The Wilding

by Maria McCann

  ‘You mean my adopted son,’ Father said sharply. My aunt looked loathing at both of us and opened her mouth to make some retort. What it was to be I will never know, since at this moment Rose entered and performed a quivering curtsey.

  ‘Mistress?’

  ‘Come and stand by me,’ her mistress ordered. ‘Now, listen, Rose! Remember what I say. These people say all my property is forfeit.’

  ‘Do we have to leave here?’ Rose exclaimed, forgetting her place.

  ‘When I die, fool! This house goes to Joan Seaton.’ Rose looked helplessly from my aunt to us. ‘And then Jonathan there marries her daughter and the vermin eat their way through my estate.’

  My father said, ‘You know full well they won’t marry.’

  ‘Oh, they might; they’ll keep mum –’

  ‘Harriet!’

  ‘– but they needn’t think I will. We’ll put a stop to you, Mathew – a stop – !’

  ‘Madam, this is madness,’ Blackett said, voicing my own thoughts, for she seemed to have taken leave of her senses. ‘Pray consider: supposing we had forged this will, why would we give away the property to Joan Seaton, when we could’ve made it over directly to Master Jonathan?’

  She hesitated, but then said, ‘Perhaps you’re subtler than that. If you ask me, my life’s not worth a candle. Stay, Rose. Don’t go away.’

  It was as Master Blackett said: fear and hatred had clouded my aunt’s reason. To comfort Rose, who had begun to weep, Father said, ‘Don’t be afraid, Rose, we make no threats. All the threats have come from your mistress. Stay by all means, and welcome.’ He waited while Rose struggled to suppress her sobs. When she was quieter, he went on. ‘We have found Mr Dymond’s last will and testament – later than the one you know of. It gives Mrs Dymond only a life interest in the property. Nothing alters, for you,’ he patiently repeated to Aunt Harriet. ‘You continue here, just as you would have done.’

  Aunt Harriet snorted with rage.

  ‘Father,’ I whispered. ‘Perhaps she was going to sell.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘This is all because of you,’ my aunt said, coming closer. ‘You disgusting little spy, you worm! Coming here to help with the cider!’ She was panting. ‘What you wanted was to see the house, see what was coming to you –’

  She rushed at me. I half rose to defend myself but her hands were in my hair, twisting, before I could get out of the chair, and her body, tall and heavy, pinned me down. I struggled to move my legs, swaddled as they were in the folds of her skirts. I heard Father cry, ‘Harriet! Govern yourself!’ as he tried to drag her off. She kicked at him and the chair fell sideways with both of us on it. I fell underneath, and took the impact all down my left arm and my chest; I lay stunned, my head pressed against the table leg. My aunt’s features, horribly distorted, loomed over me and I thought she was going to scratch at my eyes.

  ‘Let go, you mad bitch!’ I shouted.

  She gave a fearful cry and screwed up her mouth, then dropped motionless onto the floor by my side, her hands still knuckling my scalp and her eyes staring into mine.

  ‘What in God’s name – !’ exclaimed Blackett in horror.

  ‘She’s in a fit,’ my father said, bending down and shining a candle in my aunt’s face so that a streak of saliva glistened drag her or chin. ‘Quick, Rose, unlace her.’

  Rose hurried forward and knelt down beside him, her hands trembling as she endeavoured to loosen Aunt Harriet’s bodice. My aunt gave a stifled groan like one who has been crushed and then – nothing. I disentangled her now limp fingers from my hair and got up from the floor as best I could, dazed from the fall and unable to make sense of what was happening before my eyes. My aunt’s face was an unsightly purplish red. A pale tress, bloody at the roots, fell from my head onto her sleeve.

  Having unlaced the bodice, Rose laid her ear just beneath my aunt’s left breast and listened. I could hear all the breathing in the room: my own, ragged, loud and unreal; Father’s, steady and purposeful; Blackett’s, expelled in what sounded like prayer; and the sobbing exhalations of Rose. Only my aunt was silent.

