The Magic Hour

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘I’m always telling our Tom, you can tell a well-broken ’orse from the moment you go into his stable,’ he said conversationally. ‘That’s why Knighton ’orses are so easy to ’andle, not like some you can come across,’ he added, a little darkly.

  Alexandra nodded, her eyes still wandering round the yard, too shy to be able to think of a suitable reply. She had often helped tack up Cherrypan and other horses, but watching Westrup do it in such a careful, unhurried manner was a small revelation. She was just about to try to say this when she heard the girls’ voices coming towards them.

  ‘I must go now. Thank you for letting me help you. I love horses, although I’ve never owned one. Goodbye.’

  She turned on her heel and ran back a different way to the house so as to avoid seeing her cousins, just as Tom entered the yard, only slightly ahead of Westrup.

  Westrup stared after the slender dark-haired girl who had run off so suddenly, before turning to Tom.

  ‘Ah, there you are, lad. Never around when you’re wanted.’

  ‘Sorry, Mr Westrup. Mr Anthony wanted me to help him with—’

  ‘Always summat with Mr Anthony, ’bout time he went into the Army and got some common kicked into ’im, ’ands of a lady he ’as.’

  Westrup turned to see Miss Jessamine and Miss Cyrene, dressed in immaculate tweed jackets, pale lemon polo-neck sweaters and fawn jodhpurs, walk into his yard.

  ‘You can deal with this lot, young Tom,’ he muttered. ‘I want nothin’ to do with ’em, spoilt poodles both of ’em.’

  As always just the sight of his new employer’s daughters made Tom’s heart sink, knowing as he did that they would do anything to be able to compromise him in some way, simply because they thought of him as nothing more than a servant.

  ‘Horses ready, Tom?’

  Tom nodded, eyes firmly turned towards the stables.

  ‘Well then, don’t be all day about it, bring them out, would you?’

  He led out Tobias.

  ‘Come on, give us a leg-up, Tom,’ Miss Jessamine commanded, holding out one elegant leg.

  Tom avoided looking at her, not because she was not pretty, but because, owing to his mother’s employment problems, he needed her sort of trouble about as much as he needed a kick in the head.

  ‘There’s the mounting block, Miss Jessamine,’ he indicated.

  ‘You know I hate using the mounting block, Tom. You know I prefer a leg-up.’

  Tom said nothing but merely led Tobias to the side of the mounting block, and held his bridle on either side of his head. Happily the horse stood as still as a rock, only moving his bit gently from side to side in his mouth. It was always the same with Miss Jessamine. She liked to cause trouble, and for no better reason than it amused her.

  ‘Tobias isn’t near enough to the mounting block,’ Jessamine moaned, smiling in a conspiratorial manner round at Cyrene, while furtively pushing Tobias away from her, but Tom was ahead of her.

  ‘Allow me, would you, Miss Jessamine?’

  Tom pulled gently on the bridle and the beautifully schooled animal once more side-stepped carefully up to the mounting block, standing ramrod still, as Tom knew that he would, while Tom pulled on the stirrup nearest to him, waiting patiently for Miss Jessamine to place her booted foot in the opposite stirrup.

  ‘Oh really, Tobias, you’re such a pig.’

  Jessamine smiled down at Tom.

  ‘Adjust my leathers, would you, Tom. You know you do it so much better than I—’

  Tom sighed inwardly.

  ‘They’re at your usual length, Miss Jessamine,’ he said in a calm voice.

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘The length at which you feel most comfortable, Miss Jessamine.’

  ‘I don’t think they are, Tom.’

  ‘I think, with the greatest respect, you will find they are.’

  ‘Count them.’

  Tom did as he was commanded, before turning back to Cyrene, who proceeded to try out the same old tired tricks on him.

  As Tom held the bridle and pulled on the opposite stirrup, as he did everything he could to help Miss Cyrene while doing everything he could to avoid eye contact, Merryman pressed the side of his head against his tweed cap, his nostrils flaring imperceptibly, his sweet-smelling breath a tribute to the fodder that came off the carefully tended Knighton fields, his large, all-seeing eyes staring ahead, perhaps at dreams of summer fields, at the sounds of skylarks overhead, at the slow tread of warmth to come. As always Tom found himself fleetingly wondering why it always seemed to be the wrong people who ended up owning horses like Tobias and Merryman and living at places like Knighton Hall: spoilt brats like the Millington sisters, at last riding out of the yard on their immaculate thoroughbreds. The wrong people seemed to have everything.

