by Mary Mackie
The lady’s maid, a pert dumpling incongruously named Violet, was a busy little body, always chattering about nothing in particular, though she learned to hold her tongue in Narnie’s presence. Mama didn’t seem to mind the chatter; Mama’s world was becoming more confused with every day.
* * *
If emotions at the house were fraught, there was an undercurrent of unrest about the farm too, which at first I put down to my own lack of tolerance. The men seemed to move more slowly; they obeyed orders, but only after a pause; frowns and black looks followed me, and under-breath mutterings, and when two or three were gathered together their conversation would stop as I went by.
Nor was the discontent only at Orchards. Many farms around the district were plagued with petty mischiefs. One of the sail reapers at Ambleford was damaged while left overnight in a field during haying, and even dear old Farmer Pooley found slogans daubed on his barn calling him a ‘slave-driver’.
In June, when the shearing gang arrived, the trouble escalated. One of the shearers was a pro-union man who had been working in the south the previous year and now came to spread his doctrine of discontent in Norfolk. Low pay was one of the unionists’ main grievances, and bad housing, and the old, old complaint of being robbed of common lands during enclosures. Or so McDowall told me.
‘The pay’s nowhere near as low as it is in the south,’ I argued. ‘I agreed to raise it again only last season. The men know the trouble I’m having with damaged crops and increased costs and all the rest.’
‘Aye, well,’ McDowall rubbed his bony nose. ‘Trouble is, they don’t always believe it. They can see the signs – ye’ve acquired an engine and a carriage. There’s more servants in the house. Ye can always find the money for fine clothes and jewels and—’
‘That’s enough!’ I would not lower myself to remind him that the things he mentioned came from my husband’s generosity, not from the farm’s profits.
He spread his hands in a shrug. ‘Ye asked me what they were sayin’. If ye don’t like it, that’s nae fault o’ mine.’
‘I expect you to stamp out this talk, not agree with it,’ I returned. ‘I won’t condone rabble-rousing at Orchards. You can tell this – this trouble-maker to pack his bags and get off my land.’
I should have known better. The shearers worked as a unit, and if one went, all went. If McDowall had been the kind of steward I needed, he would have reminded me of that; instead he carried out my orders to the letter. By morning, with only half the sheep shorn, the shearers were on strike, though still camping in my barn. They weren’t due at their next place for a week, the foreman told me; they had to have somewhere to stay until then.
McDowall proved no help at all: he didn’t see what he could do about it; he’d only been following orders. Damning the man in my mind, out of exasperation I decided they could sit it out and whistle for their pay. I sent Benstead in pursuit of all the other gangs in the area, begging them to fit us in. They refused.
Basil, arriving home in the middle of this upheaval, went down to the yard and negotiated a settlement, which involved a promise of extra pay.
‘Better that than let the sheep suffer,’ Basil said when he returned. ‘I’ve told them there’s to be no more union talk while they’re here. Why you had to let it get this far, you stupid hen—’
‘Don’t speak to me like that!’
‘I’ll speak to you any way I like!’ he returned. ‘Women shouldn’t be allowed in business. You let your emotions get in the way. You lost your silly temper and look what happened. If I hadn’t been here—’
‘It’s McDowall’s job to sort these things out, not mine! If he’d handled it differently—’
‘Don’t blame McDowall. Fact is, a woman isn’t suited to this life. The sooner Johnny comes home the better, or this farm’ll go to ruin.’
It wasn’t true, I thought fiercely. I could manage the farm perfectly well, given proper support from my workers. McDowall had failed in his duty of backing me up. I suspected he had actively encouraged the trouble. Like the affair of the hay, which rotted because McDowall ordered it cut too soon, the incident of the shearers stayed in my mind, niggling, like grit in a shoe.
* * *
Johnny came home only briefly that year. He accompanied Mama and Narnie on a visit to Thetford and then he went off to spend some weeks with friends in the West Country. Letters told of his enjoyment of Devon, his eager studying of farming methods in that county, and there was mention of a young lady named Clara, sister of a friend he had made at Cambridge.