  ‘Is she gone?’ Blackett whispered. Rose clapped her hands to her own mouth in disbelief, and then – curiously, abruptly – my aunt made a snoring sound, after which we observed her bosom rising and falling in the usual way. Four people sighed as one. It was at this moment that Dr Green entered the room.

  *

  I hate to think how the affair might have gone for us, had Rose not been present and witnessed these things for herself. As it was, Dr Green entered at a run, as if to catch us in the act of pillaging the dead. When he saw my aunt, he dropped to his knees, bent towards her, and seemed as if he would raise her; then he glanced fearfully at us, as if he thought we might seize our chance and attack him while he was off guard.

  ‘Pray let me help you,’ Father said, understanding. He crouched to put himself at a disadvantage and also gestured to Blackett and me. The two of us moved away to the far end of the room, while Dr Green and Father lifted Aunt Harriet, not without difficulty, and laid her lengthwise upon the table.

  Blackett and I then approached again and stood with the others in a silence broken only by the quickened breathing of Father and Dr Green. My aunt’s face, draining of its high colour, was almost pale again. She might have been asleep but for the persistent grimace that tightened her lips. Father smoothed them with his hand, an action that reminded me, and perhaps others, of the forcible closure of a corpse’s eyes. Though well meant, it was not the most politic of gestures.

  ‘A doctor. A doctor.’ The parson seized hold of Rose, who had commenced whimpering, and propelled her bodily across to the door. ‘Send your man to Hibbertson! Bid him drop anything he has on hand, I’ll make it worth his while. But hurry!’ He shut the door after her as if to speed her on her way.

  ‘Should we take her upstairs – put her to bed?’ Father asked. It was a delicate question: we men could hardly undress her, and she might not wish Rose near her either. Somebody must fetch Hannah Reele. I went upstairs to find her but my aunt’s chamber, with its little alcove where Hannah slept to keep her company, was empty, and though I called along all the corridors I failed to flush Hannah out. Possibly she was gone into the village. I returned to my aunt’s room and fetched a quilt.

  Coming back, I found my father and Blackett with their chairs pulled back from able, as if to emphasise that they would not meddle with anything belonging to the sick woman. On Dr Green, however, she worked like fire on a cold day. He could not get near enough; he kept rubbing her hands and her face. I laid the quilt over her, and Dr Green elbowed me aside so that he could arrange it snugly round her body. His own complexion was a dull greenish-white, like a fish’s belly, so that he looked near fainting.

  I said, ‘She has cordial and cups in the sideboard,’ and made to fetch some, but Blackett rose and laid a hand on my shoulder, saying quietly, ‘If anyone is to administer medicines, Jon, it must be Dr Green. And since a sick lady is delicate, and can take only what’s wholesome, I shall be the first to drink.’

  I said, ‘My aunt wouldn’t keep bad cordial.’ But Dr Green understood the lawyer better than I did, and having fetched the cordial he first presented a cupful to Master Blackett, who downed it in one go. Only after this did Dr Green pour a measure between my aunt’s lips.

  ‘She swallows, at any rate,’ he said, taking the chair that had been hers and settling himself where he could dab her lips with his handkerchief. ‘Now, how did this come about?’

  Father said gently, ‘We brought unwelcome news and Harriet flew into a rage. I begged her to govern herself but it only made her more passionate.’

  The parson gazed at the now colourless face before him. ‘She is known to me as a most decorous lady.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Father said. ‘But home and abroad are different things.’

  ‘What can you mean?’ The man frowned. ‘Her household was well ordered and godly, like everything about her.’


  ‘Well ordered, certainly,’ my father agreed. ‘My meaning was that family quarrels provoke more anger than any other kind. A pastor of your experience will have found this out.’

  Dr Green’s face showed that he had. Father went on, ‘Our news concerns Mr Robin Dymond’s will – a most painful subject with Harriet. You remarked her features before I smoothed them?’

  ‘What else would you expect after an apoplexy?’ the parson retorted. By now he was losing his greenish tinge, but he was still almost as pale as Aunt Harriet herself. I suggested that we should all benefit from a dose of cordial, and went to the sideboard to fetch more cups.

