All the dear faces Page 28

  Charlie put his arm about her and drew her head down to his shoulder. She could smell the tang of the sharp soap he used, bought at the market from a housewife who made her own. It had a lemony fragrance and mixed with it was the good smell of earth and new grass. She did not answer his question and he did not repeat it, for of course, he knew what ailed her. He knew of her love for Reed Macauley and he would not press her. Charlie, dear Charlie, on whom she relied so much. What would she do without him? She leaned on him, depended on him, cared for him and about him. He was her friend and dear companion. He made her laugh and taught her patience.

  Charlie. What would she do without him?

  Chapter 19

  There had been great excitement in the parish of Bassenthwaite when Reed Macauley brought his bride home from the honeymoon they had spent in Italy. Italy, of all places, which no one in the parish, nor indeed in Cumberland, had ever been to, but trust Reed Macauley to do things in style. Though it had taken place in Bradford, where his bride came from, the wedding was said to have been a very grand affair, since the bride's father was one of the wealthiest men in the county of Yorkshire. Wool, of course, and all that went with it, which was enough to buy his daughter a wedding gift of the most magnificent diamonds anyone in the parish had ever seen. Not that her husband couldn't afford to do the same since he was not short of a bob or two himself and, naturally, with the dowry that came with her, he had made himself even wealthier.

  They had been married in February and when they returned to Long Beck in May, just before Whitsuntide, it was soon whispered, as these things were, in such a close-knit community, that young Mrs Macauley was not yet pregnant. Disappointing for Reed Macauley who'd be looking for a son within the year, but there was time yet. Mrs Macauley was a fine young woman, tall, deep bosomed, broad shouldered, full hipped, the sort of woman made to bear children they would have said, and Reed Macauley would be doing his best, since he was that sort of a man anyway, the ladies whispered amongst themselves. Not coarse, nor even earthy, but very masculine in his ways.

  All of Bassenthwaite parish and beyond, those of the upper and wealthy classes, landowners, manufacturing gentlemen, men whose money came from mining, were invited to the first dinner party the Macauleys gave. Mrs Macauley proved to be a splendid hostess. It seemed she had taken to running her husband's home with an efficiency which was a credit to her mother's training.

  A placid, even docile, young woman was Mrs Reed Macauley. One with whom Reed Macauley would have no trouble and when the subject of Mrs Lewis was brought up by the new bride to her husband, no one could have been more surprised than he was himself.

  Mrs Lewis had been cook to Reed Macauley for many years and he had been perfectly satisfied with what she had sent to his table. But it seemed that Mrs Reed Macauley was not, she told her husband, one morning at breakfast. Mrs Lewis and Reed Macauley's housekeeper, Mrs Stone, had run his home between them, uninterfered with, ever since his mother died, for though their master was exacting, demanding the best, it seemed that what they did was perfectly acceptable to him. Not to Mrs Macauley, who needed, she told Mr Macauley innocently, of all things, a French chef who could prepare the epicurean bonne-bouche she had, in her father's house, been used to.

  “I am not at all satisfied with the standard of Mrs Lewis's cooking, Reed, and I'm afraid she will have to go. Mother, who has been in London, has interviewed one or two likely persons for me, persons with style and experience in the kind of cooking 1 want. French chefs since the people I mean to invite for weekend parties are used to certain standards, and I'm afraid Mrs Lewis has proved she cannot provide them."

  “I beg your pardon," Reed Macauley lowered his newspaper slowly and the breakfast room became hushed.

  “We have been home a month now, Reed, and though what she sends to the table is . . . adequate, she cannot manage many of the dishes I have asked her to prepare. Mrs Stone is also really in need of pensioning off to some cottage which I am sure you could provide, since she ispast doing what I require of her, and of course, we must have a proper butler. That man who comes in when we have guests is all very well . . .”

  The three housemaids who stood about the room, known as Peg, Jenny and Josie, before the coming of their new mistress, but now called Askew, Hall and Baxter, at least by her, since it seemed she was not in the habit of calling her servants by their Christian names, did their best to blend into the wallpaper, their eyes like saucers in their rosy country faces.

