by R J Lynch
Drabble looked down, his face suffused with red, the hat turning in his hands. ‘Sir, I do not know whether it is my place to say this or no. But…tomorrow…your banns will be heard for the second time. I think that is why the day is special?’
‘It is, Constable.’
‘Well, sir…sir, I wish to say…sir, I would like to congratulate you on your engagement to Kate Greener.’ The final words came out in a rush and Drabble looked away over the fields as though he wished he were somewhere, anywhere, other than here.
Blakiston felt a gentle warmth at the feeling, so clearly genuine, expressed by this rough and unlettered but only too human peasant. ‘Thank you, Drabble. I value your words.’
The rest of the day was as busy as Blakiston had anticipated but he went about his business willingly, at least half of his mind always on the happiness he would feel tomorrow. He sank into bed after sending word to the inn that he would take his breakfast at home next morning and not at the inn at Beggar’s Bank. Though not vain, he wanted the extra time to take particular care over his appearance. It would be a sorry excuse for a man who could not trouble to look his very best when the woman of his dreams would stand by his side. He had already given instructions that his best linen was to be washed and pressed with exacting attention and the clothes he was to wear on the morrow hung over the backs of chairs in his bedroom.
Next morning he was awake and out of bed long before the necessary time. It was a warm September morning, the sun already over the tops of distant trees, when he stepped into the yard to wash himself carefully under the pump. Then he returned to the house to shave and then to dress. Time passed so slowly that he almost wished he shared the rector’s taste for a pipe of tobacco but eventually there came the knock on the door that said breakfast was here. Unusually for him, he wrapped a large linen napkin around his neck and allowed it to fall to his waist so that no dropped food should stain his front. His nervousness about the coming morning was not so great, though, as to inhibit his usual pleasure in the morning repast – indeed, in any meal – and he ate with his customary gusto.
When the serving maid came to collect the large oak board on which his breakfast had been carried in it was still too early to set off for Chopwell Garth and Blakiston chastised himself when he realised that he was taking out his watch at intervals of only three minutes to check whether enough time had passed but eventually it was time to put on his jacket, don his three-cornered hat, lock his door and mount Obsidian. He forced himself to ride to Chopwell Garth at a gentle trot and not the gallop his nervousness urged on him.
Kate had been ready as long as Blakiston had and was waiting with, if anything, more anxiety. When the sound of hooves was heard in the yard, Lizzie told her to sit down. ‘Take hold of yourself, man. You don’t want to look as though you can’t wait to be with him. Stay there and let me open the door and bring him to you.’
Kate pushed past her. ‘But I can’t wait to be with him. And I am not some young girl of the gentry who needs to swoon and seem shy.’
‘What will the man think?’ said Florrie.
‘He knows what he’s getting,’ Kate answered. ‘If he wants to marry me it has to be the me I’ve always been.’ She opened the door and there, less than a foot from her, stood Blakiston. The two simply stared at each other before Blakiston recovered enough to hold out his hand and say, ‘Kate. Will you do me the honour of riding to church with me?’
As she took his hand, Kate would have given anything to maintain a calm and dignified exterior but suppressing a giggle proved to be beyond her. She let Blakiston pick her up by the waist and place her on Obsidian’s back immediately in front of the saddle before himself vaulting into it and putting his arms around her in order to take the reins.
If she had been asked afterwards what they talked about on the ride to church, Kate could not have answered the question. Conversation she knew there had been but of the subject matter she had no recollection. She would have said, though, that the journey, short as it was, had been among the most contented times of her life.
Contentment was threatened when they reached the church, for Susannah Bent was stepping down from her carriage with her mother and Kate heard the girl’s words clearly: ‘a spinster on horseback with a man. She’s no lady and marriage won’t make her one.’
Blakiston leapt from the saddle with a vigour not, perhaps, reflecting the reverence due to arrival at church and wrapped Obsidian’s reins round the horizontal post to which three other horses were already tied. He turned to Kate, put his hands once more around her waist, lifted her to the ground and whispered, ‘Ignore her’.
When he took her hand in his, keeping her on his left so that he was free to raise his hat to the other church-goers with his right, she gasped at this open expression of affection but her surprise was nothing to that expressed by Susannah Bent. ‘Hand holding! And their banns not told three times yet, never mind a marriage gone through! I never saw the like.’ Kate glanced at Blakiston and when she saw that he was smothering a laugh she found it impossible to hide her own mirth. They walked into church hand in hand, giggling like two children.
This week, Kate sat in the Estate pew alongside Blakiston and she simply did not care – did not, in fact, notice – how long the rector’s sermon went on. She felt herself in heaven and she knew that it was a heaven that smiled on her. And then, the magical moment when Rector Claverley looked at his whole congregation, smiled and spoke the words she was waiting to hear: ‘I publish the banns of marriage between James Blakiston, late of Burley parish in the county of Hampshire and now of this parish and Catherine Greener of this parish. This is the second time of asking. If any of you know cause or just impediment why these two persons should not be joined together in holy matrimony, ye are to declare it.’ There was no screech from Susannah Bent this time because, immediately before the banns were read, she had risen from her pew and stalked from the church, her face pink and her head held high.
