by Amy Myers
Smarting with injustice, Harriet crammed her old straw hat on, determined to get her own back somehow. The chance presented itself as she saw Mary Tunstall passing the Rectory gate, she who did for the Miss Norvilles, poor simple soul. ‘Hallo, Mary. My you’re brave.’
‘Why’s that?’ Mary was unaccustomed to girls as smart as Harriet speaking to her.
‘Walking back this time o’ night with him around.’
‘Who?’ Mary gaped.
‘That awk Fred Dibble. Ain’t you seen him hiding in the bushes when girls go by? He’ll jump out one day, you’ll see.’
‘Whatever for?’ Mary was bewildered.
‘Ain’t your mother ever told you? He likes to see girls,’ she whispered in Mary’s ear, ‘without anything on. Nothing at all. He looked in at me once. You want to be careful.’
Mary thought about this. ‘I don’t walk around with nothing on.’
Harriet forgot about patience with poor Mary. ‘He’ll tear ’em off you, like he does to others,’ she shouted. ‘Ain’t he ever even touched you? Can’t you sense him watching when you walk up that long lonely path to the Castle?’
Beware the beast, flee the bear, don’t face it.
‘I just came,’ Phoebe announced airily to a remote corner of the stable, ‘to tell you Poppy’s not very well, so Father says –’
‘Father says stay away from men, eh? That it, Miss Phoebe?’ Len Thorn spoke very softly. ‘Pity. A lovely girl like you is just waiting to be kissed. You must be fifteen now, I’ll be bound. Won’t be long to wait now.’
‘I’m seventeen.’ Phoebe was indignant.
‘Is that so? You’re a woman, I see, now I look further.’ His eyes travelled down slowly, then up again. ‘Did you ever wonder, Miss Phoebe, what life is like outside this Rectory here?’
‘Of course. I’m going to finishing school in September.’
‘Will they teach you to finish this?’
Face the formless bear. She had no choice. He stretched out his arms for her, kissed her, not like the curate, but taking her breath away and forcing her mouth open, sucking greedily, surrounding her with hot breath. She seemed to be clamped to his chest, yet she was certain she could feel his hand on her leg. How could it be, for it seemed to be her stockinged leg, and then before she could react, it was clamping her between her legs, and a pain, well, not a pain but something, shot right through her. What was he doing now? Whatever it was, she was quite certain she didn’t want him to do it, and moreover he shouldn’t be doing it. Then suddenly she was free, her skirts falling back.
‘There now, Miss Phoebe,’ he said hoarsely, ‘you’re too pretty, that’s the trouble.’ He stared at her and she knew she should run away or cry out, but she seemed curiously immobile. He ran one hand over her chest, almost absently, and bent forward to kiss her again. She knew she should move, but she didn’t. This time he didn’t try to force his tongue into her mouth but kissed her quite gently, and the feel of his lips on hers was rather nice. This time that pain, or whatever it was, was exciting as it travelled down her. ‘Pretty, pretty, Miss Phoebe.’ His tawny eyes seemed to be searing into her; he released her, and this time she did move away.
‘Will you tell your father, Miss Phoebe?’ The note of cocky defiance wasn’t in his voice any more, but she couldn’t seem to take advantage of it.
‘No. If you don’t do it again.’
‘Not unless you provoke me, Miss Phoebe.’ His nonchalance was coming back now, and he whacked Poppy on her side, as if to reiterate his point.
His face haunted her dreams that night, not so terrifyingly as before. The formless blank shape came curiously, excitingly, but insidiously, creeping towards her, around her, into her, merging in the black shadows that were dancing outside the Rectory windows.
Next day a deeply troubled Mary told her mother about the shape in the bushes who would jump out and tear off her clothes; the mother told her neighbour, who warned her daughter, who giggled about it with her friend, who was so scared that Mary had been stripped mother-naked on her way to the Castle that she told her sister, who told her brother, who told … and pretty soon even Joe Ifield knew Fred Dibble was up to his nasty tricks again.
