The Tide Mill

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by Richard Herley


  “Some,” Ralf said. “Not all.”

  “More than I do, anyway.”

  They continued pushing their way through the vegetation. Ralf’s sense of unreality grew. The impossible had happened. They were together. He could hear her voice, replying to Godric, expressing pleasure, speaking about the harrier, saying this was the first she had seen. Was this the same girl he had once known, haughty, disregarding, and cold? He remembered the suspicion that had struck him after talking of her to Imogen and his turmoil increased. What if – what if she felt for him even a little of what he felt for her?

  The tide was nearly out. Planted in the mud at the base of the dike, his father had left a graduated pole fitted with a sliding cork collar, for measuring high tides. As the pole approached, Eloise asked him its purpose.

  “So this is the place, then,” she said, when he had explained.

  “We’ve passed the point where the bund starts. It cuts across to there.”

  “Across the lagoon?”

  “That’s going to be the hardest part.”

  “Why does the dike go so far out? Why should it protect the lagoons? You’d think they’d have finished it further back.”

  “No one knows. Some say this corner used to be farmland too. I suppose it flooded so often they just gave up.”

  “How old is the dike? Is it Saxon?”

  “I’m sorry, I’ve no idea.”

  Godric said, “The Domesday Book might tell us. But I think it’s even older. In my grandfather’s time they found Roman coins near the staith. Pottery, too.”

  This recollection seemed to put Eloise in mind of something. Ralf had a vision of the coins and sherds, forgotten at the back of a cupboard, all that remained of the far more comprehensive invasion before the Normans’. He found his eyes drawn to hers, and hers to his. Each instantly looked away, she from politeness, he from embarrassment. The silence threatened to become obvious, until Godric said, “Where’s the mill-house going?”

  Ralf could scarcely breathe. He said, “Pretty much where we’re standing.”

  “What a fool I am, Ralf! I didn’t bring the drawings.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I particularly wanted … you can see everything just the way it’ll be … I’ll fetch them.”

  “Where are they?”

  “In my saddlebag.”

  “They’re out of date,” Ralf said, lamely, aware that he risked being left with Eloise, and she without a chaperone; but, knowing that once Godric got an idea in his head nothing could dissuade him, he added, “If you really want them, let me go.”

  “Certainly not. It’s my fault. Would you like to see the plans, Eloise?”

  She did not look at Ralf, and clearly thought him so harmless that she did not see the inherent impropriety of her brother’s suggestion. “If it’s no trouble.”

  “There we are,” Godric said. “The lady commands.”

  Ralf said, “Please, Godric. We don’t need them.”

  “Nonsense. Sit and rest. I’ll be back in no time.” With that he started along the path and hurried away.

  Eloise spoke first, when he was twenty yards off. “I must say, a rest would be welcome.”

  “Where would you like to sit?”

  “Facing the harbour, I think.”

  More time was taken up in enquiries about the dirtiness of the grass, its dryness, and whether it was suitable for the linen material of her garment, all of which were answered with such small consequence that Ralf, having selected the cleanest place, could no longer delay the moment when she sat down and he was compelled to sit beside her, on her left, the gap between them the maximum consistent with the pretence that to him it was of no significance.

  She looked across to the dunes, turned her cheek a little towards him, and for a moment gazed at the sea before turning further and issuing a well-bred smile. “Godric is so impulsive,” she said.

  “He’s always been the same.”

  “Tell me, Ralf, how long will it take to build the mill?”

  “About a year,” he said, grateful for the neutral turn her words had taken, trying to ignore the sensation produced by hearing her speak his name for the second time today, for the second time ever. “A year or so, if all goes to plan.”

  “It will be a great asset to the manor.”

  “If it works.”

  “There’s no doubt of that, is there?”

  “Not really. But it’s something new.”