Kate and Blakiston left the church in more orderly fashion after the rector’s blessing and engaged in the greetings with other parishioners that went on week after week. Kate had detached her hand from Blakiston’s and instead had taken his arm.
Susannah Bent had seen impropriety in all of their actions and Kate and Blakiston had ignored her but some things really could not be done and one of those was for Kate to return, even for a moment, with Blakiston to his house. He therefore put her once again on Obsidian’s back and carried her to Chopwell Garth. Even then they risked Society’s disapproval because they reached the farm before Tom, Lizzie, Florrie and Lulu and were therefore alone for several minutes. Blakiston stared longingly at the young woman who so captivated him. ‘Kate. I should dearly love to kiss you.’
Kate’s heart rejoiced. Of course it was wrong for a man and woman who were not married to kiss; Susannah Bent would know that and Society would agree. But Kate was a labourer’s daughter and Society foolishness was nothing to do with her. Blakiston wished to kiss her. She wished him to do so. The rector had spoken of impediments when he read their banns and Kate was not entirely sure what an impediment might be but she knew there should be none in this matter. And they had already kissed in the past – once when Blakiston had proposed to her and once on Obsidian’s back on the way to New Hope Farm. She lifted up her face to Blakiston and said, ‘I should like you to do so.’
And so, when the Laws family and its offshoots walked into the yard, they found Kate clasped firmly in Blakiston’s arms and her lips pressed tight against his. Lizzie coughed. ‘Mister Blakiston. Sir. Will you eat dinner with us?’
Kate would have liked nothing more than to hear her love say yes, but she knew the difficulty it would create. ‘He has to dine at the rectory tonight. Would you have him look like William Snowball before we are even wed?’
Blakiston smiled. ‘It is true, Mistress Laws, that two large meals in one day would be unwise but I should be honoured to share your table if you would permit me to take only a
small helping.’
‘The honour will be ours,’ said Lizzie, ‘and you must eat only what you choose.’
‘Then I accept your kind offer.’
Kate felt that now the happiness of this day was complete.
Blakiston said, ‘There is, though, a condition and that is that you call me James.’
Lizzie looked sad. ‘I will with pleasure while you are in our house and at our table, but I beg you not to ask us to do so when we are out or in the company of others.’
‘I shall accept that as a small victory but you should know that I will not cease my request until it has been accepted in all places. For are we not to be family?’
When she heard that, Kate had to tear her gaze away from him because she knew that she must look like a beaming idiot. ‘Dinner will be some time yet,’ she said. ‘And I must help in the making. Will you take a seat in the parlour?’
‘No,’ said Florrie. ‘He will not. You have a lifetime ahead of you for seeing to dinners, and it will be shorter than at your age you think. The only thing that never stops is time. Your banns were read for the second time today. The sun is shining. Is your man to sit alone in the parlour while we are all about our business? Go, the two of you, and walk. There will be fewer chances to do that when you are man and wife than you can have any idea of.’
Now it was Blakiston’s turn to beam with pleasure. He held out his hand. ‘Kate. Will you take my arm?’
And she did, and they walked out of the yard and into the road beyond in a dignified manner that completely failed to hide the pleasure they both felt.
The briar roses in the hedgerow had ceased flowering three months earlier and were now covered in hips that grew more red by the day. Chaffinches and blackbirds sang furiously and the fact that the song was to warn other birds of the presence of human interlopers did not detract from the enjoyment they gave. One of the shire horses that had pulled the harvest carts trotted towards them and put her head over the hedge in the hope that there might be a carrot or an apple on offer. Blakiston squeezed Kate’s hand against his side. ‘What is in your mind, dear heart?’
Kate pondered the question. What was in her mind? She said, ‘I cannot quite believe that this is real. That you are real. That I did not imagine sitting in church by your side hearing the rector tell everyone that we are to marry. I keep thinking I will wake up and see people laughing at me. Or that I will be walking with you like this and I will look up and see that it is not you but some fat farmer who I dread to spend the rest of my days with.’
‘Well,’ said Blakiston, ‘I confess I understand your concern because I wake up in the middle of the night convinced that I have been dreaming and that the most wonderful person in my life has not consented to become my wife. So what I suggest is that, if it is true and we are both dreaming, we carry on with the dream. And in two weeks’ time we will be wed and my life will be better than any dream could ever be.’
Kate laughed and they walked on in silence until she said, ‘A little while ago, the whole village was talking about your kindness in giving Emmet Batey a breakfast the like of which he had never eaten. And now, James, the entire parish speaks of William Snowball and the shilling a day his wife receives from you at a time when it is said you think he should be locked up in Durham Jail. You will have beggars knocking at your door asking for help.’
‘Batey was hungry through no fault of his own. As for Snowball, the sum is nine pence and not a shilling and I give it to his wife in return for his work to make sure that she and her children are fed. But tell me what you know of Snowball because it was clear when I told Drabble to take him to New Hope that he was reluctant to do so.’
‘Well, you are a man who sometimes pretends to be gruff and sometimes makes people believe him but I know that you are the kindest man in Ryton. I do not know why Jeffrey Drabble might not have wanted William Snowball at the farm.’
