‘Oh, I noticed it. How could one miss it? You couldn’t get much more on it if you tried.’
‘That isn’t my fault. You speak to Peggie.’
‘I certainly shall. My larder must be depleted.’
She now lay back into the cushions at the end of the couch and, her voice and mood changing, she said, ‘It’s been a strange year. How much longer have we of it?’
He turned and looked at the round-faced clock hanging on the wall at the other side of the room. ‘About seven minutes,’ he said.
‘Don’t you think it’s been a strange year?’
His tone had changed now as he answered her, saying, ‘I would hate to look back on any minute of it if it wasn’t that it has led me here. It’s only when you look at the picture objectively that you realise that everything seems to have been planned from the beginning. We have no free will as regards the events that shape our lives, only a little bit allowed us within the events…Do you look back over the things that have happened to you during this year?’
‘Oh yes. Yes, I’ve been doing it all day…’
‘Thinking of Joe?’
She turned and looked at him sharply. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, thinking of Joe, but only in connection with Lily’s loss and the baby’s future and feeling a bit guilty about the promise I made him, to find out who actually did the deed, when I know that I haven’t as yet made a start, because I wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘Best left alone.’
She watched him slip off the couch onto his knees and lift a piece of wood from the basket to the side of the hearth and throw it into the middle of the blazing fire, sending the sparks, not only flying up the broad chimney, but spurting back onto the hearthrug. And as he dabbed them out, she said, ‘Do you want to roast us?’
For a moment he remained on his knees looking into the flames; then he got up and, bending over her, held out his hand, saying, ‘Come on; it will soon be starting.’
Without a word she rose and they went out of the room and into the kitchen. And there he took her coat and hood from the back of a chair and helped her into them; then from a hook on the door he took down his own coat and buttoned it up to the neck, announcing, ‘We’ll wait and go out just before they start, because it’s bitter out there.’
An oil lamp burned in the middle of the kitchen table and with the glow from the open fire that heated the round oven to the side of it, the room was illuminated with a soft warm light. They stood in this glow and in the silence looking at each other, waiting for the sound of the first hooter. When it came he pulled the door open, took her arm and led her out onto the step.
The sky was high and bright with stars, the frozen field before them appearing like a silver sea. The air hit the back of their throats like old wine and the whole world seemed to be now enveloped in the chorus of ship’s foghorns vying with each other and factory hooters screaming their time signals, all mingled with the sound of church bells, their peals seeming to bound from one star to another, until the very sky itself became a canopy of sound.
They stood, shoulder tight to shoulder, until the very last note died away and they were left standing in an echoing silence and seemingly alone in all the world, between the roof of stars and the sea of silver. And such had been the enchantment of the moment that they did not speak as they turned indoors. Not until he had closed the door and dropped the bolt on it and they were standing face to face, did he say in a voice that was thick with emotion, ‘Happy New Year, Bridget.’ And her answer came almost as a whisper, ‘And the same to you, Douglas, the same to you.’
And now he carried out the reason he’d asked her to see the New Year in with him: he put his hands on her shoulders, leant towards her and placed his lips on hers; and he left them there, and when after a moment there was no response and he was about to withdraw, her arms came about him and her mouth answered his and they clung together until they swayed and her shoulders touched the door. Only then did their lips part, but they still held on to each other.
‘Oh, Bridget! Bridget!’
She made no answer because she couldn’t at this moment when her throat, even her whole body, was choked with unbearable emotion.
The spaces in the floorboards of her mind had widened of late and she’d had to face the fact of her true feelings and what they would mean if given way to, or if they were reciprocated. One of the thoughts pointed out that she would be connected with that family, another that he only saw her as a friend. But now she knew differently.
He was leading her into the sitting room, gazing at her all the while, and when they once more stood before the fire he again uttered her name, saying, ‘Oh, Bridget! Bridget!’ but now added, ‘Is this true?’
And she could only murmur, ‘Yes, Douglas, very true for me.’
‘Oh, my love.’
Again they were enfolded, again their lips were together, hard, tight. When they almost tumbled onto the couch, he said, ‘Drunk, and without wine.’ He now drew her round the couch and to the table, saying, ‘Let’s drink to this wonderful moment.’ And when he had to leave go of her in order to open the bottle of wine, he said, ‘I never want to move any further away from you in my life again,’ she made no reply: she was finding it difficult to find words to say, in fact she didn’t want to speak. This wondrous thing was beyond words, it didn’t need words, just actions, to be held, to be kissed as he had kissed her, to hold him in her arms.
They stood, their glasses clinking; then after they had drunk he asked quietly, ‘Would you like something to eat, dear?’
She shook her head: ‘No. No, thank you,’ she said; ‘this is enough.’ And at that she finished a glass of wine at one go, and he, laughing, followed suit before taking the glass from her and placing them both on the table. Then, his arm about her he led her back to the couch, and there as if both exhausted after some strenuous event, they lay back looking at each other, until he asked softly, ‘When did you know?’ and she shook her head, saying, ‘I can’t remember. It seemed to creep up on me, and all the while I was pushing it back. And you?’