  They had been brought to this state smoothly and inexplicably, as if by some power which also commanded Godric, or with which he was in league. It occurred to Ralf that he had forgotten the plans on purpose, even though that made no sense at all, the more so since she was already affianced, or promised, or contracted, to another, to whatever future it was that her father had arranged. She was forbidden, she should have been chaperoned, but here she was, sitting beside him in the afternoon sun, whose light, as she moved, struck and turned to gold the minute silver cross at her throat.

  She was asking more questions, ostensibly about the mill. Ralf answered. Their conversation was assuming a brittle, glassy quality, more unreal than ever, nothing to do with the words spoken, slowly converging on the point where Ralf would become consumed by certainty.

  He was ever mindful of what Imogen had said, about girls being told. It would take Godric no more than ten minutes to bring the plans. Of these ten minutes Ralf had already squandered six or seven, and was no nearer, no further along, had not the slightest idea of how to begin. Tell her he must. He wanted to blurt it out, but was unable to. There came a pause in their meaningless exchanges.

  He would never have this chance again. “My sister …” he said, but could not continue.

  Did she look surprised? No. Quietly, intimately, she asked, “What about your sister?”

  Tell her, tell her, his inner voice commanded, in Imogen’s words, over and over again. You’ve got to tell her. “She said girls … girls … she … She’s interested in the mill, too.”

  “I’m sure she is.”

  “What I’m saying is, not many girls would be.”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. They just wouldn’t.”

  “Her name is Imogen, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d be pleased to know her better,” Eloise said. “Do you think she’d like to learn to ride? You’ve made such good progress today.”

  “To ride?”

  “Her father is a master craftsman.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ralf said, in stultified confusion, dismayed, sunk by his own cowardice. “I don’t understand.”

  “Miss Grigg will soon be a lady. A lady must know how to ride. She could have Hennet. I’d like to teach her.” She drew breath. “Please don’t look like that. I assure you, I have nothing better to do.”

  “I didn’t mean … I —”

  “You’re thinking, ‘What does she do with herself?’ I’ll tell you. Good works in the manor, visiting the sick. With my aunts. We arrange the flowers in the church. Then there’s my embroidery. Otherwise, my time is my own.”

  “Please, mademoiselle, forgive me, I intended no disrespect.”

  “You can call me ‘Eloise’, if you like. The other’s a bit formal, don’t you think? Among friends. I’m sure we’re friends, despite what Godric said.”

  “Yes, of course.” Ralf could no more bring himself to call her by that name than utter the words his cowardice had left so far behind. “I don’t know what he meant.”

  She did not dignify his falsehood with agreement, with one of her own, and Ralf regretted his lie. They both knew what Godric had meant. She was perfect. Perfect for him. She said, “So it’s settled, then.”

  “What is?”

  “Miss Grigg. You’ll ask her to come?”

  “I will.”

  “Shall we say tomorrow, at the afternoon sequent? If that’s convenient to her.”

  A minute later it was over. God
ric returned, brandishing the scrolls. During the subsequent examination of the drawings, the pointing out, the discussion, her impartial behaviour left Ralf feeling more confused than ever. He was once again no more than her brother’s lowly friend. She was what she had always been, the daughter of Lord de Maepe, his father’s new employer.

  Ralf was thankful that he had not given way to his delusion. Had he tried to take advantage of her vulnerability, she would have been mortified and insulted to the extent that the Baron would have heard of it: and then what would have happened to the pending project and his own father’s licence and livelihood? What would have happened with Godric?

  The return ride brought Ralf’s suffering to new depths. Her smile was worse than anything that had gone before. He would no longer have the protection of her disdain. He was condemned to love her through a mask of friendliness.

  And he had accepted her message to Imogen, to bring her to Eloise, with whom, out of his earshot, she might in all innocence betray an unguarded remark. Because of this he would have to be circumspect even with his own dearest confidante. He was now, in effect, alone.

  That evening, the message was duly delivered, and was with pleasure and surprise received. While the rest of the family prepared for bed, Ralf took the rushlight to the kitchen table. He knew he would be unable to sleep, and wanted to divert his mind by poring over designs for the drive-train.