  Reed regarded the smooth and equally rosy face of his wife, wondering wearily for the hundredth time in the last four months how he was to season himself to the realisation that this artless, innocent, young woman was to be his companion for the rest of their lives together. That from now until one of them died she would sit opposite him at the breakfast and dining table; that she had, as it seemed she was now intent on doing, the right to fire or hire his servants as she pleased. She was not silly, nor even empty-headed. She had been brought up to be the wife a man like himself needed. Not clever, for if she had shown signs of it, it would certainly have been erased from her childish mind years ago. She had been moulded from birth for her place in life: to extend a wide-eyed, unquestioning docility to her husband, as she had to her father. Embroidery, a few scales on the piano, French verbs and a prayer or two in English. That was all she knew. To sing and smile and take part in the small-talk thought suitable for a lady, and the understanding that man was the master and she his weak and female shadow. She could deal with servants, run her home with the efficiency a man of shrewd business sense would not despise, but she had no thought in her head which was not put there by her husband. Except in her own domain, which was her husband's home.

  She was smiling at him in perfect innocence, anticipating no argument, merely showing him the courtesy of telling him what she intended doing in the running of their home, which was, after all, her job. To make it as comfortable as she could for him, for their children when they came, and for their guests, who would, since he was a man of business, and she a woman with friends, be many.

  He sighed, doing his best to be patient since none of this was her fault, this disaster he had brought upon himself. He waved his hand at the maids, indicating that they should leave the room, praying that they would not go blabbing to Mrs Lewis and Mrs Stone, and that if they did, which seemed likely, he could smooth it over without undermining his wife's new authority.

  “Esmé, Mrs Stone has been in this house ever since my mother died and Mrs Lewis before that. My father employed them to look after us and when he went I saw no reason for change. Mrs Lewis is a splendid cook and Mrs Stone, though I dare say she has had her own way and has become used to it, will quickly adapt to what you need of her. They are neither of them old enough to be pensioned off. Mrs Lewis is not yet fifty and Mrs Stone only a few years older. That is not ancient, you know.”

  It was to eighteen-year-old Esmé Macauley, but she waited politely for her husband to finish what he had to say before starting, sweetly, to explain.

  “I agree that Mrs Lewis is splendid, Reed, as you say, but only with the provincial dishes she is used to preparing. She cannot manage French cuisine. You will, I'm sure, want the gentlemen with whom you do business and, who will be dining with us, to have the very best you can give them, and I, as your wife, can only supply it if I have the proper servants. I intend to begin house parties as soon as I have the staff since my friends from Yorkshire, from Cheshire and Leicestershire, where I have often hunted and been their guest, will wish to be mine. And now that the weather is warmer, I thought it would be charming to have champagne picnics, like we did at home. I shall need another carriage or two to carry the ladies who do not ride and then, at the proper time, a harvest ball, perhaps with a marquee on the lawn for the tenants . . .""Tenants?"

  “Why, yes, that is what my friend Lady Harrison of Edenthwaite does every year. Her husband's estate . . ." "This is not an estate, Esmé. This is a working farm." "Oh surely more than that.
"

  “Shepherds, I employ. Men in the yard and the fields. A gardener or two, stable lads. There are no tenants, only those who live in cottages on my land."

  “Very well, no marquee for the tenants, but a ball nevertheless and a hunt ball at . . ."

  “We have no ballroom Esme. This is a farmhouse." "But the salon is large."

  “Salon?" since he was not aware he had one.

  “The drawing room then. The carpets could be removed and chairs set about . . .”