‘Oh, I can pinpoint the very moment. It was in the carriage, when you broke down and I held you. That was the point when the light really dawned. But I think I, too, had been working up to it before, from the night of the dance. You were so different.’
‘Oh, I know I was. Victoria emphasised the difference and although, at her command, I got a new dress, it didn’t seem to make any difference.’
‘Don’t be silly.’ He tapped her cheek with his fingers. ‘Of course you’re different. You’re intelligent, and you’re a girl…a woman who is doing something with her life. You were bound to appear different in that company of hunting, shooting, fishing from the male side and frivolity from the women. Not that I don’t think some of them were intelligent enough, but they used it mainly in sharpening their tongues and trimming their fingernails into claws. As a boy who didn’t seem to matter I was left to listen to their chatter, and as a young man who should, my father thought, be brought out, I was thrust into the men’s company, and there, there was still chatter, where you were looked upon as a fine fellow the more bawdy you were. Of course,’ he pulled a face now, ‘like all groups in all parts of society I must admit they weren’t all alike. Pat Maybrook, for instance. I met him the other day and he was genuinely pleased, seemingly, to see me, and to hear that I was doing well. And the Forrester family, the five girls, they were all nice, except’—he now laughed—‘except Freda.’
‘Why Freda?’
‘She used to chase me. She must have been very hard up, but she did. I was scared of Freda from when I was seventeen or so.’
‘I’m glad she didn’t catch you.’
‘Oh, Bridget. Bridget. I don’t know how many times I’ve said that since this New Year’s come in, but I’ve said it a thousand times in my mind over the past months, especially since I came into this little house. And you know something? I’m going to make my first confession. I planned this
night. I thought, I will kiss her. That will give me an opportunity to find out, because everybody kisses everybody, whether drunk or sober, as the New Year comes in. But I told myself, I will kiss her and then I shall know if she has a spark of feeling for me.’
‘Oh, my dear, my dearest Douglas.’ She was holding his face between her hands. ‘You are a schemer, but I forgive you, because I, too, am a schemer, and I have a first confession to make. This place’—she now wagged her head from side to side—‘was never for letting. No cabby ever raced his horse so hard from that awful farm and shed you were in, to my agent in Newcastle, where I told them what to do. You’d be along, I said, and they had to play it…well, cagey, as if there was someone else after it.’
His eyes widened, his teeth were now biting his lower lip. He gripped her wrists and pulled her hands from his face, saying, ‘You wretch! Oh, you scheming…’
‘Well, what more proof could you have of my love for you?’
‘But, Lily and the child, they were coming here?’
‘Yes; and so they were, but she would have none of it. Too far away from the house, as I’ve said, and she had got the Lodge very comfortable. I didn’t know then what I was going to do with it, but from the minute I saw you in that place I knew, and…and oh, my love, I wanted you near me. I did, I did.’
Once more they were enfolded. And now he asked quietly, ‘You will marry me?’
‘Sir! Sir!’ She tried to draw back from him. ‘What else?’
‘I wish you hadn’t any money.’
‘But I have, a great deal of money.’
‘Well, right from the start I’m going to say this to you. I don’t want it spent on me. Do you understand, my dear? I want to work and earn by my working.’
‘Oh yes, I understand, and I wouldn’t want you to be any other way. But there’s one thing I would like to do for you.’
‘And what’s that, madam?’
‘I’d like to have a proper road made from here towards the back gates, so you would have easy access for the transport of the stone, et cetera.’
He fell back from her for a moment laughing now as he said, ‘Here we go! Here we go!’
‘That’s nothing. It will save the carts getting bogged down in the field. Be sensible.’
‘Be sensible.’ He had his arms about her again, and hers were about him. And now he said softly, ‘There’s one thing I haven’t told you, and that is, besides you being the most kind and thoughtful creature on this earth, you are also beautiful.’
‘Don’t. Don’t.’
He pulled her more tightly to him. ‘You are beautiful. You are a beautiful woman. And I’m going to sculpt you…not scalp you…sculpt you from head to foot one day. And I’ll make you more beautiful than the head I gave you at Christmas. And that was you, too, you know.’
She became quiet within his hold and when he reached out and lifted her legs across his knees so that she was practically sitting on his lap, she made no move to stop him.
Florrie McLean could not get down the stairs quickly enough; she had to check her legs from running in case the miss’s cup of early tea jumped off the tray. And when she burst into the kitchen, Peggie and Jessie both turned from where they were sitting at the table enjoying their early morning cup and demanded, ‘What is it? What is it, woman?’
‘She’s…she’s not there! The bed it’s…it’s never been slept in.’
The two women rose slowly from the table and three pairs of eyes exchanged glances. And then the cook sat down and her body began to shake with laughter, and this was taken up by Florrie, but Jessie did not join in. Her head was wagging as she said, ‘Well, now, she shouldn’t have gone that far. No, she shouldn’t. Well, now. And you two’—she was wagging her finger at them—‘don’t let this go any further. She’ll likely be over in a minute or so. What time is it? Oh’—she looked at the clock—‘quarter to eight. Well, she’ll be bound to know by this time that you’ve taken up her tea. But act ordinary, d’you hear me? Act ordinary as if nothing had…well…Huh! I was going to say, as if nothing had happened but…’
She was biting on her lip now; then her body, too, began to shake, and the three of them now were leaning on the table and Peggie was saying, ‘Well, that’s that. We know where we stand. But I think we’d better keep it from the men, don’t you?’
