A Woman of Substance

by Barbara Taylor Bradford

  Edwin’s chest was congested and tight, and he was unable to speak, but he gave her a lopsided smile and shook his head wearily.

  ‘Do yer feel all right?’ Emma regarded him with some misgiving. In the moonlight he looked extraordinarily pale and depleted, and he shivered more violently than she herself did.

  ‘Yes.’ He groaned, sitting up. ‘Let’s get going. It’s cold, Emma.’ He grinned ruefully as he looked at her dripping hair and face and clothes. ‘We’re like a couple of drowned rats again.’

  “But we’re safe and we’ll soon be at the Hall,’ she responded, adopting a cheerful tone.

  The lower road had turned to mire and was also strewn here and there with rocks and branches. In spite of its slimy surface, and the various obstructions, they managed to walk at a brisk pace, and once Edwin’s breathing was more normally restored they began to run, holding hands tightly, only slowing their pace when they had to skirt boulders and dismembered trees, arriving at the main entrance to Fairley Hall much sooner than they had anticipated. One of the great iron gates, bearing the Fairley family crest in polished bronze, had been half ripped off its hinges, and dangled precariously from the high brick wall surrounding the grounds. Walking up the gravel path, they saw that even here the storm had wreaked its havoc. Flower beds had been flattened, bushes shredded, hedges crushed, and some of the box and yew topiary specimens, clipped into fantastic shapes, had been smashed beyond recognition.

  To Edwin’s immense distress one of the great oaks had been struck by lightning, split asunder, a monument to time finally felled by God’s wrath and nature’s unpredictability. It was here that Edwin paused and took Emma in his arms. He pushed back her dripping hair and gazed down into her face, its loveliness unmarred by the water and mud streaking it, palely gleaming in the moonlight shafting through the bower of green oak leaves drifting above them. He bent down and kissed her fully on the mouth and with passion, but it was a passion tempered now by tenderness. They clung together, swaying gently. After a moment of silent communion, Edwin said, ‘I love you, Emma. You love me, too, don’t you?’

  Her green eyes, iridescent with light and glittering catlike in the darkness, swept over his face, and a swift pain shot through her, piercing and poignant and she was filled with a strange emotion she had not experienced before. It was a sweet emotion, yet one tinged with sadness and a vague and curious yearning she did not understand. ‘Yes, I do,’ she answered softly.

  He touched her face lightly, returning that penetrating look concentrated so ardently upon him. ‘Then you will meet me up at the cave at the Top of the World, later in the week when the weather has improved, won’t you?’

  She was silent. Up until this moment Edwin had not contemplated the possibility that she might refuse, but now the idea struck him so forcibly he was filled with panic. ‘Please, please say you will,’ he entreated, conscious of the protracted silence, her hesitation. He pressed his body closer to hers and cajoled, ‘We can have a picnic again.’

  Still she remained silent. ‘Oh, Emma, please, please don’t spurn me.’ His whisper was hoarse and a new desperation had crept into his voice. Edwin held her away from him and examined her face, so pale and inscrutable. There was a look in her eyes that baffled him, one he was quite incapable of inter-preting. ‘You’re not upset about—about—what happened? What we did, are you?’ he asked gently, wondering with rising alarm if this was indeed the reason for her unexpected and sudden unresponsiveness to him. Then in the faint moonlight sifting through the trees he saw the deep flush rising to her neck to flood her face with dark colour, and his heart sank. She was angry with him.

  Emma turned away. But Edwin’s harsh breathing stabbed at her and she quickly brought her face back to his, peering deeply into his bluish-grey eyes, and what she saw there made her heart lift on a crest that was joyous and it overwhelmed her. His eyes were full of love and longing but, hovering behind these mingled feelings so clearly apparent, she saw a flicker of fear. Emma knew then with the utmost certainty that Edwin Fairley did truly love her, just as he had said he did. And she loved him. He was part of her now. She marvelled that this one person in the whole world could suddenly mean so much to her, could have become, within a few hours, so necessary, taking precedence above all else. It was a possibility she had neither anticipated nor bargained for. She could no longer bear to witness the pain in his eyes. ‘Yes, Edwin, I will meet yer up at the cave, and I’m not angry about what we did.’ She smiled and it was that same smile that always suffused her face with radiance.

