by Anne Doughty
‘I cannot bear the thought of your going,’ said Teddy baldly.
‘I’m trying not to think about it,’ replied Hannah softly.
They sat in silence, staring out over the vibrant colours of the flowerbeds, the only sound the comfortable hum of myriads of small bees who disappeared bodily into the glowing interiors of large throated blooms or swung perilously from the tiny ones.
‘I am twenty-one, but I have another year to do at Cambridge,’ he said soberly. ‘I should like to take my degree,’ he added, looking up into a nearby tree, smothered with late flowering clematis.
‘Of course you must take your degree.’
She glanced at him cautiously. His face gave not the slightest clue to his feelings, any more than they’d done the evening he’d engaged Lady Altrincham. But she knew he was distressed. His whole body was alive with a tension he could control only by sitting bolt upright. Every few minutes he drew in a great, deep breath. Between times, he seemed hardly to breathe at all.
‘What can I do, Hannah? What can I do?’ he said at last.
‘About what, Teddy?’ she said encouragingly.
‘About not wanting to part with you ever again,’ he burst out.
‘According to Miss Austen’s novels, at this point you are supposed to make me an offer,’ she said steadily.
‘And would you accept?’
‘Yes, I would.’
‘Truly?’
She nodded vigorously, as if only by some physical gesture could she persuade him she would.
‘And would your father consent, do you think?’ he persisted, a glimmer of hope softening his voice.
‘I think he could be persuaded,’ she said, smiling briefly. ‘But I don’t think my father is the problem. You must think of your parents, Teddy.’ I have neither money, nor title. I’m hardly a suitable match.’
‘Hannah, my love, you don’t need money or title. You can have mine. You can have everything I can give you, if you’ll be my wife. But you’ll have to help me, like you did when the Altrinchams came. I’d never have managed that evening but for you. How do I manage this?’
‘Of course I’ll help you. We’ll help each other,’ she said, putting out her hand and resting it on his. ‘We must work out what it’s best to do.’
He turned to her and smiled, a warm, glowing smile, such a rare thing with him she was quite overwhelmed.
‘Can we seal our promise before we work out our strategy?’ he asked softly, as he slipped his arm around her.
‘Yes,’ she whispered, as he drew her into his arms and kissed her.
Even if Sarah had not spotted Hannah and Teddy leaving the old garden hand in hand, she would have guessed something had happened from the sparkle in Hannah’s eyes and the lightness of her step. She and Marianne had long ago shared their thoughts about Hannah and Teddy. They agreed something had happened, but before they could celebrate, they had to find out exactly what.
Lady Anne was completely taken aback later that same afternoon when Teddy asked to speak to her alone. She’d never in her life seen Teddy so animated or so obviously and openly happy. She was even more amazed when he managed to tell her quite calmly that he wanted to marry Hannah. He’d asked her, he said, and she’d accepted him and now he’d like her advice about approaching his father.
‘Teddy darling, I thought I was so old nothing would ever surprise me again, but you’ve managed it. Hannah is a dear girl and I’m sure we’ll find a way, but do remember she is only eighteen …’
‘And what age were you, Mama, when you said “yes” to Father?’
‘I was nearly nineteen,’ she said, trying to sound firm, ‘and your father was much older than you are.’ Then she laughed. ‘Go away and let me think and don’t say anything to your father yet. I want to talk to Mrs Hamilton before I speak to him,’ she said, shooing him away. ‘Send Betty up to ask her if she would come down to me now. If she’s not too busy with her letters,’ she added quickly.
Rose was equally surprised when Betty tapped her door and made her request. She’d left her friend not an hour earlier, so they could both catch up on their correspondence, having spent the day on a most pleasant drive with Lord Harrington to the part of his estate nearest the Somerset border.
‘I have a surprise for you,’ Lady Anne said, as Rose crossed the room and came to sit beside her in the wide bay window.
‘Nice, I hope?’ she said, laughing.
‘I hope you’ll think so. I do. Or rather, I think it will be nice when you and I solve one or two little problems,’ she added carefully.