  Her voice tripped on, light and silvery, and for several minutes he let it flow over him. She was so very pretty. She wore a simple morning gown of sprigged cream muslin, the neck high and frilled, the sleeves long and tight fitting. About her eighteen-inch waist was a broad sash of cream silk tied at the back in a bow. The bodice of the gown was tight, showing off her magnificent breasts, and the shoulders were sloping. Her hair was immaculately arranged with a centre parting and cream velvet ribbons threaded the side curls in a golden cloud over her ears. Her cornflower-blue eyes were wide and clear with nothing in them but her desire to please and her complete ignorance of what was in her husband's mind. She looked utterly enchanting, composed and unruffled, at eight o'clock in the morning, turned out by the lady's maid she had brought with her to a faultless perfection which, though it spoke of hours of effort, had, he knew, taken no more than the half-hour in which he himself had bathed, shaved and dressed. There was not a sign of the night before in which he had made love to her with the despairing strength of a man who fears he is losing his mind and who is convinced that only by plunging his male body into female flesh, can he save his sanity. She had made no objection. She had made no response. He had turned her, tossed her, this way and that, studying the young magnificence of her nakedness from every angle, in every position his imaginative mind could devise. For hours on end he had caressed her, doing his best to take into his mouth, into his own body, the most intimate parts of hers, going into her again and again, since if he could get her with child, at least some good might come of the charade they played out. He had exhausted himself, falling asleep with his face pressed into her flat, empty belly. He felt bruised, weary, drained this morning and she looked as though she had never known a man's hand in her life. Perhaps that was because, in a way, she had not. Like a doll she had been. Acquiescent, submissive, dutiful, doing nothing. There, beneath his hands, his lips, his worrying teeth, his body, but not . . . not with him. Not as . . . as she would have been.

  At once Annie Abbott's vibrant laughing face swam into his vision and the room, the bright sunshine which streamed through the window, his wife's smooth face, his wife's tinkling voice all dissolved and vanished. Eyes, deep and golden brown as the waters in the high tarn and just as gleaming. Eyes which had melted to a rich warm chocolate on that day, long ago now when she had almost, almost moved into his arms. The day he had heard she had been interfered with and he had gone rampaging down to Browhead, only to find it had been that wisp of a child she had taken in. She had hit him, he remembered, though he could not bring to mind why, then, later, when he had drunk the tankard of ale she had given him by way of apology, if Annie Abbott could be said to apologise to anyone, there had been sweetness for a while, a hint of what might have been between Annie Abbott and Reed Macauley. Then they had argued again and he had ridden off in high dudgeon, his temper a furnace within him at her defiant stubbornness.

  As he had the last time, the day on Rosley Fairground, the last day. The day he had seen her with her hand in that of another man's. The day she had looked into his eyes and held the man's hand and . . . he had run .. .

  Reed Macauley had run away from her . . . It had been an agony, a pain so great even now it festered and bit deep inside him and would not let him rest. Dear sweet God, if he could only escape it, and rest. She was as ingrained in him as though she was a living part of his body. As much his flesh, his muscles, the arteries which pumped his blood, his mind which dwelled on her every hour of the day, the heart which beat and beat and grieved for her. All these elements were contained in Reed Macauley and so was she, a living extension of himself, which could no longer be complete since she was missing from his life and always would be. For weeks he had hated her. Through the winter when tales of her doings had come to him he had hated her so much the bile had come to his mouth and choked him. She was just as they said she was, brazen and unblushing, indecent in her shamelessness, a woman of easy virtue, who would use any man to achieve her own ends. They said all these things of her and he agreed, and yet, deep in his heart, which knew Annie Abbott for what she truly was, a small voice to which he refused to listen whispered that if she was all these things, why had she not used Reed Macauley? Surely, of all the men in the parish of Bassenthwaite, he was the one who could have given her the most. She had known she could have it. She had only to put out a hand to him and comfort, security, love, could all have been hers without doing a hand's turn to achieve it. A house somewhere, for herself and her child, money, jewels, clothes, his protection. Anything she wanted, needed and yet she chose to work herself and that girl she took in, into the ground to keep her independence. Putting herself in danger, dressing like a man, tramping the fells alone but for her dogs, in her eternal search for what she was after.

  His wife's voice interrupted his painful thoughts and, though they were painful, they were also precious and guarded and he wanted to strike out at Esmé for ripping them apart.

  “. . . so I will summon Mrs Lewis first and give her a month's notice. I think that is fair, don't you? I shall of course give her a glowing reference since she . . ."

  “And where in hell's name do you think she is to go at her age? After all these years of devoted service, where is she to go, Esme A woman of forty-five thrown out in the street just because she can't manage bloody French cuisine . . . ?"