She hadn’t seen Jamie. Agnes tossed and turned in her bed; counting sheep, counting pies, nothing worked. He hadn’t been at the gate in Silly Lane as he usually was on her half-day off, and pride had kept her from marching up to the ironmongery to seek him out. What if she’d sent him straight into Ruth Horner’s arms again, what then? Had she cleaned the slicing machine? One dark thought after another chased through her mind. A drumming inside her began to beat insistently, growing louder and louder. Bang, she’d lost him, bang, he’d marry Ruth, bang, he’d kill himself – it wasn’t inside her. It was outside, an insistent beating, men’s voices, women’s too. Outside the Norville Arms, was it? She lay there rigid, unable to be sure this was not another nightmare. Then she was sure; it came nearer. They must be in the High Street, banging, shouting, clapping – not a drunken rabble, though. She sat up in bed, rigid with fear. This was far more sinister: determined, menacing, organised threat with the sound of marching feet. Then it stopped for a moment as though it were gathering strength. It was a little further away now, further up the High Street, by the ironmongery. And then she knew: Jamie.
It was as if the whole of her insides were turned into one gigantic silent scream. Rough music. Her ma used to tell her about it, how it hadn’t been done for many a long year, how all the villagers turned out of their homes to gather in front of someone’s door to show their disapproval by banging anything they could lay their hands on, then attacking the cottage itself with brooms, tin pails, anything. It were worse, so ma said, than anything the village policeman might do. It hadn’t died out, though, for tonight they were doing it to her Jamie.
She moaned to herself, her arms clasped round her, rocking to and fro in agony. When that didn’t help she drew the sheets over her head, to distance the noise, but nothing could extinguish the sound of Jamie’s voice in her ear crying, Are you one of them, Aggie, are you?
She heard a door slam. That would be the Rector going out to calm them down. Tensely she waited, counted each step he must be taking, calculating the time it would take him to reach the crowd and shame them into silence. It took fifteen minutes longer than she had thought before the dull roar became a low rumble, and then nothing, as the protesters slipped away into the darkness and at last she fell into a troubled sleep.
‘No, Laurence, I fear you are wrong, sadly wrong. My department looks not to Ireland for the dogs of war, but to Europe.’ Sir John paced up and down his study, his brandy and soda as yet untouched, which was a sure sign of his agitation, the Rector realised.
‘But even if Russia mobilises in support of Serbia, how are we affected?’
‘If Russia fights, Germany joins Austria. It will follow, as the night the day.’
‘And if so?’
‘France has a treaty with Russia, and moreover may welcome the chance to regain what she regards as her honour, lost in 1870.’
The Rector stared at the Squire. He was tired after his interrupted night. When the troubles of Ashden were so time-consuming, he lacked the energy to grapple with those of the outside world, especially those that could not affect England. Nevertheless he tried. ‘And because we are morally bound to France by a mutual understanding, we may be drawn in? Surely not. It is a European war. France would not be so foolish as to expect it, and even if she were, she will realise we cannot support her, because of Ireland. And even if there were no Irish problem, there would be no public support to ally ourselves with France in this present difficulty. No, all this is mere sabre-rattling.’
‘The Kaiser has wanted to rattle a sabre at England for many a long year.’
‘But not to take on our Empire. He is foolhardy, but not foolish, surely.’
‘Foolish? If he believes that England faces the other way, faces Ireland not France, he might well wish to ta
ke his chance to humiliate her, or, worse, count on our neutrality to pursue his own plans of Empire. When he is master of Russia and France, he might reason, he can pick off England at will.’
‘Your theory is just that. It can have no realistic basis.’
‘At the moment the Cabinet agrees with you. I trust with all my heart you and they are right, Laurence.’
‘Caroline.’ Isabel hurtled through the door. ‘Come and help me.’
It was an order. Reluctantly, Caroline left Cicely Hamilton’s Marriage as a Trade. She had escaped to her room only five minutes ago, creeping out of a tense discussion between her mother and Mrs Dibble over, of course, the likelihood of rain on the day, as the weather had perversely grown cool and close, and the worrying rise of a shilling per sack of flour in Liverpool because of the current uncertainty. When the talk turned to raspberries, she had fled to her book.
