Lally lay almost as he had left her: clothes tossed on the floor, the bed crumpled from their lovemaking, her golden hair spread across her pillow, fast asleep.
It was a tiny room that, in other days, had been a servant’s attic before the area began to decline as the better off moved further west. Apart from the rickety iron bedstead there was a washstand with a jug and basin on top and a wardrobe leaning on three legs, its door half open to disclose an unsightly mess inside. The floor was bare except for a rag rug, the curtains were too short for the window and failed to meet in the centre, and there was a great damp patch in the corner of the wall from which a loose piece of faded wallpaper was dejectedly making its way down to the floor.
But none of this mattered to the impetuous lover who, blind to anything but his mistress, tiptoed over to the bed and crouched beside her, gently blowing at her face until she opened her eyes. Then he wafted in front of her a bunch of violets he had bought from a flower seller at the corner of the street as the cab turned into Drury Lane.
‘Oooo ...’ Lally began, stretching out her hand, but he immediately stopped her mouth with a kiss.
That day there was no lunch because there was no matinée. Guy sent the old hag who ran the house out for sandwiches from a nearby public house and a bottle of champagne.
They made love and they ate, made love again then slept in each other’s arms. At five he looked at his watch, lay on his back and sighed. Lally ran a hand lightly over his face.
‘What is it, my love?’ she asked, her deep blue eyes shining trustfully.
She had a very soft low voice, an educated voice. She protested that she was a girl of good class who had run away from home because she wanted to be an actress. Guy wanted to believe her, but it was difficult. It was true that she had an air of breeding, but he felt that it could have been acquired, like her cultured voice. He had an idea that she came from the East End and a past she was anxious to obliterate. But he didn’t mind. That Lally should remain in some ways mysterious was part of her charm, the essence of desirability.
Guy took her hand and caressing it, brought it to his lips.
‘I have got to go down to Dorset to look after my estate. We shan’t be able to meet so often.’
‘Oh, Guy.’ She gave a deep sigh and leaned her cheek against his. ‘For how long?’
‘For a month, my darling. I shall try and come up to town once in a while. With my wife in the country it may be possible to meet at our house. But my love –’ he kissed her hand and looked seriously into those deep, deep blue eyes ‘– we must get you away from this hole. I want you, while I’m gone, to look for a place, maybe a little house in St John’s Wood.’
‘But I could never afford such a thing, Guy,’ she protested.
‘No, but I can. You find somewhere nice for us, my darling. It will be our little love nest, and I will visit you there often.’
‘But a month, Guy. I don’t think you can love me very much if you can stay away a month.’
‘My darling, I adore you, you know that,’ he protested. ‘But since my wedding I have only been in Dorset a few days, and there is a lot to do.’
‘If only we’d met before.’ Lally sighed deeply, locking her arms round him. ‘I might have been Lady Woodville. What a cruel, cruel thing fate as.’
Knowing better, Guy remained silent. If there had been no Margaret, there could have been no love nest for Lally. At five o’clock he took her out to dinner, and afterwards walked with her across Leicester Square to the stage door.
He then hailed a hansom cab which took him to Chesterfield Street. Margaret was waiting for him with a meal carefully chosen, beautifully cooked and exquisitely presented.
As he sat down opposite her, flicked his napkin across his lap and blew her a kiss, Guy thought he was a very lucky man indeed to have two women who adored him.
‘How was work today, dear?’ she asked, nodding to the butler to begin serving the meal.
‘As always.’ Guy stifled a yawn. Lally was an energetic mistress and their love-making, though delightful, made him tired. He would prefer to have gone to the club for a few hands of bridge and then an early night, but he and Margaret had an engagement with Aunt Gwendoline, whose feathers were still ruffled after the scandal caused by Eliza’s rejection of Lord Thornwell.
While dinner was being served with slow solemnity, Margaret said nothing, but as soon as the staff had left the dining room, she leaned across the table and said in an urgent whisper: ‘It is most important that you make a success of the business, Guy.’
‘Why is it?’ he demanded petulantly, taking up his spoon to eat his soup.
