The Rector's Daughter (Part Two of The People of this Parish Saga)

by Nicola Thorne

  ‘Just that you must take care, my dear,’ Miss Fairchild said, getting up and patting her ward’s hand. ‘Mr Turner is in many ways a most suitable mate for you, but you must be careful not to ... Well, people’s tongues will wag.’

  ‘Not about me, Aunt,’ Connie said with a resigned smile. It was true this was rather a delusion on Miss Fairchild’s part. ‘Mr Turner is head over heels in love with Mrs Woodville. Everybody knows that.’

  ‘Mrs Woodville!’ Miss Fairchild sat down again abruptly. ‘But she is years older than him.’

  ‘Nevertheless, he loves her. He conducted her almost exclusively when she sang in The Messiah, and she wasn’t even a soloist. His eyes scarcely ever left her face. Everyone noticed it, and now that she lives at Pelham’s Oak he finds every excuse he can think of to go and see her. I can assure you, Aunt, no one would ever read anything into my seeing Mr Turner alone. He scarcely even notices that I am a woman.’

  ‘Oh!’ Miss Fairchild sounded as though a puff of wind had thrown her off course. ‘Oh, I see.’

  Why was it, she thought, that some women attracted men, and went on attracting them, and others didn’t?

  It was a little like the Bible: ‘For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath.’

  It seemed most unfair.

  After lunch Connie went off to her appointment with Mr Turner, sidling along the streets as though she were terrified of whom she might see, and Miss Fairchild awaited the arrival of her solicitor, Mr Potts of Potts, Bootle and Potts of Blandford, whose firm had been her family’s solicitors since the time of her parents’ marriage.

  Mr Horace Potts was the third generation to be in the family law practice, and he was considered a go-ahead young man, ambitious to prosper and do well, to expand his own and the firm’s fortunes.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Potts.’ Miss Fairchild held out her hand as he crossed the room, and was surprised by the vigour with which he seized it and pumped it up and down.

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Fairchild. A very good afternoon I think you will find it. Do I find you well?’

  ‘Very well, thank you, Mr Potts, and you?’ Miss Fairchild sounded a little surprised by his animation.

  ‘Excellent, thank you, Miss Fairchild.’ He gave her a broad smile as he drew a large folder from his portmanteau. ‘And Miss Yetman?’

  ‘Constance is very well, thank you. Practising her music.’

  ‘What a fine musician.’ Mr Potts raised his eyes reverentially to the ceiling. ‘In the opinion of my wife she is of professional standard.’

  ‘That is most kind of your wife,’ Miss Fairchild said, ‘but nevertheless, not quite true. If she had been, I would have had her trained; but she is a good amateur, and that is quite sufficient in Connie’s case.’

  Not for the first time, Mr Potts felt deflated in his enthusiasms by Miss Fairchild and, taking the seat she indicated, he sat looking at her with an air of expectancy.

  ‘Now, Mr Potts,’ she said, ‘what brings you here?’

  ‘Well ...’ Mr Potts dived into his folder and produced a certificate which he passed to Miss Fairchild, who gazed at it uncomprehendingly.

  ‘Gold shares.’ She looked enquiringly at him. ‘So?’

  ‘They were purchased by your parents in a remarkable act of foresight in the year eighteen sixty. I don’t know whether my father or grandfather advised them or what, but for many years that particular mine in South Africa remained undeveloped and the shares thus practically worthless. I now have to tell you the astonishing good news that a rich vein of gold has been discovered in the mine, one of the best and largest in South Africa. The shares have gone up tenfold since this was announced, and as you have ten thousand they are worth over a hundred thousand pounds.’

  ‘A hundred thousand pounds!’ Miss Fairchild breathed. ‘What a lot of money.’

  ‘These,’ Mr Potts went on enthusiastically, ‘together with your various properties, this house and the shop in Wenham, and your many other investments, make you a very wealthy woman, madam. In fact, I should think you are the richest woman in Wenham.’ He paused and then said dramatically, ‘Miss Fairchild, you must be worth close to a million pounds.’

  ‘A million pounds!’ At last Miss Fairchild took a very deep breath. ‘Did you say a million?’

