by Clare Flynn
‘That is terrible. Who? When? I must speak with him.’
Hephzibah shook her head. ‘There’s no point. He’d ignore you and it would hurt your relationship with him and his support of your work in the parish.’
Merritt knew what she said was true. The squire’s behaviour was not even unusual. ‘Richard Egdon is like many landowners who seem to think the droit de seigneur is still in force and it is his right as the landowner to take his pick of any woman on his estates. I wish it were otherwise. Has he harmed you, Hephzibah? Tell me. I will kill him if he has laid a finger on you.’
She looked sideways at him, a little surprised. ‘Ah, Merritt, ever the gentleman. I made it clear that he would get nowhere with me and he would come to wish he had never started if he tried to touch me. It worked at first, but then... he tried again. He was aggressive. He kissed me, touched me. It was horrible. I had to leave Ingleton Hall immediately to escape him. I was on my way into Nettlestock to seek your help when I met Thomas and he... he… swept me off my feet. I told him what his father had done and he offered to marry me. I was shocked but overjoyed. It was like a light breaking through the clouds and transforming my life. Until that moment I’d no idea he cared for me.’
Merritt bit his lip, knowing that Egdon’s offer of marriage had more than his love of her at its root. Were she to know that Egdon had benefited financially from marrying her it would surely break her heart.
Hephzibah’s voice was soft, hesitant, as she continued. ‘I love Thomas with an intensity I never knew I would feel. Just to look upon his face moves my heart, swamps me, fills me with pain. Oh, Merritt, if only you could understand what it is to love someone when you are uncertain that their love for you is in equal measure. But let me get to the point. We have now been married for more than three years and have yet to conceive a child.’
Merritt felt a little flicker of hope inside him. ‘You are trying to tell me that you and Mr Egdon have not consummated the marriage?’
‘Of course we have.’ Her voice was sharper, with a hint of exasperation. ‘My husband has always been most attentive whenever he is at home. Yes, he may not be here as often as I would like, but when he is, he fulfils his duties as a husband without fail, if you understand what I mean. This is so embarrassing. I have never discussed such intimate matters with anyone else before. I suppose your being a clergyman means I see you as different from other men. I feel a little more able to talk to you – but it’s still difficult. I hope you don’t mind my frankness.’
Merritt stared ahead. Why was she so capable of twisting the knife into him? He knew it was unconscious on her part. He knew that she would not wish to hurt him, but the way she failed to see him as a flesh and blood man pained him almost beyond endurance.
‘The squire is desperate to secure the future of Ingleton Hall and the whole village – I think you know that he and Thomas don’t see eye to eye? They quarrel often and I believe that explains Thomas’s frequent absences. I have suggested we move to live in London or even in Mudford but he won’t hear of it. He doesn’t appear to suffer the pain of our separations the way I do.’
The path narrowed in front of them and a tree overhung the pathway. Merritt stepped ahead and held back the branches so that Hephzibah could pass without impediment. They were forced to walk in single file for a while so he fell in behind her and she carried on speaking, calling back over her shoulder to him. She told him about the squire rewriting his will to favour his future grandchildren over Thomas and how he constantly taunted Thomas about his failure to father a child.
‘Yesterday morning, after Thomas left, Sir Richard summoned me to his study. He spoke to me as if it were a business transaction. He asked me again if I was expecting a baby. Oh, Merritt, I am afraid if I don’t conceive soon he will take matters into his own hands.’
Merritt stepped off the narrow track and pushed his way through the undergrowth, re-joining the path in front of her. He gripped her by the arms. ‘He threatened to rape you?’
‘Not in so many words. He spoke of disinheriting Thomas if I don’t produce an heir and called upon my duty to his family and the future of Nettlestock and the community. He told me he believes Thomas to be incapable of fathering a child.’ She flushed. ‘I know he wouldn’t hesitate to force himself on me if he felt it necessary. Having an heir is the most important thing in his life.’
