Looking about her, Jane brushed aside finally Paul Fletcher’s warnings and prophecies; back here at Blake’s Reach they lost their power. Triumphantly, she reached out and pulled the bell cord.
***
William was as changed as the house. He sat beside her at the table, eating with those precise and assured manners that had startled her at first, but in every other respect he was different. He wore a coat too tight and short for him; at Patrick’s bidding he had washed his hands impatiently, but the sweat marks showed clearly in the dirt on his face. The red curls on his forehead had caught a thin cobweb. Except for his greeting, he was quiet ‒ for once too hungry to talk.
Patrick came to attend them at the meal, his swift, swooping movements like a fly. He accepted Jane’s praises calmly, and waited for Kate’s entry with the tray of food to start his attack.
‘Sure, it’s a real cook you’ll have to be gettin’, Miss Jane. Wouldn’t this stuff be lying in yer belly like a lump o’ lead, and y’ comin’ to an untimely death wid the indigestion …’
Kate sniffed, and banged down the tray. ‘The Irish are naught but a bag o’ wind, and so needn’t be troubling about their bellies.’
‘In good time, Patrick ‒ in good time,’ Jane said. ‘Kate does very well for our needs at present … which, Heaven knows, have to be simple enough to match my purse. Time for a cook when we have a full pantry.’
‘Aye, Mistress, aye,’ Kate muttered approvingly, casting a glance at Patrick’s downcast face. She was delighted at this blow to his love of grandeur and ostentation. ‘Ye’ve wisdom far greater than yer mother, poor lady,’ she finished.
Jane held Kate back after Patrick had gone to supervise the vast meal spread in the kitchen. The old woman waited expectantly at the end of the table, her hands folded against her apron.
‘I met Paul Fletcher this morning, Kate,’ Jane said quietly, spooning her broth which she thought was surprisingly good.
‘Aye, Mistress.’ The tone was careful.
Jane looked directly at her. ‘Tell me about him, Kate.’
Her head jerked nervously. ‘What, in Heaven’s good name, should I know about Paul Fletcher, Mistress. It’s not for the likes o’ me to have anything to say of him.’
Jane was impatient. ‘Oh ‒ Kate, don’t be foolish! I’m not asking you to tell me anything the whole Marsh doesn’t know. Where does he come from? … how long have the Fletchers lived here?’
‘Oh …’ Kate shrugged. ‘Is that the all of it, now? Well … a bit of a wild one, is Mister Paul. He’s one o’ the Fletchers of Warefield. He’s brother to Sir James Fletcher who lives at Warefield House over near Hythe. The family came to the Marsh some ways back ‒ about my grandfather’s time, I’d say, and they’ve done well out of it. Sir James is rich, Mistress. They say he has a lot of his money in some company way off in India ‒ and that do make him twice as rich as he used to be.’
Jane raised her eyebrows. ‘Rich, is he? Well … Paul doesn’t look like a rich man’s brother.’
‘It doesn’t follow, Mistress. Paul’s the younger brother ‒ and the estate be fixed on the elder. He had some share of his father’s money, though. Not a fortune, they say. But whatever it was, he went off and bought a part of a plantation in the … West Indies … wherever that might be.’
Jane nodded. ‘The West Indies …? What happened to the plantation?’
Kate shrugged. ‘I don’t know the exact rights of it now, Mistress. Perhaps Paul hadn’t much of a business head in those days. They do say his partner tricked him, and then the fever wiped out all the slaves. He lost whatever money he put into it.’
‘And so he came back?’
Kate nodded. ‘He came back and went into the Navy. He’s a good sailor ‒ the people from this shore have always been rare fine sailors ‒ but he joined late, you understand. They say the Navy’s a slow place to rise in, and young Paul has too much of a will to enjoy bowin’ and scrapin’. He stuck it for a couple o’ years, and then a year ago ‒ more or less ‒ he suddenly turned up on the Marsh again. He took Jim Rogers’s cottage at Old Romney, and I hear he’s makin’ a book o’ charts …’
She added, looking first at William’s head bent over his food, and then at Jane, ‘O’course, what he does with the rest of his time is his own business. He’ll not make a fortune out o’ any old book o’ charts. He’s quick and clever, Mistress, but there are those who must know what he’s about ‒ if you take my meaning …’ She glanced again at William. ‘They be waiting to catch him. But then …’ with a shrug, ‘doubtless he’ll get off lightly. He has influence, and he handles a pack o’ men so big the magistrates be mortally scared o’ them. He’s Sir James’s brother, t’ boot ‒ and Sir James is an important man on the Marsh.’