  ‘Well, close.’ Mr Potts looked quickly at his calculations. ‘Say, eight to nine hundred thousand. Nevertheless, a considerable sum of money. Now.’ He sat back and, returning the share certificate to its folder, tapped his knee. ‘The thing is, what shall we do with it all?’

  ‘Do?’ Miss Fairchild echoed shrilly. ‘Why, leave it where it is. It seems to be doing very well.’

  ‘Shares rise and fall, Miss Fairchild.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Well, I have been talking to your broker and he advises Russia, Miss Fairchild. He feels that Russia offers an attractive prospect for investment. He says, sell South Africa and buy Russia. There are gold fields in Russia too.’

  ‘Is he mad?’ Miss Fairchild said with a trace of impatience. ‘What sort of broker is he exactly? Does he not read the papers? Does he not know, for instance, that together with China and the Balkans, Russia is in a ferment? The whole country boils like a cauldron.’

  ‘Why, nothing would unseat the Tsar. He is a cousin of our king, a grandchild of Queen Victoria.’ The notion seemed to appal Mr Potts.

  ‘Cousin or not, grandchild or not, Russia, young man – ‘Miss Fairchild shook her finger at him as one on the brink of a lecture – ‘is poised on the verge of revolt and, let me tell you, the rest of Europe might well follow ...’

  ‘Oh, I hardly think ...’

  ‘You leave my shares where they are. South Africa, lately unionised and well out of Europe, is a very safe place to be. If the price has only just begun to rise, you may be sure it will go higher.’

  ‘But, Miss Fairchild, the shares have soared ...’

  ‘Then let them go on soaring, and while you’re talking to your broker and putting him right about prospects for investment in Russia, based on my advice, ask him to purchase another five thousand of those excellent South African shares for my ward as well. There is no reason why we both should not benefit. Is there, Mr Potts?’

  ‘None at all, Miss Fairchild.’

  ‘Excellent. Do it, man, and get them before the price is even higher.’

  Mr Turner was not at his house. He had forgotten Connie. His maid was full of apologies and tried to explain that the curate had so many things on his mind: the Rector had not been well, and this doubled his workload, no, trebled it, because the Rector did very little parish work anyway. Poor Mr Turner, out all day visiting his parishioners, attending this meeting and that. She did not mention that this day his duties had again taken him to Pelham’s Oak.

  Connie left a message and went on her way to the church, where she began to sight-read Haydn’s Creation, hoping that no one was listening in the church.

  It was a difficult piece. Difficult to play and, surely, much too difficult to sing? The Messiah was so much easier; besides, everyone knew the tunes. It was always being sung in some local concert hall or church. Everyone knew its rousing choruses, its sublime solo pieces.

  ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth, for in my flesh shall I see God.’

  She strummed a few notes extempore of the oratorio on the organ and then she began spontaneously to sing, lifting up her head and opening her mouth wide as her voice echoed through the chancel, across the altar to the very rafters and beyond. She sang like an angel.

  ‘And though worms devour my body ...’

  Connie had not sung with such freedom, such abandon, for years. Her soul felt indeed free and exalted, her body was uplifted, liberated from awkwardness and embarrassment, short-sightedness and the slight squint; above all, from the curse of perpetual shyness.

  ‘Yet in my flesh shall I see God.’

  Of course Mr Turner preferred the
experienced, attractive Mrs Woodville, to someone so naive and gauche as herself. Which man of good sense would not?

  Connie, once she had finished the aria, sat silently for a moment, head bent, realising she was close to tears. The rain had started to thud on the roof, and the inside of the church grew dark. It was also very cold. Yet for that moment she had seen God, had had a vision of heaven, had realised that there was more to life than being a spinster of the parish, a woman meekly accepting her destiny, never to know the happiness of marital love, the fulfilment of motherhood.

  She took the heavy copy of The Creation from the organ and, getting off her stool, walked slowly through the sanctuary and along the centre aisle of the church. Suddenly she stopped and her heart literally seemed to freeze with horror, for there, crouched at the back against the wall, lurked a man.

  Aunt Vicky’s warnings now came back to her: ‘Never go to the church alone when it is dark. Never ...’

  But Aunt meant at night. She would certainly never go at night. This had just been an overcast day.