‘Father has indicated to me, without laying any blame, dearest, on you or anyone,’ she added breathlessly, ‘that the well of money is not limitless. He talks of it drying up ...’
‘Now listen, Margaret, I will not be blackmailed.’ Guy scowled. ‘I made that very clear at the start.’
‘Of course, dear.’ Margaret bent her head submissively to her plate.
‘I’m a man of quality. I am not used to work and, frankly, I don’t like it. However, I have agreed to put some hand to the business, because I realise that these days having money is not enough. It must be made to work. The good old times when a gentleman was simply intended to be a gentleman have gone. But don’t expect too much of me, Margaret.’
His wife did not look at him, but inwardly she sighed. Maybe a little of that ephemeral gold dust of first love was beginning to fall away from her eyes ...
John and Catherine Yetman sat at the dining table, heads bowed in an attitude of prayer. But really it was because they could think of nothing to say. Agnes fidgeted with her knife and fork, but she had guessed the news already. The only one who appeared unperturbed was Christopher Yetman, who went on making a hearty meal.
‘You are no longer to be wed?’ John asked at last, raising his head. ‘Is that what you are saying? She has thrown you over?’
‘She loves someone else, Father.’
‘But she promised; a betrothal is a sacred, solemn undertaking.’ John’s voice rose with indignation as he proceeded.
‘Well, Father, not from the point of view of the church. In law maybe, but I shall not sue Miss Brough for breach of promise. I would not wish to marry someone who loved another.’
‘I think she was a hussy,’ Catherine said vehemently, ‘shameless and brazen. Engaged to one man, making eyes at another.’
‘Oh no, Mother, I don’t think she was. This fellow is a teacher at her school, a scholar, a gentleman. She considers they have more in common than she and I would ever have. I dare say she’s right.’
‘I must say, you don’t seem very crushed.’ Christopher Yetman gave his nephew a knowing smile. ‘Maybe it was not a very hard sacrifice to allow Miss Brough her freedom?’
‘There were differences,’ Ryder acknowledged. ‘She did not want to live where I did, nor, I think, as I did.’
‘For that I can’t blame her,’ his father said bitterly. ‘I told you you should give up all idea of living in that cottage once you were married. I was prepared to assist you financially to find something more suitable. Really, Ryder,’ woefully his father shook his head, ‘this will look very bad in the town. To be thrown over by Miss Brough! Not good enough for the miller’s daughter.’
Ryder seemed only too willing to concur.
‘Indeed. I felt therefore that I should go away for a time, Father. Besides, I am restless. I thought I was to be settled. Now I am not. In this mood I am no good to you or myself.’
‘But where will you go?’ His mother’s voice was quiet, anxious. ‘Not abroad again, I hope?’
‘I don’t know, Mother.’ Ryder pushed his plate away and folded his arms, his brow furrowed in thought. ‘Sometimes I don’t feel I belong in Wenham. I am like a stranger here. I hoped with Maude, a local girl, I could settle down, but it was not to be ...’
‘I can understand that, dear,’ his mother said, but his father gestu
red impatiently. He pushed away his half-empty plate, rose from the table and threw his napkin on it, like someone throwing down the gauntlet.
‘Run away, will you? I’m ashamed of you, my son. It makes the deed of being jilted by Miss Brough all the worse.’
‘I don’t look at it in that light, Father.’
‘Then if you don’t, everyone else will.’ His father’s tone was harsh. ‘They will think you have been driven out of town by a petticoat. Besides –’ his father sat down again and reached for the water jug ‘– did you ever think that you are leaving me alone again? I am to work on the business by myself?’
‘There’s Herbert, Father, and Perce ...’ Perce was the head builder.
‘Two men who do not take the place of my son.’ His father thumped the table. ‘I need you, Ryder. You are good at what you do. I’ll make you a full partner. I’ll buy you a house in Blandford where you will be away from all the gossip. I’ll ...’
‘I am going, Father,’ Ryder said quietly. ‘I have made up my mind.’
