‘Jealous?’
‘Well, something’s the matter. Victoria ...’ Christopher looked round. ‘How would it be ...’
‘Yes, Christopher?’ Her voice trembled slightly as, very carefully, she put the pot down upon the stand.
‘Well, did you ever think ... This is a nice house. But I don’t want you to imagine for a moment that it’s just for that. It’s you. I miss you ...’
‘Christopher, are you saying ...’
Abruptly he held up a hand.
‘I’m saying nothing yet, Victoria. But I think we have an understanding.’
‘Oh, indeed we have,’ she breathed.
‘But first I want to raise the money as I said I would. It has taken a long time –’ he sighed loudly ‘– but these things do. I want it to be a proper partnership, because I don’t want people to think I asked you to marry me merely for gain.’
During the Great Plague of London, those who were able to flee to the outskirts of the city or the country did so to try and escape the hideous, contagious disease. In the centuries that had passed since then, London itself had spilled out into those parts which were once green meadows or ploughed fields. Some northern areas retained their countrified aspects – ponds, fields and woodland – and by 1881 Hampstead was a fashionable and desirable area in which to live because of its proximity to the open heathland which enclosed its pretty streets and winding lanes.
Every day nursemaids could be seen pushing perambulators containing the offspring of the nobility, the gentry or the well-to-do. Those of their charges who could walk or toddle ran along by their sides playing with their balls, their skipping ropes or hoops, sometimes accompanied by barking dogs, the family pets let off their leash for a good long run.
In summer the fair came to the Heath, and then the children were carefully watched because of the gypsies and the rough crowd from the London slums whom the fair attracted. But for most of the year the Heath was for those who liked fresh air and the out-of-doors and, although it was so vast that it could never be called crowded, on Sundays and holidays the numbers who appreciated its facilities swelled as the populace of overcrowded London came by public transport to take advantage of the clean, country air.
Not far from the High Street was a cluster of dwellings on the Heath itself known as the Vale of Health. There, so it was said, the fugitives of plague-ridden London had sought refuge for their animals and themselves and gathered in great numbers.
In one of these small houses, tucked away behind a walled garden, a young couple looked around with a view to purchase. It had taken them some time to find it, but now they knew it was exactly what they wanted, and they threw their arms around each other in delight at such a find.
The solicitor who acted for the vendor accompanied them on their expedition and was as pleased as they were that it filled the bill. It was small, but not too small.
‘You see, I have a place in Dorset,’ Sir Guy said, twirling his cane. ‘This is perfectly adequate for Lady Woodville and myself when we visit London. My wife’s chest is weak,’ he said, looking anxiously at his partner. ‘I want her to have the best air in London.’
‘You could have nothing finer than this, Sir Guy,’ the solicitor assured him. ‘Why else is it known as the Vale of Health?’
It was true that Lally’s constitution was not strong. She tired easily, and the long hours at the theatre sometimes left her prostrate. That, and walking up and down the three steep flights of stairs in Covent Garden, had made Guy determined to get her away as soon as he could.
The little house he bought for her in the Vale of Health was ideal, and he lost no time in completing the purchase, after which they spent many happy days together looking for suitable furnishings for their love nest.
By the beginning of summer Lally was able to move in.
‘You have made me the happiest woman in the world, dearest Guy,’ she said as they stood together at the window looking at the pretty little garden, with a fountain playing, all enclosed by a high wall.
‘And you have made me the happiest man.’ Guy bent to kiss her and, twining his arms round her, said: ‘Lally, I want you to leave the theatre. I want you to stay here and wait for me. The theatre’s not good for your health. Besides, I don’t like you dancing. I don’t like the way the men ogle you. I want no one to desire you but me.’
‘But Guy, dearest, I shall be very lonely here,’ Lally said doubtfully. It was true that she would miss her friends and the life of the theatre. She would also miss the suppers that she got from her many admirers when Guy was away. For Guy was not the only man in her life, though he was the most persistent. In many ways she did love him, but perhaps not quite as much as she said she did.
