Turning the Stones

by Debra Daley

  The necessity of Eliza’s marrying was beginning to loom at Sedge Court at that time. I have no expectation that I should ever marry. I have formed the impression that when nets are cast in the marriage market, they haul up from the cold deep all kinds of distorted beasts. I was deathly afraid even then that Mrs Waterland might try to force a match for Eliza with Tobias Barfield. There was always a faint drone of unease in the background of my existence caused by the fear of Barfield’s visits to Sedge Court. I remember an occasion when I was returning from Mrs Richardson’s cottage with a tincture for the master. I had climbed up from the point and was crossing a field next to the road. I disturbed a pheasant and it burst out of its covert, bronze feathers flailing, and flew off low over the newly turned earth. As I watched it go, I heard hoof-beats and the rumble of an approaching vehicle.

  I recognised the chaise. I turned away and hurried along the verge of the road with the idea of taking a bridle path that I knew was close to hand, but the chaise quickly caught me up. As it came alongside Johnny Waterland leaned from the window with his light hair fluttering. There was a lazy smile in his voice as he offered me a lift to Sedge Court. I shook my head and kept on, but Johnny ordered the driver to pull over. The chaise stopped a few yards ahead and Johnny alighted. He shot his cuffs with a flash of silver buttons and said, ‘How thoughtless of me, Em. Of course it would not please you to share a conveyance with Barfield.’ He placed a lightly restraining hand on my arm. ‘Still, we are miles from home and it is a warm day for walking, by Jove.’

  I said, ‘The distance is of no concern to me.’

  All at once he banged on the side panel of the chaise with his fist – the vehicle flinched and the horses whinnied at the scare. He roared, ‘Barfy, you toad! Come out!’

  I averted my face, but I heard the chaise creak with relief as Barfield disembarked. I was aware of his barrel shape at the edge of my vision.

  Johnny said, ‘Miss Smith holds you in abhorrence, sir. For your penance and to spare her feelings, you will walk to Sedge Court, while I escort her in the chaise.’

  Barfield hooted with laughter and lisped, ‘At your disposal, Waterland. As always.’

  ‘If you have not reached Sedge Court in an hour, I will send out a search party.’ Johnny laughed. ‘Come along, Em. We’ve got rid of that dog.’

  I saw that I must ride with Johnny or be left on the road with Barfield. I allowed myself to be handed into the chaise – its interior smelled musty and faintly fermented – but I was uneasy. Johnny leaned back against the seat opposite, one sinuous arm lying along the back of the seat. I could no longer see in him anything of the overshaded cornstalk. There was a sheen on him that must have come from the savoir faire that he cultivated in London.

  He said, ‘You are quite safe from Barfield now. He knows he made an error.’ He might have been referring to a family pet, some old hound that has snapped unexpectedly at a visitor.

  I looked out at the fields. The shadows of the trees behind the hedgerows flung themselves at the chaise one after another as we passed by.

  Johnny said, ‘Do not be a little martyr, Em, you haven’t been harmed. Barfy is simply a sporting fellow with a great liking for the hunt. You are not the first little doe he has brought down.’

  I turned a cold eye on Johnny, but he only raised his hands palms upwards, lace cuffs drooping in a gesture of laissez-faire, and let them fall again with a rueful smile. He had his mother’s rosebud mouth, but it was less suitable on a man. He asked me how old I was and I replied that I was the same age as Eliza.

  Of course he could not recall his sister’s age.

  I said, ‘Sixteen and a half.’

  He seemed bored. He said, ‘It’s awfully warm in here, is it not?’

  He loosened his neck-cloth and undid a couple of buttons of his waistcoat. I pulled down the window pane and let in fresh air. It was eighteen months since we had seen Johnny at home. The household bemoaned his absence, but money still flowed in and nobody would argue with its bounty. An army of tradesmen had been renovating the interior of the house for months on end. Eliza’s apartment was pasted with the latest wallpaper and lavender borders and she slept now in a mahogany bed hung about with fifty yards of glazed chintz. Mr Otty and Rorke were suave in new livery of blue serge coats and moleskin breeches and there was even a flicker of animation in the master and talk of digging canals and coal mines. None of us below stairs understood exactly what it was that Johnny undertook in London at the bank of Hill & Vezey, but it did seem as if we were in clover, and it was our young master who was the cultivator.