‘Now you’re teasing me. I’m consumed by curiosity,’ she responded, settling herself more comfortably. ‘Now tell me, do.’
‘My dear Teddy has had the great good sense to fall in love with your daughter,’ said Lady Anne without more ado. ‘She’s only eighteen and he has a year to do at Cambridge, but it’s perfectly clear they’ve made up their minds. I’ve never known Teddy so absolutely sure of what he wants. She’s the only girl he’s ever looked at. Three years of balls and house parties and he’s never so much as remembered a girl’s name when I’ve asked him. Will you and John give your blessing?’
She opened her mouth to speak and then closed it again. Now that Lady Anne had put it into words, she realised she’d been aware of something new in Hannah’s behaviour, but Teddy had been so generous with the time he’d given to Sarah and her camera, she couldn’t quite see how he’d come to know Hannah well enough to fall in love with her.
‘I think the bigger question is what you and Harrington think,’ she said slowly. ‘It’s hardly the match he might have had in mind, if he’s thought about a match at all.’
‘Oh, he’s thought about it all right. Don’t imagine we don’t have to make our appearance at these wretched balls. I won’t tell you what he says about some of the girls who think Teddy would be a good catch. Like Lady Altrincham’s daughter. As great a charmer as her mother,’ she added sharply. ‘Besides, Harrington will ask me. And I’m asking you. What shall we do, Rose? Now we are old and wise,’ she went on with a grin. ‘Teddy did point out that I wasn’t much older than Hannah when I said yes to Harrington. Though Harrington was twenty-five.’
‘If we’re going to draw on our own experience, we can hardly object, can we?’ said Rose, thoughtfully.
‘Would you want to object?’
‘No, I wouldn’t,’ said Rose, shaking her head vigorously.
She paused before she continued more soberly.
‘I’m only concerned at the question of status. Hannah’s mother was a servant, if you remember,’ she said, with a small, wry smile. ‘Such things are important for their future, as you know only too well.’
‘Yes, I suppose I do see what you mean, Rose,’ she replied reluctantly. ‘Hannah is prettier and better educated than most of these girls Teddy’s been trying to avoid. She’s very cool and steady, far more ladylike than Marianne. I can’t imagine her having problems even if some stupid gossip found out how you and I became friends,’ she went on more forcefully. ‘But I expect you have a point. You usually do.’
Rose sat quite still, letting herself take in fully what had happened. With the wisdom of hindsight, she could see it all now quite plainly. It had been there in one of Sarah’s first photographs. The gardener picking the peach. She’d seen something in the two reflected figures standing so close so unselfconsciously watching Sarah take her picture. But only now could she make the connection.
‘Don’t forget now, Rose, thanks to Sarah, Lady Altrincham will be boasting in all the best places how she met the Ballydown Hamiltons at Ashley Park.’
They both laughed and put out their hands, each to the other.
‘The same lady is more likely to go and look us up in Burke’s Peerage before she does anything of the sort,’ Rose retorted. ‘I’m afraid she won’t find us there.’
‘It’s none of her business,’ said her friend fiercely. ‘Teddy can marry whoever he wants and Hannah is a dear
girl. I confess I’ve got to know Sarah better, but I can see why Hannah appeals so much to Teddy. She’s just what he needs,’ she added, thinking again of an assurance in Teddy’s voice she’d never heard before.
‘Oh, Rose, can you believe it?’ she burst out suddenly. ‘You and me, sitting here, discussing our children’s marriage? It seems no time at all since we were discussing our own. You do realise, don’t you, that if we can’t be sisters, it looks as if we’re going to be mothers-in-law!’
They sat on, talking quietly, their laughter easing the tension as they gave their minds to the problems and difficulties they could foresee for the two young people. In the end, it was Lady Anne who hit upon a plan that might resolve Rose’s unease about Hannah’s status. Hannah should go with Marianne to finishing school in Switzerland.
