Past Love (Part Four of The People of this Parish Saga)

by Nicola Thorne

  She then tore the letter in two and pitched the pages towards the waste-paper basket, but they missed their target and landed on the floor.

  “I think he means well, dear,” Hubert said lamely. “What does Ruth think?” He looked anxiously at his step-daughter, who was gazing at her plate.

  Finally she raised her eyes to look at her mother. “I think it’s very kind too. It was well-meant.”

  “I told him you would not like it.” Deborah also recovered her courage. “He brought it up at the dinner party –”

  “And if I’d known there were only four people at that party I would not have allowed you to go, Deborah,” her mother rounded on her. “I understood many more people would be there.”

  “I don’t see how you could stop me, Mother,” Deborah, who had hardly ever contradicted her mother in her life, found herself retorting. “I am twenty-seven years old this year. I shall soon be an old spinster of thirty, and then forty and fifty. I –”

  “Deborah, I don’t know what’s got into you!” The colour mounted on Sophie’s cheeks. “I think you had better go to your room and calm down.”

  “I am very calm, Mother.” Deborah stood up. “I am calm, but I am angry. Mr Sadler has made a very generous offer which you misinterpret in order to undermine him. What sort of reception do you think you can have in this shabby old place? We have not one room big enough to hold more than fifty people.”

  “I’ll ask Carson,” Sophie clenched her jaw. “Please sit down, Deborah, and don’t make a scene. You would like it at Pelham’s Oak, wouldn’t you, Ruth?”

  Ruth didn’t reply but, as though shocked at her sister’s outburst, continued to gaze at her plate.

  “I think we’d better consider this matter carefully, my dear.” Hubert went over to his wife and put his hand on her shoulder. “You are a bit overwrought.”

  “I am not overwrought, Hubert,” Sophie said, dashing his hand away. “On the contrary. If Ruth also considers this a ‘shabby old place’ I thought she might prefer Pelham’s Oak which is, after all, the Woodville family home whereas Upper Park is not.”

  “That is a point.” Hubert turned placatingly to his stepdaughters.

  “But Abel is not a Woodville, Father,” Ruth said. “He is a Yetman, and I am going to take his name.”

  “The bride traditionally has the reception in her home, or a place chosen by her parents.” Hubert looked for assistance to Sophie who sat staring at the table as if in an effort to control herself, both fists tightly clenched against her face.

  “Besides,” Hubert went on, his tone conciliatory as befitted a man of the cloth, “if it is held at Upper Park, Eliza won’t come.”

  “Neither will I,” Sophie looked across at her daughter, “so you can please yourself. I am saying no more.”

  She then rose from the table and, taking the rest of her mail, left the room.

  “There!” Hubert dejectedly sat down next to Ruth. ‘You’ve upset your mother.”

  “Why does she hate Bart so?” Ruth demanded, her face pale with anxiety. “She loses no opportunity to be rude to him or unpleasant about him. What has he done to her?”

  Hubert said nothing while Deborah raised her eyes over Ruth’s head and gazed out of the window.

  “I think we’d best do as Mother wants,” she said after a while, also getting up. “Pelham’s Oak, after all, will be very nice, that is if Uncle Carson agrees, and I’m sure he will. You’d like that, Ruth, wouldn’t you?”

  But Ruth’s mouth remained in a stubborn line as if she were thinking of the luxuries, both of food and surroundings, that Upper Park would have to offer compared to the slightly more homespun, but nevertheless perfectly acceptable, facilities of the family home at Pelham’s Oak.

  Deborah went to her room and contemplated herself in her mirror. With both hands she scraped back her hair, bared her teeth, looked deep into her eyes.

  Plain. Decidedly plain, and shabby. Twenty-seven next birthday, and what had she to show for her life? A son she never saw and wished didn’t exist, yet whose unseen presence continually troubled her. A mother whom she loved but whose rigidity and piety she not only didn’t understand but found increasingly alien. She had a darling of a stepfather, and no one could complain about him: kind, tolerant, understanding, a man one couldn’t help but love and admire. His was the compassionate side of Christianity; her mother’s was based on rigid Old Testament morality of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, of reaping as you had sown.

