by Val Wood
‘Is it?’ He turned towards her. ‘But what about Christy? Surely –’
‘No. We were never in bed together. How could we? I was a servant. We used to meet on Beverley Westwood or beneath ’trees in New Walk. We – it was always quick; we were afraid of being caught. Christy wanted it and I didn’t mind.’
He smiled down at her. ‘So you’re still an innocent in spite of having a child?’
‘Innocent? I didn’t think I was.’
‘Innocent in the ways of love,’ he murmured. ‘It can be so beautiful.’
‘Then yes, I am,’ she admitted. ‘I didn’t rate it all that highly, even though I loved Christy.’ She swallowed nervously. ‘Perhaps we’ll just go to sleep, shall we? We’ve had a long day.’
She lay down and moved as far from him as possible, facing the window. She knew that Agnes had slept on this side of the bed, but she hadn’t wanted to take Stephen’s side, nearest the door. She sighed. I hope I’ve done the right thing in marrying him.
He lay down beside her on his back, and soon she felt sleep stealing over her and images of the day jumbled together in her drowsiness. Her breathing became deeper as she sank softly into the feather bed and she was only just aware of Stephen’s deep sigh as he turned his back.
It was some time later, when she came to turn over, that she found that her hair was trapped beneath Stephen’s shoulder. He must have moved at some point and lain upon it as it was stretched across the pillow. She pulled her head but she was held fast, with his body close to hers. She reached one arm behind her to push him away, but in his sleep he came closer.
‘Stephen,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve caught my hair. I can’t move.’
He murmured something and put his arm across her and kissed her shoulder. ‘Mmm?’ he mumbled.
‘I can’t move. You’ve trapped my hair.’
‘Sorry!’ he croaked, and lifted his head. ‘I’m dreaming. Jenny?’ He leant on one elbow and looked down at her. It was lighter now; a pale grey dawn was breaking and the birds were beginning to chirrup and trill in the roof. ‘How lovely you are!’
‘No.’ She smiled sleepily as she turned over. ‘Not me. I was always known as a plain girl.’
He touched her face with his finger. ‘Whoever said that was wrong.’ He lay down to face her. She opened her eyes to see his, glazed and tender, softly gazing at her. ‘You’re very beautiful: warm and flushed in sleep.’ He ran his fingers from her cheek down her throat and she felt a sudden craving sensation in the pit of her stomach as they continued down, and he cupped her breasts in his hands.
He leant towards her and kissed her lips, closing his eyes as he did so, and she wondered if he was thinking of Agnes. His hands slipped beneath her nightshift to stroke her thighs, belly and naked breasts. ‘So soft,’ he breathed. ‘Like silk. So young and lovely.’
She drew in a breath, but didn’t speak, couldn’t speak, for as she felt his hands and mouth traverse her body, she could only moan. A pulse throbbed in her throat, her breasts felt tender and aching, whilst from between her thighs came an impulsive yearning. This wasn’t something she had experienced with Christy. The quick couplings to give Christy urgent release had left her largely unmoved. This was a pleasure previously quite unknown as she felt Stephen’s body enticing and exploring hers, and she, tantalized and intoxicated by his seduction, let her own hands stray across him. Over his shoulders and down his chest, then running her fingers down his back until, gasping in an overwhelming surge of desire, she clutched the roundness of his buttocks and felt his strong thighs straddle her.
She stretched back her neck on the pillow and gave out a low, quivering moan as unhurriedly he slipped inside her: demanding and persistent, yet tempting and entreating by the penetrating throb of his body until she was urged to respond. She ran her tongue around her lips and he, seeing the gesture, covered her lips with his own. She started to pant and he, with a low hankering groan, eased his mouth away as she cried out.
‘No, don’t stop,’ she begged. ‘Please don’t stop. Oh, is this right? We said we didn’t love each other. We don’t, do we?’ She grasped him and with her clamorous body urged him on.
‘No,’ he breathed hoarsely, as he reached a crest and then came down. He suckled her nipples with a voracious appetite, bit her neck and devoured her open mouth and climbed the peak once more. ‘No, we don’t. We love other people. But we’re flesh and blood,’ he groaned, ‘man and wife, and you are so desirable. Ah!’ He gave a rampant cry. ‘Jenny!’ He clutched her so tightly that she might have bruised, but she was melting and past all perception.