‘Definitely,’ Jessie said. ‘Definitely, except, that is, if any of them see her coming up over the field.’
‘Oh, I don’t suppose so,’ said Florrie; ‘they were all a bit shaky on their feet when they left here, weren’t they.? And Mr Croft’s still in bed, isn’t he?’
‘Aye, he is,’ Jessie said; ‘and he’d better stay there for a time. I think he’d be a bit shocked; he wouldn’t imagine her being capable of that.’
The word, that, seemed to present a picture again to the three of them, and once more they were leaning against the table and laughing. And they didn’t stop until Jessie, taking a pull at herself, said, ‘Well, that’s set the New Year off for us. I wonder what the end of it will be.’
It was four days later when Victoria received a letter from her cousin Bridget, and when the contents made her hysterical to the point that she laughed uproariously, Bright called Kate Swift upstairs to attend to her, for she was nearing her time and he felt she might do herself an injury. But Kate could not calm her, and when Victoria pushed them aside and shambled out of the bedroom and down the stairs to the smoking room, where she knew she would at least find her father-in-law at this time of the day, Bright and Kate followed her. They watched her thrust open the door, an action which seemed to startle the master, and he turned from where he was sitting, crying, ‘Woman! Why are you down here?’
‘I am down here, sir, to show you this letter.’
William Filmore stared at the woman before him, her stomach protruding like that of a poisoned horse, and he almost snatched the letter from her hands. And after he had read it he looked back at her, saying nothing, which brought the cry from her: ‘Well, sir, can’t you see the irony of it? Your son married the wrong one in taking me, but your second son is marrying the right one. ’Tis ironic, don’t you think? You would have been set and your house in order if he had still lived here, or if your elder son, as you will likely tell him, had had sense and hadn’t chosen a pretty face to go with what he imagined was a fortune.’ She began to laugh again. ‘He is out about his daily business, but if it is possible, when he returns this evening I should like to be present when you tell him the news. Oh, yes, I deserve to be present when you tell him this news, sir.’
‘Woman, go to your room.’
‘I will go to my room when I am ready, sir.’
His bawl almost lifted her from the ground as he yelled, ‘Go to your room! Out of my sight.’ Then looking to the side and through the open door, he cried, ‘Bright! See to it.’
When Bright and Kate came quickly into the room and, one on each side of her, turned Victoria about, she made no protest. Her laughter was ebbing away, driven out by the pains that were starting to catch her breath…
Twenty-four hours later Victoria gave birth to a daughter. And it was noted amongst the staff with pity that neither father nor the grandfather asked to see the child, although both of these men were downstairs drinking.
But pity for the mistress had increased in James Bright and also his mind was set on asking questions when he heard his master say to his son, ‘Biting you, isn’t it, when the runt of the litter has got what you imagined was intended for you? You feel you could do murder again, don’t you? It’s hard for you to accept that he always had more common sense in his little finger than you had in your whole head. As your wife said, you picked the wrong one. But you were always greedy and…bloody stupid. Look what you’ve sprung on the house now, a female! And our line hasn’t thrown off a female in three generations. Always classed ourselves as breeders of men. But I’ve had to ask meself lately, what kind of men? At least I do when I look at you. The other one is more man than y
ou’ll ever be and…’
‘Shut up, Father! Shut up! I’m warning you. Shut up!’
‘You’re warning me of what? I’d be careful, son, be careful with that tongue of yours, for who knows, what one’s capable of doing, another can.’
As Bright walked quietly away along the conservatory he told himself that there was something here he didn’t understand. The only thing that was clear to him was there was some grave reason behind the fight that had taken place between the two brothers, and it hadn’t only to do with money because the lack of that had been a source of trouble in this house for years. No, it was something else. But there was one thing that he was glad of and that was Mr Douglas was going to marry that nice kind Miss Mordaunt. Yet, at the same time, what a pity, he thought, that Mr Douglas hadn’t been the elder son, because then Miss Mordaunt would have taken over this house and everything would have become different. Oh, yes, so different.
PART THREE
THE YEARS BETWEEN
1896
One
‘But, Mam, why have they all of a sudden decided to do this?’
Lily looked at her son and said gently, ‘It isn’t all of a sudden. The mistress has been talking about if for some time.’
‘Well, that’s news to me…and to Amy as well. She doesn’t want to go to any boarding school. Anyway, I thought that Mrs Filmore considered Madam Duval’s Academy for Young Ladies’—he wrinkled his nose now—‘the very last thing in education. In my opinion it’s the very last thing in snobbery.’
‘It’s about time, Joseph, that you learned to keep your opinions to yourself.’
‘Oh, Mam, I do, I do, because I have to. God knows why, and all of a sudden, when for years I’ve had the run of the place.’
The Black Candle Page 26