  It was said that her mother had had a hard life; that both her own parents and her husband’s had opposed her first marriage. That she had suffered in the inhospitable land of Papua, New Guinea, where her husband had died of a fever in her arms.

  When she had returned to Wenham she was impoverished, forced to live first of all with her parents, from whom she seemed to have inherited their own ascetic idea of the Christian faith, and unwelcome by the Woodvilles who refused to see her until the death of Lady Woodville. Then their grandfather had decided he needed help, and decided to forgive his daughter-in-law, who took her children with her to look after him. In many ways living at Pelham’s Oak with a dear, tolerant grandfather had been the happiest time of Deborah’s childhood.

  But when he remarried, Sophie and her children were told they were not wanted, and it was then that kindly Hubert Turner had stepped in and given them a home and their mother a new name.

  Deborah sat on the bed and looked at the floor. She remembered Bart Sadler coming quite often to Pelham’s Oak, her mother’s eyes lighting up when she saw him. She even began to look pretty which even her greatest admirers admitted she never had before. Those eyes never lit up now. It seemed that, behind her steel-framed spectacles, they remained veiled from the world, seeing but unseen. Her mood, her thoughts, were never really known or understood. As a person in the town she was admired rather than liked.

  And then, of course, she, Deborah, had added to her mother’s woes by running off with Michael Stansgate, an ignorant workman of no fixed abode who had seduced her in a side chapel in her stepfather’s church, a place she felt she had desecrated to this very day.

  Her mother and she had wanted to have the baby adopted, but it was Hubert who tried to be more far-seeing to the day they might regret such as an action, and had suggested that his clergyman cousin and his wife, who had two children of their own but were not well-off, might value the income that would accrue if they fostered a baby boy, at least for the foreseeable future.

  Deborah often thought of the boy, now nearly eight years old. Would he ever forgive her if she did want to see him? What would she say and how would she explain what she had done? What worth was her life? What use?

  Then she thought of Bart, and his suggestion when they parted that night, holding hands surreptitiously in the doorway, that they might meet again.

  It gave her a secret hope. To be wanted, even by an old man like Bart, made her feel important and necessary.

  But there was always her mother in the way.

  Her mother was not at lunch. It was a Saturday and Ruth was spending the day with Abel. Their father had gone to Salisbury on church business, so Deborah ate alone in the dining room waited on by the housemaid, Polly, who was a cheerful soul, given to gossip.

  If anyone wanted to find out what was going on in Wenham, Polly was sure to know the answer.

  “What do people say about Bart Sadler, Polly?” Deborah asked as, after finishing her lunch, she began to peel an apple for dessert. Polly, who was clearing away, stopped in her tracks. “Why, they say he is a very wealthy man, Miss Deborah.”

  “Yes, but what else?”

  “Well, Miss Deborah, he has been gone from Wenham for very many years. Most people scarcely remember him.”

  “Do they say anything about Mr Sadler and my mother? I mean, before she was married to my stepfather?”

  Deborah gazed at Polly whose placid, cheerful face suddenly went pink.

  “Some people have a cruel to
ngue, Miss Deborah. Mischievous I call them and those are the people you should not listen to.”

  “Yes, but what do they say, Polly?” Deborah insisted. “You can tell me. I promise not to pass it on. I simply want to know.”

  “Well, Miss,” Polly nervously crumpled her white pinafore between both hands, “they say that your half-brother, Sam, very much resembles Mr Sadler. But I pay no attention to them kind of remarks myself, and neither I think should you, Miss.” And with that Polly, trembling with confusion, fearing she had gone too far, rushed out of the room, leaving the dishes behind.

  Deborah tapped on the door of her mother’s sanctum and listened. No sound. She tapped again.

  After a while, “Who is it?”

  “Deborah, Mother.”

  “I’ve got a headache, Deborah, could you come back later?”