‘Yes …’ Absently Jane fed General a piece of bread soaked in gravy.
‘Though, mind you,’ Kate continued, ‘they say the pair o’ them don’t get on too well. Sir James is a solid man, and he’s no love for anyone as wastes his money. Paul doesn’t go often to Warefield House. His brother’s lady wife, Alice, can’t abide him. There be some old quarrel between them.’
‘Is Paul married?’
‘Married? … not that the Marsh folks know of. With all them black women in the Indies he didn’t need to have a regular wife, they tell me. He’s a restless one, Mistress … A handful for any woman.’
William had finished eating, and he bent down and gave his plate to General to clean.
‘I met Paul Fletcher this morning, too,’ he said.
Both women turned on him instantly. Kate gave a wail. ‘Master William, you didn’t go …’
Jane cut her short. ‘Where did you meet him? ‒ How?’
William looked indignant. ‘I didn’t go anywhere! I was working there by the gate, and a man came up the hill leading his horse. He seemed to know about me ‒ he knew that we’d come yesterday. He said his name was Paul Fletcher, and he promised to come back and bring me some white mice.’
‘Then what did he do?’
‘Why ‒ nothing! He just stood there for a while, watching all the people work. He just laughed a little, and shook his head, and went on straight up the hill. Do you suppose he’ll really bring the mice? I’d like to have them.’
‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised,’ Jane said, ungraciously. She pushed back her chair and rose. ‘I’ve no doubt he’s plenty of time to collect white mice, as well as waste the morning standing laughing at other folks’ labour …’
William looked at her in astonishment. Kate said nothing, merely started to clean up the dishes. Jane waited for her comment, and when there was none, she turned away, irritably brushing the dust on her gown.
William and Kate could hear her voice trailing off as she walked down the hall.
‘They must be finished eating now … I want them to understand I don’t pay them to sit stuffing themselves … Patrick! … Patrick! …’
II
Paul Fletcher’s cottage was at the lower end of the tree-lined lane that led to Old Romney Church. Every Sunday the bells tolled and the people walked and drove along this lane, and stared into this cottage, and shook their heads because he never showed himself at the church door. They said the wildness had got into him since he had sailed the Caribbean, and maybe ‒ God save us ‒ he had even brought back the taint of Popishness. Paul knew what they said, and didn’t care.
He turned his eyes with relief away from the wearying distances of the Marsh, and fixed them on his own moss-touched roof. The landscape of the Marsh was oppressive to him ‒ flat, dull, with the wind forever sighing in the elms and swishing the willow trees. It seemed to him that he had always hated the Marsh, but he knew that there must have been a time when he had loved it ‒ perhaps long ago when he was a thin, sunburned boy hunting for birds’ nests in the hedgerows, or being taught to sail by the Dymchurch fishermen. He knew the secret places of the Marsh, its twisting tracery of roads was etched on his memory; so often he had lain and watched
the sky reflected in its thousand and one stretches of water. He might have loved it then, but it was a long time ago.
His horse headed down the lane towards the cottage, and the rooks in the trees over his head suddenly rose in a body, and filled the air with their unearthly screeching. His mind was closed against the sound because he could still hear the footsteps of the girl as she hurried away from him along the church path, with the sun on her wild red hair, and the dust on her blue gown. He smiled a little at the memory.
He unsaddled in the lean-to at the back of the timbered cottage. No smoke came from the chimney, and he knew as soon as he opened the kitchen door that this was yet another day on which Mary Bridges, the woman from the village who cooked for him, had neglected to show herself. Last night’s supper and to-day’s breakfast dishes still littered the table. He had let the porridge burn again this morning, and its acrid smell lingered in the untidy room. Although he was hungry, he turned away from it in disgust.