‘Marianne would love it and they get on so well together,’ she said, enthusiastically. ‘I’m sure Hannah will agree if she knows it will help Teddy. Switzerland is lovely, so I’m told. And I do know where it is,’ she insisted, smiling. ‘The school isn’t far from Zurich. It’s very expensive and quite international. A year there and Hannah would have no difficulties with the likes of Lady Altrincham or her daughter. It would be my engagement present to my future daughter-in-law. I’m sure your dear John wouldn’t deny me that.’
From the hall below the dressing bell rang.
‘Come, Rose, what do you say? Shall we put our plan to them after dinner? If they agree, I shall speak to Harrington tonight and you can write to John in the morning.’
‘It’s a very good idea, Anne,’ she said warmly. ‘You’re very generous. The more Hannah can learn of the world she has to enter, the better it will be for both of them. I’m sure Teddy will understand.’
They kissed each other and parted. As Rose walked slowly along the wide landing towards her own room quite suddenly she had an image of John on a hot day in Kerry, in a groom’s coat that was too small for him, swinging her up into a Molyneux coach to keep an irritable old lady company. What was he going to say to his eldest daughter marrying Richard Molyneux Harrington and giving his blessing to Lord Cleeve, his prospective son-in-law?
Neither John Hamilton nor Lord Ashley raised any objection to the proposed marriage, none at least that stood up to the gentle and considered persuasion of their respective wives. John’s immediate concern was a fear he might not see Hannah before she departed. As for Lord Ashley’s, his concern was that none of the manor houses on his estate might be available for the young couple in a year’s time.
Rose and Anne agreed that Hannah must go home, however briefly. Her return journey to London to join Marianne required an escort. With admirable timing, Anne’s sister Lily, who still lived in the family house in Dublin, wrote to say she would be coming to London for her annual autumn visit, just when Marianne would be making her preparations for departure. John could take his daughter to Dublin by train and deliver her to a house he knew well enough, for he and Rose had spent part of the first week of their married life there.
As for a suitable home for the young couple, Anne simply assured her husband that something would turn up. She had been so right, so often, in such circumstances, that Harrington forgot all about it and began to enjoy his summer break. He rode with his wife each morning, enjoyed the company of their guests in the afternoon and nodded off after dinner, overcome by much fresh air and two or three glasses of port with his son. To his great surprise and pleasure, his son seemed to have developed a firm grasp of the political situation in England, along with an awareness of the growing tension in South Africa and Russia’s designs on the areas of China adjacent to their southern and eastern boundaries.
The last week was a happy one for everyone at Ashley Park. The engagement of Hannah and Teddy, symbolised by a pretty ring he’d recently inherited from his grandmother, was celebrated with outings and picnics, boating parties and tea on the lawn. Sarah had the privilege of photographing the whole family, complete with staff, arranging them to her liking on the marble surround of the fountain.
Early that same morning, she’d taken Teddy and Marianne on horseback. Now she posed Hannah and Teddy together, hand in hand, beneath a rose covered arch in the garden. Finally, in the late afternoon, she tapped quietly at the door of Lady Anne’s sitting room, knowing her mother was there. She enquired politely if she might photograph them, talking by the open window. It would only take a moment, she said.
She excused herself as soon as she’d taken her pictures and ran back upstairs to her own room. She pushed the door closed behind her, threw herself down on the window-seat and wept. It had been a wonderful summer. She’d made such good friends with Marianne and Teddy. But now it was over. Hannah and Marianne would go off to Switzerland, Teddy back to Cambridge, to take up lives utterly remote from hers. All she had was going back to school in Banbridge. Boring old school. And no Hannah to share it with. Never again to cycle down the hill with her. Never again complain about the teachers they didn’t like. Never again go sketching with her and Ma in the pony and trap. Soon Hannah would be Lady Cleeve, living in a big house somewhere in Gloucestershire.
She cried till she was exhausted, then she washed her face in cold water and carefully wrapped up her completed film ready to go to the post in the morning.
After the tears and kisses, the embraces and last minute messages, the coach journey and the long hours in a stuffy train, all three Hamiltons were grateful for the cool and relative quiet of the ship. They ate supper silently and went to their cabins early, each of them absorbed in thoughts that raced backwards and forwards across the wide stretch of calm, grey sea that divided their lives from their own past, and now from another life in Gloucestershire.
