In the basement, before such things were thought possible even in the homes of the rich, was a magnificent Turkish bath complete with swimming pool, hot and cold cabinets and icy showers from faucets in the walls. The water came from a nearby well which was considered to have special healing properties and to have been venerated for centuries. Dorset was peculiarly rich in wells with alleged magical and curative properties, and Julius was fortunate to have secured one on his land.
The land he had bought had once been part of a farm, and when building on Amsterdam began most of the remnants of the farm had been obliterated. There were, however, one or two remaining edifices that had been stables in the old farm, and it was Eliza, looking over the almost completed property with Julius and Ryder, who suggested it should be turned into a cottage for ground staff maybe with a thatch.
Julius was delighted with the idea. After all, this was Dorset and thatching was part of the county tradition. The architect was asked to design a cottage based on the existing buildings complete with a thatch roof. As a sign of his affection and gratitude to Julius, Ryder undertook the thatching of it himself, and promised to begin work as soon as the exterior of the cottage was finished and the roof beams were ready, felted and battened.
By the year 1895 everything was nearly ready. The decorators and designers, after quarrelling bitterly among themselves, had perfected their marvels on the interior of the house; the curtains were in place, the carpets – some of them priceless –laid, and the furniture, much of it specially commissioned from celebrated Dutch, Belgian or Spanish cabinetmakers such as Van de Velde and Antonio Sandi, was ready to be delivered.
One by one the craftsmen working on Amsterdam Hoos gradually completed their tasks and departed, until just a skeleton staff remained to do odd jobs, make a few repairs and finish the cottage ready to be thatched.
Often, after work, Ryder rode back to Wenham with as many of his men as he could take in the carriage – some standing on the outside steps and hanging on to the sides – and, towards the end of the completion of the job, he became accustomed to taking them into the Baker’s Arms for a pint or two of best Dorset bitter.
The Baker’s Arms was an ancient public house that had stood in the High Street since Wenham was merely a cluster of dwellings round the village pump. It was a low, two-storeyed building that sometimes served as a magistrates’ court, as had happened with Albert Newman.
Ryder was in his element among working men. He always had been. He thought of himself as a craftsman, a man who worked with his hands, and his dress and demeanour showed it. Civilised he was, but no gentleman. His hands were thick and rather coarse, and he had never lost the accent of his boyhood. He had the respect of his employees, but also their affection as one of them. Any job in the building trade they could do, he could do. He could put his hand to anything: plumbing, bricklaying, carpentry, plastering and, above all thatching. In this he was an expert, a master thatcher.
Ryder enjoyed being surrounded by the men, swapping stories, some of them rather coarse, and quaffing beer. Sometimes on Friday nights, when he had taken the men their pay, he treated them to several rounds and some had a bit too much to drink. Then, one after the other, they slowly went home, the less drunk supporting those who had had too much.
Ryder was a slow drinker; he had a good head but knew his limitations and seldom got drunk. On Friday evenings after the men had left, he found himself spending more time chatting to Annie McQueen who usually served them. She was a comely woman of about thirty-five whose husband, the drover, had by now left her with three children to clothe and feed. Her mature charms were coveted by more than one man in Wenham.
She had moved back into the public house with her mother and father, and her contribution to the household was to work every evening in the bar, and sometimes during the day as well.
Annie was buxom, full-breasted, but not fat. She had brown curly hair which cascaded over her shoulders, and she always wore a rather low-cut dress or blouse. There was a directness, a friendliness and a simplicity about Annie that appealed to Ryder. Moreover, in her brown eyes there was a sympathy, a ready understanding, which suggested that, whatever bad experiences others had, she could cap them with worse stories of her own. She was a woman, above all, who had lived.
But Annie was also full of laughter. Those brown eyes that could be so sad could also break into merriment. Annie, one felt, understood everyone and everything. It was no surprise that she was popular among the men, most of whom had wives with none of her winning attributes.