‘Oh, my ungrateful sons!’ John Yetman raised his fist to the ceiling as if calling on God to strike them down. ‘What did I do to deserve such sons, none of whom will be here to help me in my old age ...’
‘You are exaggerating, John,’ Christopher, who had been listening to the proceedings with interest, interrupted calmly. ‘You told me only the other day how proud you were of your sons. You said Hesketh and Robert had done well, that Ryder was a “real man”, one after your own heart – and now you ask what you have done to deserve them. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘What my husband means,’ Catherine came rapidly to her husband’s aid ‘– is that now he is alone in running the business. He is not getting any younger. A man with three fine sons would have hoped that at least one of them would have been prepared to carry on the family firm started by their grandfather. We are proud of Robert and Hesketh; they are professional men, the first we have had in this family. As for you, Christopher,’ she curled her lip contemptuously, ‘the sooner you stop hanging round poor Victoria Fairchild and filling her head with all sorts of ideas ...’
Christopher leaned back in his chair, a satisfied smile on his face.
‘My dear Catherine ... I am not giving Miss Fairchild ideas. If she entertains false hopes that’s her fault. I’ve said nothing.’
‘I hear that you are in that shop every day ...’
‘If you will listen to gossip, my dear ...’
‘In fact it is true, isn’t it?’ she challenged him. ‘What else do you do with your time?’
‘True only in the sense that I am interested in investing in the business ...’
‘With what, may I ask?’ John burst out contemptuously. ‘What will you use for money?’
‘Ah, that’s where I was hoping you could help me, Brother. If I were to buy ...’
‘You know absolutely nothing about haberdashery.’ Catherine angrily seized the bell and shook it to summon the maid. ‘I never heard such nonsense ...’
‘You know nothing about anything,’ John said. ‘Everything you have touched has been a disaster.’ Then, as the maid entered and started clearing the dishes before serving the sweet, they stopped their discussion and began to talk instead of general matters, prospects for the harvest and so on.
But later, in the drawing room, they continued the conversation. The oil lamps were lit, and the windows shut and curtains drawn against the insects which, with the advent of summer, came up from the river. Catherine sat upright in a chair sewing; the men sprawled with glasses of brandy or port in their hands. Agnes had gone to her room to read.
Despite the discord Ryder thought that it was a domestic scene that he would miss when he went away; the closeness and devotion of home, no matter what his father said, the comfort of family ties.
But go he must. Not on account of his broken engagement; that he didn’t mind at all. But now that he was free, the person he had to get away from was Eliza, before he enmeshed them both in what could only be a hopeless passion. That was the test of his love.
‘To return to the theme at dinner.’ John still sounded angry, but he was by now a little more mellow thanks to the brandy he had drunk. ‘Miss Fairchild is of the opinion that you are interested in her, and not her money or her business. She has said as much to her friend Miss Bishop, the schoolmistress, who came to see Catherine the other day.’
‘Oh did she?’ Christopher cast a jaundiced glance at his sister-in-law, who kept her eyes on her work. ‘And no one told me.’
‘It was not your business.’
‘But it is my business.’ Christopher got up to help himself to another glass of port. ‘That is the thing I hate about a small town. You can’t put one foot in front of the other without everyone knowing what you’re up to.’
‘When the penniless younger brother of one of its leading inhabitants starts making overtures to a middle-aged spinster of means, it is not a trivial matter,’ Catherine replied in a low, calm voice, determined not to lose her temper. ‘This is a very close-knit community. You are an outsider, Christopher ...’
‘Me an outsider!’ Christopher exclaimed. ‘But I was born here. In this very house. If anyone is an outsider, Catherine, it is you.’
Catherine was a girl from Wimborne, twenty miles away, when she married John Yetman.
‘If you marry into a family you become part of the community,’ John retorted. ‘Catherine has lived here for over thirty years. She knows every single person in Wenham and they know her. We care for Victoria Fairchild because she’s a woman with a disadvantage, despite her comparative good fortune, and we don’t want unscrupulous people taking advantage of her.’