His sitting-room was a bare apartment ‒ furnished for all his needs, and lacking any touch of warmth or ease. It was a functional room ‒ a place to store his books and mariners’ charts, his quadrant and compass; there were shelves for his wine and glasses, a peg on the door for his hat and coat. It was dusty; the red curtains were still drawn across the windows as he had left them last night. He jerked them back now, and the sunlight flooded in.
There were stiff, dead daffodils in a stone jar on the windowsill. In a springtime burst of enthusiasm Mary Bridges had put them there a week ago.
He poured himself brandy from a decanter, and dropped wearily into a chair. He had had no sleep last night ‒ and the rain had soaked through to his skin. He felt the brandy flow easily to remove the tenseness, and thought that six nights from now, if the weather held he would spend another night waiting in the darkness on the shore, another night waiting for the signal … another night waiting for the shape of the lugger to emerge from the blackness as they rowed with muffled oars towards the rendezvous … another night to listen to the tramp of the porters’ heavy boots, with the armed boatmen at the front and rear of the column. Another night … and another … until there was enough money to leave it all behind him. Enough money to leave the Marsh forever.
He was tired to death of the comfortless round of his existence ‒ this dreary, sterile life that held none of the things he wanted, only risk and danger, and their accompanying terrors. But daring and courage of this sort commanded a high price. If the cargoes were good, and the runs successful, he wouldn’t be here very long ‒ not long enough to forget how to enjoy himself.
The sun beat warmly on the back of his neck. He closed his eyes; the uncomfortable, dusty room receded, and now he was crunching the sand of a soft-coloured Caribbean beach under his boots, and the blue-green water beyond the surf line was strangely like the eyes of the girl who walked beside him. She laughed, and talked to him lightly, and the breeze blew her wild hair. It was red hair, and the blue gown she wore was faded by the fierce sun.
Paul fell asleep with the glass still clutched in his hand.
III
On the evening of the day after her meeting with Paul at the church, Jane ordered a fire to be lighted in the drawing-room at Blake’s Reach. She dressed herself in a gown that had been one of Anne’s favourites ‒ a green silk with heavy cream lace ‒ and settled herself to wait for him. Responding to her lead, William also presented himself in the drawing-room, wearing one of his velvet jackets, and his hair darkened with water. With General beside him, he sprawled on the blue and gold carpet before the fire, impatiently thumbing his way through a book he had taken from Spencer’s shelves; he talked hopefully about the white mice Paul had promised, and kept looking at the clock on the mantel.
Jane stifled her own impatience; finally Patrick came and took William, protesting, to bed. She added logs to the fire, and the ticking of the clock went on in the stillness. The fire threw shadows across the floor. In this light, Jane thought, the room looked handsome; the carved cornices and mantel took on depth and richness ‒ the frayed edge of the carpet over by the windows was lost in the dimness. The Blake portraits, painted by provincial artists, made them look calm, almost dull, people, with no history to speak of. She could see her own reflection in the mirror on the far wall ‒ it should have pleased her because at this distance, the pointed white face might have been Anne’s own. But instead she sat, with nervous hand plucking at the lace, wondering why she went to this trouble to receive Paul Fletcher, and why it now seemed important what he thought of Blake’s Reach and herself. Yesterday she had thought him a meddlesome and impudent stranger. She knew she was looking at the clock as many times as William had done ‒ and she couldn’t stop it.
At last she had to tell herself that he would not come that night. She kicked the rug back from the hearth, and went slowly into the hall. Patrick was there, dozing in a big chair, with the candle ready to light her to bed.
During the day they had cleaned and aired Anne’s old room. The fire was burning there, and her nightgown laid out. Patrick held the candle high.
‘It doesn’t look like Miss Anne’s chamber,’ he said sadly.
‘I miss the pretty things she kept about her ‒ like toys they were in her little hands. I just can’t think now, that Miss Anne grew up in this gloomy old hole.’