  He said, ‘Eliza does badger one so. You might point that out to her. Her recent letters are choked with peculiar military metaphors.’

  ‘One of her tutors was an army man.’

  ‘Ah yes, the tutors. I believe I am paying their wages.’

  ‘They ride over from Great Neston four days a week, if the weather allows. They are called Captain Dennison and Dr North.’

  ‘Relations of Lady Broome, ain’t they?’

  The captain and the doctor of divinity had been engaged as a favour to her ladyship. Captain Dennison was shorttempered with a face like a hunk of corned beef. He habitually wore a soldier’s coat, but in an unexpected concession to fashion, he sported gigantic rosettes on his long-snouted shoes. He was missing his left arm, which had been shot off at the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745. The sacrifice was not in vain because Eliza had been sufficiently impressed to remember the date of the battle, which was an uncommon feat on her part. Dr North had the pallid, damp look of a potato that has been peeled and washed. He hinted that he had once been a curate. There was certainly something starchy in his dress and in his nature. According to Eliza, divinity and pedantry were his strong suits.

  Eventually I said, ‘Mrs Waterland believes that many lessons germane to domestic life might be drawn from the captain’s victories and defeats in the field.’ For some reason this made Johnny laugh out loud. Perhaps my tone was drier than I meant it to be. I said, ‘Eliza writes you so often because she holds you in high regard.’

  ‘So I gather. I’ve no idea why.’

  I put my face to the window. In the distance I could make out the squat tower of Saint Mary and Saint Helen at Great Neston, where Miss Broadbent was buried. The Sunday after her death the parson there preached a sermon in which he asserted that self-murder is by all agreed to be most unnatural and repugnant to the feelings of mankind. Did I tell you already that it was not until after Miss Broadbent’s death that I found out her Christian name – it was revealed during the coroner’s inquisition. She was called Juliet. Its poetical nature struck me, and strikes me still, as unbearably affecting. Juliet. A name that suggests an entirely different future had been intended for her than that of a lonely governess. No one came forward to claim her body, you know.

  Johnny was saying something to me. I sat back from the window. I had seen enough of the church.

  ‘I did not hear you.’

  ‘I said, you are strange and unaccountable. Do you know, your cool manner is rather agreeable. You ought to teach it to my sister.’

  I said, ‘Are you going to throw Eliza and me out when you inherit Sedge Court?’

  Johnny laughed. ‘That depends. I might if you disappoint me. But you won’t risk that, will you?’

  *

  Jim has left the dough to swell while he gets the beef boiling for the crew’s supper. The wind wails and the waves boom. The sound reminds me of Mr Paine’s thunder house and his manufactured lightning bolts and my heart gives me a knock. I am at a low ebb now. Here I am stuck, carried along in the dark hold of this miserable vessel towards a destination that has been decided for me. I cannot escape the feeling that I am caught in the operation of an unknowable network. If you can hear my voice, tell me that it is not so!

  Weever Hall, Cheshire

  June, 1765

  Our journey to Weever Hall for Lady Broome’s summer dance took place on a lustrous June day. By the time
we reached the village of Tarporley on the western edge of the Cheshire plain, it was gone noon and we paused there for refreshment. Mrs Waterland had spotted an old walnut tree favourably contorted for shelter and she instructed Mr Otty to spread a rug and cushions beneath its branches, while I unpacked the provisions. We dined alfresco and afterwards found ourselves inclined to linger in the shade, quite toppled by the heat of the afternoon.

  I excused myself and wandered a little way along a hedgerow, looking for a place to make water out of sight. I spied a convenient copse of hawthorn, where I hoisted my petticoat in privacy. But as I emerged from the trees I detected a quiver in the air that suggested the presence of some creature nearby. My imagination bypassed a benevolent explanation and rushed at once to the hair-raising conclusion that I had likely stumbled into the province of a wrathful bull. I fled to the safety of the copse and peeked out from the bushes at the surrounding swards.

