‘There’s another one,’ I said, pointing to a colt on the other side of the pen. ‘Darker, but he’s certainly chestnut.’
‘By the look of it,’ James said, ‘someone’s turned a chestnut Arab stallion out on the moor for the summer. That mare colt has an Arabian head.’
‘I’m surprised you never caught sight of ’un,’ said a voice behind us. We swung round and found ourselves face to face with Stephen Duggan. I barely recognized him. He was leaning on a stick and looked very lined. His hair was hidden by a big cap but his eyebrows were now white. He had got rid of his beard and the stubble on his imperfectly shaven chin was white as well, and his grin was as unlovely ever.
‘I had him out on the moor for four months last year,’ he was saying. ‘Arab stallion, name of Emperor. Bit of an experiment I’ve been longing to try since I don’t know when. Sold ’un at the year’s end, got an offer of more than I paid for ’un so I took it. Those two are the only foals of his that took his colouring. I’m sellin’ all his colts, though; it’s right enough that they’re not bred for winter on these hills. I hope to get good prices. There are things to see to on the farm. I reckoned there weren’t much point takin’ a lot of trouble with it when I didn’t know who’d have it after I’m gone, but that’s over now. Ralph’s home so I’ve left my tenancy to him and I thought I’d best spruce the place up a bit. Philip’s staying out in Antigua, seems he’s settled and don’t want to come back. Ralph can farm the place hisself or let it on, but it’ll be in Duggan hands just the same. And he’ll have Duggans to come after him, with luck, because … Oh, there they are! Ralph! Here!’
I had realized that by now Ralph might well be back in Minehead, but I hadn’t expected to encounter him at Bampton. Yet here he was, walking towards us through the crowd and he was not alone. At his side, smiling, glowing, was Harriet Baker. I knew her at once. They came up to us, and before Ralph introduced her, I saw who she now was. On the third finger of her left hand gleamed a golden wedding ring.
Time had made no difference; I could not look at Ralph, could not behold his dark, smiling eyes or the shape of his dear face, and not feel the world reel beneath my feet. But I must make no sign. A commonplace exchange was taking place.
‘So ’ee came back.’ That was James. ‘You got tired of growing sugar or cotton or summat in a nice warm climate?’ The undercurrent of aggression was unmistakeable.
‘I was supposed to stay there for five years,’ Ralph said. ‘And so I had when my father died. I’d been thinking things over, in two minds whether to stay on with Philip, but as soon as my mother’s letter came, that settled it. I knew I must come back. Besides, Philip didn’t need me any more; Cousin George did help us to buy a small plantation of our own and it’s doing well, so I persuaded Phil to buy me out, and found a passage home. I’ve been home for three months now, and more than that, I’ve got married! This is my wife, Harriet! Harriet, this is James and Peggy Bright, from Foxwell Farm, not so far from my great-uncle’s place.’
‘I remember Peggy!’ said Harriet, smiling. ‘We met years ago, when Peggy was staying in Minehead.’
She was a tactful woman, this radiant Harriet. Her smile was joyous, her chestnut hair gleamed; her chestnut eyes shone. She had met me when I was staying with Ralph’s family; she and her brother had come to dine and Ralph had been there. She had known that I was then engaged to Ralph. She had sense enough not to mention that now and her eyes searched mine, wondering if I still remembered, if I were now contented. I made myself smile back, to tell her that I was indeed content. ‘You look well!’ she said.
‘I am very well, thank you.’ It wasn’t so very difficult to return her smile because Harriet was the sort of person it is impossible to dislike. ‘I remember you, too,’ I said. ‘But it was a long time ago. I’m Mrs Bright now and I have two children!’ The world was spinning round me.
I saw Ralph’s eyes change. It was momentary, but it was there. I, his Peggy, his love, had two children, by another man. James Bright, standing at my side, had had what I had once pledged myself to give to Ralph. But Ralph had pledged himself to me, as well. Neither of us had kept that pledge. Ralph had married Harriet, and I had stood at James’ side before the altar at St Salwyn’s and taken certain vows.
For life.