  Tasha Millington liked to invite her children and her friends, all sorts of different people, into her dressing room to talk to her in the mornings. It was an enjoyable moment in the day when she would pen the menus for the evening, even suggest wines to go with them, but most of all choose the clothes for her various social engagements in a leisurely fashion.

  And it was here where the opinions of children and girlfriends, of all and sundry, were so valuable, for as she gossiped and laughed with them she would wrap a scarf around her waist, or around her neck, or drape it around a hat, and ask whoever it was who had been organised to amuse her to tell her what they thought, following which she would inevitably ignore everything they had just said.

  The point being that, as all Tasha’s guests knew, they had not really been asked up to her dressing room to give their opinions, but to tell her news of themselves, or someone else, to pass on gossip, generally to entertain the lady of the house while she was at play with her clothes and her menus.

  Shoes were often tried; small- or tall-heeled shoes were walked up and down and dresses held against her long, slender body, while her eyes flickered from the mirror to whatever it was that she was showing off and back again. Jewellery too would be brought out of leather boxes of all shapes and sizes and put up against yet more items of clothing. Lapels had brooches held against them, and necklaces were poised above the cut of décolleté evening dresses. All in all, although mornings were a busy time for Tasha Millington, they were also blissful, for they were her time. A time when she could put herself before her husband, a time when luncheon with him seemed far off, and dinner, happily, even further.

  For, as she often said to her trusted friends, ‘It sometimes seems to me that men want nothing more than to eat! And when they’re not eating, they’re talking about eating. Nothing else seems to interest them as much as food.’

  While in a way this statement was as true of Jamie Millington as it was of the rest of his sex, Tasha was wrong in another way. Something else did interest Jamie Millington, or was interesting Jamie, in the shape of a new tenant in the village, someone down from London for the hunting season, only foxes were not the only prey she had in mind to chase.

  Alexandra was glad to be back at Lower Bridge Farm, glad to be home, until she unpacked her suitcase.

  ‘What are these, may I ask?’

  Betty Stamford turned from the contents of the suitcase, the expression on her face as hard and furious as when she had found her reading the book that Frances and Mrs Chisholm had lent her granddaughter.

  ‘Ther-ther-those are clothes, Gran.’

  ‘I can see they’re clothes, Alexandra, I have eyes in my head, don’t I? What I want to know is what you are doing with these clothes?’

  ‘The-the-the Millingtons gave them to me. Their mother, that is Mrs Millington, she gave them to me.’

  ‘Oh she did, did she? Well, they can all go back to where they came from, my girl. I am not having you wearing fancy and frivolous clothes like that at Lower Bridge Farm, I’m not. Not for all the tea in China.’

  She picked up the cardigans, the dresses, the satins and the silks that had been carefully pressed and wrapped in tissue paper for t
he delighted Alexandra.

  ‘You are not going to go flouncing round the house in these, Alexandra Stamford. These are going to be parcelled up on Monday and sent right back to where they came from, and that will be that. You are no poor relation of the Millingtons. There’ll be no crumbs from the rich man’s table here, at least not if I have anything to do with it.’

  She shook out the tissue paper and emptied their contents all over the bed in a horrible muddle, and as she did so Alexandra stared from them to her old relative’s face. Up until that moment when she saw the expression in her gran’s eyes Alexandra had wanted only to come back to the farm, to resume being a Stamford, to go on as before, to run to the top of the drive and wait in the wind and the weather for Mrs Chisholm’s old motor car to come roaring along the highway, stopping only for Alexandra to fling herself and her satchel into the back before roaring off again. Now as she saw the deep-seated resentment in Gran’s eyes, she wanted to run straight back to Knighton Hall, she wanted to sit and watch Mrs Millington in her dressing room as she tried on an endless succession of dresses and tops, of jackets and skirts, of coats and hats. She wanted to be back in the dining room gazing secretively round at the paintings of her dead mother’s ancestors, at the silver on the sideboards, and the gold carved frames surrounding the paintings on the walls. She wanted to be walking slowly down the shallow wooden stairs towards tea in the library. In a few seconds it seemed to her that compared to her grandmother her Millington cousins were everything that everyone should be: graceful and glamorous, artless and light-hearted, not heavy-handed and resentful, sarcastic and caustic.