  Edwin’s facial muscles, tight and intense with apprehension, relaxed, and he too smiled, taking her into his arms with a rush of relief and happiness. ‘Oh, Emma, Emma, my sweet Emma. You’re everything to me.’

  Poised under the old oaks, locked in an embrace that was further sealing their destinies, they were oblivious to their dripping clothes, their shivering limbs, the cold night air. They were conscious only of each other and their fierce and flaring emotions, not realizing, in their euphoria, that emotions could wreak devastation as horrendous as the ripped and shattered landscape surrounding them. Eventually they drew apart, searching each other’s face for confirmation of their love. Edwin nodded, his eyes awash with tender lights, and Emma smiled, and then silently they went up to the house, hand in hand. Edwin was jaunty and seemingly untroubled, but Emma, pragmatist that she was, had suddenly begun to consider the welcome they would receive. She was patently aware that it would be far from cordial and certainly one of furious reprimands.

  When they turned into the cobbled stable yard they saw that the kitchen door was wide open, spilling light. Standing in this corridor of light was a distraught Mrs Turner. She was perfectly still, watching, waiting, her arms akimbo, her plump face a stony mask, yet she gave the impression, in her very quietness, of wringing hands and doom and dire consequences. Emma slipped her hand out of Edwin’s and hung back, allowing him to walk ahead of her.

  Mrs Turner was utterly relieved and overjoyed to see Edwin, but her anxiety had been so pronounced, and she had been so overwrought for hours, this relief quickly manifested itself in a flash of intense anger. It was only because Edwin was the young master of the house, and therefore entitled to proper respect, that Cook controlled that anger, but her voice was shrill as she stared down at him.

  ‘Master Edwin! Where have yer been? Yer gave me a right turn when yer didn’t come home. Why, it’s almost ten o’clock. I thought yer were lost on the moors, or dead, with this raging storm. Aye, I did that!’ She shook her head energetically and her eyes sparked. ‘By gum, Master Edwin, it’s a good job the Squire’s away, and Master Gerald is in Bradford for the weekend, or yer’d be copping it, yer would indeed. Scared me half ter death, yer did. Why, I’ve had Tom out twice with the lantern, searching for yer up yonder!’

  The cook heaved a great sigh that rippled her vast bosom. ‘Well, young man, don’t dawdle about there, come inter the kitchen at once!’ She turned and hurried inside, followed by Edwin, who was mounting the stone steps. She had not noticed Emma, who was reluctantly loitering in the shadows. Edwin stopped at the kitchen door and beckoned. ‘Come on, it’s all right, Emma. I’ll handle Mrs Turner,’ he whispered.

  ‘I’ve got water boiling in the set pot in the washhouse,’ Cook announced from the centre of the kitchen, her eyes roving swiftly over Edwin’s filthy clothes that dripped water, and his mud-splattered face. ‘Well, aren’t yer a right sight, Master Edwin!’ she snorted. ‘Yer look as if yer’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards, yer do that.’

  It was then that Mrs Turner saw Emma slipping through the door and down the kitchen stairs. She was incredulous and her jaw sagged. ‘Aay, lass, what are yer doing here? I thought yer were safe at home with yer dad. I never dreamt yer were out in this weather.’

  Emma did not answer. Mrs Turner looked from Emma to Edwin, staring at them open-mouthed. Her voice was brusque when she found it. ‘Yer haven’t told me yet what yer doing trailing in at this hou
r, with Master Edwin, looking like a drowned rat. Come on, lass, speak up!’ She glared at Emma, and tapped her foot impatiently, hands on her hips.

  Before Emma could reply, Edwin stepped forward and said with a show of self-confidence, and just enough superiority to remind Cook who he was, ‘I came across Emma on the moors, during the storm, Mrs Turner. She told me she was due back this afternoon, to help you with the jam making, or some such other domestic task. We tried to make it back together, but I decided the thunderstorm was too dangerous. We sheltered up at Ramsden Crags as best we could, waiting for the tempest to abate.’ He paused and fixed his cool eyes on the roiling cook. ‘It was rather difficult geting back, even when the rain ceased. The Ghyll is flooded and the beck by the lower road is dangerously high. But, here we are, safe if a little bedraggled.’ He smiled engagingly, displaying that irresistible charm of his father’s, which was so inherent in him.