‘Sounds as though he’s mashed on the girl,’ Narnie snorted.
‘Oh, surely not!’ Mama replied. ‘Why, Johnny’s only twenty years old. He can’t possibly be thinking of marriage yet.’
Nevertheless, my brother was growing up. In another year he would be leaving university.
* * *
The newly-formed Farm Labourers’ Union spread unrest across the west and south of England. Sporadic strikes broke out; farmers retaliated with lock-outs, some as near to us as Suffolk. The news was reported in the papers and we heard more about it from George Pooley, who was a member of the local Farmers’ Club where such news was discussed; like so many institutions, the club was a male-only preserve and therefore, to my annoyance, barred to me.
The Farmers’ Club had word that a unionist speaker was coming to Dersingham and that a meeting was being called on the common for a Sunday night in July. George Pooley and some of the other farmers planned to go along to hear what was said.
One evening, in the week before the meeting, I walked the fields alone with my secret thoughts, sending hares starting, hearing pheasants cry, breathing in the scent of bean flowers and ripening grain. How peaceful it was when work was stilled for the day, when evening shadows lengthened and swallows swooped. As I walked, I assessed the crops – oats nearly ready, given another week or two of good weather; barley golden, too; wheat needing longer, ears still tinged with green and grain oozing milky juice under a probing thumbnail. Once I had dreamed of teaching Georgie such things.
‘Miss Rose!’ The hiss brought me round, startled, to see Jack Huggins roll out from under a hedgerow where he had been hiding so quietly that I had passed him unseen.
‘Jack, you rapscallion! What are you doing there?’
His grin split his dirty face, showing the gap where he had lost a front tooth in some brawl. He still looked an urchin, slight for his fourteen years, though he was better dressed and better fed now. He had a roguish gleam in his eye, and his silky golden locks curled down his neck from under a battered old peaked cap he kept from his days in London. He sported a couple of pheasant-tail feathers in it – moulted ones, I hoped. ‘Been waitin’ for you, Miss Rose.’
‘Oh, yes? Is that all you were doing?’
‘’Course!’ His bright eyes and innocent expression demanded what on earth else he might have been up to there in the hedge. Poaching? Heaven forfend!
Yes, I thought, poaching it was without a doubt; if I probed I might find a wire noose not far away, probably more than one, with a garrotted hare waiting to be collected. ‘Jack—’
‘Got this for you, miss,’ he broke in, and with the air of a conjuror in a sideshow he produced a piece of paper from his pocket. ‘I’d’ve brought it before, on’y Mr Benstead’s been on me tail all day and I hen’t had the chance to git away.’
‘What is it?’
‘Gentleman give it to me. Met ’im in the lane this mornin’.’
‘What gentleman?’
‘Just a gentleman. Wouldn’t know ’im again if I saw ’im.’ He pushed the note into my hand and winked. ‘Not when he give me a whole shilling. Don’t know nothin’ about it, me. Note? What note? G’night, miss.’ Doffing his feathered cap as if he were a courtier, he turned and went leaping away. A piercing whistle brought a little terrier barking after him.
I knew who the note was from, even before the handwriting confirmed it. It was simply a folded piece of paper
written on one side. Not very discreet, except that Jack Huggins had had no schooling and couldn’t read, besides which I had a feeling I could trust the young rogue not to betray me. Presumably ‘the gentleman’ had guessed the same. He had written:
Meet me – PLEASE – at the cottage where we met before. This afternoon, 2 p.m.
This afternoon.
The message had come too late.
* * *
That evening, by candle-light, I studied my reflection critically for the first time in months. Outwardly I was a mature woman of twenty-eight, with careworn hands and marks of sorrow on my face. It was a thin face, freckled from the sunlight, haloed by unkempt red hair that would never stay in a tidy bun. Beneath its dusty black my figure was thin, too, angular and bony. Youth was passing, along with hopes and dreams. I stared into the mirror, into my own empty eyes, and I knew that if I had had the note in time I would have gone to meet Geoffrey, and be damned to the consequences. Because inside me I was still the young girl with impossible dreams.