  The figures which this morning had made sense, the diameters and patterns of the pitwheel, the wallower, the spurwheel and pinions, the shaft speeds and multipliers, tonight meant nothing. He was stuck, tangled, in the afternoon, reliving it yet again, trying to understand. His conclusion veered from one pole to another, like her own inconsistency. He was sure that she had no regard for him, and he was sure that she did. Her words and manner had told him one thing, her eyes and the tone of her voice another. She had known what he had been trying to stutter out. She had wanted to hear, and had even tried to encourage him. But if he had said it, that would have been the end. The mill was at its most precarious stage. He and his father had given up Rushton and taken money from the Steward: but the tender had yet to be submitted or the contract signed. Even now there was a chance that the Baron would back out, or find someone else.

  Ralf could no longer think. The mathematics of Eloise would defeat a far greater mind than his.

  Elbow on the table, forehead in hand, exhausted, he stared sightlessly at the papers while, bit by bit, midnight approached and the tallowed rush burned towards its base.

  4

  On the way to or from London, Gervase often broke his journey at Alincester, especially if Margaret were with him. He could not afford to keep a house of his own for this purpose, but stayed at an inn. The best in the city was the Spread Eagle, in Eastgate, near the cathedral school. The chambers above the street were too noisy for his liking, but at the back they overlooked the inn’s pretty garden, which sloped down to the river.

  The water, fast-flowing and clean, dropping over a low weir, produced a roar which, attenuated by thirty yards of air and foliage, a pair of heavy drapes, and the curtains of the four-poster, he found most soothing.

  He was listening to it now. As the dawn slowly grew he could also hear the loud quacking of the ducks whose antics he and Margaret had watched yesterday morning after the service.

  They had attended First Mass, which had been conducted by none other than the Suffragan of Alincester, Bishop Septimus. Afterwards, Septimus had made a point of greeting them, enquiring by name after each of the children and fully living up to his reputation for geniality. During their talk he had invited the de Maepes to a noonday reception at the Bishop’s Palace. The visit of a Roman prelate was being honoured.

  Gervase had decided to attend. The great Receiving Hall had been packed with people, lay as well as clergy. As he had expected, Bishop William had dominated the proceedings, intimidatingly tall, stout, splendidly arrayed, his liver-spotted pate concealed by a purple silk biretta. Gervase had not avoided him; neither had he sought him out, and he was still not sure who had initiated their eventual encounter.

  Cardinal Pellegrini had been introduced. The ensuing conversation had been brief and insubstantial. It was the Bishop’s bearing which had given Gervase pause. Nothing could evade those watery blue eyes, and Gervase had felt himself being simultaneously assessed and cautioned. Then William, spying a more useful introduction for his chooser of popes, had moved on, his guest in tow.

  “Margaret. Are you awake?”

  No answer. She was still sleeping, oblivious. She imagined that all was well. She had not understood the import of anything he had told her.

  He loved his wife. Her strengths had sustained him, and the whole family, through some difficult times. At court she was popular with the other women of her age. As a girl she had been ravishing. Thirty years ago, when the King had been twenty and she seventeen, she had for three months been his mistress, a severe test for the newlyweds, but one which had earned them both permanent favour. Gervase owed his present influence and connections largely to her. His manor was small and poor; without Margaret he would have had no more voice than Angmer.

  But however much he loved her, sometimes Gervase wished she had more understanding of the world they occupied, where intrigue meant more than money, and money meant more than everything else.

  This was midsummer’s day. The quarterly figures were awaiting him at home. He knew what they would tell him.

  The decline in prices would not go on for ever. They always rose again, sooner or later. But could he hold out till then?