Stephen Duggan began to talk about his experiment with the Exmoor–Arab cross. Ralph and I exchanged one long, intense look. In it, we made each other know that nothing had changed, nothing at all. We were still part of each other, for ever. And then we looked away.
It was such a brief exchange of glances, but James saw it and understood. I saw his gaze shift from one of us to the other, and I saw his blue eyes grow chilly. Then he turned to attend to what Stephen Duggan was saying about crossbred horses and after that he exchanged a few commonplace, amiable sentences with Harriet. He also purchased Stephen Duggan’s two crossbred foals. But then, he drew us away. We went on to buy the mature ponies we needed, a pair of purebred Exmoors, both past four years old, but James said little to me. He had gone very quiet. We returned to the inn and went up to our room to change our clothes before dinner. As soon as he had closed the door behind us, he rounded on me, taking me by surprise, so that I sat down suddenly on the side of the bed and stared at him, hardly recognizing James, my husband, in this red-faced man whose eyes had once more become like blue marbles, hard and bulging.
‘I saw you and Ralph Duggan looking at each other. Don’t you try denyin’ it, don’t you dare. You looked at him and he looked at you and it was all there. But for that there business over Maisie Cutler, ’ee’d have married Duggan and not me, and you still wish it had been! Don’t ’ee!’
‘But I married you,’ I said weakly. ‘Years ago. Ralph Duggan’s all in the past.’
‘Is he? Didn’t look like it today, did it, you two gawping at each other like a pair of mooncalves!’
‘We didn’t! That’s not true!’
‘I always knew you’d sooner it had been him, but after all these years, I reckoned ’ee’d got over it; put it behind ’ee. I reckoned by now, I’d have your heart, Mrs Bright. But I b’ain’t got it! Have I? I saw that look ’ee gave him and the look he gave you! Don’t lie to me! Your heart’s still his!’
I shrank away from his furious face, feeling the tears just below the surface. ‘I suppose that just for a moment, we both remembered the past, but that was just natural,’ I said timidly. ‘We can’t change the past, or forget it completely.’
‘Do ’ee have to throw it in my face the way you did?’
‘I didn’t!’ I was really crying now. ‘I did not! You’re imagining things! You’re not being fair. The past makes no difference now. You’re my husband! And Harriet’s married to Ralph! Harriet’s nice. Ralph wouldn’t want me now.’
‘Bah! I know what I saw and believe me, I could have killed the both of ’ee, then and there!’
Anger came to my aid. Through my tears, I said: ‘Poor Harriet! What did she ever do to you, that you would want to make her a widow!’
‘Keep your voice down! Do ’ee want the whole inn to hear?’
‘You began it! You attacked me! Oh, James!’ I was still crying. ‘Are we going to be at loggerheads over it for the rest of our lives?’ I took a deep breath and wiped my eyes, and then added: ‘I love you, James. I want to go on loving you. Only it’s difficult to do that when you glare at me and say you’d like to kill me. When you say threatening things like that, I just feel frightened and I don’t know what to do. I want things to be ordinary again.’
Some of the rage was dying out of his face. My flash of indignation had apparently done some good. ‘Can’t we change and have supper?’ I asked. ‘And just be ourselves again?’
He sat down heavily on the bed beside me. ‘Yes. We can. But we’re not goin’ to supper yet. I’m goin’ to remind ’ee who you belong to.’
James had always been a kind and considerate lover. That evening, however, he was neither. That evening, his embrace was not lo
ving but imprisoning, his entry an act of conquest, his search for satisfaction a furious pounding as though he were trying to conquer an enemy. We were both exhausted when it was over. There was none of the usual pleasant afterglow, only weariness and, on my side, something dangerously near to hatred; on his, probably, guilt.
I had told him I loved him. It had never really been true. There had been affection, friendship, warm, pleasant feelings like that but the bonding I had once had – still had – with Ralph; the huge need, the desire not just to be with him but to give myself away to him; these were absent and could not be created by an act of will.
But from now on, I must be careful. From now on, my life and Ralph’s must be totally separate and if, by accident, we should encounter each other, we must give no sign of that which still lay unspoken between us.
