The expression in Annie’s eyes was enigmatic, but Eliza thought she smiled.
Eliza looked round the dark, dusty room that had been the first office opened by Ryder’s grandfather in Blandford. The first and also the last. In the intervening years many others had sprung up in other towns, but all had been closed down as the business was split into parts and sold off by the greedy Yetman brothers after the death of their father.
In one corner of the room was a battered desk, in another a cabinet and a shabby chair. The floor was bare and, in the stillness, she fancied she could hear the sound of the mice she had disturbed scurrying beneath the floorboards.
The premises were reached by a rickety flight of outside stairs, and when pushed open the door at the top swung rather drunkenly upon its hinges.
Opposite the door was a grimy window on which the legend ‘Yetman Bros (Est 1821)’, once proudly inscribed in gleaming gold paint, was just discernible. Eliza went over to the window and, breathing on it, rubbed clear a small area through which she could gaze down into Salisbury Street.
On the shelves along one side of the wall of the Yetman office were rows of dusty volumes: old accounts, specifications, orders for all the essentials of the building trade. Eliza took down one, and a huge black spider crawled hurriedly away up the wall, having taken refuge in the old volume for goodness knows how long. As she opened the ledger she saw that the pages were yellow with age and the ink on them was faded.
‘1832 Town Hall Blandford: repairs to be carried out’: they were then listed with a modest sum of money neatly written in beside each item.
Gingerly Eliza replaced the volume and then sat down at the desk and leaned her elbows on it, possessed of a strange feeling of excitement, almost of exhilaration.
Ryder had been born thirty-one years after the business was established by his grandfather Thomas Yetman and his Uncle Bernard. John had been Thomas’s eldest son and had carried on the business. The family had moved from poverty to riches in a comparatively short time, cashing in on the building boom and expansion of industrial England.
In her mind’s eye Eliza could imagine the office transformed, cleaned, painted, the shelves and old furniture thrown out and replaced by new, the bare boards covered by a carpet. She imagined opening up the shop downstairs which had long been boarded up and making that the front office where people could come and look at plans, and discuss their requirements with – who?
Why not herself? This was the reason for her change of mood.
She rose and went over to the window to look once more through the clear patch she had made past the faded gold letters.
Her discovery that Annie’s child was not, after all, Ryder’s had given her a new lease of life. She realised, with hindsight, that too much had crowded in upon her at once, with a consequent lowering of spirits: Ryder’s death followed shortly by his father’s, the realisation of her financial position, and all her new responsibilities coming at the same time as she was told the rumour about Annie.
She had held it against Julius ever since; but it was rather like the ancient practice of killing the messenger who brought bad news. What Julius had told her must have been speculated upon by half the town. For that she had held a grudge against a man whom everyone respected, whom she herself found attractive though she dared not show it.
Her mother had always called her stubborn and she was – and perhaps a little blind as well.
As for Annie and the glance she’d given her in the street: it told Eliza something. There was no smoke without fire.
Suddenly she heard a brisk footfall on the outside steps, and rapidly crossed the room to stand on a landing outside the door as her elder son bounded up the staircase, two steps at a time.
‘Be careful,’ she called, ‘it is very fragile.’
‘How long have you been here, Mother?’ Laurence asked as he reached the top. ‘I know the steps are bad and I was afraid for you. Well, what do you think?’
He wore the worn trousers, jacket and shirt of the new apprentice; his face and hands were grimy and his hair matted and tousled. But he looked happy. She had never seen him looking so well, and she knew how he loved his work. He was good at it, too, an eager learner who also put in long hours in his own workroom behind the house.
‘I think we shall have a business here, my son,’ she said, tucking an arm through his and drawing him into the room. ‘We will purchase the freehold from what is left of the Yetman estate – they will not dare ask much for it as the place is in such terrible repair – and we will start up again.’
‘But who will run it, Mother?’ Laurence ran a hand anxiously over his face. ‘Perce and I ...’
‘I will run it,’ Eliza said. ‘I will be in charge of the office. I will take care of the accounts myself and see to all the orders. You will see to the execution. When we make some profits we shall plough back into the business what we do not need for ourselves, and engage more workmen.
‘That way we will expand, and that way we will be self-sufficient and will be dependent on nobody’s charity. We will even repay Julius Heering the small amount of money he lent you.’
Laurence gazed at his mother and, bending towards her, planted a kiss on her forehead. ‘I do love you,’ he said and embraced her.
The rest of the morning they spent excitedly going over plans, making a few preliminary calculations on a blank piece of paper found in the office. The following day Eliza would visit the bank, and very soon the business would be operable.
Eliza drove herself home at lunchtime in her pony and trap, feeling happier than she had felt for years. It was rarely that people were given a second chance, and she was going to grasp it with both hands and make a success of the new venture.
The gates of the house were open and a carriage stood in front of the porch. She drew up behind it, and Ted came running up to her immediately with a worried look as he took the pony’s bridle.
‘Sir Guy has been waiting for you, ma’am ...’
‘Nothing wrong, is there?’ Eliza’s heart skipped a beat, and she realised that she had been counting too much on good fortune, thinking that the storms were over and only calm water lay ahead.
