‘When you have none it is the most important thing in the world.’ Guy drew her down on to the crumpled bed. ‘With Margaret’s fortune I can hold my head up again. I am a man of substance, of consequence. If only I didn’t have to go to that dreadful office’ – he put his head in his hands – ‘I would be the happiest man in the world ... even with Margaret.’
‘You do not ... love Margaret?’ Eliza whispered.
‘How can I love Margaret?’ Guy said scornfully. ‘She is five years older than I am; she is ugly and she has a will of iron.’
‘But there is something I like about Margaret,’ Eliza insisted. ‘I do not see her with your eyes, but in her expression today I saw sympathy for me in my predicament. Of course, she is at odds with Mother about her position in the house. It is not easy for her.’
‘I don’t dislike Margaret either,’ Guy said hurriedly. ‘Like you I find her very sympathetic. She is very kind. But you know, my dear’– he put a hand on her shoulder – ‘I am a man who has known love, passion. It is very hard for me to have as my life’s companion someone who has none at all.’
‘Then you know why I could never have married Lord Thornwell,’ Eliza said mulishly.
‘What do you know of passion?’ Guy rose and, putting his hands in his pockets, went to the window, where he stood looking down on the house he had rented to Ryder Yetman. ‘You are but a girl of eighteen. Lord Thornwell may have been repulsive to you – and that I can understand – but you must behave correctly in public, Eliza. You must learn to control your temper. I think this scheme of going to Holland for a year is an excellent one. It will not be very exciting, but it will be interesting and it will give you the chance to think. I cannot but approve of it. With your interests at heart, my dear, I hasten to add.’
He sat down again and took Eliza’s hand gently in his own. ‘Who knows what will happen in Holland? Wouldn’t it be funny if I were married to a Dutch woman and you were wed to a Dutch man? If he were like Margaret, he would be sure to keep you under control.’
Eliza said nothing. She didn’t even look at her brother, because in her imagination she saw so clearly the figure standing on the roof, his hair the colour of the straw in his hands.
Slowly a plan, an idea whose audacity made her inwardly gasp, began to form in her mind.
Guy knew a great many young, titled or wealthy men, most of whom had titled or wealthy wives. There were a few bachelors in his group, a few men-about-town who Margaret feared, not without reason, might lead him astray.
A few days after the family conference with Eliza (who since then had spent most of her time sulking in her room or riding Lady disconsolately round the fields correctly attired, at the family’s insistence, in riding habit and using a side saddle) Guy made his escape to London. There he intended to enjoy a few days in the company of his friends while making a pretence of doing some work.
How Guy hated his days of drudgery in the warehouse overlooking the Thames where he was being taught the rudiments of the vast Heering and Martyn business. How he looked forward to going home to Chesterfield Street in the evening. There he would bathe and change, before going to his club, or maybe to a less reputable establishment where he could play for high stakes and meet women whose virtue was less than perfect.
One night Guy visited a gambling club in Covent Garden where bezique, chemin de fer or ordinary card games were played for high stakes, where gin or whisky could be had for tuppence a tot, and where a woman, or a man, could be hired for the hour or the night. He had dined well at Quaglino’s in the company of three of his friends, all of whom were unattached, dissolute and as rich as Croesus. For a long time when his own prosperity foundered Guy had had to shun their company. It was good to be numbered in their circle again.
They were all drawn to the card tables by the high stakes offered and the fact that there were a number of pretty women sitting, or standing, idly about watching the game.
Guy was about to sit down and take his chance at bezique, to attempt to bring the elusive knave of diamonds and queen of spades together, when he caught the eyes of a young woman who seemed to be in the company of an acquaintance of his, Caspar Moss, who was the heir to an earldom.
For a moment he was transfixed. She could not have been more than twenty. Her eyes were a brilliant blue, her complexion was a flawless cream, and golden curls in an elaborate coiffure tumbled about her head. She wore a décolleté gown and he saw the mounds of a pair of most beautiful breasts rising enticingly from the froth of tulle.