What we felt must stay hidden always, lifelong, for eternity.
Eternity suddenly seemed to be a very long time indeed.
Storm
Time slipped past. We didn’t quarrel again. We talked as we always had concerning things on the farm, and the children. The next winter was appalling. We were snowed in for six weeks and although we had ample supplies of grain and preserves, bacon and home-cured ham and salted beef, we had never depended completely on these salted meats in any previous winter. We had treated ourselves, now and then, to freshly killed chicken or sacrificed a sheep, and since James followed the hounds and went to Exford now and then to drink with the huntsmen, we were presented with the occasional haunch of venison.
But with the snow piling up against our windows, and ten-foot-deep drifts in places, there was no hunting and as we didn’t know how long the snow would last, we preferred not to kill our own stock. We could feed them, since we had good stores of fodder, hay and turnips and the like, and despite the infuriating depredations of the deer when they got into our cornfields in summer, that winter, we tried to put out food for them when they came down from the moor in search of it. Neither of us could bear to see them gnawing at tree bark, or trying to paw a way through the snow for a few mouthfuls of sour winter grass. The wild ponies did best and somehow most of them survived.
In the summer of 1807, I was very ill with a miscarriage. Mattie Webster was a blessing, for she understood these things and skilfully took charge of me. She was a blessing again, early in 1809 when I had my son John. I had produced William and Rose quite easily, within a few hours, but with John, I strove and suffered for two agonizing nights and two dreadful days and was near the end of my strength when at last he emerged into the world.
‘There shouldn’t be another child,’ said the Exford physician Mattie had sent for in desperation on the second day. ‘It would be dangerous.’ He gave James a stern look, and then took him out of the room for some private talk.
When it was all over, James said: ‘The doctor had a few words with me. Well, three’s enough; they’re all healthy, and I don’t want them losing their mother. As for us, well, he had a word or two about that.’
Thereafter, James claimed his marital rights only rarely and when he did so, he withdrew before he could plant his seed. I didn’t mind. I had no desire to conceive again and I didn’t mind the long gaps between our uneasy unions. I had never found much satisfaction in James’ arms, anyway.
As a couple, we did well enough, I suppose. There was, always, an area of silence between us, things that must never be mentioned, but as long as we were careful about that, all was more or less well. There was no excitement but there was affection – yes, there was affection – and we had much to share and talk about.
The farm continued to prosper. We enlarged our herd of Red Devon cattle and our flock of sheep and acquired a shepherd called Zachariah Searle, a tall, lean, dour but very competent individual, who came of a line of shepherds so long that according to Mr Silcox, who still dined with us sometimes and sometimes brought Edmund Baker with him, they’d been looking after sheep on Exmoor since before the Norman Conquest.
Rose, growing rapidly now, was becoming prettier than ever. When she was seven, we sent her with William to what was now Edmund Baker’s school in Exford. She learned to read and write and if she was not a particularly gifted pupil, William was very sharp and also attentive, so Edmund told us with approval. James was remote with Edmund at first, but Edmund was tactful, talking freely about our children’s studies, but never mentioning Harriet – or Ralph. Gradually, to my relief, James relaxed.
The long-drawn-out conflict with France and the ambitions of Napoleon Bonaparte continued. We heard a rumour of an attempted French landing somewhere in Wales, but that was nowhere near us. The beacons on Dunkery and Selworthy remained unlit and at last, in the June of 1815, came the Battle of Waterloo – it was William’s thirteenth birthday, in fact – and the end of Napoleon’s hopes.
‘Peace from now on,’ James said, when we learned of it, through Edmund Baker. A messenger had come from Minehead to tell the vicar, who happened to be at the school at the time, giving a lesson on religion. Edmund promptly gave his pupils the rest of the day off, and set out on a round of as many moorland farms as he could reach, to spread the glad news further. The vicar went back to his church to ring the bells so that all Exford would know that something momentous had occurred.
Edmund Baker, who before continuing his news-bearing ride, had stopped to drink tea and eat a slice of cheesecake in our kitchen, said: ‘It may not be as peaceful as all that. Mr Silcox never gambles but he says that if he did, he’d lay money on folk starting up with smuggling again, now that it won’t help pay for French soldiers to invade us.’