  “Reed . . . oh, please, Reed," Esmé's face crumpled in distress but Reed Macauley did not see it, or if he did, he did not care. His mind was battered with pictures of a woman, any woman really, who is forced by circumstances to struggle in this cruel, man's world, to survive on her own. To stoop to tasks which were beyond her, physically and emotionally. Humiliated and cast out to fend for herself after all these years. He could not, would not stand for it, no, not if he had to ride over there and .. . and. . .

  Jesus . . . Jesus God! it was Mrs Lewis who was being discussed here . . . not . . . not her. And he would not allow it. She had no right to even think of dismissing her, not Mrs Lewis, even if Esmé was mistress of this house now . . . Dear sweet God . . . let there be a child soon . . . a son . . . or a daughter . . . anything to ease the ache in him which wouldn't let up, anything to put Annie Abbott out of his mind, his heart, his life, or he would go mad with it. She was destroying him, his torment . . . his love.

  “Mrs Lewis stays, Esmé." His voice was cold, implacable and his young wife shrank back in her chair as he stood up. He saw it and was sorry, but there was nothing he could say to reassure her. Not now . . . not just now when he needed to get away.

  “She is . . . a member of the family . . . no, no, not related . . ." he added irritably as his wife's astonished face could plainly be seen to be dwelling on the horror of having a common cook's blood mixing in the veins of her children, when they came. "And I don't want to hear another word on it. Those with whom I'm acquainted and who have been dining here for years seem to have takenno harm from Mrs Lewis's cooking, indeed they have often praised it. Your friends I'm afraid must learn to do the same. Of course, if their fine sensibilities cannot overcome it, then they are at liberty to stay away.”

  Ignoring the fat child's tears which had begun to form in his wife's beautiful eyes, he strode from the room, banging the door behind him.

  *

  The long moving ribbon of sheep wound slowly down the track towards the lower pastures, a jostling, steaming throng of animals which now and then jumped as though in joyful anticipation of what was to come. The air was filled with their bleatin
g and baaing and their hooves made a sharp clatter on the rough stones, before they reached the more profuse grass of the inlands. Two dogs worked them, as silent as shadows, moving in a sweeping blur from side to side, keeping them together, chivvying down those which were reluctant to go. At their back were Annie Abbott and Cat.

  Blackie and Bonnie were experienced sheepdogs now, running as 'doubles', obeying Annie's orders with no more than a high whistle and a short command. They had gathered her ewes and the twenty or so lambs which they had dropped in May, and others besides, since any man's flock may roam freely on the high fells and sheep know no enemies amongst their own, mixing with one another as they cropped. Despite this there were not many strays. A Herdwick will stick to its own 'hear, the pasture where it is weaned. It has in it an incredible homing instinct which fortunately had not been too deep in the ones Annie had bought at Rosley, since it had been known for a sheep sold miles away, if it is able, to return to its own 'heaf'. Annie's had not done so. There would be a 'meet' in November at a local hostelry where shepherds would gather, not only to celebrate the end of a successful farming year but where all strays, or neighbouring sheep had to be displayed by noon of the day decided, and all sheep whose marks were not in the 'Shepherd's Guide' started some twenty years ago were to be drawn into a fold apart from the others to be inspected by all at the meeting. Those who infringed on this rule were fined sixpence each. Every sheep and lamb, as it was born, was branded with the owner's `smit' on the fleece, and all of Annie's new flock now had her lug' mark on their ear. Those she found without her mark among the sheep she had gathered must be taken to the meet and how the farmers in the parish who had managed over the past year to treat her as though she and her flock, indeed her farm, did not exist, would cope with that, she could not imagine. Nor did she care. She had bought her flock. She had mated each ewe with the eager ram which had been driven back to Rosley in the spring. At lambing time the four of them, Charlie and herself, Cat and Phoebe, and the two dogs had gone, day after long wet day, searching out the new lambs which stood, small and white and defenceless against the dark contrast of their mother's bulk. The dogs even at such a young age, knew instinctively that gentleness was needed, driving the ewe and her staggering lamb, sometimes two, towards Annie, where with a deft twist of her crook, she caught the ewe, checking her udders for milk supply, since the lamb's survival depended on its mother's ability to feed it. The lamb was marked with exactly the same colour and spot as its dam.