  Dr Green reproved me – ‘You make free with another’s goods’ – but I was not inclined to obey him: I gave my father a cupful, and even offered one to Dr Green himself, but he only shook his head and every so often let out a tiny dry sob like a hiccup. I wondered what he made of us, tearless and relentless as we were. Seeing my aunt still and waxen on the table, how should he imagine her spitting and screaming at me, trying to pull the hair from my head? I put my hand up to my temple, which was stinging, and found a raw bloody place where she had torn the skin away.

  Dr Green, who had been watching me, turned towards Father. ‘You spe of her late husband’s will.’

  ‘My brother had made certain changes, but said nothing of them to Harriet – to Mrs Dymond,’ Father explained. ‘We came to explain the arrangements.’

  ‘You’re saying he left less to her … more to you?’

  ‘No,’ Father firmly corrected him. ‘Not more to me.’

  ‘You don’t wish to discuss it,’ the man said, as if he had expected nothing else.

  Here Blackett coughed. ‘Perhaps, if I may … ?’

  ‘That might be best. This is Master Blackett; I apologise for not presenting him earlier – it was not the moment, as you will appreciate. Master Blackett’s a lawyer, but the will we speak of was not drawn up by him. It was made by Master Ousby, who dealt with all my brother’s business.’

  ‘The later will grants Mrs Dymond a life interest in the property,’ explained Blackett, ‘after which it passes to Joan and Tamar Seaton, illegitimate connections but acknowledged by Mr Dymond at the end of his life. This is what Mrs Dymond found so offensive.’

  ‘Cruel,’ Dr Green murmured.

  ‘With all due respect, I would disagree. While Mrs Dymond cannot be expected to welcome the changes, the provision made for her is liberal.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it, but she planned to leave this house.’

  Here I looked at Father as if to say, I told you so, but he was staring at Dr Green.

  ‘Leave? Did Harriet tell you that herself?’

  ‘She and I intend to marry.’

  I think all of us gasped. Dr Green wiped his eyes. ‘My elder brother has a liking for this part of the world. We had agreed to an exchange: he was to take End House and in return he would make over to us a handsome house in Devonshire. You see now what a blow this is …’ – he remembered himself in time – ‘this will be, if it stands in law.’

  ‘It will stand,’ Blackett assured him.

  My father was still incredulous. ‘This house was Harriet’s childhood home.’

  ‘To her,’ said the parson, ‘it has been a Vale of Tears.’

  A Vale of Tears. As if, from Guild Hall to cave, Harriet had been the sufferer throughout! No doubt it had tried her sorely, having beggared her sister and one of her sister’s children, to fail in drowning the other. Up to this point I had begun to experience a creeping pity for the parson, whose regard for my aunt, however deluded, appeared sincere. That pity was now washed away in a flood of disgust. It must have shown in my face since Father, coming out of his amazement, looked a warning at me – one that I ignored.

  I said, ‘You know this Joan Seaton, I think, and what she is to Mrs Dymond.’

  ‘An affliction.’ He said this as if delivering a sermon; it was one of the most provoking things I ever heard in my life. ‘Mrs Dymond has borne her sorrows with fortitude, and never ceased to hope that her sister might be reclaimed.’

  So he did know. Not for the first time in my life, I stood amazed at the monstrous prodigy that is love. It is not so rare a sight, after all: a mean-souled man worshipping a mean-souled woman. That he did worship her was plain; yet they had not a grain of compassion between them. Who knows? It was perhaps this stony-heartedness that bound them together. More than anything else, I wondered if my aunt could have confessed her crime to the man before me. There is said to be honour among thieves; might there also be, between liars, a species of truth?

  * * *

  We returned home sobered by what we had witnessed. Even the lawyer, familiar with wickedness and folly, kept repeating that although the reading of wills was often attended by ugly scenes, never in his life had he seen anything like my aunt’s fit of passion.

  As for me, I was wondering how I might now be feeling had she fallen dead beside me, her hands still in my hair which was also Robin’s. There had been a moment when I thought … again I saw that blond lock drop onto her sleeve, and I shuddered.

