We’ve been discussing men and what happens to their wretched wives when they drink too much,” said Henrietta, but a ragged cheer from the hail cut short any further exchange.

  Adam said, “They’re leaving now. I told Alexander to make sure that send-off nonsense is confined to a shower of rice. That poor devil Fawcett couldn’t be bullied into taking more than a sip or two of champagne.”

  “He’ll not need champagne,” Henrietta said, rising and giving a touch to her hair and earrings. “Your daughter's his substitute for liquor and has been, ever since she put her hair up. Not that you could be expected to notice it. Come, Edith, let's see them off and afterwards we’ll offer tea to all the wives in the dining room and leave the men to talk haulage alone. After all, that's what they came for; the wedding was just an excuse.”

  They followed him out, through the hall and into the forecourt, where Giles (in a way the touchstone of the occasion) was holding the bridles of the team hitched to a rosetted wagonette. The April sun flooded the front of the house and over towards the downs there was half a rainbow, arched across a sea of brown, green-tinted woods. Edith thought, amid the storm of cheers and jokes directed at the couple, “By God, Henrietta knows her business. As well or better than he knows his, and that's saying a good deal!”

  4

  Henrietta brought up the subject that same night, when most of the guests had departed, and the few remaining were scattered about a house that seemed silent and deserted after such a sustained commotion.

  She asked Adam less out of curiosity than as a means of sidetracking his thoughts and his misgivings concerning Stella, for she believed he was troubled by guilt regarding his share in the Moncton-Price debacle. In fact, he had more or less admitted as much, saying, the moment he climbed into bed and laid himself down with a grunt, “Couldn’t get near the girl when she drove off, but she looked happy enough from the glimpse I got. Was that your impression?”

  She said it most certainly was, smiling at her reflection in the mirror, but he added, with a rather pathetic attempt at raillery, “You gave her a second helping of mother's advice, I hope,” to which she replied, laying aside her hairbrush, “Indeed, I did not. I started to, a week ago, but she laughed in my face. She’ll be giving me advice soon, I wouldn’t wonder.”

  He sat up at that, saying, “Great God, you’re not hinting that our first grandchild will come across the fields, are you?” and then she laughed, for the conclusion was typical of a male, so ill-equipped to deal with subtleties of this kind.

  “The difference between this marriage and the last is that the girl was courted and that taught her far more than I could. She's head over heels in love with that humping great farmer's lad, and not simply concerned with rescuing her pride, as you seem to think.”

  He said, settling back, “Rubbish. What the devil can she know of love, except the kind she found in those trashy romances you and Phoebe Fraser leave lying about the house?”

  She came round to the bedside then, turning the lamp low and saying, “Simply that working alongside him has sharpened her instincts. That's what I meant by ‘love.’ She caught him at the right time, when he was crushed under his own troubles, and that gave her an advantage, rare enough in a woman's case. Don’t worry your head over Stella any more. She's off your hands, and for good this time. Instead, tell me about Edith and that Tom Wickstead. It's all right, Edith told me to ask you. It can’t be so dreadful, can it? Was he married to someone else when she threw her cap at him?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” he said. “He was a convict on licence.”

  His revenge was in the look of dismay on her face, and he was glad then that she had not quite extinguished the bedside lamp.

  “He was what?”

  “A ticket-of-leave man. She first met him when he was pilfering one of our Harwich-bound packages. Later she managed to talk him out of his profession on the promise of a job with us. I don’t usually put much faith in these road-to-Damascus reformations, but it worked with him. He's one of the best men I ever had. The Crescent staff think the world of him.”

  “But that's crazy,” she said, “Edith marrying someone like that… did you know all the time?”

  “No. She told me to cheer me up, that time I met her in Peterborough after you had sent Stella to her. I always thought there was something a bit odd about the chap. Not that odd, however.” He looked at her anxiously. “Look here, Hetty, if you let it make any difference to your approach to him or her I’ll be damned sorry I told you. I wouldn’t have done, without her leave. Why did she make a point of asking you to ask me?”

  “That would need a lot of thinking about!” said Henrietta, but she at once began to think about it, weighing the enormous reserve of faith and courage that would be needed to take a gamble of that size. Or perhaps faith and courage hadn’t played such a spectacular part in it, for she remembered now how glum and at odds with herself Edith had been when they had parted after all that patient coaching at the Thameside Headquarters. Adam was away learning to walk. Edith had been nearly thirty then, and might have seen Tom Wickstead as a final chance to make something of her life.

  She said, wonderingly, “What made her do it? She's always had nerve, but it seems a terrible chance to have taken. Besides, Edith never struck me as being my type of woman as regards a man.”

  “What kind of woman is that?”