They fell asleep with their arms round each other, both murmuring words of contentment. They woke again to find the sun shining through the window and knew that they were late for milking, and feeding the hens and letting out the horses, but Stephen gathered her into his arms and made love to her, swiftly and urgently, then they scrambled into their clothes and rushed downstairs, touching and kissing as she put the kettle on the fire and he struggled into his outdoor boots.
She made tea and took a cup out to the dairy where he was sitting on a three-legged stool milking a disgruntled cow. ‘Christina’s still asleep,’ Jenny said. ‘I’ll feed the pig.’ He looked at her and then away, concentrating on what he was doing.
‘Did I— I hope I didn’t hurt you?’ he muttered.
‘No.’ She shook her head shyly. ‘No, you didn’t.’
‘It’s been a long time. Agnes was – well, she was ill for a long time, even before you came.’
Still he didn’t look at her and she bent her head to hide the flush on her cheeks. ‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘I understand what you mean.’
‘Do you?’ He stood up and picking up the almost full pail emptied it into the wooden churn. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Yes,’ she repeated after a moment. ‘I understand that men have a need, and – and it must have been very difficult for you – for both of you, because I know how much Agnes loved you.’
He glanced at her but didn’t answer and slapping the cow gently on her rump he led her out of the barn.
She let the pig into the orchard, collected the chicken and duck eggs and went back inside to cook breakfast. The elation of the night and the morning had left her, and she felt curiously deflated. I must try to remember that he’s a man with a man’s needs, and that the reason we married was so I could give him a child and he would give Christina and me a name. He doesn’t love me and I don’t love him, and perhaps … perhaps I shouldn’t have enjoyed what we did. Maybe it was even wrong that I should want him to do the same things again. But I do, she confessed to herself, confused and guilty. I do.
She sighed and went to the cupboard, took out a bowl, cracked four eggs into it and whisked them with a fork. She heard the kitchen door open and then close and, looking up, saw Stephen leaning against it.
‘Breakfast’s not ready yet,’ she said, and for some unknown reason felt tears prickle her eyes. ‘Another ten minutes.’
He came towards her and taking the bowl from her set it on the table and put his arms round her. ‘I didn’t come in for breakfast!’ he said softly, kissing her on the mouth. She lifted her face towards him, responding to his touch, and saw in his eyes a look that she knew to be desire: a longing which bewitched her, was received and returned. There was no time to run upstairs. He took her into his urgent grasp and they pulled and tugged at awkward clothing and sank to the floor, crashing into table legs and chairs. They heard the chortling cry of Christina from the bedroom, but the sound was lost in the thudding of heartbeats, the pounding of pulses and the deep moans of eager passion.
Later, when they had finished breakfast, Stephen lifted Christina high in the air. ‘Your mama,’ he said, giving her a little shake until she squealed in delight, ‘will be giving you dozens of brothers and sisters if we carry on the way we are doing.’
Jenny sat back in her chair and breathed out. ‘And we shall have to work twice as hard to keep them.’
He came towards her, Christina in his arms, and gently stroked Jenny’s cheek. ‘I will,’ he vowed. ‘I’ll let nothing stop me. I’ve wanted a family ever since I lost mine. I’ll work for you and my children, Jenny. Have no fear of that.’
‘Even though you don’t love me?’ The words were out before she could stop them. ‘Even though we love – have loved – others?’
He gazed down at her. ‘Even so.’ He bent and kissed her. ‘You won’t ever forget him, will you?’
She swallowed. ‘Christy? No. Never.’
He nodded. ‘He must have been very special to you. First love always is.’ He smiled wistfully. ‘Did he think you were beautiful?’
‘He said that I was.’ She gave a small laugh. ‘But I didn’t believe him.’
He put Christina down. ‘But he was right.’ He went to the door. ‘Must be off.’ He sounded reluctant. ‘I’ll be down at midday.’
‘You’re wearing me out, Jenny,’ he said a week later. ‘You forget I’m an old man compared to you, a sprig of a girl. I’m going to sleep in Christina’s bed tonight and she can sleep with you!’