  But all this happened in a lightning flash, and only as result of Alexandra seeing the look in Betty Stamford’s eyes, of seeing how she cast aside the beautiful frocks and cardigans that Tasha Millington had so kindly given Alexandra, as if they were dirty or ugly.

  ‘You are not to wear any of these, do you hear? I do not want our neighbours making fun of you in these nobby clothes, do you hear?’

  Alexandra stared at her grandmother, her face expressionless. She knew that Janet Priddy was coming to tea that afternoon. She knew it because Janet Priddy always came to tea on a Sunday afternoon. The moment Alexandra heard the dog barking, the moment she heard Mrs Priddy’s voice raised in the hall, she would carefully close her bedroom door, and start to undress. She would try on every single one of the cast-offs she had been given, she would twirl in front of the mirror wearing cashmere cardigans and silk-lined skirts, and as she did so she would smile at herself and whisper, ‘I’m a Millington now, and nothing you can do about it, Gran!’

  ‘Westrup is really too sick to ride, O’Brien, do you want to lead up second horse for me?’

  Jamie Millington, immaculate in his hunting clothes, his stock tied with artless elegance, his boots shining as if they had just left the hands of a military batman – instead of Tom’s eager hands – looked questioningly at Tom.

  The prospect of leading up second horse for the first time for Mr Millington made his new groom burst with an excitement he was careful not to show. Happily he was already dressed for the role, smart as paint in his second-hand clothes, as he now took care to be on a winter’s morning when Mr Millington was setting out to join the meet.

  ‘Very well, it’s only two miles to Alfred’s Point, you follow as soon as you can, and be smart about it, I don’t want to be looking round for you all the time.’

  Tom was on the old cob that usually served as Westrup’s conveyance when leading up Mr Millington’s second horse of a winter morning. Now it was Tom’s turn to do the same, and he was ready to do so in fine style only minutes after his master had left the yard. He was proud to say that he had learned to saddle up so quickly that even old Westrup could not do it faster; as fast, but not faster. Such was his hurry to keep up with Jamie Millington he was still tightening his girth when he was turning out of the gate, while at the same time leading up Mr Millington’s favourite hunter, Prospero. A natty Welsh cob crossed with thoroughbred, Prospero already had his ears pricked eagerly forward as he heard hounds ready and waiting at the meet, and realised that it was going to be one of his favourite days. Tom smiled across at him.

  ‘You lot don’t need a telephone, do you, Prospero my lad?’ he asked the big shining bay as they trotted smartly along. ‘You just point the old ears towards where you know you want to go, and there we are.’

  They completed the couple of miles to the meet at such a fast trot that they finished by catching up Jamie Millington some few minutes later, Tom’s heart singing all the while, as he realised that poor old Westrup’s illness had released him from the normal duties of the day: the cleaning, the chopping, the fetching and the carrying. For once Tom had drawn the long straw and would be able to follow Mr Millington across hill and dale until his first horse tired, and Tom led up second horse for him, and took first horse home.

  What a pleasure it was to sit back and watch the mid-week riders arriving, some like Mr Millington accompanied by their grooms, some by horse box, all of them giving every appearance of being up and raring to go. It was a fine sight, and one that never failed to thrill Tom. He himself had learned to ride from an early age by dint of mucking out horses in return for lessons from whichever groom was in residence at whatever house his mother had been currently, if not lengthily, employed to cook. Learning to ride had been one of the many things upon which he had always been determined, and yet he could never have said why. He had always known that while his formal schooling was nonexistent and his mother’s and his lives hand-to-mouth, to say the least, if he meant to get on, he had to learn to ride.

  ‘Meet me at the county boundary by the beeches,’ Mr Millington called back to Tom as ’‘ounds please’ was called, and the day’s sport had begun.

  The sun was breaking through and the morning well ahead of itself when they found for the first time, and Tom led up Prospero for Mr Millington to change horses.