Having undressed, I turned down the lamp and lay awake in the darkness thinking of Geoffrey. I tried to picture him but the picture wouldn’t hold steady, only fragments glimpsed as if through water. I almost got out of bed to look at the likeness hidden in my locket, but if Basil came and discovered me…
Even as I thought of him I heard his step in the hall. He was coming up early. Oh, God… not tonight, please. As the door opened, light misted in from the lamp he was carrying. I feigned sleep, hearing the familiar sounds as he began to undress; the creak of springs as the bed sank under his weight; his boots thumping to the floor. After a while the light went out, the covers lifted and he climbed in beside me, propped on one elbow, saying, ‘I’m off to Norwich tomorrow. Taking the first train. I’ll be gone a week. Right?’
‘Aren’t you going to this unionist meeting?’ I asked. ‘I thought you told your uncle George…’
‘So I did, but something more important’s come up. What do I care about a farm labourers’ meeting? My uncle’ll tell you what goes on.’ He waited a few seconds, then: ‘Right,’ and he lay down, turned away from me.
Silently I lay listening, waiting, until his breathing told me he was asleep, and then, released from fear of my husband’s attentions, I called up the shimmering fragments of my lover’s image. I could no longer pretend to myself that Basil cared for me, or I for him. Any chance of happiness between us had died with Georgie. And so I sought consolation in dreams and fancies, assuring myself that thoughts could not be sinful. The sin would occur only if I allowed my dreams to become tangible. And that I would never do.
* * *
With Basil away and Mama and Narnie again in Thetford, Uncle Jonathan and Aunt Beatrice drove over in time to attend church. Beatrice wanted to see the Prince and Princess of Wales and their five offspring. The prince, who had been convalescing abroad, had returned for a brief stay at Sandringham before resuming his court duties.
I had no opportunity to converse with either the prince or the princess, but His Royal Highness doffed his hat and called, ‘Good morning, Mrs Pooley!’ across the crowd, and Princess Alix acknowledged me with a smile and a gracious nod of her head.
‘How proud you must be to know them!’ Aunt Beatrice said.
‘Indeed I am.’ After all the months of disgrace it was an undeniable pleasure to bask in royal approval.
My aunt and uncle remained with me for lunch and afterwards took a walk about the farm, though neither of them was as spry as in former days. Aunt Beatrice, troubled by rheumatics, walked with the aid of a stick, coming behind while her husband walked with me and talked of what might happen the following year when Johnny came of age.
‘I imagine he’ll be glad of your services as housekeeper,’ Uncle Jonathan said. ‘Shall you and your husband plan to stay?’
‘I think not. Not for long. Once Johnny is settled, we shall probably move away.’ Basil had spoken of moving to Norwich, though I couldn’t imagine what I should find to do with myself in a city, without the demands of the seasons and the crops.
‘And your Mama?’
‘I imagine she will go on as she does now, dividing her time between Orchards and Thetford.’ So long as William Turnbull will stand for it, I added ruefully to myself.
‘And will Miss Narborough continue to be her companion? The reason I ask, Rose, is Willow Cottage. I know you wished to continue renting it, in case Miss Narborough decided to go back, but it doesn’t do to let a property stand empty, especially with the winter in prospect. And we need a place for our old butler, Marshall, for his retirement.’
Silently, I gave best to Narnie, saying aloud, ‘Then by all means let him have it. I can’t imagine Narnie ever being persuaded to leave Mama – or Mama to allow it.’
My aunt and uncle left after taking afternoon tea; Beatrice wanted to attend evening service at her chapel.
* * *
All day, behind the quietness and the usual Sunday routine of milking and horses being tended, I had sensed an air of anticipation about the farm. I had let it be known that the men were free to attend the union meeting if they wished, but I had also asked McDowall to go and bring back news. However, as the lonely evening dragged on, my own curiosity drove me down to the yards to harness up the pony and trap. I didn’t trust McDowall; George Pooley would bring back a more reliable report, but it might be days before he had the time to come to Orchards… so I rationalised, giving myself excuses to go when actually it was my own curiosity that drove me.