‘You don’t seem like an old man,’ she laughed. ‘An old man wouldn’t have your energy, or vitality. But yes, go in the other bed. I could do with a good night’s sleep!’
But they both awoke and met on the landing and in silence they returned to his bed where he held her close and, without the searing explosion of eagerness, tenderly and gently made love to her.
They awoke one morning a few weeks later when the sun was newly up with a brightness that had been missing over the long cold wet winter. ‘It’s almost spring,’ Stephen said as he stood by the window. ‘At last. There’s another lambing due. Crops to be sown. It’s going to be a good year, I can feel it in my bones.’
Jenny, sitting up in bed, noticed that he didn’t glance up at the top meadow with the same intensity as he once did, when he had looked towards the white stone that faced them. She had looked, though, and had seen the greening over as moss started to cover it, and long stalks of grass growing around it, and knew that he hadn’t been up to cut it lately.
She put her hand to her mouth and the other to her ribs, as she felt bile rise inside her. ‘Stephen,’ she muttered. ‘Will you put ’kettle on ’fire? I feel sick.’
‘Sickening for something?’ He turned towards her. ‘The pork wasn’t off?’
‘No!’ She grimaced. ‘I don’t think so. I’d salted it well.’ She gasped and threw back the covers and, tumbling from the mattress, fished under the bed for the chamber pot. ‘I think I’m pregnant. We’re going to have a baby.’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
‘Stephen is the most caring husband,’ Jenny wrote from the comfort of her bed. ‘I wasn’t allowed to go downstairs that first morning after I’d retched and retched, and was brought hot water for drinking, as I couldn’t face tea. Then he made thin gruel and poached a new-laid egg and brought it upstairs so that I could have breakfast in bed. I couldn’t help but think of Agnes, and how he must have cared for her when she was ill before I came to help them, and I confess to feeling a touch of envy for the love that they once shared.
‘I will never know of course, but I don’t think that Christy and I would have had the same contentment that Stephen and Agnes had, for the more I think about it, the more I come to realize that our life together would not have worked out well.
‘Stephen rode over on one of the crossbreed shires to give George Hill the news, taking Christina up in front and leaving me in bed. As soon as they were gone I got up and continued with my usual tasks and had the dinner ready on the table when they returned. Dr Hill, of course, refused to come immediately, as Stephen had asked him to. He said I was young and healthy and childbirth was perfectly natural, and that there was no danger of my giving birth within the hour! It is very surprising to me that Stephen is so concerned, when he knows quite well that I gave birth to Christina with only his help. It is different now, I suppose, when I am carrying his child.’
Stephen took the waggon and made the journey to Driffield market to sell some rabbits. He came back with a young heifer for fattening and trailing a small pony for Christina.
‘She’s too young to ride,’ Jenny said fearfully when he returned with the pony trotting behind the waggon. ‘She’ll fall off and break her bones.’
‘She won’t.’ He grinned. ‘I shall teach her how to sit and ride properly. She’s just the age to start: she’ll have no fear.’
He sat Christina on the pony’s back and, to her delight, led her slowly round the bottom meadow. Stephen glanced up towards Agnes’s stone. ‘I heard more news about the railway line when I was at market,’ he said. ‘We shall be having another visit from an official of the North Eastern Railway Company before long, I don’t doubt.’
‘What will it mean?’ Jenny asked, walking alongside them. ‘Will it affect us? Will you be forced to give up land?’
He shook his head. ‘Not without a fight, I won’t. I’ve been talking to some of the other farmers. It’s gone before Parliament already but if we band together we have a chance of turning the proposal, but some of them won’t hold on, and others are looking for compensation.’ He grunted. ‘This Beverley to Market Weighton line has been talked about for years. When Agnes and I first came to live here George Hudson was about to buy the Londesborough estate, so that he could build new lines from Market Weighton to York, and stop any other company from linking up with them from Beverley. Lord Hotham refused to let him put a track across his land, but now he’s agreed to it, providing they build a station at Kiplingcotes.’
‘But don’t you think it’s exciting?’ Jenny said. ‘People could go all the way to York from Beverley by train if a line was built!’