Lally was in the habit of lying to all and sundry about her past. In fact she had known neither mother nor father, but had been brought up in a foundlings’ home from which she had made her escape at the age of fourteen. She was gifted with outstanding good looks and a quick, agile mind, and she put both to good use.
But Lally was not accustomed to a stationary life or to fidelity. The last thing she wanted was to be stuck in a small house on the outskirts of London pretending to be someone she was not. Who of her friends would be able to visit her in a place so inaccessible? Maybe a few of her wealthy men friends who could afford a hansom or who had carriages of their own; but she would not dare risk that because of Guy. If he found out, she thought, he might kill her.
‘Let me continue in the theatre just a little longer, dearest,’ she pleaded standing on tip toes to kiss him. ‘Then in the winter when the fog starts I will do as you wish and remain in my little nest.’
‘Oh, Lally,’ Guy sighed, ‘how can I refuse you anything? I love you so much.’
Lally kissed him with all the fervour of which her faithless little heart was capable, and as she broke away from him she asked: ‘Won’t your wife wonder why you spend so much time in London away from her?’
‘She thinks I’m busy in the family business,’ Guy replied with a chuckle. ‘Little does she know I have not stepped inside the premises for weeks. I have no head for business and I do not like it – I was not brought up to work.’
Lally was alarmed. Stupid she was not; she was a sharp, intelligent Cockney girl who had lived by her wits for most of her nineteen years.
‘But don’t you work with your uncles, and her father? Don’t they miss you?’
A shadow passed over Guy’s face. Despite the warnings of his Uncle Prosper, in his ardour he seldom thought through the consequences of his actions. In fact it never occurred to him to tell his uncles, or his father-in-law, where he was and what he was doing. He was master of his wife’s fortune, and he knew she adored him. He did his best to make her happy when he was with her. He was a man who found it very easy to serve two mistresses.
‘The very last thing my wife would do would be to question my behaviour or my whereabouts. Besides, she is very happy in Dorset, where she rules the roost. Now that we have a son, her happiness is complete.’ He looked around him with an air of satisfaction. ‘She has done her duty and I have done mine.’
Guy encircled his beloved’s tiny waist with his arm and drew her even closer to him. He never thought that his words might hurt Lally, who, though she knew her station in life, continued to hope that, one day, it might change.
‘Might she not find out about this purchase, Guy?’ she enquired anxiously. ‘After all, six hundred and fifty pounds is a lot of money.’
‘Not to Margaret,’ Guy said confidently. ‘She brought an enormous dowry. Thanks to her I am now a very wealthy man, and you will never want for anything, my little love. It would never ever occur to Margaret to question anything I did. Now, my darling,’ he said, bringing her hand to his lips and looking meaningfully into her eyes, ‘we have perhaps time for a little rest before I have to go.’
Ryder looked round the office in Salisbury Street, at the portrait of his grandfather in a place of honour on the wall, at the
shelves piled high with papers, documents, plans and ledgers and, finally, at the desk opposite his father’s with its back to the window. John stood watching him anxiously, his hat still in his hand, as though he expected his son to take off again at any moment. Ryder felt a constriction in his throat as a wave of intense emotion swept over him, and he saw, from the expression on his father’s face, that he knew quite well what was going through his mind.
‘A full partner, Ryder,’ John said, placing his hand squarely on his son’s arm. ‘My successor, my right-hand man.’
‘I don’t deserve it, Father,’ Ryder said, bowing his head. ‘After what I did, I don’t deserve it.’
They had been to his mother’s grave to lay flowers, and there he had knelt for several minutes mentally begging her forgiveness. This poignant moment was still fresh in his mind.
‘I deserted you. I was not there when you needed me. I didn’t even know my mother was dying. You are too good to me, Father ...’
