‘You have him now, Miss.’ Abby held the baby closely to her as though to reassure him that at least one person loved him.
‘Well ...’ Lally tossed back her head and examined her nails. ‘One can always give babies away, can’t one?’
‘Oh, you wouldn’t, Miss?’ Abby felt so angry that she sat down, uninvited, on her mistress’s bed. ‘That would be a cruel thing to do. He’s so beautiful ...’
‘Yes, but I don’t like him much either, and that’s the truth,’ Lally said petulantly. ‘I didn’t want him. I did everything I could to prevent him happening. But Sir Guy is very impetuous. Men never think it’s their responsibility to prevent babies happening. Then they get cross. It is so unfair. Now my career is ruined too. And all for what?’ She threw up her hands in despair. ‘Sir Guy was very angry when I became pregnant, but he stood by me. I know that it is really his wish that I should give the baby away.’
‘I expect it is,’ Abby said shortly. Then she rose, tucking the baby’s shawl round him. ‘I don’t know how you could give your child away, Miss, and as his father is a nobleman I don’t suppose you would send him to a foundlings’ home.’
‘But what shall I do?’ Lally wailed, looking weak and appealing.
‘My sister would look after him. You would have to pay her, of course, but she would love him, and if you ever wanted him back you would know where to find him. When he is grown up and tall and strong and looks like Sir Guy you may regret what you did to him as a baby. On the other hand –’ Abby gave her a withering look ‘– you may not ...’
‘Oh, but Abby, that is an excellent idea,’ Lally said as if an enormous weight had been lifted from her shoulders. ‘Of course I love him a little bit, and I may even grow to love him more. But what you suggest is an excellent plan. Only –’ Lally’s voice took on the wheedling note that Abby knew well ‘– I haven’t a lot of money, you know. How much do you suppose your sister would charge?’
It was true that Margaret Woodville felt, at last, a happy woman. She had two fine children, a boy and a girl, two nice houses; she had got rid of her mother-in-law, who now dwelt in comfort but not luxury,
not as much as she would have liked, on the cliffs overlooking Bournemouth Bay.
The only flaw in Margaret’s life was her husband, Guy: that beautiful young man she had fallen so madly in love with, she had now come to despise. He had not lived up to her expectations. She supposed that it was foolish to have had any, but she had been in love, uncritical, and, despite the evidence, one always hoped that people would change.
Instead of pining, however, instead of wishing things were other than they were – as a Lally or a Henrietta might have done – Margaret busied herself with many interests. She had cultivated a number of acquaintances in the area and had made one or two close friends. There were Lord and Lady Mount, (old friends of the Woodvilles), who lived outside Blandford and had children a little older than hers. There were Mr and Mrs Sudbury, who owned a magnificent, historic home near Milton Abbey, not more than five miles or so from Wenham. They were about the same age as Margaret, but their children were older. The Sudburys were cultivated, wealthy and gregarious. There were Mr and Mrs Abbot of Field House near Wimborne who, some said, were the wealthiest people in the county. Again there was a houseful of delightful children. But probably her favourite people of all were Mr and Mrs Yetman. The Yetmans, of course, were not in the same category as the Mounts, the Abbots and the Sudburys – all county families like the Woodvilles. They were in a special category all of their own. Guy still shunned his sister and her family, but that was of little consequence to Margaret as now, in many ways, they led separate lives, Guy was mainly in London a place Margaret hardly ever visited,
People have short memories, but the community in Wenham was slow to forget what had happened to Eliza in the year 1880. To the end of her life she would carry about her the whiff of scandal, an element of notoriety that some found shocking and others attractive. She was certainly different. She was direct, straightforward, uncomplicated and, like Ryder, she was by now completely indifferent to what people thought of her, or what they said behind her back.
Nine months after their church wedding a son was born, who was given the name Laurence. Then came Dora and Hugh in the next five years. With three young children under five, Eliza had plenty to occupy her, but she was ably assisted by Beth, who had come home to her with Lady as part of Ryder’s wedding present. What a memorable, miraculous day that had been when they all arrived together with the tale of what had happened to Farmer Frith.