Guy gulped and asked for his cards, but under that disturbing, curious gaze his play was erratic and he lost a lot of money.
Finally he withdrew, and after paying his debts and buying himself a whisky he sauntered back to the bezique table. The young woman wore a look of boredom because Lord Moss excelled at the game and did not appear to tire of it. Guy didn’t know how he could keep his eyes on his cards in her presence.
He stood behind her, admiring the sweep of her shoulders, the graceful curve of her neck. Slowly she seemed deliberately to turn and gaze at him and, as he smiled, he lifted a finger as if enticing her over to him.
Caspar was so absorbed in his game that he didn’t notice that his companion had left his side and, as the woman rose gracefully and sauntered to the edge of the crowd, Guy withdrew to the back of the room and she followed him.
For a moment they stood smiling at each other and then Guy said: ‘Haven’t we met before?’
‘I don’t think so,’ she murmured, her voice low, musical, as lovely as her face.
‘I’m a very old friend of jelly Moss.’
The fact that he knew the Viscount’s nickname was a way of establishing his credentials.
‘I hardly know him at all,’ the woman said dismissively. ‘My name is Lally. Lally Bowyer.’
‘And mine’s Guy Woodville.’
Later he escorted her back to an address just round the corner in Drury Lane. It was a shabby house in a shabby street patrolled by pimps, prostitutes and a variety of rogues and ne’er-do-wells who were sometimes apprehended by the patrolling bobbies from nearby Bow Street and hauled off to the cells.
It was a far from salubrious area and Guy’s heart sank. She had told him she was an actress, but now he thought that maybe she was nothing better than a common prostitute.
The entrance to the house was dingy and there was an all-pervading smell of fried fat. Guy’s nostrils twitched as he followed Lally up the stairs right to the top, where both paused while they caught their breath.
‘It’s only temporary,’ Lally said, with a fetching smile that completely turned his heart, stifling all criticism, ‘while I find my feet.’
Impulsively Guy leaned towards her and, before she had time to open the door, kissed her.
Margaret found her role as the new Lady Woodville a difficult one. She had not foreseen how much Henrietta would try to interfere in the running of the house, or the moods and capriciousness of her young sister-in-law, Eliza. In her innocence she had thought her husband’s mother would be content to take a back seat, and she had scarcely thought about Eliza at all.
For a woman who, approaching thirty, had been resigned to the idea of lifelong spinsterhood, the advent of young Sir Guy had been like a dream. He was handsome and aristocratic. His manners were exquisite. To all and sundry, high and low, equals and servants, he was the same courteous man whom many people not only respected but also loved.
Margaret was, however, aware that there was another side to Guy: she knew he liked to play cards, to patronise the gaming tables. She did not wholly approve of some of the friends he introduced to her in Chesterfield Street, and she regretted the fact that so many of them were aimless, footloose bachelors.
But she had made up her mind not to nag, and she would not nag. Despite his economic dependence on her family, she would allow Guy his freedom. In that way she hoped, in time, to win his love.
In those first months of her marriage Margaret was in love
and wanted everyone to love her. She soon discovered that the reality was different and that, as a foreigner, many people regarded her with reserve, even suspicion.
Wenham was a small place and, in her eyes, the attitude of its citizens narrow and small-minded. She knew she was an object of curiosity and that the servants showed their allegiance to her mother-in-law rather than her. Despite her almost perfect English, some people professed not to understand what she was saying.
It was all rather distressing, but Margaret was not one to let things get her down. She had too much to be grateful for: an entire new existence, a husband she adored and the possibility of a child one day. In fact, everything to live for.
Despite Henrietta’s dominating presence and her interference, she had little to do with the actual running of the house, or the estate. She objected to someone usurping her place, but she had never bothered herself with mundane matters and now it was too late. Margaret was there, the reins very much in her hands.