  There was no sign of a bull – but my eye did light on a queer sight in an adjacent field. Its far reaches had a blackened appearance, which I took at first for a crop that had gone to mould or been burned in a frost. In fact the darkness was due to an infestation of birds – crows, surely. Curiosity drove me from my hiding place then and I skirted the field to gain a closer look. Yes, they were crows, an enormous number of them, hundreds even, standing in an eerie silence. They gave the impression of having been called to muster and seemed to be waiting tensely for a proceeding to commence. I saw that their collective gaze was directed towards a shallow gully, where four crows stood apart. One of these four was cowering before the others in a scene that smacked of menace. It seemed to suggest that a trial was in session or that, in fact, a sentence had already been passed. But my presence had disturbed the birds. One of them looked in my direction with a croak and the next second the entire flock rose as one and beat away into the sky with a great uproar of wings.

  I hurried back to report what I had seen – the others must have noticed the birds blotting the blue of the sky – but as I came into our encampment I had a change of heart. Crows were not a good omen. Better not to draw attention to them. One preferred to believe that everything would go well for Eliza at Weever Hall.

  ‘There you are, Em,’ Mrs Waterland said. ‘I was beginning to think you had absconded.’ She stretched slim arms above her head and her cascading bangles tinkled melodiously. ‘Isn’t it a glorious day? Baron von Boxhagen has chosen a perfect time to visit our little corner of England.’

  Eliza was lying curled on her side with one arm draped across her face. She yawned from beneath her armpit and rolled up to sitting. I had rectified her eyebrows with the pincers in preparation for her appearance at Weever Hall, but she retained even in repose the fierce, beetle-browed expression which she had inherited from her father and had never been inclined to banish.

  ‘Do you not think that von Boxhagen is a very comical name?’ she chortled.

  There was a jangle of jewellery as Mrs Waterland began to brush invisible smuts from her skirts. ‘May I remind you, my love, that the baron has a very uncomical fortune. I will thank you to take him seriously.’ The violent movement of Mrs Waterland’s hand was at odds with the serene lake of her face, but Eliza seemed unaware of her mother’s displeasure.

  She insisted on saying, ‘It is only that his name sounds like carpentry. And anyway, if he is so well off why does he bother to be a dull old botanist?’

  ‘A botanical artist,’ Mrs Waterland corrected. ‘Like Cousin Arthur, the baron is an investigator of natural philosophy.’

  ‘I am sure there is very little philosophy in Nantwich.’

  ‘His father was acquainted with Sir Henry Broome, Eliza. That is the connection, as you well know.’ There was a note of steel in Mrs Waterland’s voice.

  ‘Well, I hope the baron proves more amusing than our cousin. Arthur does lecture one so in the most dusty manner.’

  Mrs Waterland said with a hint of weariness, ‘The point about friends and relations, child, is not that they should delight us, but that they should be of use to us.’

  I said in my mollifying way, ‘I dare say we are all looking forward to Lady Broome’s dance.’

  ‘Oh, the dance,’ Eliza groaned. ‘I suppose I must play the charmer as usual.’ Her sigh suggested Helen of Troy exasperated by the magnitude of her beauty.

  ‘I wonder, my love, is that possible?’ Mrs Waterland mused. She waved away a fly and looked off to one side, her face thrown into green shadow by the brim of her bonnet. ‘You have made very slender progress as a siren.’

  For three seasons Eliza had been produced at public assemblies and every private social in the county without attracting interest. No matter how rigorously Mrs Waterland polished her, Eliza could not be brought to a shine. She affected not to care about her failure as a belle and continued to direct her devotion towards Johnny, or to the idea of him, since he was seldom at Sedge Court, but her mother, as you must know by now, cared very much.

  *

  Half an hour later we found ourselves turning down a lane that led to Lady Broome’s estate – a sprawling collection of farmhouses, farmland, gardens and a park, surrounding the manor house. Eventually the blue slate roof of Weever hall came into view and we passed through a wrought-iron gateway on to a wide drive that bisects an endless lawn. The lawn looked as if it had been ironed flat. There was a fountain in front of the bulky red-brick mansion hurling water.

  As we approached the house we heard a loud bang that sounded like a pistol shot. I was severely jolted by the report. It seemed to reverberate from a reach far beyond the lawn and filled me with inexplicable terror.

  We craned towards the windows of the chaise to see what had happened and glimpsed a gentleman rushing from the house, his coat flying. He stumbled along for a few yards and then fell to his knees and seemed to scrabble about in the grass.