  “You know very well what I mean. She's a woman who would be attracted to a man mentally more than physically, someone who could do without one if she had to. Oh, I know very well that you think every woman in the world prefers a man of her own to the inside of Aladdin's cave, but that's only male vanity. It isn’t necessarily so at all. Your own Aunt Charlotte was one. I remember when I went to her seeking advice, of the kind I needed so badly at that time, she was absolutely scandalised. Not at my asking but at the notion of my thinking she could
provide any of the answers.”

  He said, chuckling, “If you plied my Aunt Charlotte with those kind of questions you deserved a Victoria Cross at least. The wonder is she didn’t upend you and lace your backside with a raspberry cane, the way she used to handle some of the saucy little madams who went to her school when I was a boy.”

  “She probably would have done if she hadn’t been so embarrassed. But don’t sidetrack me. You should know Edith. She was madly in love with you for years. Did she ever strike you as the saucy type?”

  It was his turn to think back on Edith Wickstead. “No,” he said, thoughtfully, “she was always out looking for something more lasting than a tumble in the bracken. She wanted to insure against lonely old age. She wanted children, too, and I’m glad she had the good sense to make the leap before it was too late. She's a good wife and a good mother, I’m told, but the source of my information is prejudiced. Tom still looks at her like… well, damn me, that's odd!”

  “Like what? What were you going to say?”

  “I was going to say ‘Like Denzil was looking at Stella when he put the ring on today.’ Did you notice it? Some would call it the Prince-in-the-Sleeping-Beauty look but he reminded me more of a newly landed salmon!”

  “You’re insufferable,” she said, and reached out to turn the lamp screw, reducing the wick to a red glow. But then, as the glow faded and her eyes adjusted to the moonlight penetrating the curtain joint, she said “Yes, I noticed it, and any little difficulty that does arise while those two are getting used to one another is in that look. He's a good, sturdy boy, but it must be an odd feeling to be worshipped like a goddess by someone twice your size and weight. I daresay Stella can cope with it, but I confess it would make me uncomfortable.”

  She heard his sleepy chuckle and then, after a moment or two, his snore. The old feeling of escaping from everybody and everything stole over her, as it never failed to do when they were alone in this room in the dark and she thought, sleepily, “The first family wedding behind us… the first real wedding that is. And in two years Adam and I will be celebrating our silver wedding. With luck I’ll be a grandmother by then. I’ve earned my luck…” She turned, stealthily enlarging her sleeping space already invaded by him. As she settled, one arm across him, the other tucked under her cheek, she had another pleasant thought, “I don’t envy the young, as I once did… this is the best stretch of all… the middle stretch, when you know where you are going and why.”

  5

  Dusk had fallen before they had turned the horses loose in the pasture, still scarred with half-burned rubble. Stella was too excited to eat, but she stirred the log smouldering in the open grate so as to boil water for their cocoa. It was very pleasant, she reflected, to be able to do a simple, humdrum task of this kind, to work in one's own kitchen, instead of someone else's, or in the outhouse that had served as a kitchen for the last six months. Already Dewponds seemed more familiar than Tryst. Parts of its structure dated from the fifteenth century, but most of it was his creation and hers, so that the strangeness and the feeling of desolation she had experienced on her arrival at Courtlands as a bride did not trouble her now. Instead she pottered about happily, reminding herself every few minutes that she was mistress of the place in fact as well as name.

  She understood, of course, that one hurdle lay ahead. Somehow—she was not clear how—his veneration of her would have to be moderated. Somehow she would have to teach him to take the initiative as master of the household and not defer, as he had been inclined to do ever since she had proposed to him, on everything pertaining to the establishment, even the purchase of new stock concerning which he knew more than she would ever know. There was so much to learn and he would have to teach her, but how did one convey this to a man stunned by the swift rush of events, from the moment he had picked her up and carried her over his threshold as far as the stairs?

  Adoration, of the kind that stemmed from his every glance, was well enough during courtship, but she had no wish to reign here as a goddess or a fairy queen, waited upon by a chosen mortal, who moved and spoke as if he was under some kind of spell. He had reverted, in the last few days, to the gentle, dutiful boy who had plucked her out of that ditch all those years ago.