The sun was low, a few men making purposefully along the lanes in twos and threes. The meeting was to be held in an area between the common and the Sandringham Warrens, among gorse bushes and heather. Going round by a devious route, I left the trap in a clearing in the plantations and stayed discreetly among young pine trees on the hill, from where I saw that several hundred men had gathered – so many that some of them must have walked miles.
As the light faded, lanterns were lit, raised on beanpoles. Someone started to sing a hymn unfamiliar to me, though many of the men took it up and soon the warm twilight was loud with male voices raised in fervent chorus. The sound sent shivers down my spine. It was a ‘ranter’s’ hymn, I guessed, with a chorus that spoke of conflict and marching with banners.
Given the distance, and the growing twilight, I couldn’t see much of the speaker. He stood raised on an improvised dais, with a phalanx of supporters around him. He appeared to be dressed much as his audience was dressed, in Sunday best of dark suit and white shirt, but when he began to speak his voice carried with clarity and passion. I didn’t catch every word, but I heard the gist.
He preached the evils of low pay and bad conditions; he called the squires ‘land-stealers’, the farmers ‘slave-drivers’; he railed against the injustices of a law that allowed a gamekeeper the right to search a man at any hour of the day or night. ‘The game laws are unjust! They should be abolished. Shooting should be stopped. It’s a privilege of the rich, and makes temptation for the poor.’
At this point a voice intervened, complaining that the union was trying to set class against class. The lone voice belonged to Reverend Lancaster.
‘Priest of Baal!’ the answer boomed from among the crowd. ‘Friend to the tyrants!’
‘Yes. Yes!’ cries came. ‘Throw him out. No room for enemies here.’
A flurry in the throng said that moves had been made to carry out this order, but the speaker raised his voice, appealing for calm. ‘We’re not here to do violence. Not yet! We’re here to tell you how strong we can be if we stand together. Let him stay. Let him listen and take heed.’
He cited the example of the French Revolution. Carried away by his own rhetoric he even hinted at the efficacy of arson and murder, and he raised the old republican complaints against the royal family.
A few bully boys were moving among the crowd. There was a commotion on the periphery, where I now saw a knot of men standing together in the shade of a patch of gorse. I guessed they w
ere members of the Farmers’ Club. Their presence had been discovered; the bullies were moving in on them, jostling them.
My attention was so fixed on that spot that I was late in seeing another couple of shadows detach themselves from cover and make sidling way towards me. One of the men was slight, the other as tall and thin as the bean-pole he carried, a lantern swinging from it sending slants of light across his scarred, ravaged face.
Davy Timms.
The smaller man looked like my old enemy, the ex-gamekeeper, Pyke.
As I turned to look for a way of escape, another figure loomed up behind me, tall in the shadows, wearing a wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his face. His hand fell heavily on my arm as he nodded to the others, ‘That’s all right, bor, I’ll tek care on ’er. Come you on, Miss Rose, ma’am. This is no place for you.’
Despite the country accent, the labourer’s clothes, and the hat that disguised his face, I knew the timbre of Geoffrey Devlin’s voice when I heard it. I also knew well enough not to argue, not then.
The two men stopped. The light swung, and by its gleam I saw Timms’s eyes, cold and watchful in his ruined face.
Half leading, half pushing me, his fingers biting into my upper arm, Geoffrey hustled me back down the slope towards the place where I had left the trap. When I glanced back I saw that we were well out of sight of the meeting, though the glow of its lanterns still showed on the rise, behind dark sentinel tree trunks, and occasionally a shout of agreement could be heard as the speaker raised some point.
‘You’re hurting me,’ I complained.
The pressure eased, but only a little. He said furiously, ‘Why in heaven’s name did you take the risk of coming here tonight?’