Her aunt had spoken of Miss Hamilton with disgust, as a renegade to the militant cause, since she had left the WSPU to join Mrs Despard’s Women’s Freedom league. Nevertheless she had lent Caroline her book and that was shocking enough. Marriage, in Cicely Hamilton’s view – and, Caroline supposed, Aunt Tilly’s – was no better than prostitution in that women were forced into it for economic reasons. As Ruth Horner had just avoided, Caroline was bound to agree. Not herself, though. Never. With Reggie, it would be an equal marriage. For Isabel …
‘Smell this.’ Isabel marched her to her own room where she had set up her home-made perfume apparatus, a glass funnel suspended between two supports over a glass bowl. The Rectory’s best blooms stood wilting in a jug (naturally Isabel had forgotten to give them water). ‘It doesn’t smell at all. It’s all Percy’s fault. He wouldn’t get me the pure alcohol I wanted. No one cares. I hate being poor.’ She sat on the bed sulkily while Caroline sniffed cautiously at the results.
She glanced at Isabel. ‘It’s not the perfume that worries you, is it?’
Isabel bit her lip. ‘No. I’ve decided I’m scared,’ she announced dolefully.
‘Of what? Robert?’ Caroline could not take her seriously, and was inclined to be impatient. Compared with poor Agnes’s problems, Isabel’s were slight indeed – and entirely of her own making. Did she even know, Caroline wondered, what had been going on in the village this week, and would she care? Guilt overcame Caroline for she was all too well aware that the dark shadows over the village, much as she sympathised with Agnes and Jamie, were failing to touch her as they should, such was her own happiness.
‘Of marriage. But I do want to get married, don’t I?’ Isabel burst into tears, and, alarmed at this proof of sincerity, Caroline went to comfort her.
‘I can’t answer that, darling, because I’m not in your head, in your heart or in your shoes. Perhaps you’re a little worried about sharing a bed with someone?’
‘Perhaps,’ Isabel muttered, then loftily, ‘of course, you wouldn’t understand.’
Caroline would. She felt caught up in a web of mystery and excitement about her own wedding bed which filled her with strange feelings. Even the words ‘wedding bed’ sent a happy shiver of anticipation through her. But what if her guess was right and Isabel didn’t really love Robert? Then she could well understand how Isabel might dread it as an ordeal. ‘Robert will be kind and gentle, I’m sure.’
‘That may be the trouble,’ Isabel said under her breath, covering it quickly with, ‘He’s wonderful of course.’
‘Suppose you play a game and imagine these aren’t just normal fears but real. How would you feel in two weeks’ time if you were still here and not in Paris, if there were no wedding because you’d changed your mind?’
Isabel considered this, then brightened up. ‘I do feel a little better. You’re a dear, Caroline, you really are. I hope you’re as happy as me one day.’
I am now, Caroline thought to herself. Much happier, in fact. She was surprised it was not written all over her face: ‘I love Reggie.’
In those final days before the wedding, Caroline’s concentric circles spun furiously and independently. The King’s intervention to break the Irish deadlock had failed, and the bitter episode of the gun-running Asgard and the Dublin Shootings poised the country on the brink of civil war, Father told them gravely. Meanwhile, Austria disregarded Serbia’s apology and seized the excuse to mobilise and invade; Russia snarled and the Kaiser snarled back. Goodwood took place in stifling heat without the King’s presence, but society floated on in chiffon, satin and top hats waiting for the date when it could thankfully retire to the seaside. Her birthday passed with scant Rectory attention – unsurprisingly since she chose to spend the day on a picnic with Reggie, her excuse for being alone with him all day being that she would feel selfish dragging her family away from the Rectory at such a vital time. Eleanor dutifully failed to put in her ‘offered’ appearance as chaperone. The Rectory larders groaned, the refrigerators and ice-house filled with raspberry ices (red, not white, though, Mrs Dibble snapped), bridesmaids’ dresses were fitted and pressed, the bridal gown allotted a room of its own. Now the wedding fever had gripped Caroline too, quite apart from her own reasons for looking forward to it. Within her there lay a deep nugget of joy, as, bursting with excitement, she waited for Saturday when Friday’s grey skies would lift and the long hot summer would reach its climax.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘Praise we the Lord!’ In the interests of the rest of the household Mrs Dibble refrained from bursting into song and maintained a continuous and energetic hum of gratitude. Not only had the Almighty dutifully provided a warm, dry day (the sun would undoubtedly soon be shining), but He had also arranged for her junkets and jellies to set, a matter about which Mrs Dibble had been uneasy. Cautiously she went to investigate her snow cheese left in the larder to drain all night, with strict instructions that that blessed dog was to be kept out of the kitchen. There had been one terrible occasion when Ahab, strolling into the kitchen from his appointed bed in the scullery in search of nocturnal amusement, found the snow cheese merrily draining away its surplus liquid, ate the lot and was promptly sick, lying wanly and reproachfully by the cause of his downfall when she arrived in the morning. This time all was well. One by one Mrs Dibble tweaked off the muslin covers from the lemon cheesy mounds to find a satisfactory amount of liquid beneath each sieve.