  Nor was this all. Within a week someone from the house sent a letter, confused, unsigned and in a halting, stumbling character. I seemed to remember that Rose could not write, and I wondered if our informant might be Geoffrey, or perhaps even Hannah Reele. The news was that Aunt Harriet, though conscious, remained enfeebled and Dr Green was questioning all the servants, trying to find us out in some criminal action.

  We were naturally worried at this. However, nothing came of it, and we concluded that without actually putting the servants on the rack Dr Green had not been able to make them say what he wanted, and had been obliged to let the matter rest.

  I have no doubt that, could Aunt Harriet and Dr Green have strung us up on gibbets, they would have done so without a twinge of conscience. We were opposed to the wishes of a rich lady, which for many in this world is crime enough.

  I omit here the lengthy business of the proving of the will. Be it sufficient to note that despite everything my aunt could do, it was upheld, and – contrary to the thunderings of Dr Green – the outcome did not kill her.

  21

  Settling Accounts

  My father was grown busier than ever, and shut himself away with papers he kept carefully from my sight. I knew, as well as if he had told me, that he was preparing to settle accounts with Tamar and Joan. Under the terms of the will they were provided with a maintenance until they were able to inherit, which meant they had no further need of us; our dealings with them were coming to an end.

  An end! The finality of such partings was something I was only just starting to learn. In getting by heart this first of all lessons, that each of us owes God a death, most children were far more advanced than I, since I knew it only in a bookish and unfeeling way. My grandparents were all dead before I came into the world, so I had never missed them. My parents still lived, and as their only child (as I thought) I had lost no brothers or sisters when young. Even my natural father had never been a favourite of mine, shameful though it is to admit, and besides, no sooner was he laid in the ground than he climbed out of his grave and into my dreams. Now, however, he was sunk down again. More, I had seen my aunt, that close-pent furnace of a woman, go in a trice from screams of rage to a mute, constricted helplessness. A little more passion, or a little less bodily strength, and she would have entered upon the life eternal.

  Learning the meaning of ‘coming to an end’ was a bitter business. Stupidly, painfully, I got it by heart that any talk, any quarrel or kindness I had shared with Tamar would never be taken up, never finished, not if I lived to be ninety. The thread between us had been snapped. An end. Never. These words, that had been mere sounds before, now grew teeth and gnawed at me.

  I cannot tell how I got through the next few weeks. As March moved into April and the birds carried out their shameless courtships in trees and on house-tops I struggled through each day as if imprisoned in a long d
ark tunnel. In April came warmth and sweetness: the earth opened up, breathing that nameless, stirring odour that rises from the abundant body of Nature waking from her long sleep.

  During that time I was tormented by the desire to speak with Tamar. Was it lust – wanting to take up again something I knew was foul and forbidden? It might be so. I could not say what I wanted, not exactly; I could not think like other men. What I yearned for was an abomination, and that knowledge taught me to find excuses even in the privacy of my own thoughts. And yet, even in the midst of all this confusion, there was one thing clear in my mind: I had a question I must put to her, one only she could answer.

  I think I may say, in all modesty, that I had gained a little wisdom, though not much, from the events of the last few months. I endeavoured not to yield to melancholy without a struggle; I strove to be content. I was constantly in company with my parents, I returned to my old friendly fellowship with our neighbours, I dug until my limbs trembled, I even read sermons. Starved, my desire grew thin and keen as a blade and dug into my heart until I thought that organ would be sliced in two. I told myself that Tamar and Joan must think themselves in heaven; that God and my earthly father (I mean Mathew) had brought goodness out of my evil, and the least I could do was refrain from meddling, and leave their work to bear fruit.

  Spring came on apace. By May the bushes were clotted with blooms and young girls carried armfuls of white blossom into the houses. A maypole was set up on the green; lovers ran laughing into the woods to seek flowers there, and no doubt found a few sweet blossoms not mentioned in the herbal. May filled me with longing so that I was weak as the new lambs staggering in the fields.

  It was in May that I received a letter from my aunt, summoning me once more to End House.

  *

  ‘You’re not going,’ Mother said, beating up the pillows more roughly than was necessary. ‘You’ve suffered enough at her hands.’ ‘I don’t think she would be violent, not now,’ I said.