  “I just want to say ‘sorry’.” Deborah turned the handle and popped her head round the door. Her mother was sitting in her armchair with her feet up on a stool, and did indeed look very pale.

  “Can I get you something for your headache, Mother?” Deborah asked sympathetically. “You look all in.”

  “I’ll have a cup of tea in a minute.” Sophie passed a hand across her brow. “That will do me good.”

  “We’ve agreed to have the reception at Pelham’s Oak. After all it is the home of the Woodvilles.”

  “I’m glad.” Sophie put out a hand to show her gratitude and suddenly Deborah felt humbled because of all the hateful thoughts and feelings she had entertained about her mother, especially recently.

  “Why don’t you like Bart Sadler, Mother?” she asked. “Why do you dislike him so much? He’s very kind.”

  “You may think so, but I don’t think he behaved very well in the past. He did introduce Uncle Laurence to a wicked man, and people thought some of the things he did were not ...” Sophie paused as if in an effort to find the exact word, “quite right. He had a rather unsavoury reputation.”

  “But, Mother, he used to come and play with us at Pelham’s Oak when we were small.”

  “That’s before we found out what sort of man he was. Now I wouldn’t have him in the house, and Deborah ...”

  “Yes, Mother?”

  “I would very much prefer it if you didn’t see Mr Sadler again. I mean if he asks you to dinner I want you to decline. I know Abel is involved with him work-wise and when Ruth is his wife I suppose she will have to entertain, and be entertained by, her husband’s business friends. But I noticed you dancing with him the night of his party and I thought, well ... contact best avoided, Deborah.”

  As if her confidence was restored, trust between mother and daughter re-established, the colour began to return to her cheeks and she looked across at Deborah and smiled. “Do you understand what I’m saying, dear?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  Sophie gave a deep sigh and settled back in her chair. “That’s a good girl. Now, why don’t you go and ask Polly to bring us some tea? I’m sure we could both do with a cup.”

  Chapter Nine

  Traditionally, the bride looks beautiful and Ruth Woodville on the day of her wedding in May 1930 did not disappoint. She was tall, slim, with hair the colour of ripe corn and deep-set, translucent, violet-blue eyes.

  Her bearing as she had walked up the aisle on the arm of her uncle, Carson, for her stepfather was to marry her, was regal, every inch the Woodville, and everyone commented on the likeness between uncle and niece.

  Ruth seemed to have no nerves, to be confident in herself and her choice of a bridegroom, and the pair exuded happiness as they came out of the church into the sunshine, to be greeted by a shower of confetti thrown by the waiting, excited crowd who comprised almost every inhabitant of the town.

  Again it was one of those days when, in honour of the Woodville family, everything came to a standstill. The bank closed, the shops were shut, only the Baker’s Arms remained open in the hope of attracting those revellers who wanted to slake their thirst before and even after the ceremony at the church, before moving on to the reception.

  Afterwards, as was by now the custom, all the townsfolk followed the family back to Pelham’s Oak, a long, almost unending stream of cars, carts, bicycles and wagons. Some were on horseback, a few hardy souls, usually the less sober ones, even walked, though they were usually picked up en route and given a lift.

  Deborah had been chief bridesmaid to her sister, in charge of a host of younger ones: Toby and Leonard Woodville as pages and six bridesmaids who included Elizabeth’s children Mary and Betsy, respectively thirteen and twelve.

  The bridesmaids’ dresses were blue, a shade which brought out the colour of Deborah’s eyes, her appearance every bit as striking as her sister. She was two years older than the bride but from the glances of the many young men who attended the reception in the great cream and gold drawing room at Pelham’s Oak, few doubted she would be long in following her.

  And, indeed, to her surprise, Deborah was enjoying herself. She was devoted to her sister and with the pain of losing her went the joy, the knowledge that until Abel had built them a new house, as he planned to do, she would be living nearby.

  The best man was Abel’s business partner Solomon Palmer, who was observed to be paying a lot of attention to the chief bridesmaid as, in fact, a good best man should. However, when one compared them side by side heads nodded, tongues started wagging. What a good pair they would make. Deborah so far and, on this occasion at least, vivacious, her blonde good looks offset by the handsome young man at her side.