Gradually, over the weeks and months that went into the finishing of the Amsterdam Hoos, Annie became a confidante of Ryder, a true and trusted friend; one, moreover, he felt he would not like Eliza to know about.
Annie’s eyes always lit up when she saw Ryder come into the saloon and move towards the bar. Her manner became more animated, slightly flirtatious, and gradually she moved along until she stood opposite him. As she leaned over, her full breasts seemed to be supported by the top of the bar, and the deep cleavage between them became visible. Ryder knew that, again and again, his eyes strayed towards that provocative sight, and his loins stirred with crude and impulsive longings.
Annie was so voluptuous compared to Eliza who, despite three children, still had the figure of a boy: small-breasted and slim-hipped. Annie was overtly sensuous, whereas Eliza couldn’t be thought of in the same terms. He realised then that life with the same woman could be a little dull, however much one loved her. A mild adventure now and then rejuvenated a man, doing him, surely, little harm?
Ryder knew that, in his mind, the idea of an adventure with Annie was forming. It would be that, and nothing more. For a married man who had been faithful for fifteen years it would be a change, something to remind him of his former virility, the success he had had with all kinds of women in his bachelor days.
Ryder began to be wholly obsessed with Annie, and if she wasn’t there when he entered the bar he would leave quite soon afterwards and not stand drinking. But if she were there he stayed for hours. Some of his men noticed it and it became a joke among them. But hadn’t any number of them also cast lascivious eyes in the direction of the buxom Annie? Perhaps they were merely envious.
Annie knew that Ryder was married, and to whom. She had never been introduced to Eliza. Such a woman, a lady of refinement, would never be seen entering the doors of a public house. But Annie knew who she was. Sometimes when she was sweeping or washing the pavement outside the door of the pub she might see Eliza on the other side of the street greeting an acquaintance as she went about her errands. Annie would lean on her broom handle and gaze surreptitiously at her, because Eliza was the kind of woman that others could not but help admire, perhaps even envy a little.
But Annie knew she would envy her no more once Ryder was her lover.
Annie and Ryder stalked each other for several months like a couple of dogs on heat though, naturally, not so obviously. But the intentions were the same. They would eye each other across the bar, sending silent signals. Then the other men would slowly drift off and they would be left alone. Ryder could see right down her cleavage and imagine the great splayed nipples at the tips of each milky white breast. He imagined Annie taking all her clothes off and himself pressing against her. Sometimes the thought was so vivid that he suspected she could see it there, reflected in his eyes: that she knew.
‘I hear that house is nearly finished,’ Annie said to him one night, just as he was thinking it was time he went home or Eliza would be asking him why he was so late every Friday night. ‘They say it’s beautiful,’ Annie went on. ‘One of the wonders of the world.’
‘Oh, nothing like that!’ Ryder smiled at her and moved a little closer. His gaze travelled from her cleavage to her eyes, and he saw the naughty, mocking smile as if she did indeed know what was going on in his mind; lustful, evil thoughts. ‘It’s quite unusual and very modern, but certainly not a wonder of the world.’
‘Worth seeing, though,
’ Annie added speculatively, moistening her lower lip with the tip of her tongue.
‘Oh, worth seeing.’ Ryder picked up his glass and finished the contents. Then, almost reluctantly, he put it on the bar and gazed into it.
‘Another half?’ Annie said, in such a suggestive voice that Ryder could have imagined she had said something else. Their secret game was getting complicated.
‘I don’t think so. Not tonight.’
‘I have a nephew,’ Annie began and, so that no one else could hear what she was saying, she leaned so far over the bar that it squeezed her breasts into the shape of two great balloons. You couldn’t have put a hair down her cleavage, never mind a finger or a hand, Ryder thought. ‘I have a nephew,’ Annie said again, ‘who is very interested in the building business.’
‘Really?’ Ryder said, straightening up.
‘He’s done a bit of carpentry, that sort of thing. He’d like to be a thatcher.’
‘Is he apprenticed to anyone at the moment?’