  Connie gazed, petrified, at the form which, like her a few minutes before, appeared to be in a trance. As he straightened up and ran his hands through his hair, she realised who it was. She breathed a sigh of relief and, as she breathed, so she blushed. The blood rose in her cheeks and flooded her face.

  Thank heaven it was too dark for Carson Woodville to see her. He now came towards her and she saw that his hands were silently clapping together.

  ‘Well done. That was divine, Connie. I can’t tell you when I have been so moved.’

  ‘Oh thank you, Carson,’ Connie said diffidently. ‘I don’t know what made me do it. It was a sudden impulse. I thought I was alone.’

  ‘You were,’ he said. ‘I was visiting the tomb of my mother and little sister Emily when I heard this heavenly sound.’ Carson raised his eyes to the church roof, a hand behind his ear. ‘I thought it must come from heaven. Then it began to rain and I was brought down to earth, but the wonderful sound persisted. So I took shelter inside. Do you often sing like that?’

  ‘Never.’ She shook her head violently. ‘I don’t know what made me do it. I sing sometimes with Aunt Vicky, or when the choir is practising and I’m playing for it; but what I did today I have never done before. I can’t think what got into me.’

  ‘Well, whatever it was, I’m glad.’ Carson smiled down at her and she wished she could melt; he made her feel so inadequate, so gauche.

  She was not too naive to know that Carson had a bad reputation in the neighbourhood. Any girl who saw him was warned by her parents to avoid him at all costs, and to hurry home.

  He was considered a bad lot, the black sheep of the family. But she had always liked Carson. She thought he was very handsome, almost beautiful, wild-looking as she imagined Heathcliff must have been; and yet she discerned an air of melancholy in him, of which others appeared not to be aware. She remembered him at his mother’s funeral, and as she was motherless herself she knew just how sad and bereft he really was.

  It seemed curious that she, Connie Yetman, could understand Carson Woodville so well, yet she could; she did. She felt a sense of hero-worship for him, as the comparison with Heathcliff already showed. And she knew she was safe with him.

  Carson opened the door and they looked out onto the sodden scene. The wind had risen and the rain lashed the stone of the church like a curtain.

  ‘Well,’ Carson said, ‘we shall have to stay here until it stops, Connie.’

  ‘My aunt will be worried,’ Connie fretted. ‘She’ll wonder if I’m all right.’

  ‘Would you like me to run ahead and tell her where you are, and that you’re all right? I could even bring you back an umbrella and escort you home.’

  ‘Oh Carson, how kind. How very, very kind.’

  He was really like a knight in shining armour.

  Carson really was kind. Miss Fairchild shared Connie’s opinion. In the pouring rain he had run all the way for an umbrella and then had escorted her home. He had also taken a mackintosh and a pair of galoshes. People said a lot of bad things about him, but he was a gentleman. For himself he had no thought at all, and arrived soaking wet; the two ladies had fussed over him, divesting him of his jacket and insisting that he cover his shoulders with a blanket as he sat in front of the fire, drinking hot tea.

  Miss Fairchild had shared the common opinion of Carson Woodville as some kind of villain. But every time she’d encountered him – and it was true these occasions were few – he had been quite charming. He had been attentive and polite, and now he had gone out of his way again to assist Connie.

  Connie couldn’t do enough for her deliverer. She made sure he was as near to the fire as he could get without burning himself, and she plied him with tea and hot muffins. Miss Fairchild noticed how animated and confident Constance appeared to be in his presence. So far there had not been a single blush.

  ‘How opportune you happened to be in church,’ Miss Fairchild murmured, pouring fresh tea into his cup. ‘Are you a worshipper, Carson?’

  Now it was Carson who blushed.

  ‘Not what you would call a regular worshipper, Miss Fairchild, although, of course, I accompany my father to church, which he attends more regularly now that George’s widow is living with us.’

  ‘And how is dear Sophie?’ Miss Fairchild asked with concern. ‘I seem to see her so infrequently.’

  ‘Sophie is very well,’ Carson said. ‘I think she likes living with us, and we certainly like having her. It is good to have a woman there again. The house is almost as it was when dear Mama was alive. In fact I was visiting our family vault today when the heavens opened, and for that reason I had to seek shelter in the church. That was my real reason for being there. And how lucky I was,’ he turned to the girl beside him and smiled, ‘for the church was suddenly filled with the most wonderful song, as though the heavens had opened. I couldn’t believe it ...’