‘Oh, surely not,’ James said. ‘The government’s come down hard on smugglers these last ten years or more. We’ve got a Riding Officer patrolling the coastline nowadays and a Waterguard at sea, patrolling in the Channel. I saw one of their rowing galleys, the other day when I was in Porlock. That’s where it’s kept, so I hear, it was just pulling out of the harbour. I doubt if any of that’ll be withdrawn; it’s worked too well. And the Shark’s still at sea, too.’
‘There’s a new one now,’ said Edmund, gathering up cheesecake crumbs and eyeing the parent cake so wistfully that I automatically reached for the cake knife and cut him another slice. ‘This one’s called the Harpy. A dreadful name, in my opinion; I suspect that whoever named her isn’t quite in sympathy with her purpose.’
As a rule James never mentioned Ralph if he could help it but now he said: ‘Is your brother-in-law, Ralph Duggan, likely to start free trading again? Or has he repented of the past? Did he build the Harpy?’
‘No, he didn’t,’ said Edmund, and added: ‘I’ve wondered if he might still be interested in smuggling but I hope not. He’s got the Hathertons, Luke and Roger, father and son, both working at the boatyard now, though, and they’re a bad influence, I’d say. But he’d be taking a terrible risk. He and Harriet have four children now, and what would become of them if Ralph was taken? She doesn’t say very much, but I think Harriet worries.’
I busied myself with refreshing the teapot, and avoided James’ eye. Edmund, tactful again, moved from the fraught subject of Ralph to the less fraught topic of Stephen Duggan and remarked that he had heard somewhere or other that Stephen Duggan had made further experiments with crossbreeding ponies.
‘Ah. We’ve done quite well with two of his Exmoor–Arab crosses,’ James said.
They had been good purchases. We had named the chestnut mare colt Goldfinch and called her darker half-brother Copper. They were good-tempered and when the time came were easily broken both to saddle and harness. They were strong enough for a long day out round the farm, and good-looking into the bargain. Only Goldfinch had ever given us any trouble, and that was to do with shoeing.
Sweet-natured though she usually was, we had a terrible time with her the first time we took her to Exford to be shod. She reared, squealed, kicked Ezra Kent, who was still the Exford smith, and bit his twelve-year-old son who was working with his father to learn the trade. Later, she c
ame to realize that the smith would not harm her, but she was always nervy when we took her there which, unfortunately, was rather often. Like many horses with white socks, she had hooves with pale horn, which tends to be soft, and in her case, it seemed softer than was desirable. Her shoes frequently came adrift. She would then go instantly lame on the exposed foot, as though the uneven walk that resulted really hurt her. James maintained that this was actually a form of sulking about having shoes inflicted on her at all, though he did add that that if so, it showed what an intelligent animal she was.
The conversation drifted back to Ralph after a while, because Stephen Duggan was in poor health, and there had apparently been much talk of what would happen to Standing Stone when he finally went.
‘Harriet did say to me once that she would like to see Ralph sell the boatyard and move to the farm,’ Edmund said. ‘Ralph knows something about cultivation now – he learned it in Antigua.’
I held up the teapot, in a gesture that enquired who wants another cup? James’ eyes were on me and once again, they looked like hard blue marble.
‘If Ralph Duggan has the good sense to keep his hands clean until Stephen Duggan passes away,’ he remarked, ‘maybe he will move into Standing Stone. That would take him further away from temptation, I suppose.’ His expression dared me to say I was glad.
Edmund held his cup out and I filled it, pretending to have noticed nothing, but if James were wondering how it would be when Ralph and Harriet were at Standing Stone, only a short distance away from us, so was I.
We were not yet old. I was only in my mid-thirties; Ralph much the same age. To have him so close would be wonderful, a joy. I would surely see him sometimes!
It would be dangerous.
That night, I found out how dangerous, for James made love to me, except that it wasn’t love. It was as it had been after the fair at Bampton, so many years ago. It was an act of conquest. He claimed – almost proclaimed – his rights over me, his rights of possession.
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