She turned towards the house, but Guy had already appeared and ran rapidly down the steps towards her.
‘Guy, what is it?’ she asked anxiously.
‘It is Mother, Eliza. She has been taken seriously ill and is not expected to live. I want us to go straight down to Bournemouth in my carriage. Margaret has left already. There is not a moment to lose if we wish to take our leave of Mother.’
Eliza sat in the swaying carriage feeling sad, it was true; but the feeling of triumph, of exultation, had refused to go away. She and her mother had never been close. They were different kinds of people, and her mother’s rejection of her at the time of her elopement had damaged their relationship irreparably.
As the carriage sped along the road towards Bournemouth she regretted how little real affection she had for her mother – unlike Guy, whose head nodded mournfully in time to the clatter of the horse’s hooves.
‘It seems that sadnesses never end,’ he said, wiping a tear from his eye. ‘First Emily, now Mother.’
‘Emily was too young to die,’ Eliza said gently. ‘Mother is not.’
‘Still, she is our mother.’ Guy looked bitterly at his sister. ‘You are a hard woman, Eliza, if you do not grieve at the death of a parent.’
Eliza, not wishing to be a hypocrite, said nothing but let her head sink back against the seat of the carriage. It was indeed a hard child who did not love a parent – and a hard parent who could cast off a child.
Then she pictured in her mind the little office and what she would do to make it attractive.
‘I am going into business,’ she said to Guy, hoping to take his mind off his melancholy preoccupations.
‘What?’ Guy sat up abruptly.
‘I’m going to revive the fortunes of the Yetman business. Laurence has begun his app
renticeship. Perce is very pleased with him, and they have more work than they can cope with. I am going to reopen the Blandford office and take charge of the orders, the invoicing and the day-to-day enquiries.’
If she hoped that her words would cheer Guy up she was mistaken. He threw his head back and once more shut his eyes.
‘Dear God, Eliza,’ he exclaimed, ‘is there no end to the follies you will commit? Do you not realise that by birth you are a Woodville? People remember that, you know, even if you do not. Oh yes, and they remember all the other things you did, too. You will take our family right down in the mire, and we shall all sink with you.’
‘What nonsense you talk, Guy,’ Eliza said crossly. ‘This is nearly the twentieth century. Classes are no longer as divided as they were, women not so protected. We have women doctors and academics, and one day we will have women lawyers and businesswomen and...’
‘That day I hope I never live to see.’ Guy sighed loudly. ‘And all the time you have a man very well suited to you, who loves you and could keep you in such luxury you would never want again.’
‘If you are talking about Julius, then you would have me bought as every other woman is bought – something paid for at the altar. No, thank you. Julius Heering I like, but I do not want to marry him. I do not want to be owned or helped by him.’
‘I don’t understand you.’ Guy shook his head wearily. ‘I don’t understand you at all. Marriage is a partnership. See how well Margaret and I get on.’
‘Yes, but things have changed a lot in eighteen years. Women are not so eager now to give their rights away – or their money, if they have it.’
‘Any moment now you’ll be telling me you are a suffragette,’ Guy said ignoring her jibe.
‘Any moment you may be right. Maybe I will invade the council of Blandford and in time be its mayor.’
Guy pretended to sleep, and Eliza was left to think about their conversation and the very real changes in attitudes between men and women that had taken place in her lifetime.
‘Do you know, Eliza,’ Guy murmured after a while, ‘I would like Mother to see my little Elizabeth. She is her grandmother, after all, and I would like them to meet before she dies.’
‘I think you are asking for the impossible, Guy,’ Eliza said. ‘No one would understand why Elizabeth was there, least of all she and Mother. It would hurt Margaret, who would ask herself the same question.’
Guy settled his head back in the seat again while two large tears stole down his cheek. ‘I am convinced that God sent little Elizabeth to take the place of Emily. He meant me to have her, and to have her live with me.’
‘God may understand it, but I doubt that Margaret would,’ Eliza said. ‘Elizabeth is very well looked after, Guy. Who knows what the future may bring? But I think that, for now, you should be thankful for the family you have, for your good wife who understands you so well, and not cause her further hurt than you have already.’
The family stood about Henrietta’s bed as she slowly sank into a state of unconsciousness from which, from time to time, she had moments of illumination. She had seen her brothers, her son and daughter-in-law, her daughter and all her grandchildren. To some she had said a word, to others nothing. She had patted Carson’s head and told him that it was important to be good, whereupon that young man had thrown himself across her bed in a fit of uncontrollable weeping. Those present to see the edifying sight earnestly hoped that it might have a lasting effect. With Guy she had quite a long conversation. She merely gazed at Eliza, who bent to kiss her.
George made the sign of the cross reverently on his grandmother’s forehead and prayed for a long time over her as though he were an ordained minister of the Church already, while Guy also knelt by her side, holding her frail hand.
Dora and Hugh gave her a dutiful kiss, and her Martyn nephews and nieces made brief appearances and left quickly. Only the immediate family remained by her bedside until the end.