‘You have been through a lot, my boy,’ John said finally flinging his hat on the hatstand and sitting down behind his own desk. ‘You have been punished for what you did; but God has been good to you. He has given you a lovely, loyal wife. That you have earned the respect of a woman such as Eliza raises you in my estimation. I am prepared to believe that, rightly or wrongly, you were in the grip of a powerful emotion you could neither understand nor resist. I also know now that, despite loving another, you were prepared to honour your word to Maude. That alone was the action of a good man.’ John Yetman put his head in his hands and sighed. ‘I realise how difficult it was for you to tell us, your mother and me, about Eliza. I wish you could have written to us to let us know all was well.
‘But I realise why you didn’t.’ He took a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose vigorously. ‘Your mother loved you and trusted you to the end; but to have known where you were and what was happening to you, while it would not have prevented her death, would have eased her mental suffering.’
As Ryder raised his head his father saw the agony etched on his face.
‘Put it out of your mind now, Ryder. She is in heaven and her sufferings are over. I believe that, even if she cannot see us, she will know that all is well. Indeed, she may have sent you to me in this hour when I needed you – and I do need you, Ryder ...’ John indicated the papers which lay in disorderly piles all over the room. ‘Since Herbert left me I have scarcely been able to cope. My business is going to ruin; that business started by my father, continued by me, and to be passed on to you and, I hope, to your son. You are an essential link in this chain, and I’m sure your dear mother had some hand in your return. Today, kneeling at her grave, I thanked her for it.’
‘Then, Father, as you say, to work,’ Ryder said, sitting briskly at his desk and passing his hands over the smooth shiny surface. ‘Tell me everything you have in hand, what you plan, and what you wish me to do. I will carry out every request to the letter, to the best of my ability.’
‘Well done,’ John said warmly, bending over the plans which lay on his desk. ‘Pull up your chair and I will show you this new development we plan in Dorchester, or rather planned. We were just about to go ahead with it when Herbert left, and since then it has been in abeyance. Now I feel vigorous and confident enough with you beside me to continue it.’
Willingly Ryder rose to his feet and, with a pencil in his hand, sat beside his father while they talked, studying the draughtsman’s plans and making notes.
At lunch time the two men went down to the Crown Hotel near the bottom of Salisbury Street for lunch. The bar was full of farmers, traders and local businessmen, some of whom greeted Ryder with varying degrees of cordiality, while others seemed deliberately to turn their backs on him.
Ryder had known it would be like this. The people of Blandford would be no different from those of Wenham, and this ambivalence would continue for some time.
‘If only Eliza’s mother would give us permission to marry,’ he murmured to his father as he passed him the glass of beer he had bought for him at the bar, ‘the dirty looks would soon stop. People would soon forget.’
‘Lady Woodville has a nasty streak,’ John nodded as his lips touched the foaming froth of his beer. ‘They say the son would be prepared to forgive his sister, but she will not. Maybe you should go and see Sir Guy. He is a reasonable sort of man.’
‘I think Eliza has a mind to deal with her brother.’ Ryder drained his glass. ‘She must persuade him that the deed is done, and the sooner we are married properly in church the better, although we ourselves believe that in the sight of God we are man and wife. Now, Father shall we go in to lunch?’ Ryder looked at his watch. ‘I am anxious to go over to Dorchester and inspect that site.’
They were about to proceed into the dining room, which was already nearly full, when John felt a tug on his sleeve. He called to Ryder, who had gone on ahead, and they both turned to look at a man neatly but nondescriptly dressed, with cold eyes peering through steel-framed spectacles, mutton-chop whiskers, and a bowler hat in his hand.
‘Mr Yetman?’ he enquired.
‘Mr John Yetman,’ John replied.
‘Ah!’ The man looked from John to Ryder. ‘And would that be Mr Christopher Yetman?’
‘That is my son Ryder. Christopher is my brother. Have you business with us, sir?’
‘I wonder if I may have a few words in private, Mr Yetman?’ the man murmured, glancing furtively around. ‘What I have to say is of a confidential nature.’
‘You can say anything you like in front of my son,’ John said gruffly. ‘Get on with it, man, we are anxious to eat.’
