A Time Like No Other Page 4

  They left Foxwell by a dilapidated gate after Harry had told the family, who collected with an air of acute misery to see them off, that the rents for the past years would be cancelled but on the first of January Mrs Fraser would expect to see one of them in the estate office with a month’s rent in his hand. That they must clear their fields – after all, counting himself, Arty had six able-bodied people to help him – and in the spring a crop must be sown. Arty nodded dejectedly and when the man and Mrs Fraser had ridden off turned to his wife and told her that the good times were over and what were they to make of this chap who seemed on good terms with the new widow. It seemed indecent to him with the poor young chap scarcely cold in his grave for the missis to have taken up with someone else, didn’t Evie agree with him? Despite the looseness of her own daughters’ morals, Evie did!

  Thickpenny Farm, rented by the Higgins family, Cowslip by the Grahams, Prospect Farm by the Archer family, Folly by the McGinleys and the Home Farm by the Jacksons, were, in comparison to Foxwell and the Weavers who rented it, in comparatively good shape. The stock was well cared for, mostly pigs, sheep, poultry and an excellent herd of Friesian cows at two of the farms, the rest given over to the growing of mangolds, some wheat, potatoes, oats and rye, and all promised to keep up with their rents now they knew that Mrs Fraser, poor lass, had an agent, as they thought Harry Sinclair to be, to help her with the estate and to whom they could go in times of need. Many of their outbuildings needed repair and Polly McGinley confided that the roof of the farm leaked ‘summat dreadful’, so much so that she and Sean were forced to sleep in the parlour and their son Denny and his wife Kate, who lived with them, shared a pallet by the kitchen fire.

  Harry promised that Mrs Fraser would see to it all the moment the rent was paid.

  ‘How am I to mend their roof, Harry? I haven’t a penny to my name,’ Lally asked disconsolately. They were almost the only words she had spoken during the whole of the morning as they travelled from farm to farm. She seemed overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the task she proposed to take on and had Harry not been beside her, gently encouraging her, she would have put Merry to a gallop and made for home. They were riding through a great belt of timber rising from a jungle of undergrowth that covered the entire south-eastern section of the estate. It was at least two miles across and about a mile deep with a clearing in the middle which was covered with the sodden carpet of russet autumn leaves. There was a fallen log in a patch of sunlight and, reining in Piper, Harry dismounted and held out his hand to her. She took it and jumped to the ground and was for a bare moment held in his arms as he caught her. She remembered thinking he smelled nice, a lemon scent of some sort; perhaps shaving soap. He was dressed very casually in a tweed jacket, riding breeches with well-polished, knee-high riding boots and a high-necked jumper. His ebony hair fell in a tumble of curls over his forehead and for a disturbing moment she wanted to reach out and brush them back as she might young Jamie’s. His dark brown eyes, the colour of chocolate, darkened even further and a faint flush came to his amber cheeks. His lips, well cut and firm as though to proclaim he would stand no insolence or opposition from any man, lifted at the corners with a hint of humour and as she slipped to the ground their bodies were pressed against one another then he let her go and turned away.

  ‘Perhaps we could sit here for a moment,’ he said politely, getting out his snowy white handkerchief and brushing it over the fallen tree trunk so that she might sit.

  ‘I must get back to the children. Dora is still somewhat . . .’ she was about to say ‘inexperienced’ then she remembered that Dora, Jenny and Clara came from a family of twelve and, as Jenny had remarked when Dora was taken on, she could bring up two babies with one hand tied behind her back.

  Harry sat down beside her. He wanted to take her hand, enfold it between his own, helpless beneath the wave of tenderness that swept over him but he knew it was far, far too soon for that. Let her get used to him, to having him help her, to calling often, on the estate’s business, of course, and when she began to feel at ease with him and was becoming used to her loss of Chris then he could perhaps . . . well, he was not sure what he would do but he was sure he could start to . . . to . . . court her. Court her! Was that his intention? This feeling he had for her had come on him so suddenly it was still unwieldy and he was not certain how he was to handle it, or her. First he must make himself indispensable to her so that she trusted him, treated him as a friend, then perhaps he might . . . Oh, to the devil with it, let’s get today over before we start planning the bloody future!

  ‘You’re anxious about money, I know that, and the problem of how you are to mend the roof at Folly Farm and all the other repairs needed, which seem to be many, must appear to be insurmountable but you must allow me to help you there.’