She drew in a satisfied breath, made herself a strengthening cup of tea, and prepared to finalise the tactics for her battlefield while the troops slumbered on.
‘Morning, Mrs Dibble.’ She was wrong. Even Harriet was prepared to be down early today, her handsome face for once looking excited rather than sulky. Myrtle tumbled in a few minutes later, just as Harriet had finished her tea and was setting forth to start on the drawing room armed with Globe polish, cloths, tea-leaves and brushes.
‘And disinfectant in the pigwash tub, if you please, Myrtle. We don’t want an army of bluebottles joining in the party. And I thought I told you, Myrtle, to empty the grease-bucket strainer. I can smell it from here. And change the fly-papers. And you’ll need some more Monkey soap out.’
‘Morning, Mrs D.’ Agnes came in, trying not to yawn, ten minutes later. Once again she hadn’t slept, but she was determined to do her best for the Rectory today.
‘I want a word with you, girl,’ Mrs Dibble said as Myrtle departed to the scullery, in what passed for her as a motherly tone. She pushed a cup of tea towards Agnes. ‘Young Jamie Thorn’s coming here today to help Percy out.’
Already Agnes was back in torment and it was only twenty to seven. ‘Here?’ she repeated stupidly. She’d been trying to see Jamie for days, but he wouldn’t open the door, not even to her, not after the rough music. He was never in the shop, never at home apparently, and the door was never left open now like it usually was. His mother always pretended not to know where he was, but she must, she must.
‘The Rector asked him to come and help Mr Dibble with the wine.’ Mrs Dibble offered no further explanation.
Agnes nodded as if the news
were of no interest to her, though she was filled with instant hope and despair at the same time. She didn’t care now if he’d done it or not, she still wanted Jamie. She realised this was the Rector’s way of showing Ashden what he thought of their nasty habits; he was allying himself openly with Jamie Thorn. She wondered vaguely why, and then forgot about the Rector in the dilemma of her own affairs. He would be here; she would see him, that was all she cared about. Today somehow or other must settle things between Jamie and herself; every problem had a climax, and today was hers and Jamie’s.
She rose to her feet. ‘Thank you, Mrs Dibble,’ she said, and went to lay dining-room breakfast. ‘Breakfast for us at seven-thirty today, Agnes,’ she heard Mrs Dibble shout after her. ‘And Miss Caroline’s going to take a tray up to Miss Isabel at eight o’clock, remember.’
‘I’ll remember,’ she shouted back.
Old Dibble had called her Agnes, she suddenly realised. That meant a lot. She was on her side, then. Right. Agnes straightened her shoulders. This would be The Day.
Caroline jerked awake, took a second to realise that this was really The Day, her day, jumped out of bed and rushed to the window. The sun wasn’t out, but on the other hand there was no sign of rain on the terrace. It was going to be a glorious, glorious day, it had to be. Happily she seized her water jug, splashing water with alacrity into the bowl, and glad she had had a bath last night for this morning no one would dispute Isabel’s right to the bathroom. She decided she’d go down to the kitchen to collect Isabel’s breakfast, and remembered family prayers at eight-thirty this morning. She’d have to dress properly. Bother. Today of all days she didn’t want her usual rush. She opened her door and craned her head out, sniffing in the atmosphere. Already the Rectory was excited. She could hear George crashing about in his room, the comforting hum of her mother’s voice downstairs, despite the almost tangible tension. They could make enough electricity from the Rectory air to light Piccadilly – or Ashden. That would be the day; they hadn’t got gas in the village yet, let alone a public electricity supply. Not that she minded. She loved the glow of oil-lamps, the sight of Fred slowly working his way round the Rectory lamps each evening; and who would give up the warmth of the fires of the kitchen ranges even for the excitement of gas stoves? To be fair, she thought ruefully, Mrs Dibble would. It must have been terrible for her all this hot summer to have to cook on the range; she never complained, though there were frequent raised voices in the servants’ quarters.