‘No he’s not.’ Annie looked meaningfully at him. ‘Now I know you’re a master thatcher.’
‘But I scarcely ever do any practical work these days.’ Ryder’s voice held a note of regret because it would have been nice to have done Annie a favour. Maybe she might have rendered one back.
‘Perhaps you could just see the boy and talk to him?’
‘Gladly,’ Ryder said, clutching at a straw. Then, as if an idea had suddenly struck him, he went on: ‘As it happens I’m going to do some thatching very shortly. There’s a cottage attached to the big house you were talking about. I’m going to thatch it myself. As a matter of fact I could do with an assistant. Most of my men are busy on other work. Why doesn’t your nephew...’
‘And I could perhaps come along with him and have a peep inside that house at the same time,’ Annie said, all wide-eyed innocence.
A few days later when Ryder arrived at Amsterdam Hoos at the appointed time he saw a pony and cart standing outside the gates of the house, but no sign of the occupants.
He had ridden over on horseback by himself, and with a feeling of excitement mingled with guilt he tethered his horse to the tall new wrought-iron gates and, pushing them open, walked up to the front of the house. There he saw the solitary figure of Annie, dressed rather decorously and formally as if out for a visit –no hint of that enticing cleavage now – with her coat buttoned right up to her throat and her hat, looking rather like an elaborate bird’s nest, perched on her head.
‘Well, well,’ Ryder said, feeling a shade inadequate now that the moment of truth had arrived. ‘Did you come alone?’
‘Oh no.’ Annie pretended to seem shocked. ‘My nephew Billy has gone round to take a look at the cottage you are to thatch. I said I’d wait for you so that you’d know we were here.’
She smiled at him, and then, as Ryder didn’t move, she said suggestively: ‘Shall we take a peep inside?’
‘I’m not sure it’s open –’ Ryder began to fumble in his pocket ‘– but I think I have a key.’
He knew, of course, that he had a key; but now that she was here, and the dream was about to become reality, he didn’t know quite what to do. He had not slept with a woman other than his wife for fifteen years, and he loved Eliza, he truly did. If she ever found out about Annie he knew how much it would hurt her.
He doubted whether she would be as tolerant as Margaret was about Guy. It could kill their marriage.
Ryder made a pretence of looking for the key, finding it, and when he had it in his hand and put it to the door he found he was trembling. Suddenly the cool hand of Annie closed over his and, taking the key from him, she said: ‘Here, let me,’ and with a deft turn unlocked the door and pushed it open.
The hall was vast and, with a sharp intake of breath, she stood and gazed at the high ceiling, which had a skylight in the roof. The hall was shaped like an atrium, and there was a round staircase that curved up three floors right to the top. It was, in every respect, a breathtaking conception based on a design of classical antiquity.
‘And you built this?’ Annie gasped, mouth hanging wide open.
‘Yes.’ Feeling composed, a little smug, more confident, Ryder took the key from her and smiled. ‘That’s why it’s taken such a long time – over four years. It would have taken longer, but my client is a man who likes to get things done, impatient of delay ...’
‘He sounds a bit like you,’ Annie said, nudging him and moistening her lips with the tip of her round, wet tongue.
‘Well, we are a bit alike,’ Ryder admitted, overcome once more with a feeling which he thought must be akin to stage fright – a rapid beating of the heart, an overpowering, almost overwhelming sense of fear ...
He watched as Annie slowly undid the top of her coat. Beneath it, to his astonishment, her breasts were bare: two enormous orbs, as he had imagined, with the wide brownish nipples splayed across, even larger than he had expected.
‘Oh!’ he gasped.
‘You like them, don’t you?’ she said and, her hands under her breasts to lift them, she pressed herself against him just as, so many hundreds of times, he had envisaged that, one day, she might. With the palms of both hands he squeezed her breasts, feeling the large nipples harden to his touch. Then her tongue was in his mouth, and he undid the rest of her coat rather clumsily but found to his disappointment that, from the waist down, she was fully dressed: a corset, a skirt and a long, long pair of drawers.