‘It will take a little time, Mr Yetman,’ the stranger continued. ‘Do you think I could call and see you in your office?’ He looked at the heavy watch which hung from a gold chain across a grimy waistcoat that had seen better days. ‘Say two o’clock? I am anxious to return to London.’
‘You have come from London? Well then, you’d better sit down with us’ – John hospitably indicated the dining room – ‘and have something to eat.’
‘I have had a bite already, sir. I went to your office and was told you had left and where to find you. I shan’t detain you, sir; but what I have to say is a matter of some importance.’
‘Come, then.’ John beckoned to the waiter and asked for a table for three. He offered the stranger a drink, but the man would take nothing.
‘Hollis, sir,’ he said, extending a hand across the table. ‘Michael Hollis of 201 Southampton Row, London.’
‘And what is your business, Mr Hollis?’ John shook out his table napkin and tucked it into the top of his waistcoat. ‘Are you in the building trade?’
‘Oh no, sir.’ Mr Hollis seemed to find this amusing. ‘I am by profession an enquiry agent.’
He stopped talking while John and Ryder, having studied the menu, ordered their lunch: beefsteak pie with vegetables and a pint of bitter each.
Mr Hollis watched them with a hungry look in his eyes, and Ryder formed the opinion that he had not, in fact, eaten, and that as soon as his business was completed he would make for one of the meaner hostelries in the town. He didn’t seem nervous, but there was something shifty and vaguely disreputable about him that made Ryder uneasy. For some reason he thought of Farmer Frith.
‘You seem to imply that your business concerns my uncle, Christopher Yetman.’ Ryder looked at him intently.
‘Yes,’ Mr Hollis murmured. ‘Would you happen to know where I might find him?’
‘And why would you want to find him?’ John took up the questioning.
‘Well, he is wanted on a bigamy charge, sir. It would appear that Mr Yetman has a wife in Brighton, and another in south London. It would also appear that he may be in search of a third, as he has disappeared, having divested both ladies of all their money and left them in great distress. When Mr Yetman is apprehended he will face very severe charges – if proved, of course.’ He paused and gazed at them calmly as John and Ryder stared
at him open-mouthed from across the table. ‘I see I’ve shocked you and your son, Mr Yetman ...’
‘A bigamist!’ John took out his handkerchief and mopped his brow. ‘I know nothing of my brother’s activities. He comes and goes.’ John glanced quickly at Ryder.
‘I take it Mr Yetman has been as unsatisfactory as a brother as he was a husband.’ Mr Hollis’s sympathy was veiled. ‘I realised immediately that this had nothing to do with you; but if you could kindly let me know where your brother is. Considerable sums of money are involved. Some, I understand, that he has purloined ostensibly for the support of his family ...’
The focal point of the town of Wenham was the High Street. Here news and gossip of all kinds was exchanged, whether it was of a serious nature or something of the utmost triviality. In the centre of the High Street was the Baker’s Arms, which was run by a family with an Irish name, McQueen, though all their progeny had been born and bred in Dorset.
The bar at the Baker’s Arms was perhaps the most important place in Wenham for the exchange of information, as well as misinformation, about its inhabitants. Many of these were unable to defend themselves, for no respectable woman would be seen in the bar, which was presided over by an attractive woman called Annie who, although married, was always known by the name of her parents: McQueen.
Annie McQueen knew Christopher Yetman very well. He spent a lot of his time in the bar of the Baker’s Arms and, as Annie was kind and sympathetic, he frequently confided in her.
Despite his mysterious past, the uncertainty as to his exact occupation or means, Christopher, with his fair, slightly greying hair, his rugged, weather-beaten good looks, his hearty laugh, his formidable six-foot frame, was an engaging character. He had made several passes at Annie, but she had quite rightly deflected them on the grounds that she was a married woman with two children and her husband was a drover with a wicked temper.
The People of This Parish (Part One of The People of this Parish Saga) Page 20