  She turned abruptly, her mouth opening on a denial but he held up his hand. ‘No, just hear me out. I’m not suggesting I should lend it to you but if you were to see Anson, he’s the manager at the bank in Moorend, he will give you good advice on how to raise a loan. The rents, when they start to come in, will repay it and in a year or two you will be out of debt and the farms should all be in good heart and making a profit. Most of the tenants seem to be honest and hardworking and must have money in the bank. They have been paying no rent for years as far as I can see and with a bit of encouragement’ – he smiled wryly, for he knew what he meant by that – ‘will soon be round at the estate office. Where is it, by the way?’

  She looked bewildered. ‘I’m not sure. Chris didn’t . . .’

  ‘No matter,’ he said, wondering what else Christopher Fraser hadn’t told this lovely wife of his or even if he knew himself. Years and years of neglect had run the estate into the ground and he also wondered where the money had come from, which moneylender had provided the means, the cash for Chris, and his father before him, to throw about so lavishly, and where it had gone. They had lived like princes. As a youth, he himself had been, with his own father before he died, to dine at the Priory and had been open-mouthed at the liberality and display. Champagne drunk as though it had been water and came out of the taps in the kitchen, exotic foods prepared by the French chef Joe Fraser had kept, card games for extremely high stakes which his father had smilingly refused to play, and every lamp in the house lit so that it looked like an enchanted fairyland. He had hunted from there with the rest of the county people, admiring the expensive hunters eating their heads off in the stables, the hounds kept by the Frasers, the hunt servants, the display of wealth. All gone now and this slender young woman was left to pick up the pieces.

  ‘I’m sorry to be of so little help to you but I will find it and set it up as an office. Where did you find the accounts books for the farms?’

  So she was not quite so confused as she seemed! They had been lying on the top shelf in a cupboard in the kitchen, unearthed by Mrs Stevens when he questioned her. Probably slung there heedlessly by Chris when his father died and he had found them too complicated for his careless mind to understand.

  ‘I found them one day on the kitchen table, Mr Sinclair,’ Mrs Stevens had told him, ‘so I put them away for safety until Master Chris should ask for them. He never did.’

  ‘They were . . . safe with Mrs Stevens,’ he answered shortly, since he did not want to blacken the name of her dead husband who had been a light-hearted fool.

  ‘Then . . . what shall I do next, Mr Sinclair?’

  He sighed, for it seemed she had not yet accepted that he was of her generation, the brother of Chris’s friend and not an elderly man from that of their fathers’!

  ‘First we’ll return to the the Priory and locate the estate office, look through the records for the agreements with the tenants, the leases, then, when you are free we’ll ride into Moorend and see Mr Anson at the bank. When would—’

  ‘This afternoon would suit me. You could stay to luncheon and then, if you can spare the time we could—’

  ‘I’m sorry, Lally, but this afternoon I have
an important appointment but perhaps tomorrow?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He could see she was somewhat deflated, having made up her mind that he was to be at her disposal whenever she needed him and he was sorry. But before he took her to see Fred Anson he must speak to him alone, for there was not a shadow of a doubt that the bank manager would refuse her. The estate would be heavily mortgaged, of that he was certain and there would, no doubt of it, be overdrafts, creditors and the like, and the chances of old Anson throwing good money after bad, as he would see it, were absolutely nil. Unless he himself offered to stand the loan! It wouldn’t be a loan really, not from the bank, but he would be forced to go through this charade to convince Lally that it was.

  ‘But I would like to take you up on your offer of luncheon. My appointment isn’t until three.’

  They mounted their horses and rode on through the wood, Harry making silent estimates of the value of the timber, since it would be one way of putting some money into the estate. They emerged into the pale sunshine of the steeper and less dense Moor Wood that rose behind the Priory and Harry could see the back of the house lying in the valley as they crossed rough ground leading to the paddocks which had once teemed with horses. Ebony was there, peacefully cropping the grass beside Blossom, the little cob that pulled the lawn mower. They both looked up and the cob whinnied a welcome, then walked towards the fence, ears pricked forward. They entered the stable yard where Carly ran to take their bridles.

  ‘Give them both a rub down, lad,’ Harry said, with the casual authority of one who is used to giving orders and having them obeyed.

  Carly looked at his little mistress, thinking she looked tired but she smiled at him as she dismounted and murmured, ‘Thank you, Carly,’ and if he could have got down on his knees and kissed her feet he would have done. This Sinclair chap just took everything that was done for him for granted but Miss Lally never failed to smile and thank you. He led the two animals towards the stables and watched as Mr Sinclair and Miss Lally entered the kitchen by the back door.