‘Oh, that’s how you see me, is it?’ Christopher seemed saddened rather than annoyed by his brother’s attitude. ‘Unscrupulous.’
‘You have never given us the opportunity to think anything else, Christopher.’ As though sensing his sadness, Catherine kept her tone of voice reproachful rather than angry. ‘You never come here unless you are out of money, and now you have been with us for over five weeks, eating our food, using our linen and, apparently, taking advantage of Victoria Fairchild.’
‘Supposing I loved her?’ Christopher asked. In the profound silence that followed, he casually produced a cigar from his inside pocket and began the elaborate process of lighting it. As no one seemed able to find words, once he had got it drawing he went on: ‘Victoria Fairchild is a very comely woman. She has a minor disfigurement, which I don’t find all that displeasing. She is forty-five, my age. We have known each other since we were children. It is true that she has a fortune and I have not. But I would not be the first man to marry to his advantage – nor, I suspect, the last. You should be happy on my behalf and keep your judgement for others.’
‘Then you are really serious?’ John could not hide his amazement. ‘What Miss Bishop said was true?’
‘Five weeks is only five weeks.’ Christopher contrived to look mysterious. ‘We shall see what we shall see.’
Because it was ready for habitation, and the atmosphere at home –what with his own and his Uncle Christopher’s revelations – was tense, Ryder decided a few days later that he would take up residence in the cottage he had prepared for his bride. He would stay there at least until he had completed his plans to leave the district; at the moment he did not know where he would go. If Eliza left for Holland before him, it might not even be necessary.
The truth was, of course, that he did not really want to leave or to lose the chance of those meetings with Eliza, whose casualness did not deceive him. He hoped that maybe she would make at least one last visit before he packed his bags for a journey he did not want to make. The trouble was that, like his uncle, he had no money and he was too proud to ask his father for any. Besides, he didn’t feel he deserved it. He had not worked for it, and he had let his father down.
Ryder was a complicated man. At the age of twenty-eight, he was not satisfied with life, nor particula
rly proud of the part he had so far played in it. He knew that the family sometimes compared him to his uncle, but he would never marry a woman for her money as his uncle seemed prepared to do.
Even if Eliza would have him, he was in no position to marry or support her. In a few years that might change. She was only eighteen. Who knew what the future, and a change of fortune, would bring?
Ryder put a bed and some rudimentary furniture in his cottage, driving it over himself in his pony and cart. He knew he would not be there long, but it was a quiet place in which to make plans.
He was sitting one evening at his back door smoking a peaceful pipe and watching the last rays of the sun disappear below the distant hills, when he heard the sound of a horse approaching which then came to a stop directly behind him.
He knocked out his pipe and went round the side of the cottage to see who the visitor might be.
‘My goodness, Miss Woodville. You startled me,’ he exclaimed.
‘Did I, Mr Yetman?’ Eliza seemed intent on making sure that Lady’s bridle was secure on the hitching post before she turned to him. ‘I’m sorry about that.’
‘’Tis very late, Miss.’ Ryder looked at the sky and scratched his head doubtfully. ‘After the reaction of your sister-an-law that day I didn’t think you would want to come this way again.’
‘I’ve come to say goodbye,’ Eliza said, walking towards him. ‘I’m to be sent to Holland next week.’
Ryder stepped back and Lady whinnied, as though she had understood the importance of what was being said.
‘I’m very sorry to hear that, Miss Woodville. I’ll miss you.’
‘I’ll miss you too – Ryder. That’s why I came.’
Ryder looked hesitantly towards the door.
‘I don’t think I should ask you in, Miss. I don’t think your sister-in-law would like it, nor your mother if it came to their ears. Don’t forget that I’m your brother’s tenant. He could have me out of here just like that.’ Ryder snapped his fingers above his head.
‘You’re not a poor man, Ryder,’ Eliza said. ‘Your family is wealthy. I wonder that your fiancée is prepared to live in a cottage as small and humble as this. Did you not tell me that she would rather you lived elsewhere?’
The People of This Parish (Part One of The People of this Parish Saga) Page 12