She was aware of Blakiston’s searching gaze. Then he said, ‘Kate, forgive me, but I am not sure that you are telling me the whole story. You know I have seen this before – I saw it when you did not want to say that Margaret Laws was known to be a wanton – and you do it when there is something that, if you told me, would be to someone’s disrepute. It is to your credit that you do not like to say something bad about another but I ask you to overcome your discretion and tell me what I need to know.’
Kate sighed. ‘No one likes to give William Snowball work. Our Tom says that he works hard and well but he must be watched. It is said that he will take things that are not rightly his.’
‘Thank you, Kate. I had already seen something of this but it is good to have it confirmed.’
One of the differences between the class in which working people lived and that of the rector was the time they took their dinner. It was a change that had only come about earlier that century and there were still aristocratic families that took their main meal in the middle of the day but for the most part the moneyed and leisured classes now dined in the evening. Some better-off farmers, seeking to ape the gentry, did the same but Chopwell Garth stuck to the old ways: early in the fields, breakfast at seven in summer and nine in winter, the fields again, dinner in the middle of the day, work once more, a bite to eat brought to them in late afternoon and supper in the kitchen when it was too dark to work out of doors any longer. Sunday mornings were different because they must be in church, but the afternoons were the same.
When Kate and Blakiston returned, Florrie and Lizzie were placing food on the table: a large piece of roast beef; bowls mounded with vegetables of several kinds; a huge jug of gravy that, for all its size, would need to be refilled at least once during the meal. All of this was left on the table and untouched, however, until a soup of vegetables in beef stock had been eaten.
When it was time for the beef, Tom turned to Blakiston. ‘Mister Blakiston, will you carve?’
‘No, Tom, I will not and not simply because you failed to call me James. This is your house, you are the master of it, this is your table, that is your beef and carving it falls to you. I will thank you to cut for me one slice only.’
Surreptitious smiles were exchanged between Lizzie, Kate and Florrie but Tom turned scarlet as he picked up the knife.
When the beef was eaten and the plates had been cleared away into the scullery, a series of puddings took their place. Kate could never look on this profusion without comparing it to the privations and lack they had known before they had come to the Garth. Truly, life was an amazing thing and even more amazing was the way God worked in it to achieve his ends. If only all could share in the plenty. They were well fed to the point of bursting but she knew that some of their neighbours were close to starvation.
Blakiston took only an apple and Kate knew that soon he must be gone. She told herself to accept what must be but she could not help looking forward to the time two weeks hence when, when Blakiston went home, she would go with him.
And when the moment of separation came, as it had to, Kate walked to the gate and Blakiston walked beside her, leading Obsidian. They stood for a moment, heads almost touching, before Blakiston took her in his arms once more and held her tight. He kissed her – on the forehead, on the cheek, on the throat and, at last, on the lips. Then he rose into the saddle and rode away from Chopwell Garth and Kate returned sadly to the kitchen.
Blakiston’s heart was in turmoil as he rode home. He had now kissed Kate four times. Before he had left Hampshire to come here he had been engaged to marry another but her he had never kissed, however he had felt about her and believed she felt about him. It was simply not done in the circles in which he moved.
He shrugged. He knew what people in his Hampshire circle would say: that Kate was no better than she should be; a hussy without respect for herself or the society she moved among. They would be wrong. Since falling in love with Kate, and getting to know her family, he had come face to face with values completely different from those he had grown up with. Different – and more honest. He gave
thanks for the fate that had brought him down in the world and transferred him from the soft life he had known to the harder one lived here.
When Blakiston arrived at the rectory that evening, he was greeted by a penitent rector. ‘Blakiston. Come into my study. I have something to say that you must hear.’
In the study, Thomas poured two glasses of madeira. Blakiston took his with a smile. His friend was worried; what he was worried about would become clear when the man could spit the words out. At the moment, he seemed to want only to stare through the window. At last, he spun on his heel, determination etched on his face. ‘Blakiston. I have a confession to make.’
‘A confession? My dear fellow, I give you absolution before I have even heard the words.’
‘You will remember the day – that day of my confounded stupidity – the day we fought, here in this very room, over your wish to marry Kate Greener and mine to prevent you? Well, how could you have forgotten?’
‘By an act of will, Thomas, for I have put it completely from my mind. I implore you to do the same.’
‘I can not until…until I have told you…look here, old man. I wrote to your sister that same day. Immediately you had left here I wrote, such terrible words…but my dear chap, why are you laughing?’
‘I know you wrote to her. She wrote to me and told me about it.’
‘Oh. Oh, dear. Was she…’
‘Apoplectic, my dear fellow. And excruciatingly rude about my choice of bride.’
‘I am so sorry.’
‘You should not be. You did what you believed to be right.’
‘But I have brought dissension into your family.’
‘It would have come of its own accord, Thomas. With your help or without it. And now let us speak of something else, for really I never wish to think of these things again.’ He remembered the question that had come into his head several times since he had first heard Thomas read his banns. ‘Tell me. When you ask for cause or just impediment why two people should not be married, does anyone ever answer?’