Like Guy Woodville, Ryder was often away from home, but for different reasons. He was committed to restoring his father’s business and began to build houses, parish halls, even a church. He built a new factory in Blandford and a school in Yeovil. He took on regular workers and paid them well. He saw that they were well housed and looked after; that their children went to school and had enough to eat. In this he was a singular employer, and his workers loved him.
One day Margaret sat at her desk looking carefully at the statements from the bank, reconciling expenditure with income. She enjoyed accounts and thought it must be because business and banking were in the family. Yet one item, or, rather, a series of small items, puzzled her. Regular small amounts of money were being paid to a bank in Hampstead, London. Twenty pounds a month. Twenty pounds a month?
Her eyes narrowed, and she went along the corridor into Guy’s study, which was on the first floor next to his dressing room. On the way she lingered in the nursery, where George was playing with his baby sister under the watchful eye of the nursemaid, Ruth. Her underling the nursery maid was tidying up, and it was a pleasant, domestic scene which brought a smile of pleasure to Margaret’s face.
After chatting to the nursemaids and patting the children on the head (she was a conventional upper-class mother who saw them at certain times of the day: in the morning, after tea and at bedtime), she went into Guy’s study and began to rummage through his desk. Twenty pounds a month – what could that be for? She looked for a clue and found none. She suspected gambling. The best thing would be to ask him or, better still, write to the bank. Margaret was the sort of direct, undevious woman who would do a thing like that. She would never let a suspicion rest. It might, she thought, be some error and they could be losing money. Twenty pounds a month was, after all, two hundred and forty pounds a year.
She was about to close the drawer of Guy’s large untidy desk, promising herself that one of her tasks during the next few days would be to tidy it for him, when some papers were disturbed by the act of shutting the drawer. She looked closely and saw, lying right at the bottom, a legal document bound with tape and stamped with a seal. Curious, she pulled it towards her and sat down in Guy’s chair to study it.
It was a lease.
On closer perusal she discovered that it had to do with the freehold purchase of a house in the Vale of Health, Hampstead. And it was dated just a year after she and Guy were married.
When Ryder and Eliza had eloped, Euphemia Monk had been thirty-two. She was considered timid and very, very shy, largely because she had lived a sheltered, secluded and, in truth, uneventful and rather lonely life.
Their elopement had seemed to her quite gloriously romantic, though, of course, she had not dared tell a soul. She knew neither of them personally and learned everything by hearsay, but vicariously she had shared the excitement of their exile, the humiliation of their homecoming. To her it was like a novel from the circulating library which nice girls were not supposed to read.
Her house overlooked the church, and as the newly married couple had slipped out of the side entrance, their hands entwined, hers had been one of the faces staring at them from behind the net curtains. But not in disapproval! How she’d envied them: the bride beautiful, the groom tall, strong and handsome, as they followed their path to happiness; the kind of happiness that, up to then, had eluded her. She was afraid it always would.
After her father’s
death she had closed her house and travelled, accompanied by a maid, and sometimes by an aunt, her mother’s sister, who was an accomplished painter and linguist. Then she had died too, after which Euphemia found herself completely alone in the world except for her books, her sizeable fortune, safely invested, and her memories.
Euphemia Monk was not a pretty woman, but she was comely. She liked to dress well and was highly thought of in the town. Gradually her shyness seemed to evaporate, but still she kept herself to herself, a single lady without any vices and few close friends. She had two maids, a cook, and a gardener who doubled up as coachman; but the carriage was scarcely ever used. Occasionally she made forays to Blandford, Wimborne or Dorchester, or as far afield as Bournemouth or Bristol; but most of the time she remained at home, reading, sewing, or working in her garden. She was extremely fond of gardening and knew a lot about plants.
Miss Monk fell into that indefinable class that was not society, not aristocracy, not of yeoman stock, and certainly not working class. On the social scale, had there been one, she would fall somewhere between the Woodvilles and the Yetmans: respectable middle class rather than gentry.