In the early hours of the morning Sarah woke and lay listening to the unfamiliar noises of the ship, the slight creak of movement, the sudden muffled thumps and bangs from the decks below. A dim, misty dawn filtered through the salt-sprayed porthole of the cabin. She eyed it carefully. Even if the Irish coast were in sight, there wasn’t enough light for what she wanted. She’d wait a while before she risked waking Hannah who was fast asleep in the lower bunk.
Somewhere, miles away across the water, her father, Jamie and Sam would be getting up early to come and meet them. She could imagine them standing on the quay at the very same spot from where they’d waved goodbye so many weeks ago. No Elizabeth and Hugh this time. Hugh had had his operation. Elizabeth had written to Ma some time ago and said it had been successful, but he’d been away four weeks already and they still didn’t know when he’d be home. She wasn’t sure Elizabeth had told them exactly what was happening.
Well, if Elizabeth and Hugh were to miss their homecoming, all the more reason to record it for them. She lay thinking about the pictures she might take as they came up the lough. She wondered if the throbbing of the ship would create camera shake. No Teddy to ask now, she thought, with a small stab of sadness. In a year’s time, he would be her brother. She was going to miss him as much as she would miss Hannah and Marianne.
What she really wanted were the pictures of the harbour you could only get from the ship as she slowed right down to manoeuvre into her berth. But even if she were moving slowly, angles would change quickly, so she’d need to be in just the right place to catch the moment she wanted. She tried to remember exactly what she’d seen as they’d left and where on the deck she’d need to be. It was hard to recall the details of their departure now, it seemed such a long, long time ago. They’d walked round the upper decks with Elizabeth and Hugh and Jamie had taken charge. She could hear his sharp, light tones.
‘That’s my drawing office down there,’ he’d said, pointing to a one storey building.
‘And where’s your ship, Jamie?’ she’d asked.
‘Over there,’ he’d replied, not even bothering to look at her.
‘So that’s the Oceanic, is it?’ Hugh had asked, gripping the rail, as he leant out for a better view of the forest of spars and planks that enfolded an invisible
shape of enormous height and length.
‘Well, it’s the keel. That’s where we start,’ Jamie laughed. ‘She’s not due for launching till late ’98 or early ’99 you know.’
Jamie had got well into his stride then, telling them all the details of the ship. How long she was and how high. What engines she was going to have. He was not at all pleased when Hannah cried out suddenly.
‘Look everyone. Look up there.’
She was pointing her finger towards the top of the central spine of a tall, three-masted barque berthed further down channel.
Sarah had spotted the small figure right away, but her mother couldn’t see him until her father told her which mast Hannah was pointing at and whereabouts on it to look.
‘My goodness, ye’d need to have a head for that, wou’dn’t ye?’ he said, as they all watched the lithe figure climbing steadily up the rigging.
‘How high would that be, Jamie?’ Sam asked thoughtfully, his eyes never leaving the small dark shape.
‘Probably about two hundred feet. They need a huge amount of sail to make any speed at all,’ he said nonchalantly.
‘But it would look magnificent under full sail,’ said Elizabeth. ‘It must carry a lot of canvas. I’ve never seen so much rigging before.’
‘Oh we see them all the time,’ said Jamie, scarcely managing to show even a polite interest. ‘They still bring grain from Australia and non-perishable stuff that doesn’t need refrigerator ships. Anything so long as speed doesn’t matter. But I can’t see them surviving long myself.’
‘A pity,’ said Hugh, studying the tracery of ropes and rigging. ‘They’re very handsome, but I suspect the working conditions are very harsh compared with steamships.’
She’d smiled at Hugh then and he’d smiled back. Since they’d been friends again, they’d talked a great deal about working conditions in the mills and all sorts of other employments. He’d promised to lend her the Factory Inspector’s Reports when she came back from Gloucestershire, so she could see for herself the problems that were known and being addressed and the ones that hadn’t yet been picked up. Poor Hugh. Ma did say he’d been through a lot. But then, so had Ma, and she was all right now.