  ‘Thank you, Tom. You can take Bezique back now. I’m not going to stay out the whole day. Oh, and I’ll rug him up myself when I get back. Just leave the feed out, will you?’

  Tom set off back to Knighton Hall in the best of spirits, for leading the old hunter was no trial, and the late-morning sun meant that he finally clattered into the old yard feeling warmer than he would have thought possible on such a winter’s morning.

  ‘Mr Westrup, you’re up and doing after all, then?’

  The old groom looked awful, white in the face and hardly able to speak without coughing, but he grabbed Bezique’s bridle from Tom.

  ‘I’ll put him away, you do the cob.’

  Tom smiled wryly. Nothing could persuade old Westrup that Tom could do a good job, nor that Tom was not after his job.

  ‘Mr Millington says he will rug up Prospero when he gets in, we’re just to leave the feed out.’

  Westrup raised his eyes to heaven.

  ‘Not in my yard, ’e won’t.’ He turned away, still coughing horribly. ‘I put my ’orses away, not Mr Millington. Now be off with you and back to your other jobs before I ’ave a word with you about those ’ay wisps I found in water buckets this morning and the straw not ’eaped up to the side of Merryman’s box the way I like.’

  Tom sighed inwardly. There were days when Westrup was just a little difficult to take, and this was one of them.

  ‘Look, Mr Westrup, I don’t actually have any other jobs this morning, the family’s all out for the day, no logs to be chopped or fires to be laid, nothing like that, so why don’t I go and get you some cough medicine from the chemist in town?’

  Westrup was just about to argue with him when yet another paroxysm of coughing burst from him. When it finally left him holding on breathlessly to the water pump, he must have finally seen sense, because he nodded.

  ‘All right, Tom lad,’ he said in a more conciliatory tone, ‘but nothing fancy, mind? I just want a linctus. Something to clear this up.’

  ‘I’ll take my bicycle, once I’ve rubbed this lot
down, and I’ll be back in a jiffy, see if I’m not.’

  Westrup nodded, unable to speak for fear of bringing on another fit of coughing. He hated being ill worse than sin, particularly during the hunting season.

  ‘If you go the back way to Kennard the Chemist, it’s much quicker, lad, you know that, do you?’

  Tom hesitated. The back way was his least favourite bicycle ride since it took him by so many of the old tenanted cottages whose back gardens and alleyways housed bicycle-chasing dogs; but he knew Westrup was right, it was quicker.

  ‘I’ll do that,’ he agreed, before starting to blanket up the cob.

  Without bothering to change from his treasured riding clothes, he bicycled off towards the village. The sun was still shining, the sky was an unbelievably clear winter blue, and he was sure he could see leaves of a fine light green on every tree that he passed. Finally, deciding that discretion was the better part of valour, and he would go the long way to Kennard’s rather than risk getting his backside bitten, he began to push his treasured bicycle across an empty field, through a gap in the hedge, and so finally past a barn that was sometimes used by Douro Partridge to store Millington hay after a particularly good summer’s harvest.

  He had actually swung his leg over the saddle and was cycling along the path that led past the barn when he heard voices. Mr Westrup was always on about keeping his eyes open for travellers on the road, for strangers and ‘undesirables’ as he liked to call them, so, thinking to do his duty by his boss, Tom dismounted from his bicycle. Laying the precious vehicle against the barn wall, he was able to slide the old wooden door open just enough for him to be able to fit his head through the gap.

  If he could have taken back those foolish seconds, that moment of rash curiosity, of over-zealous loyalty to Mr Westrup and Knighton Hall, there’s no doubt about it, Tom would have done, and instantly, but he was halfway through the barn door before he saw Mr Millington.

  ‘I’m sorry, so sorry, sorry, sir!’

  Even as he scrabbled with nervous hands to pull the old door back into place, plucked his bicycle from the barn wall and started to cycle furiously towards Kennard’s and the village, Tom knew with cold certainty that his days at Knighton Hall were numbered, and, of necessity, those too of his poor mother in the kitchens. He had just seen Jamie Millington in a position in which no married man would want to be discovered with someone who was not his wife, and not the hasty sliding back over the old wooden door, nor the fact that he had hardly taken in the scene before him, nothing could save him now.