Stephen stopped the pony and looked at her. ‘Yes, of course. I believe in advancement, but I don’t want it here.’ He turned and pointed up the meadow. ‘That’s where it would come, right across our land which we can’t afford to lose. Besides, there’d be soot and sparks flying, perhaps setting fire to the crops. The noise would startle the animals. There’d be hissing steam and thick smoke – you should know, you’ve travelled by train!’
‘Yes,’ she said reluctantly. ‘I agree it’s dirty, but I still think it’s a good way to travel.’ But, she thought, there’s another reason why Stephen doesn’t want the line there. It would cut right across Agnes’s grave.
‘Well, I shall try to stop it,’ he said stubbornly. ‘They’ve already started the Market Weighton section, but they’ll not come on my land!’
‘So if you tell them about Agnes you think they’ll take another route?’ Jenny kept her eyes firmly up at the stone, now not as white as it once was.
‘Tell them about Agnes? What do you mean?’ Stephen stared at her.
‘Well.’ She shifted uncomfortably. ‘They surely wouldn’t – can’t – move her for the sake of a railway line?’
‘Good God!’ he breathed and followed her gaze up the hillside. ‘So that’s why –’
‘What?’ she said, feeling unaccountably weepy and wanting to go inside the house to lie on her bed, Stephen’s bed, which had also been Agnes’s.
‘That’s why Agnes wanted to be buried there! She insisted that it shouldn’t be anywhere else.’ He lifted Christina down from the pony’s back and went to lean against the fence, rubbing his hand against his chin. ‘She said it had to be there. I want to be part of the landscape for ever, she said. She even chose the stone,’ he added softly, ‘said it would always show where she had once been.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Jenny began brokenly, feeling guilty and confused. ‘She thought, then, that the line would eventually come up here?’
He nodded, his eyes still gazing upwards. ‘Yes. As I say, it’s been on the cards for years, but there have been objections by landowners, and the terrain will be difficult.’ He took a deep breath. ‘But Agnes was practical. She was convinced that one day it would come, and that it would take a miracle to s
top it.’
Jenny turned away. ‘I need to go and lie down,’ she said, taking Christina by the hand. ‘We’ll go and have a rest, shall we, Christina?’
‘You’re not feeling unwell?’ Stephen asked uneasily.
‘No,’ she said heartily. ‘But I need to put my feet up.’ And, she thought, I need to get rid of this grudge inside of me. How can I be resentful of poor dead Agnes, when I have so much? But I am, and I don’t know why.
In Jenny’s seventh month the midwife came to visit. She’d hitched a lift on a carrier’s cart, sitting atop a pile of sacks, and then trudged up the long track and path to their door. Jenny made her a cup of tea, for Mrs Burley, who was heavy in build, was hot from the walk.
‘I’m in a fair old lather.’ She wiped the sweat from her forehead. ‘But I thought I’d better come and see how you’re getting along. I didn’t realize it was such a trek.’ She sipped gratefully at the tea. ‘Dr Hill asked me if I’d been to see you. Said that Mr Laslett had particularly asked me to call. I’m right sorry I wasn’t here last time.’ She nodded at Christina who was playing on the floor at their feet. ‘But you managed wi’out me?’
‘We did,’ Jenny said. ‘She was an easy birth.’
‘Aye? Good. She’ll be gone two, is she? You do well to space ’em out. I allus says to my young mothers, try and space ’em out if you can. They’re healthier for it.’ She leant towards Jenny with her cup to accept more tea. ‘But of course, their husbands are young and eager – and thick as two short planks, most of ’em. They don’t seem to realize how babbies are made.’
She looked round the kitchen. ‘Nice and cosy,’ she murmured, ‘and if I might tek a look upstairs? Just so’s I know where everything is.’ She glanced at Jenny. ‘Is Mr Laslett from a branch of ’St John Laslett family, up Driffield way, might I enquire, ma’am?’
‘Y-yes, he is,’ Jenny answered.
‘Ah! I did wonder.’ Mrs Burley pursed her mouth. ‘I thought – well, I’d heard – you know how rumour gets about? But I thought that the Mr Laslett who lived up here was married to an older woman, and his family had disowned him! Course it was a long time ago, so it might have been somebody else!’ she said, raising her eyebrows enquiringly.