  But wouldn’t Deborah’s past put off a man in search of a respectable bride? That was what no one knew.

  Sophie was so glad that that awful suggestion of having the reception at Upper Park had been squashed flat from the start. She had enjoyed the day, been determined to enjoy it despite the knowledge that somewhere in the crowded room lurked Bart Sadler. He had also been in the church but at the back, tucked out of sight of the mother of the bride, who was in the front pew.

  Sophie was determined not to let her day be spoilt by Bart. After all not only was Ruth off her hands, happily married to a worthy man of whom everyone approved, but Debbie appeared finally to have emerged from the chrysalis which had kept her so tightly enmeshed for many years, which had stifled her young womanhood and darkened those most precious years of youth.

  Debbie had been a continuing sorrow and worry to Sophie, not so much for what she had done but because the prospect of a ruined life was a hard one for a mother to bear.

  Solomon Palmer was, indeed, a most suitable young man. She knew nothing about his family but he was now a business partner of Abel who valued him highly. His talent was obvious and his prospects must be considered good. Besides he was a fine looking young man and only a little younger than Deborah. Sophie made a mental note to remember to ask him to dinner as soon as was decently possible.

  Eliza had also noticed the attentions paid to Deborah by Solomon and, sidling up to Sophie, gave her a meaningful look.

  “Perhaps another wedding soon?” She looked towards the table where Deborah and Solomon sat deep in conversation.

  “That would be nice.” Sophie sighed. “I would love to see her happily married. But it’s early days.” She looked past Eliza to Dora who was talking animatedly to a group of people from the parish who she hadn’t seen for some time: Mr Trendle the verger, Mrs Baker the schoolmistress, Councillor Hardy of the Town Council, and Mr and Mrs Marsden, two local worthies who had retired many years ago to the town.

  “Dora looks so well,” Sophie said. “And so happy. The baby’s beautiful, I hear?”

  “You must come and see her.” Eliza put a hand on Sophie’s arm.

  “I will. I want to, now that the wedding is over. There has been so much to do. How long are they staying?”

  “They’re going back next week. Jean is anxious about his vines.”

  Jean was never very far away from Dora, as though afraid that once again she might vanish. He stood rather a
wkwardly behind her, half listening to what she was saying, his eyes wandering restlessly round the room, mentally recalling the years he’d spent in this very house as friend and factotum to Carson. In those days he had been a restless man suffering the after effects of war, rootless, without family, his first wife having deserted him. Carson, as well as friendship and support, had offered him a home, security and finally he had married Carson’s cousin who had now, in the most unexpected way, given him a child.

  Jean’s cup would have been very full were it not for the fact that his feeling of insecurity had returned. Much as he loved Dora and adored their baby he felt uncertain about the future, about Dora, wondering whether she, having left him once, might not one day be tempted to do so again, taking their daughter, Louise, with her.

  The afternoon wore on, but the crowd, enjoying itself, did not diminish. What else was there to do on a warm spring afternoon, with the buds unfurling on the massive oak on the lawn and a sense that the earth, cold and barren in winter, was springing so magically and mysteriously into life again? Some strolled into the grounds carrying drinks or plates of sandwiches precariously balanced; others joined a game of croquet started by some of the younger members of the family on the lawn. Some pairs slunk away, emboldened by wine to canoodle in the woods. Upstairs windows were flung open and heads appeared as those still indoors strove for a breath of fresh air which came wafting from inside.

  Elizabeth Temple was prominent, as usual, though it was impossible on this occasion for her to usurp Connie’s place. She fussed about the bridesmaids who were stuffing themselves with ice cream until one of them was sick and had to be escorted hastily from the room, weeping over her ruined dress. Of course it had to be Betsy Sprogett who brought disgrace on herself and, indirectly, her mother, who always tried so hard to be just that bit better than the Woodvilles, better behaved, better dressed, anxious to forget that she had been reared by servants of the family of which she never quite felt a part.