‘But you can’t possibly mean that he would try to father a child on you himself? Did he threaten that?’
‘When he attacked me before Thomas married me I had to use force to stop him from having his way.’ She blushed. ‘I had to bite him. Very hard. He has been forcing one woman on the estate for some years to have sexual relations with him or risk her whole family being thrown out of their home. I hadn’t seen her for some time. She is an unmarried woman but I saw her last week – she is unmistakably with child. It is no doubt the squire’s fault.’
‘Abigail Cake.’
‘How did you know?’
‘Because I noticed she was expecting a child,’ he said. ‘She must be several months gone.’
Hephzibah nodded. ‘The squire boasted about it to me yesterday. Said terrible things. About how Abigail had tried to avoid pregnancy by various methods...’ She blushed. ‘He compared himself to Thomas. It was horrible. He resents the fact that Thomas has a tendency to overspend and blames him for his inability to make the estate profitable. He has never come to terms with the death of his other sons and every time he looks at Thomas it’s as though he resents the fact that it is he who stands before him, not Sam or Roddy. Did you know that Ottilie is actually his adopted niece?’
Merritt nodded.
‘She may not be,’ said Hephzibah. She told him what Thomas had told her about Ottilie’s mother.
Merritt sat down on the ground and put his head in his hands. After a moment or two he looked up at Hephzibah, standing above him. ‘There is a rumour that Samuel Egdon killed himself because he found his fiancée had had relations with the squire.’
Hephzibah gasped.
‘I hate to participate in village gossip but there are some things I have been unable to avoid hearing. Mrs Muggeridge has a tendency to tell me things whether I want to know or not. She believes a parson must be aware of everything about his parishioners.’ He took off his hat and twirled it around, restlessly, by the brim.
‘Samuel was engaged to be married to a girl who was not from around here, the sister of one of his former school-friends. The squire didn’t approve of the match believing that, as eldest son, it was Samuel’s duty to marry for the advancement of the family and not for love. He wanted Samuel to marry one of the daughters of Sir Haverford Bellamy at Longstreet but Samuel refused. He invited the girl and her brother to a shooting party at the Hall, hoping that over the course of their stay they would win around his father. One morning, when the men were all out shooting, the squire went back to the house early, complaining of gout pains. When Samuel and the others returned, the girl was missing. She had drowned herself in the carp pond, leaving Samuel a note to say his father had forced himself on her. Samuel took his gun and shot his father then turned the gun on himself.’
Hephzibah gasped. ‘What an absolutely horrible story.’
‘The squire only took a flesh wound and the whole affair was hushed up. The only reason Mrs Muggeridge found out is that she is very thick with Mrs Andrews.’
‘I’m all the more certain now that he will try to force himself on me.’ She slumped to the ground beside the parson.
‘Have you spoken to Thomas about this?’ Merritt said.
‘No. He would be mortified. I’m afraid of what he would do to his father. And he’s all too conscious of the fact that the squire believes he is a poor substitute for his brothers.’
‘Oh, Hephzibah, what a mess. What did you want to ask of me? How can I help you? Would you like me to speak on your behalf to the squire? To Thomas?’
She gasped and stretched out an arm. ‘No. You must neve
r speak of this to either of them. I haven’t been able to sleep with worrying about what to do. I’d rather die than let the squire touch me. I can understand why that poor girl drowned herself in the lake. But if I don’t produce a child Thomas will lose everything. He’s already wracked with worry. His father has refused to settle his debts and he has spent all his mother’s inheritance. Oh, Merritt, I love him so much that I’d do anything to help him.’
Merritt shook his head, more puzzled than ever about how she wanted him to help her.
Hephzibah swallowed, closed her eyes for a moment then told him about Thomas getting mumps. ‘We have tried to have a baby for more than three years and I have come to the conclusion that the only way to resolve matters, and help my husband, is for me to become pregnant and the only way to do that is with another man.’ Her eyes were wild, welling with tears, her voice cracking.
Merritt was so startled he jumped to his feet. ‘The squire?’