  ‘I do believe that is Cousin Arthur,’ Mrs Waterland remarked.

  A few seconds of anxious silence passed and then Mr Paine staggered to standing apparently intact. He was shortish and of a stringy make. He returned Mrs Waterland’s wave and converged with us at the entrance of the house. He was dressed in an informal frockcoat that was, I noticed, nicely cut. I estimated him to be about forty years of age. I thought that his features, eyes wide-set and thin lips placed very low on a long face – sheep-like, to be candid – did not match his character, which was reputed to be cerebral.

  ‘We heard a bang,’ Eliza cried.

  ‘Quite. A test, you see.’ Mr Paine grinned. He held up a grass-stained ivory ball and a measuring stick. ‘I shot a billiard ball from a window upstairs, but the experiment has come out imperfect, I must admit.’

  He waded into a monologue about angles and percussion, but it was cut short by Lady Broome’s butler, who conducted us into a marbled vestibule and handed us over to a footman in flashy gold livery. We followed the man upstairs in an obedient crocodile, passing through lances of dusty sunlight that struck the portraits of Broome ancestors ascending along the walls. The footman conducted us to an unwelcoming corridor on the second floor where the air was simultaneously clammy and stifling and showed us at last into an apartment. He drew the curtains in the tiny parlour to reveal old-fashioned leaded windows. We peered out of them and I was dismayed to see that yet more crows were about, convening around the chimney pots. The crows aimed black looks in our direction. With a sound like a page being ripped from a book, Mrs Waterland flung open her fan.

  ‘Are you certain,’ she said, ‘that Lady Broome intended my daughter and me to be lodged here?’

  ‘Quite certain, madam,’ the footman replied with a bow.

  ‘Because we are rather accustomed to the view from the south-facing windows.’

  The footman said oozily, ‘I am sorry, madam, but the house is full and this is the only apartment we are able to offer you.’

  At that moment, porters arrived with our luggage. Downes immobilised them with her frosty stare and they bobbed about in the cor
ridor, while the mistress decided whether to escalate the situation.

  The footman enquired in a mildly threatening tone, ‘Shall I convey your displeasure to her ladyship?’

  Mrs Waterland retracted her fan and said with sudden nonchalance, ‘Oh, there is no need at all to trouble Lady Broome with such a trivial matter.’ She dismissed the man with a smile and said no more about it, but we all knew that our inferior quarters reflected Weever Hall’s opinion of us.

  *

  I woke the next morning feeling out of sorts. I had been plagued by patchy dreams … a red haze … the sound of a shot and awful screaming seagulls. It was early and Eliza was still asleep. I got up and laid out her morning costume, although she was not due to coincide with the baron for several hours, and then wondered if I might dare to slip into the gallery where the Broome curiosities were displayed. I was very inquisitive about them.

  Weever Hall is designed in the shape of an H, the bar of which is the long gallery connecting the two sides of the house where Lady Broome’s late husband installed the souvenirs of his expeditions to the East Indies and the Americas. The understeward had indicated its location the day before as Downes and I and other visiting servants were being shown the backstairs and covert corridors that allow us to move from one wing of the house to the other without being noticed by our betters.

  I recalled the circuitous route to the gallery without difficulty and minutes later entered it from the northern end. Pointed windows along the eastern wall let in a blush of morning light and I paused at one of them to take in a view of flat fields populated by cattle at graze. The mild countryside could not have been in greater contrast to the exotic preserves surrounding me. From the gallery’s vaulted ceiling hung all kinds of stuffed creatures – birds and monkeys, a sea creature shaped like a kite, a shark with the head of a hammer, and two extensive serpents. Colossal armoires facing the windows teemed with oddities and kickshaws – fragments of stone, sinister carvings, ceremonial daggers, filigree caskets, branches of red coral, leather puppets on sticks and a cabinet devoted to metal automatons. There was an assortment of old-fashioned chattels in the gallery, too, Jacobean furniture and moody paintings in extravagant gilt frames, which I dare say the Parliamentarian Broomes had once confiscated from Royalists. I paused at a cabinet to gaze with appalled interest at two blackened skulls lolling in an open-weave basket decorated with shells and tassels. As I stared at the tassels, which were constructed, I realised with horror, from wiry human hair, the murmur of voices came to my ear.