  Even as he framed this thought, Gervase knew it to be nonsense. He had to hold out. That meant he had to build the mill, despite the unease he felt. He could no more abandon his dependants and part with Mape than he could cut off his own head. It was his home, with every meaning the word implied. He adored the place, its landscape and idiosyncrasies, its curmudgeonly serfs, and so did Margaret. So did Eloise. Could he deprive the great lady of the pleasure of returning, now and then, to her ancestral home?

  And away from the land that carried their name, without the constant reminder of his family’s history, what would they be and how could they live?

  Since yesterday his unease about the mill had been given form. Technically there was nothing wrong with it. Walter had sought independent advice. The looming, unpleasant presence of Bishop William was all that threatened its future. Gervase remembered the wiry white eyebrows, the hairs in his nostrils and ears, the scraped and powdered jowls, the fulsome phrases with which he had recommended the Baron and his wife to His Eminence.

  Cant, hypocrisy: he spoke just the same language as Gervase himself, at court. The pursuit of power obsessed them both. There was a single difference between them. One made homage to a temporal king; the other paid lip-service to the king above. Somewhere along the way, that celestial king had been forgotten.

  The Cathedral was astounding. As recently as yesterday morning, Gervase had viewed it as represented: the supreme act of worship. Now, lying in this half familiar bed, he was not so sure. In all its extravagance, its pilgrim-trapping reliquaries, what had happened to the meek? What had happened to the Saviour? Where was he?

  Gervase would spend more time with his Bible. Compared with the splendour of the Suffragan’s mass, Joseph Pickard’s homespun homilies were closer to the truth. Then he recalled William’s suspicious stare, and Chevalley’s warning, and he surmised that Joseph had already written to the Diocese about the mill. A village priest was no better than any of them, the bishops, the abbots and cardinals, or the Pontiff himself, who was nothing but a warmonger hiding behind the cross, behind the very crucifixion. To wage war from Golgotha, in Christ’s name: was there blasphemy worse than that?

  “Can’t you sleep?” Margaret said.

  He looked at her.

  “Oh, Gervase.”

  “I’m all right. Just a bit worried.”

  “About Eloise?”

  “Yes. And other th
ings.”

  “Come to me.”

  After they had made love, he fell asleep on her breast, and as he slept he dreamt a jumbled dream of Mape, of mud and the marshes, of Godric as a child, of childhood’s end, and of Godric’s strange and serious, his angelic, childhood friend.

  * * *

  There was something wrong with Hubert, the Doorward’s boy. He looked quite normal, but he was simple-minded. He was a foundling, and much the same age as Eloise. She always tried to be kind to him, even though it made no difference to Hubert. He liked it when the big bronze dolphin hit the plate on the west door, for then he had a purpose; and he liked it even better when it was time to run across to the church tower and ring the sequent. No one had to tell him when to go. He just knew. He never bothered with the hourglass. His timekeeping was so uncanny that her father had once borrowed the instrument from the church in order to measure him. As the last grains of sand had trickled down, so the bell had chimed its two sets of three.

  Hubert hated Sundays, because then the priest rang the bell at peculiar times which obviously grated on his sense of what was right. Now that Monday had returned, Hubert was happy again.

  She pitied him with all her heart. His mechanical life was unbearably sad, but after yesterday, after last night and this morning, she wished she could be him.

  From the dayroom, she heard him coming in from outside. There were voices in the buttery, and a clashing of pots, followed by silence. Hubert, she knew, had resumed his seat in the porch.

  Eloise was alone in the room. She went yet again to the window and looked along the shingle path.

  The afternoon was but lightly overcast, humid, with one of those June skies more like July’s, intermittently brighter as the cloud thinned. The rain she had prayed for had not materialized.

  She felt as nervous and guilty as if Ralf himself were coming. Why had she done it? Why had she invited his sister?

  She had sensed it first when they had seen the harrier. Later, once they had arrived at the site, her amazement and dread had been so great, so suffocating, that she had found it increasingly difficult to speak. At that point she had believed, as far as it was possible without being told, that he had recognized her too.

 

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