When he was gone, Jane crouched before the fire in her nightgown. The chamber was vast and chill; there was, as Patrick had said, none of the charm and warmth of Anne’s London bedroom about it. Now, with Patrick gone, the silence was deep; she listened, remembering with faint regret the chatter of Mary in the small room they had shared at The Feathers, of the alert wakefulness of Lottie and Pru when Sally had imagined them asleep for hours. In this silence there was no companionship. Was this, she wondered, the solitude Paul had warned her of … was it possible that time and years could slip away in this quietness, as he said, and she would wake one day to find that she had missed too much. He had wanted her to leave Blake’s Reach … perhaps he spoke from his own knowledge of the vast empty bed, the unshared seat by the fire. She rested her head on her drawn-up knees, thinking of him standing below her in the church yesterday, making a joke of his poverty and his unkempt clothes. Yesterday he had had a feeling for her, a notion to help her, a thought for her future. Perhaps that was all yesterday with Paul; to-night she had waited, and he had not come.
IV
Kate was scandalised when Jane took the hoe and spade and set to work on the overgrown vegetable patch at the back of the stables. She worked with a frantic kind of energy, to try to rid herself of the fears of the night before. Without the women and children from Appledore, Blake’s Reach was very empty and silent; she found herself listening for footsteps, for voices, but there were none. Jed and Lucas had gone to try to mend some fences down by the dyke; Patrick had taken it upon himself to turn out the great pantry storeroom; he and Kate had been in the midst of a fierce quarrel when Jane had passed through the kitchen. But even they had stopped shouting at each other now; there was nothing to hear but the cries of the birds, and the gentle droning of the insects in the spring sunshine. Jane tried not to acknowledge to herself that it was a lonely quiet.
Presently she heard footsteps on the brick walk, and looked up expectantly. William, hands in pockets, and wearing a shirt that was too tight for him and thin with age, came around the corner of the stables.
‘I’ll help,’ he said.
She smiled at him. ‘I wish that you would. But it needs three good men here, instead of one good man … and a woman.’ She handed him the hoe. ‘Here ‒ you rake off all the weeds in the parts I’ve dug.’
The hoe was too large for him, and he was inexpert with it ‒ raking the soil into uneven piles, or splattering it over both of them as he shook the weeds and nettles free. But they worked together with a comfortable sense of companionship; with William’s presence the spectre of loneliness had dwindled. Jane began to hum under her breath as she thrust the s
pade into the soft damp earth; she was dirty and perspiring when Kate came hurrying to tell her that there was a messenger from Robert Turnbull waiting for her in the stable yard.
Robert Turnbull had sent her one of his own horses in the charge of a groom ‒ a light roan mare whose coat had bronze tints as she moved. The note from Turnbull was brief, written in a quick, firm hand; its brevity gave Jane the feeling that he was writing to an intimate. ‘I hope you will regard the mare as your own for the time you are with us here. Her name is Blonde Bess. You will find her willing and gentle, and her manners are excellent.’ It was signed simply, Robert.
In her pleasure and excitement, Jane didn’t stop to consider all the implications either of the message, or the loan of the mare. The manner of the action was, she imagined, typical of Robert Turnbull, offhand and under-stated; his motives she didn’t trouble to question. She directed Kate to give the groom from the livery stable some ale and cheese before he set off back to Rye; Patrick remained with her and William to admire and to touch, talking in soft voices to Blonde Bess, pronouncing her name over and over, stroking her shining coat, fingering the fine leather of the harness. Jane helped Patrick lift William into the saddle, and, watching the sudden delight in the child’s face, she was immediately saddened at the thought that he did not have a pony of his own.
‘She’s beautiful … she’s beautiful!’ William chanted. Jane was struck by the sight of the red-headed child atop the red horse.
‘Mr. Turnbull’s a good and generous gentleman, now,’ Patrick said with conviction.
Jane glanced at him sharply, sensing that his statement was not meant innocently. ‘Mr. Turnbull has been a valued friend to the Blakes for many years. He … he grew up with my mother!’
‘Oh, to be sure,’ Patrick answered piously. ‘He will continue to be a valuable friend, I trust, Miss Jane. There’s always something to be said for a man that knows a good piece of horse flesh …’
Blake's Reach Page 17