Downstairs practical Margaret served tea and comfort with the aid of Henrietta’s two faithful servants who had been with her since her exile in Bournemouth. If Henrietta knew when Margaret came to say goodbye she gave no sign of it; her eyes remained tight shut.
Eliza remained mostly by the window, looking out over beautiful Bournemouth Bay towards the Isle of Wight.
Eliza had never thought that the prospect of her mother’s death would move her, but it did. As she’d looked into her eyes a few moments before, she had seen there the intolerance, the lack of understanding and forgiveness, that had characterised their stormy later years together.
But she could recall how things had been when she was a child, wilful, stubborn, disobedient, but loved. From her mother, and especially her father, there had always been love, and perhaps it had never completely gone.
She turned and gazed at the still figure on the bed and wished she could roll back the years – to the time when she was a little girl and her mother a beautiful, stately woman.
Suddenly Eliza longed to breathe life into that body whose spirit was ebbing even as she looked at her. They could start all over again if only perhaps the drama of their lives would unfold in a different way.
Impetuously she left the window embrasure and flung herself on her knees by the bed, her heart overwhelmed with love, remorse and pity. She seized her mother’s hand and held it to her lips and, as Henrietta Woodville slipped slowly out of a world that had largely disappointed her, maybe she was ultimately comforted by the presence by her side of her daughter.
Five days later the late Lady Woodville was laid to rest in the family vault beside her granddaughter in the church of St Mark, Wenham.
Although Henrietta was not well-known and was little loved, she was treated with respect by the people of the parish, who lined the streets to say farewell to one of its eminent citizens.
People love a show, and Henrietta Woodville, with her hearse drawn by black horses, followed by a long procession of official mourners with black armbands, provided in her obsequies a fitting climax to her life that the town would long remember.
The muffled funeral bell tolled mournfully, the cortège wound its solemn way to the church and then to the churchyard overlooking the river for committal in the family vault. At the back of the crowd gathered round the mausoleum stood Beth, tightly holding the hand of little Elizabeth, the grandchild who would never meet her grandmother.
Guy noticed Elizabeth and sought her out, approving Beth’s gesture with a smile. On his way from the cemetery he was observed pausing and tenderly patting the head of the beautiful, curly-headed child.
The funeral party drove back to Pelham’s Oak where, as before, the house was draped in black ribbon and crepe. People spoke in hushed voices, but, really, very few had clear memories of the deceased, who had lived for nearly eighteen years in exile in Bournemouth. But the Woodvilles were an institution, and institutions always deserve respect.
Guy and his sister moved slowly among the crowd, followed a few paces behind by George and Carson, who managed to look quite angelic in black. Laurence, Dora and Hugh, reserved and dignified, showed by their behaviour that they too were almost grown up. A new generation was ready to face the new world, the new century.
It was a sad occasion, but not too sad. Lally and Prosper hovered; some Heerings had come over from Holland and would be taken back to the house built by Julius that had been appropriately renamed Forest House. Weddings and funerals were good occasions for deals and diplomacy, as every good businessman and politician knows. There would be a house party; riding and some shooting, the sort of thing Lally knew so well how to arrange.
Julius wandered restlessly among the crowd, seeking out Eliza. She looked so grave and dignified in her mourning, but so unbearably beautiful that he felt more deeply in love with her than he believed possible. For years he had been a man stuck fast upon the horns of a dilemma. He loved a woman, but knew that she did not return that love and possibly never would. Every time they saw each other they seemed
to be at odds, yet he had an instinct that the attraction was mutual.
Very occasionally they met at Guy and Margaret’s house. Julius went there often because it gave him a base in the country now that he had sold the home he had dreamed about.
He felt that even now, on an occasion as solemn and sad as this one, they were moving slowly across the room with the object of contriving an inevitable meeting in the middle.
‘Condolences on the death of your mother,’ Julius said gravely, taking her hand and kissing it.
‘Thank you,’ Eliza replied, just as gravely and inclining her head.
‘It is a terrible thing to lose a parent.’
‘And a wife and a husband,’ Eliza replied, looking steadily at him.
‘I wonder if you would ever forgive ...’
‘I have already forgotten it,’ she said. ‘And you have much to forgive in me, too. I was aloof and most ungrateful, and I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, Eliza,’ Julius said in a voice that throbbed with emotion. ‘Would you like a turn in the garden to take advantage of the cool breeze?’
‘It is warm,’ she agreed, not too solemnly. ‘It has been a very hot and tiring day.’
Detaching themselves from the crowd, they walked through the open French windows on to the terrace. They didn’t speak at all, but as they wandered slowly, in perfect accord, towards the great oak planted by Pelham – a symbol of the very Englishness of the Woodville family for over three hundred years – the Dutchman unobtrusively slipped his arm through Eliza’s, and she did not repulse him.
They stood together like that for a long time, looking up through the branches of the tree which, caught by a mysterious breeze, swung back and forth slowly and majestically with soft, whispering sounds.
From little acorns do such big trees grow.
Contents
THE PEOPLE OF THIS PARISH
Publishing History
About the Author
By the same author
Synopsis
Contents
The People of This Parish (Part One of The People of this Parish Saga) Page 49