  She thought about this seriously whilst she went about her unpacking and he was pottering about downstairs, doing some job that had been overlooked in the final stage of renovation. She accepted the fact that any significant advance in their relationship would have to be prompted by her, and she had a feeling that it had best be begun at once, before his shyness hardened into an attitude that could easily reverse the pattern of marriage. Her mother's hints concerning physical submission were irrelevant in a situation of this kind. Ordinarily, she supposed, all that was required of a bride was passivity, but theirs was not an ordinary marriage, not by any standards. Denzil Fawcett—indeed, all the Fawcetts—had lived in the shadow of Tryst all their lives, and this was sure to inhibit him, apart from his evident difficulty in acknowledging the reality of his dream. In a way, she felt, she was like the Queen on the eve of the Prince Consort's arrival at Windsor as bridegroom-elect. He might see any approach on his part as lese-majesty, and this simply would not do as a basis of marriage between master and mistress of a run-down farm. Before she knew it she would be acting out a parody of her life at Courtlands, this time with herself as the patron and Denzil as the hanger-on. The thought, whilst making her wince, hardened her determination to resolve the situation without delay. She went down to the kitchen, made the cocoa, and called his name so that he emerged from the dairy in his shirt sleeves, a saw in one hand, a square of plywood in the other, looking, she thought, more like a workman interrupted in a task than a groom whose word, from here on, was manorial writ.

  She said, gently, “I’ve made the cocoa. I’m sure you won’t want any supper after all that food. I couldn’t manage a mouthful. I was too busy and excited to eat anything except cake. What on earth are you doing with that saw and piece of wood?”

  He said, abstractedly, “I didn’t have time to put the dairy window in. I thought I’d board her up for the night and set about it in the morning.”

  She could have laughed at this and told him that she did not propose spending the first night of her married life in the dairy, but she was learning something new about him every moment and assumed that he had only begun the task as an excuse to absent himself whilst she was unpacking a trunkful of feminine garments. Then it occurred to her, with relief, that he must be familiar with feminine garments, for he was a boy brought up in the company of a string of girls, whose small clothes must have fluttered from the clothesline every Monday since he was a child. This thought led her on to an acknowledgement that he must be equally familiar with mating, for he had never spent a day of his life out of sight of a byre or barnyard. She understood then that all that was really required on her part was some positive encouragement, of the kind she had given him the day they hung the door—a final but necessarily spirited attack on the class barrier that stood between them as two people reared in circumstances so widely separated by money, manners, and education. That and heaven only knew what else prescribed by the rigid county class structure that she had accepted as complacently as she accepted the passage of the seasons.

  She said, drawing a deep breath, “Put that stuff away, Denzil. This is your wedding night. My wedding night. We’ve been working on this house for months and heaven knows, there's still plenty to do. But not now and not for a day or so, seeing there's no hope of a farmer's wife having a honeymoon.”

  He smiled, a little nervously she thought, but laid aside the saw and the piece of wood and took up his cocoa, sipping it as though it was a love potion she had prepared for him, avoiding her eye over the rim of the mug. She waited patiently for him to set down the mug before rising, crossing to him, and taking both his hands in hers.

  She said, encouragingly, “Well, now, tell me what you thought of it all? Were you nervous waiting for me to appear at
the church? Did all those people back at the house scare you?”

  He replied, “Scare me? No, they didn’t. Not like I thought they might, for they weren’t grand folk, of the kind I expected. As to waiting at the church, by God I was scared an’ don’t mind admitting it.” He grinned and she accepted the grin as a slight thaw. “I kep’ thinking—‘she’ll like as not change her mind las’ minute, for it can’t be true, none of it!’”

  It elated her that he should admit to this for it gave her the opening she was seeking. She said, “Then let me tell you something. Two things! First, Papa must have had it in mind that you would feel easier with his work people than the kind of guests he would likely invite to my wedding. He's like you in that respect. I never did see him put on airs in all my life and those people he brought in from the network don’t either, for he wouldn’t keep them five minutes if they did. As to you acting as though I’ve conferred the greatest favour on you by marrying you, it's very important you put that right out of mind, Denzil Fawcett! I love you very much. I’m happier now, at this moment, than I’ve ever been in the whole of my life. Will you please keep that very much in mind and something else along with it? It's natural for you to feel the Swann family is still, well… looming over you, in the same old way, but it isn’t, not any longer. For now you belong to it, just as I belong in your family, and for my part I think I’ve got the better of the exchange. I really do, Denzil. I’ve never been involved in Papa's business. None of us have, except perhaps my brother George. It's always been ‘The Network’—something Papa concerned himself with, quite apart from our lives down here, but with Dewponds it's different. I was about the place all the time you were rebuilding, so that already I feel a farmer's wife. I feel a Fawcett too, more than a Swann, for the first day I came here, when it was all in ruins, was like being born all over again but with a new name and a different place in life. I’ll never cease to be grateful for that, or to you for letting me help and grow into the place, as if there had never been a time when I belonged anywhere else. But now it's more than the kind of game I played with myself all autumn and winter. It's real, and I’m part of it. I am Mrs. Fawcett, Mrs. Denzil Fawcett, of Dewponds, Leatford, in Kent, and it makes me very proud and very happy to be so! But I shan’t enjoy it if you go on treating me as if I was somebody in a dream and you were likely to wake up in a minute. Can you understand that, Denzil? It's very important that you should, from the very beginning.”