  ‘Bedraggled! I thinks that’s the blinking understatement of the year, Master Edwin, I do that!’ Mrs Turner cried scathingly. ‘Yer looks like a couple of mudlarks, nay, guttersnipes!’ Her head rolled again and her eyes flew open. ‘Thank heaven Murgatroyd’s in Shipley. He wouldn’t take kindly ter the fuss yer disappearance has caused around here, Master Edwin. Mark my words, he wouldn’t.’

  ‘I didn’t disappear, Mrs Turner,’ Edwin responded quietly but with firmness. ‘I got stranded on those wretched moors, through no fault of my own.’

  ‘Aye, what yer say is true enough,’ she muttered. She glared at them suddenly. ‘Look at yer both, dripping mucky water and mud all over me clean floor. Upstairs at once, Master Edwin, and inter the bathtub. I don’t want yer getting badly again. And take yer filthy boots off. I can’t be having yer tracking mud all over t’carpet upstairs,’ she admonished, but not unkindly.

  Mrs Turner turned to Annie, who had remained silent but wide-eyed and agog with curiosity during this discourse. ‘Annie, run ter the washhouse and get two big pails of water, and hurry upstairs ter Master Edwin’s bathroom with ’em. And then bring two buckets in here for Emma.’

  Cook now gave Emma her total attention. ‘Yer shouldn’t have stayed up on the moors, lass, with Master Edwin. Yer should’ve turned back. Fact is, yer could have both made it back ter the village in no time at all,’ she remonstrated, her irascibility in evidence. She shook her head and looked from one to the other penetratingly. ‘I thought yer’d have had more sense than that, lass, and Master Edwin as well. Anyroads, inter the servants’ bathroom, me lass. Yer need a hot tub afore yer catch yer death.’

  Emma forced a smile on to her face. ‘Yes, Mrs Turner.’ She hurried to the servants’ bathroom behind the kitchen without looking at Edwin.

  Edwin had removed his boots and went up the stairs. He swung around at the top and said sweetly, with a warm smile, ‘I do apologize, Mrs Turner, for causing you grief and worry. It was not intentional, you know.’

  ‘Aye, Master Edwin, I knows.’

  ‘Oh, by the way, I’m afraid I had to abandon the picnic basket. But I’ll retrieve it for you another day.’

  ‘Aye, I expects yer will, if there’s owt left of it,’ she mumbled. There was such chagrin on his face she softened, for Edwin was her favourite. ‘When yer’ve had yer bath, get straight inter yer bed, and I’ll bring yer up a nice plate of cold lamb and some bubble-and-squeak. I knows how much yer enjoys that,’ she said, indicating the pan of leftover vegetables frying gently on the stove. ‘I’ve kept the bubble-and-squeak warm for hours for yer, Master Edwin.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Turner.’ He smiled and was gone.

  Cook gazed after his retreating figure and then sat down with a loud thump in the chair, her face creased with worry. She had seen the two of them, whispering and laughing together in corners of the house, when they were unaware of her keen but silent observation. She had also noticed them in the garden together, too many times for her liking of late. She pondered on Edwin’s story, for a moment doubting it. She frowned. Yet it had a ring of truth to it, and she had never caught Master Edwin out in lies, or deceitfulness, since the day he was born. He wasn’t like Gerald, who was cunning and devious.

  Still…small suspicions crept into her mind, which was now awash with perplexed and troubled thoughts. It’s not right, servants and gentry mixing, she said inwardly. Stepping out of her class, that lass is. She pondered further on this. ‘That’s bad. It makes for real trouble. We have ter know our place,’ she said aloud to the empty room. Elsie Turner shuddered unexpectedly and goose pimples ran up her fat arms, as long-forgotten memories rushed back, so clear and vividly alive they brought her up in her chair with a start. Not again, she thought, and shivered. It can’t be happening again.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Emma walked across the terrace and down the path leading to the rose garden, carrying the flower basket on her arm, the garden shears in her hand. Lord and Lady Sydney were coming to luncheon, and Cook had sent her out to cut some blooms for the Waterford crystal vases in the dining and drawing rooms. Emma had a great love of flowers, in particular roses, and this garden was devoted to them, as its name implied. It was her favourite spot in the whole of the vast grounds of Fairley Hall and, to Emma, it seemed oddly out of character with the house, which she found ugly and depressing, for the garden was filled with an enveloping tranquillity that gave her a sense of peacefulness, and its beauty enriched her soul.