‘I told you I’d die first. Don’t you understand what I’m asking you, Merritt? Must I spell it out?’ Hephzibah reached her hand up for Merritt to pull her up to stand beside him. ‘I will understand if you don’t want to do it. I know it’s too much to ask. I would never have dreamt of asking you, but you did say that you’d do anything to help me. I know you never had anything like this in mind, but I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t absolutely desperate. I’ve thought of every other possibility. I’ve lain awake at night trying to think of solutions. There’s no one else I can ask. And you are not married or – as far as I know – courting anyone. I did think you and Miss Pickering might...’ Merritt put a hand up in horror.
‘If it works and I have a child you would be able to see it whenever you wanted and were you to marry later I would never let your wife know what had passed between us. And of course the child itself would never know. Nor Thomas. Please, Merritt, can you do this for me? I hope it’s not too horrible a prospect for you?’ She looked up at him, her blue eyes large and filled with tears. Merritt swallowed, then put his hand up to the back of his neck, unable to credit what Hephzibah was saying.
‘I had always thought you were at least quite fond of me, Merritt, and we are friends, aren’t we? You probably think of me more as a sister but I hope you could at least give it a try. It may not work. The fault may, after all, lie with me.’ She covered her face with her hands. ‘I can’t believe I’m saying all this, asking this of you. What has become of me?’
Merritt was dumbfounded, completely lost for words. He stood in front of her and stared at her in disbelief.
Hephzibah reached for his hands. ‘You’re going to say no, aren’t you? Of course you are. It is a mad idea. To expect you to have relations with a woman you feel nothing for is to expect too much. I’m so sorry, Merritt. Please forgive me.’
She squeezed his hands between hers. ‘I am doing this for love. Otherwise I would never betray my husband, never lie with another man.’ She looked up at him, as if searching his face for validation of her words. ‘In your sermon last Sunday you spoke of how love covers all wrongs. My love will surely cover this wrong. Won’t it? When I’m doing it for all the right reasons. Doing it because of my love for Thomas. I have been reading The Prince by Machiavelli. He talks about the end justifying the means. God would understand, wouldn’t he? The alternative would be much worse. If you can do this for me, Merritt, I will be indebted to you forever.’
Merritt shut his eyes and realised he was close to tears. He turned away from Hephzibah.
She grasped at his sleeve. ‘At least think it over tonight. If you decide not to help me I will understand. I realise I am asking a terrible thing of you. If you decide you can’t do what I ask, we will never speak of it again. But, if you are prepared to help me, I’ll be waiting for you tomorrow afternoon at two. There’s a place we can use – an abandoned cottage in the woods on the far side of the water meadows. No one goes there. No one will ever know. Please, Merritt, just think about it.’
That night, Merritt barely slept. He had never felt so torn. Here he was with the only woman he had ever loved – ever could love – offering her body to him on a plate. He thought of what it would be like to see her, to touch her, to possess her. He thought of her lying beneath him: tried to imagine what it would be like to make love with her. He had no frame of reference for this as he had never been with a woman. He turned over onto his back and stared at the ceiling. His only knowledge of sex was through the words of Ovid and he had approached the Ars Amorata as an intellectual exercise rather than a practical guide. All he knew was that the thought of being in Hephzibah’s arms was almost too much for his brain to comprehend. Yet, as he lay staring at the ceiling, his body comprehended only too well.
He rolled onto his stomach and buried his head in the pillow, which was damp with his sweat. He was supposed to be a man of God: maybe his vocation was shallow, but he did have a moral compass and it was telling him that everything about Hephzibah’s proposal was wrong. He had only that morning done his level best to dissuade Mr Carver from his proposed adultery and yet here he was himself, contemplating adultery with a woman who was only doing it because she loved her husband. Wrong, wrong, wrong. He beat his fists against the pillow in anger and frustration.