His hand came away from between her thighs, and his expression, when he looked at her at last, was so comical that she laughed.
‘Now now,’ she said provocatively. ‘We can’t have it all at once, can we? Not here.’
‘Where, then?’ His voice had a note of desperate urgency, and his eyes travelled upwards as he thought of all those bedrooms leading off the main staircase, some of them already furnished.
‘We’ll have to think, but my nephew will soon be back.’ She moved away from him and, with practised fingers, rapidly did up the buttons of her coat again. He knew that his eyes registered their disappointment as the objects of his intense desire were ruthlessly hidden from view.
‘There are some bedrooms upstairs,’ he whispered frantically.
‘Are there?’ She gave him a vampish look. ‘Well, maybe another time. One day you can give me a proper look around the house. I’d like that. And then I’ll give you a proper look too.’
‘Come without your nephew if you can,’ he said in a voice thick with frustrated desire to which Annie replied:
‘Of course. Doesn’t do to corrupt the young.’
Annie’s nephew, Billy, was sixteen. He had little practical ability and, in Ryder’s opinion, little inclination to be a thatcher. He wondered if the whole thing had been engineered by Annie because she wanted to make love to him too.
So anxious was Ryder to possess Annie that he began thatching the very next week, but Billy was clumsy and held him back so, in the end, he gave him the job of fetching the bundles of old English wheat and heaving them up the ladder. About a hundred bundles or more would be needed for the roof, and although he tried to show Billy how to place the spars against which the bundles rested, and how to smooth them into place with the leggit, he knew that he was wasting his time.
Dull-witted Billy was a slow learner.
‘How’s Billy getting on?’ Annie enquired at the end of the second week, when Ryder was again in the pub with the men after paying out the wages. Ryder gave her a look.
‘I thought you said he had a practical bent?’ he said.
‘I thought he had.’ Annie looked puzzled.
‘Well, I don’t think he has.’
‘Oh dear, what a pity,’ Annie answered. ‘My sister will be so disappointed, though I must say Billy always has been a bit of a disappointment. Maybe she tried too hard.’
‘Never mind,’ Ryder said with a cheerful smile. At least it had given him a chance to feel her breasts.
‘Tell you what,’ Annie murmured, lea
ning over to give him a better look as the customers began to drift away, ‘I’ve got an afternoon off tomorrow. Perhaps I could come over and take a look at the rest of the house. It will soon be occupied, won’t it?’
‘What a good idea.’ Once again he was overcome by that wild, irrational, irresponsible feeling of excitement. ‘Shall I meet you there?’
‘But how will I get over?’
He couldn’t possibly take her. Even in a closed carriage anyone might see.
Such was her womanly perception and intuition that it seemed she could sense every dilemma he faced, was aware of every tortured, tangled emotion.
‘I’ll get Billy to run me over as he did he last time,’ she said, putting her mouth close to his ear. ‘We can get him out of the way, give him a job to do, and then take a look at those rooms.’ Slowly she winked at Ryder. ‘He’ll never say a word. He’s a bit slow on the uptake, as you know.’
That night Eliza said: ‘How’s the house coming on? I’d love to see it.’
Ryder felt a terrible pang of guilt, and again the stage fright, the fear that she too had a woman’s uncanny intuition and his base desires were about to be revealed.
‘It’s nearly ready,’ he said. ‘Some of the furniture is in.’
‘How about tomorrow? Can I come over with you tomorrow?’
They were in their bedroom preparing for bed. Ryder was glad that he could turn his back to her, because he felt she would see right through him into the dark murkiness of his unfaithful soul.
‘Oh, I shan’t be there tomorrow,’ he said, pulling his nightshirt over his head. ‘I’ve got to go to Dorchester.’
‘Just as well. There’s a meeting of the Needlework Guild. Let’s leave it until some time next week.’
The People of This Parish (Part One of The People of this Parish Saga) Page 37