  The lovely old garden was surrounded on all sides by stone walls hundreds of years old, covered with climbers that had been diligently trained over them, and which also scrambled up into two ancient trees at the far end, their blossoms shining amongst the darker foliage of the branches like fragile fragments of spun silk of the purest white. Wide borders under the walls flourished with floribunda roses, chosen especially for their large flowers and long blooming period, and they washed the garden with rafts of flaming colour the summer through. They were planted in large blocks, thickly clustered together, each one of a different variety, a riotous mingling of candescent hues. Blood red faded into deep coral, which in turn edged into blush and paler dusty pinks, with white and yellow adding their delicately fresh tints to this lavish interplay of roseate shades, coils of velvet set amidst the verdant leaves.

  In the centre, surrounded by gravel paths, was the display area of the garden. This parterre, with its ornamental arrangement of flower beds of different shapes and sizes, was a stunning formal counterpoint to those wild and abundant borders rambling naturally in their informality, but which had been precisely planned for this striking contrasting effect. In the parterre, the rose beds of hybrid tea varieties were encircled by box, cut in triangles and diamonds and squares, the box clipped flat-topped, resembling moulded slabs as though meticulously carved out of polished stone. Like the rest of the grounds, the rose garden had suffered severe damage in the violent storm that had torn up the district in June. But Adam Fairley had brought in expert gardeners, including a rose specialist and a landscape artist, to assist his own gardener, and with an enormous expenditure of money and time, and superb skill, they had miraculously restored it to its former glory.

  In the shining stillness of this blazing August morning, the garden had an enthralling and poignant beauty that caused Emma to catch her breath and pause to admire its exquisiteness. The sun floated high in a cloudless cornflower sky and the air was limpid and heavy with the heady scent of the fragrant roses that drifted all around her. Not a leaf moved and the only sound was the faint flutter of rushing wings as a lone bird soared up into the pellucid light, its warbling a faintly retreating echo. Emma sighed, marvelling at the loveliness all around her, and then moved on, intent in her purpose.

  Since the roses in the parterre were never cut, Emma headed for the wilder borders under the walls. She perspired a little as she hurried down the gravel path and was grateful to reach the trees whose lush bowers, thickly green and low-hanging, offered cool refreshing shade. She knelt down and began to clip the stems, moving from shrub to shrub, selecting her blos
soms carefully. The gardener had taught her how to cut only a few blooms from each bush, so that the overall appearance of the magnificent floribunda was never ruined by bare patches. She handled the roses gently, for their heads were fully opened, almost overblown, paying infinite attention to colour and variety, filling the basket slowly.

  Emma smiled to herself as she worked. Edwin had returned to Fairley last night with the Squire, who always came back to Yorkshire for the start of the grouse-shooting season. Edwin had been visiting Olivia Wainright at her country house in the South for the last two weeks. To Emma it seemed like two years. The Hall was a desolate place at the best of times, but especially so with only Gerald Fairley in residence, and it had begun to oppress her even more than usual. The lofty rooms, so vast and shadowy, were lifeless and eerily silent, and she always fled from them as soon as her work was finished. Now Edwin had returned everything would be different. She had missed his smiles, his tender endearments and his adoration, and their picnics on the moors, which had continued through June into July until he had left.

  Sometimes Emma had gone up to the Top of the World and sat alone on her flat rock under the shadow of Ramsden Crags, daydreaming, lost in a multitude of thoughts. She never went into the cave without Edwin. Before he had departed for his holidays he had instructed her firmly never to attempt to move the rock without him, for it would be dangerous and she might easily hurt herself.

  But now he was back and her loneliness had already been dispelled. Earlier that morning, when they had bumped into each other in the upstairs corridor, they had whisperingly arranged to meet in the rose garden for a few minutes before he went riding. She could hardly bear the agony of waiting for him. She fervently wished he would hurry. Her basket was filled to overflowing; also, Cook would be wondering where she was. A few moments later Emma heard his footsteps crunching on the gravel and looked up expectantly. She felt a quickening of her heart, unreasonably so, and a rush of happiness surged through her, bringing that vibrant light into her eyes, a smile to her face.