She had last had a real conversation with the Yetmans at Guy Woodville’s wedding, but apart from that it was the occasional encounter at church, the occasional passing the time of day: ‘good morning’, ‘good afternoon’ or ‘good evening’. But one night in the year 1884 there had been a terrible storm in which her chimney fell down, causing damage to her roof. The next morning she sent her maidservant for Mr Yetman and, to her surprise, Mr John Yetman came in person, as his son was busy on other damage that had been caused by the storm. He wore a frock coat, a striped cravat and carried a silver-topped cane. He was, once again, extremely agreeable and paid her compliments, and she offered him coffee. He was also very knowledgeable about the damage to the roof and said he would send his son to estimate for a repair.
Very gradually Euphemia was introduced to the Yetman family and their world. She had found Ryder Yetman just as agreeable, and even more knowledgeable than his father; efficient, too, for the roof had been repaired within a very short time. One day she had seen a striking-looking woman standing outside her garden gate and immediately recognised her as the notorious Eliza Yetman – still spoken of by some in the parish as the woman who had fallen into sin.
Mrs Yetman had been looking, innocently enough, for her husband. One of her children was unwell, the servants were all occupied, and she wanted him to fetch the doctor. Mr Yetman, however, was not there; it was his men who were working on the roof. Miss Monk offered to send her own coachman to summon the doctor, and the beginnings of a friendship with the family were formed there and then.
Eliza, looking from the window of the children’s nursery, observed her father-in-law walking with sprightly step up the drive. He saw her at the window and raised his hat as she waved. On the lawn the nursemaid was playing with his two eldest grandchildren while Hugh, the baby, slumbered in his perambulator. John stopped for a word with his grandchildren; he loved them dearly, and they loved him.
Eliza was doing her morning round of the house, a tour of inspection that took her from the top to the bottom, from the servants’ quarters to the kitchen. In the children’s room she lingered longest because there were tiny things that had escaped the attention of the two nursemaids whom she employed to look after them.
From the window Eliza couldn’t see the big house where she had been born and brought up. Her view now overlooked the Wen, which flowed through the bottom of the garden and, on the far side, the wood where her husband, his brothers and sister had played as children. She was glad that Pelham’s Oak was not a constant visible reminder of her past, because it always brought a pang of regret that, in loving one man, she had lost her family.
She still saw her uncle Prosper; she saw Margaret and the children, but she never saw or heard from Guy and her mother and, because they were her own flesh and blood, she missed them.
From being a headstrong, impulsive, romantic girl, Eliza had turned into a practical, philosophical young woman. Her brief experience of the harshness and unfairness of life had brought her maturity. She had quickly learned how to manage a large house and servants, and how to have accomplishments of her own, though she would never be any use with a needle, she was too impatient. Whenever she could, she liked to accompany Ryder as he travelled round the countryside on various projects; daily she exercised Lady and a pony, Ned, which would be trained for the children.
She stood for a while watching her father-in-law fussing over Laurence and Dora. He seemed curiously elated. Finally he kissed the tops of his grandchildren’s heads and then hurried towards the house, arriving at the porch just as Eliza got there to greet him.
‘My dear,’ he said, kissing her cheek, ‘I have some very happy news for you.’
‘I knew there was something,’ Eliza said, taking his arm and leading him into the drawing room. ‘You fairly skipped up the path ... rather like a man in love,’ she finished with a sparkle in her eye.
‘I am a man in love, my dear,’ he said, sitting next to her on the sofa and placing his hand over hers. ‘I think you know who she is.’
‘Euphemia!’ Eliza burst out, scarcely able to contain her own excitement and pleasure.
‘She has just agreed to be my wife. She has asked me to call her Effie. Oh, Eliza, I can’t tell you how happy I am. There is no man in the world happier than I at this moment.’