Margaret assumed control more and more, especially when, the honeymoon over, Guy started to spend a lot of time in London. Margaret spent days, weeks going over inventories with the bailiff and the estate manager with the aid of a map of the locality until she felt she knew every building on the Woodville estate.
To everyone Margaret was gracious and polite, but she wanted no one to be under any misapprehension as to who she was. She went over all the accounts, visited all the tenanted properties and either negotiated new terms with the tenants or gave them orders to quit. In cases of genuine hardship, however, she suspended payments of rent altogether, and would look after the sick and the poor and send clothing for their children.
Finally she turned her attention to the farm just two fields away from Pelham’s Oak. Again she examined the accounts and the returns. She saw that the yield of eggs, milk and dairy produce was low; her conclusion was that the tenants were unsatisfactory. She decided to pay them a visit.
As her carriage stopped outside the farmhouse she sat for a few moments examining the scene before her. She observed that the house and outbuildings were in a bad state of repair; the cattle thin and undernourished.
Sir Guy’s mother had never dirtied her shoes by coming to the farm, and the farmer was understandably astonished when the Woodville carriage stopped outside his door and the new Lady Woodville alighted, unaccompanied. She stepped carefully across the muddy farmyard, picking her way between the quacking ducks, the cackling hens and curious cats, and introduced herself to the farmer who was washing his boots under the pump in the yard.
He knew nothing about her, except that she was a foreigner, and her appearance surprised him because she looked so much older than Sir Guy.
Excited by a personal visit from the great lady herself, Martin Crook summoned his wife from the kitchen, and together they conducted Lady Woodville over the house. She paused for some time in each room to make copious notes, showing shock here, concern there at the state the place was in. When she saw the bedroom where the couple’s six children slept she was appalled.
‘The baby died of measles in the spring, my lady,’ the farmer’s wife said, sniffling pitifully. ‘But for that we’d’ve had seven.’
Margaret offered her condolences, but thought she noted a look of relief on the face of the harassed mother. However, as a method of birth control it was a drastic remedy.
‘Sir Matthew and then Sir Guy never took any interest, my lady,’ the farmer whined. ‘When we asked the bailiff for help we were sure it never got passed on.’
Margaret nodded grimly. It was true that some of the rooms were uninhabitable, and when it rained water poured in through a hole in the roof.
When they returned to the main room Mrs Crook scooped a crying toddler off the floor with a deft movement and, tucking it under her arm, wiped its nose vigorously with her sleeve. Margaret instinctively winced and looked around for somewhere clean to sit down.
The little speech she had been going to make about the need for the family to find somewhere else to live was forgotten. Instead she said: ‘I have made a careful inventory of all the work that needs to be done here, Mr Crook, and I will see that it is done, and soon. When the farm has been properly restored I shall not raise the rent for the time being but will give you the chance to improve your produce. It may be that I will lend you the money for new equipment, because new methods of farming are being invented all the time. In Holland we have some excellent farms,’ she said with pride, ‘and employ the most advanced methods. But I am told that your milk is sometimes sour on delivery, the eggs bad; I could count the ribs in some of those poor beasts in the field.’ She put her pencil under her chin and appeared to consider the matter with great care. ‘I will give you two years to put things right; then we shall review the situation. Now.’ A flea-ridden cat made a leap for her lap – maybe sensing a chance to escape with so bountiful a patron – but brushing it aside she got quickly to her feet and prepared to take her leave. ‘The problem is where will you live while the repairs on your house are being carried out?’
‘Can’t we stay here, my lady?’ Martin Crook tugged at his ear. ‘There baint nowhere else we can go.’
‘I saw a house along the valley.’ Margaret pointed in a westerly direction. ‘That belongs to the estate, does it not?’
‘It does, my lady,’ Mrs Crook said. ‘My husband’s mother lived there until her death last year.’
‘Well, that would seem ideal ...’
‘’Tis let, my lady,’ the farmer said. ‘And the new tenant is just about to take up residence.’
‘And who may that be?’ Margaret looked puzzled. This piece of information had escaped her careful investigations.