His scruples were not only moral. There was also his pride. Merritt felt humiliated: Hephzibah had implied that the prospect of making love with him was distasteful to her. She had spoken at length of her love for her husband. As for Merritt, hadn’t she said she looked on him as friend and brother, not as an object of desire?
The situation was like Satan in the desert tempting a starving Christ to turn stones into bread. He had preached to his hungry parishioners about it – were he to succumb to temptation himself, he would be nothing but a hypocrite.
And yet… Merritt closed his eyes but could not efface her image from his brain. Trying in vain to sleep, all he could think of was the look of desperation in her eyes as she had asked him to do this for her. He had made her a promise and surely it would be a bigger sin to break that promise, to betray her trust. Could he deny her anything? He feared not. He was powerless where she was concerned. If Hephzibah asked him to cut off his hand for her he would ask her to hand him the axe.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Neither can the wave that has passed by be recalled,
nor the hour which has passed return again.
Ovid
They met on the path leading to the water meadows, then took a narrow plank bridge over a stream, passed through a small copse of trees and up a slope in the chalk hill on the other side. They walked in silence, both of them embarrassed and uncertain of what lay ahead of them, wondering whether there was any alternative and whether they should turn back. The thin soil was sparsely vegetated, but they were concealed from the village and the Hall by the copse of trees. When they reached the summit they descended the other side where a small shepherd’s hut hunkered under the slope of the hill, concealed from view by an outcrop of bare chalk and a clump of scrubby bushes.
‘No one comes here. It’s not used any more. The journeyman shepherd who used to stay here died two or three years ago. And the road’s half a mile away,’ Hephzibah said.
Merritt nodded. His mouth was dry and his palms were sweating. He couldn’t believe what they were about to do. His heart ached with sorrow. Everything that Hephzibah had said to him the previous day reinforced how she didn’t see him. He was invisible to her. She saw only the costume of the local parson, a friendly man – someone to exchange pleasantries with, enjoy a walk with but not someone who merited more than the occasional passing thought. He had lain awake most of the night wrestling with his conscience and his pride. He had few religious scruples – despite his clerical profession, he saw himself as more of an agnostic or a humanist – but he did believe in marital fidelity.
How could he stand in the pulpit and lecture his parishioners about morality when he was committing adultery with one of them? And to know that Hephzibah was only doing this ou
t of love for her husband. There was the rub. It was a humiliation to be used in this way, to be treated by Hephzibah like a necessary evil, something to be dispensed with as quickly as possible, like holding one’s nose while taking medicine.
Merritt looked sideways at Hephzibah. She was clearly as nervous as he was. Her eyes were fixed on the path ahead as she walked briskly towards the small wooden structure. He wondered if she was filled with disgust at the thought of their coming congress – something to be got over with quickly, possibly with gritted teeth. He trudged on beside her, feeling like a condemned man approaching the gallows.
The place hadn’t been used in some years. Woodbine was growing over the stone walls and there was a collection of rusting chains hanging on one of the outside walls. A pile of shepherd’s crooks lay abandoned in the grass, beside a heap of woven fencing panels, beginning to rot away, their surfaces green with mould.
Hephzibah pushed the door of the hut open and they both started as the ancient hinges creaked. Inside, Merritt was grateful for the gloom – the two small windows were encrusted with grime and cobwebs, blocking out most of the light. He looked around him. There were old shepherding implements hanging from hooks on the wall, alongside a few moth-eaten linen smocks and a couple of hats. Against one wall of the tiny room was a narrow wooden box-bed without any bedding, save a neatly folded woollen blanket.
‘I brought the blanket here yesterday in case it was chilly,’ said Hephzibah. ‘We can lie on it. It’s clean.’
She looked away, avoiding his eyes. The pair of them stood there for several moments, neither knowing what to say or do.
Eventually Hephzibah spoke again, ‘Have you done this before?’ Her voice was shy, hesitant.
Merritt shook his head, frozen to the spot. For years he had longed for this moment, for the anticipation of at last possessing her, but instead of joy, he felt only pain and heartache.