The romance had been a subject of family speculation for two years, but it was no rushed affair, as befitted a couple who were not in the first flush of youth. Because of the difference in their ages few people took much notice of their rare promenades about the town, down to the river or to the cattle market to look at the livestock. They dined together quite frequently, but never alone, always with Ryder and Eliza, or one of John’s other children. It was a slow burgeoning, rather than a swift falling in love.
‘Oh, Father, that is wonderful news,’ Eliza said, squeezing his hand. ‘I so hoped it would happen.’
‘I never dared hope she would accept me. I am not well born, and I have retained my country manners as well as my accent. She is a gentlewoman. I am wealthy, but so is she. I am twenty years older than Euphemia, a man set in his ways, with grandchildren. She, bless her, owns that she is set in her ways too; but we think we shall be happier together than apart.’
‘I’m sure you will. I know you will. She is perfect for you. Not too young and not too old. You could have another family, Father.’ She looked at him, her eyes dancing.
‘Effie would like it,’ he said shyly. ‘We have discussed the matter, as befits older people. Oh, Eliza, you have no idea what a truly wonderful woman she is. She has been on her own for a number of years and yet she has conducted herself with such dignity. There has never been a word of scandal about her, or even criticism.’
‘She is much liked in the parish,’ Eliza agreed. ‘When is the wedding to be?’
John Yetman’s face lost its beaming smile for a moment.
‘There is a small point of dispute between my love and me. I said I would never enter St Mark’s again after the way the Rector addressed you on your marriage, and I never have. Effie, on the other hand, is a regular churchgoer, a friend of the Lambs. You know I occasionally attend the Methodist church, though I am not a Wesleyan.’
‘The wedding must be at St Mark’s,’ Eliza said firmly. ‘We shall behave as though nothing had happened to upset us five years ago.’
‘Oh, my dear, I’m so glad. I thought if we were married there you and Ryder might not come. If you agree, there is not a cloud in the sky.’
‘Now go and see your fiancée and say she has our blessing,’ Eliza said, rising. ‘And ask her to dine with us tonight. There is a lot to celebrate.’
‘My dear,’ John said, still hanging on to her hand, ‘there is one thing more. Effie would like me to move into her house. It is quite large enough for two, even three or more if we are b
lessed with a family. She is much attached to the house and would not wish to move. I have no objection, because I would like you and Ryder to have this house as my way of thanking you for the happiness you have brought a lonely man over the past five years. Had it not been for you, my courtship of Effie would not have been so easy. We were able to entertain and be entertained because you were always there, and I want you to know, my dear Eliza, that I love you as my daughter and could never have wished for a better wife for my son.’
‘Thank you, dear Father,’ Eliza replied, giving his hand a last squeeze. ‘Now I must go and find Ryder to give him the good news.’
While John Yetman turned back to tell his fiancée that their engagement had his family’s blessing and to invite her to dinner, Eliza went down to the kitchen to give directions to the cook for the celebration dinner. However, the large, cool room was silent except for a pot bubbling on the stove, as though preparations for lunch were in progress. The door into the yard was open, and Rover, one of the large red setters, lay basking in the sun while, provocatively, a couple of hens clucked inches away from his nose, as though daring him to snap at him. The dog, having chased elusive rabbits all morning, was far too tired and never even opened his eyes.
Suddenly there was a furtive movement by the pantry door and two figures sprang guiltily apart.
‘Beth!’ Eliza exclaimed angrily. ‘What are you up to?’
Another figure, this one male, made as if to beat a hasty retreat through the open door, but Eliza, as agile as he, grasped him by the shirt collar before he had time to reach the door and dragged him back.
‘Oh, Albert Newman, is it? I might have known.’ She gave him a sharp smack across the face, her dark eyes blazing, and the man cringed while, in the background, Beth, her cheeks aflame, screwed her apron up into a tight ball.
‘I have told you, Beth, Albert,’ Eliza went on severely, ‘that I will have no courting here in working hours. Now, off you go, Albert, and if I catch you again I’ll have your father after you ...’
The People of This Parish (Part One of The People of this Parish Saga) Page 25