‘’Tis a man called Ryder Yetman, my lady. He belongs to the Yetman family in the town, but he don’t seem to have much to do with them.’
‘And what does he do?’
‘He was a soldier, my lady, but he’m a thatcher now. His family is in the building trade, but grown so rich now that they don’t soil their hands with that sort of work no longer.’
‘Of course, Yetman,’ Margaret murmured. ‘They worked on Pelham’s Oak, did they not? And Ryder Yetman was in charge. He did very well. Maybe we can persuade him to work on the farmhouse. I shall go and see him straight away.’
‘Thank you, my lady.’
With much deference to her superior social status the farmer and his wife saw her to the door, to which her coachman drew as close as he could to prevent her dirtying her dainty shoes in the mud.
Seeing her sister-in-law’s carriage outside the farm, Eliza had chosen another route and circled the fields, sticking close to the river until she came to the cottage on the far side of the stream.
Her mother was in Bournemouth for the day visiting her brother Prosper – no doubt to discuss her – and Guy had gone up to London by train. Not infrequently he spent a night or two in town before he returned.
The shirt and breeches she had worn had been spirited away, and she dared not disobey her mother now that all the family were united against her. They had tried to break her spirit, as yet without success, but she was sufficiently afraid to give in to small things. She didn’t know whether she was strong enough to resist them completely.
She wore a simple riding habit with a long skirt, and high boots underneath. Because it was so hot she had removed her jacket and, instead of the normal shirt wore a chiffon blouse with billowing sleeves.
When they came to the stream she let Lady drink awhile, all the time gazing at the cottage on the far side of the field, now dressed with a bright, shiny golden thatch. The walls gleamed with new white paint and the door and the woodwork were black. Nestling in the valley, it looked like a cottage from a fairy tale and, spurred on by curiosity, Eliza crossed the stream after Lady had drunk her fill and trotted slowly across the field until she came to the path that led from the farm.
The house appeared to be deserted. The door was shut and she could see no movement inside. She felt a s
trange sense of disappointment, almost loss, and was about to turn and go back when she heard a sound from behind the cottage, the sound of a shovel entering the earth.
She slid gracefully to the ground and tethered her horse to the gatepost. Then she walked cautiously round the side of the house and stood for a moment, unobserved. Half way down the garden, Ryder, stripped to the waist, was digging the soil over, turning the sods then plunging his spade deep into the ground again.
She was a little embarrassed by the sight of a half-naked man and was about to retrace her steps, when, just then he looked up. Quickly he threw his spade on the ground and reached for his shirt. Shrugging it over his head and then tucking it into his breeches, he came towards her, his expression if anything as embarrassed as hers.
‘Miss Woodville!’ he cried. ‘Please forgive the state you saw me in.’
‘That’s perfectly all right, Mr Yetman.’ Eliza remained cool and composed. ‘I happened to be passing ...’
‘Come in, Miss Woodville, please.’ Ryder threw open the back door. ‘And please also overlook the fact that I’m not prepared to receive visitors.’
‘The cottage looks beautiful now,’ Eliza said with enthusiasm, stepping into the cool kitchen. ‘I couldn’t help but admire it.’
‘I haven’t seen you for a long while, Miss Woodville,’ Ryder said. ‘I thought maybe you’d gone away.’
‘No, but I’m going away soon.’ She looked round the pretty kitchen with its fresh green check curtains, a bowl of flowers on the scrubbed deal table.
‘I thought maybe you wus married,’ Ryder ventured.
‘No.’ She paused.
‘Please come this way, Miss.’ He pointed to the main room. ‘Can’t have you standing in the kitchen.’
Eliza followed him into the sitting room, where pretty chintz curtains billowed in the breeze coming through the window. There were rugs on the stone floor, and two comfortable chairs on either side of the inglenook, which bore traces of a recent fire. Against the back wall was a low sofa covered in the same material as the chairs.
The People of This Parish (Part One of The People of this Parish Saga) Page 9