  ‘And it was Constance singing?’ Miss Fairchild opened her eyes wide with pleasure.

  ‘Like a lark. Its beauty reminded me of my Mama, and of dear Emily and George in heaven. I could have wept.’ And he brushed a hand across his eyes as though there were, indeed, tears.

  ‘Oh, you poor boy,’ Miss Fairchild cried solicitously. ‘You have been bereaved, Carson, haven’t you? Your mother and brother dying so soon after each other, and dear little Emily ... well, we all recall that tragedy.

  ‘Now,’ she said, suddenly practical, ‘we are getting a little morbid. There’s no need for it, as they are with God. We mustn’t allow our love and concern for the dead to spoil this occasion of having you for tea. You must come and see us more often, Carson,’ she went on. ‘That’s, if you like.’

  She sounded as if she thought it doubtful a young man like Carson would enjoy the company of two single ladies.

  ‘I should like that, Miss Fairchild.’ Carson appeared enthusiastic as he accepted another muffin smothered in butter and honey from the tender hands of Connie. ‘However, we might be moving ...’

  ‘Moving ...’ Miss Fairchild said shrilly. ‘Moving, did you say?’

  ‘I did.’ Carson sank his teeth into the muffin.

  ‘You don’t mean, moving from Pelham’s Oak?’

  ‘Yes.’ Carson wiped his lips on his white linen napkin. ‘But the Woodvilles have lived there for centuries.’

  ‘True.’ Carson dabbed a spot of honey from his chin and wiped each finger carefully. ‘The first Woodville lived there in the time of Queen Elizabeth, as Father never tires of telling us.

  ‘Is Sir Guy tired of living there, then? Surely it’s your birthright, Carson? You are the heir?’

  ‘I don’t have much say in the matter, Miss Fairchild, to be frank. My mother’s death has left us unexpectedly impoverished. It is not as she would have wished, we’re sure; but the Heerings have always been rather mean-minded. They are business people, you know, who think of little else but money. While Mama was alive there was plenty, but on her death it re
verted to her family.’

  ‘Nothing for you?’

  ‘Nothing at all, except some bequests of a personal nature. Naturally, she thought we were taken care of financially.’

  ‘What a dreadful story.’ Miss Fairchild, amazed, sat back and gazed at Connie.

  ‘It is. My father is a broken man. He has no stomach to fight or argue with the Heerings. They are too clever. He has been offered a farmhouse on the estate, quite large, but rather than demean himself he is considering living abroad. Italy perhaps. The income from what he will get for the estate will be ample for his needs.’

  ‘And what of you, Carson?’ Miss Fairchild, still startled, gazed at him thoughtfully.

  ‘I shall probably go abroad too, Miss Fairchild, and try my luck overseas. Or I may go to London and look for work.’ Sadly he shook his head. ‘There will be nothing left for me to do here.’

  12

  For Eliza, the news about the possible disposal of Pelham’s Oak to a gentleman from the City, a nouveau riche with no association with the neighbourhood, was almost as much a blow as it was for her brother and nephew. She had been born at Pelham’s Oak, and the shock was more bitter for being learned in a roundabout way when she visited Lally after Prosper’s departure for London in the New Year.

  Lally had brought her adopted baby, Alexander, to Dorset, thus sentencing herself to a life in the countryside she professed to dislike so much. Despite his acquiescence, the adoption had provoked a rupture in her relationship with Prosper, who felt she preferred the baby to him. He had come down for Christmas, but Roger spent the festive season with the Hills, and for Prosper and Lally, despite dinners and parties, and presents galore, it had not been the same.

  Eliza had been puzzled by Lally’s behaviour, but she respected it. She did not know that Roger was Lally’s son – the secret had been kept from almost everyone – and she thought it was because she had no children of her own. She admired her for what she had done, and went to see her and keep her company often. Eliza’s generous heart always went out to people who performed acts of personal courage, and she knew that the adoption of Alexander had caused a crisis in Lally’s relationship with her beloved husband.