  Biddy was for a moment confounded by the unexpected arrival of the visitor. She was at the stove adding salt to a stew she had made that morning. Scrag end of mutton, which was all they could afford, with plenty of vegetables, which Barty had sent round to the kitchen door with Froglet, to be served with a mountain of boiled potatoes. There was an appetising smell and the stew, cooking slowly in an enormous copper pan, would do them all, including the men who worked outside, for their midday meal and then this evening she would contrive something with a chicken, an old one plucked and cleaned by herself that had only yesterday clucked unconcernedly in the yard. She was good at that and managed to feed the household, though for how much longer she shuddered to think. If Miss Lally didn’t get some brass from somewhere soon they would all fade away, including those babies in the nursery. She had made bread earlier on with Clara’s help and several large loaves lay cooling on the table.

  ‘Mr Sinclair is to stay for luncheon, Biddy,’ Miss Lally told her as she and the gentleman, who looked somewhat astonished by the unconventionality of it all, walked through to the hallway beyond the kitchen door. Jenny and Clara stood with their mouths agape, but then Miss Lally was like that, unaware of the proprieties and if she was, not caring a jot or tittle about them. As Master Chris had been.

  But Biddy Stevens was unfazed. ‘Very well, Miss Lally. If you would take Mr Sinclair through to the drawing room and offer him a sherry, I will set luncheon in the breakfast room.’

  ‘Thank you, Biddy,’ and without glancing at him Lally led her visitor through the hallway and into the drawing room where a good fire was burning. ‘Will you take sherry, Mr Sinclair?’

  ‘Goddammit, Lally, will you call me Harry,’ he snapped and with raised eyebrows at his tone Lally shrugged and indicated the drinks tray. ‘And if it’s all the same to you I’ll have a whisky. I see you have a bottle here.’

  ‘Of course, help yourself. Chris . . . used to drink it. It’s not been touched since . . . since . . .’

  ‘Thank you and . . . let us talk about the farms.’

  At one of the farms two of its occupants were talking about her. Jed and Ham Weaver were lounging before the fire in the kitchen of Foxwell Farm, both smoking a clay pipe. Spurred on by the sudden appearance of their landlord, or should they call her landlady now, both Arty and Evie Weaver were poking about at the back of the building among the nettles and docks that proliferated there. They were searching for the scythe to cut the weeds with and which, by Arty’s reckoning, he had left leaning against the wall last summer.

  ‘I were cuttin’ the bluddy things when you come over badly an’ I were forced ter give over an’ give yer a ’and inter’t kitchen,’ making it sound as though had it not been for her the whole lot would have been cleared and the scythe returned to its proper place in the ramshackle barn.

  ‘Nay, I can’t remember but do us ’ave ter find it right now? An’ anyroad I reckon it’ll be rusty and if us—’

  ‘Give over, woman. Did yer not see the look that man give us? If us don’t get summat done ’e’ll ’ave us outer ’ere and then what’ll we do. We gotter mekk a start somewhere an’ them two lazy sods inside can gerroff their bums an’ all. We gotter find next month’s rent from somewhere an’ it’s up ter them ter earn it in the only way they know.’ By which he meant poaching.

  Them two sods, unconcerned by their parents’ sudden anxiety, were telling each other what they would like to do to the ‘widder woman’ if they could get their hands on her which, though unlikely, made a pleasant discussion. They went short of women, for though they were well-set-up young men and not without looks, they were known to be rough, vicious even with the women they got their hands on, and shared. Most women in the district gave them a wide berth. They sometimes had to resort to forcing one or other of their sisters, which was all very well and certainly scratched their itch but a sweet little morsel like the ‘widder woman’ would make a nice change. Let her just ride up here on her own and they’d show her what real men were like, they told one another, and that was a bit different to that milk-sop she had married.

  ‘We’d ’ave ter be careful like, our Jed. She’d ’ave the law on us if they catched us.’

  Jed smirked. ‘There’s ways an’ means, lad.’

  ‘What d’yer mean, Jed?’ Ham was what was known as a bit of a gawby, not quite all there, as clever as a clog nail as they said in Moorend, which suited Jed for it meant he was the leader in whatever mischief they got up to.

  ‘She’ll not know it’s us, is wharr I mean, Ham, me lad.’

  They both began to laugh and it was not until Arty entered the kitchen and gave them both what he called a ‘thick ear’ that they stumbled from the farmhouse and into the barn where they kept their traps and lines and the old rifle they owned for the purpose of taking out the squire’s deer.

  Lally spent the rest of the day after Mr Sinclair had left, and far into the evening, sitting by the drawing-room fire poring over the estate books which, to her surprise, she found quite fascinating. She had played with Jamie for an hour under the disapproving eye of Dora who was of the opinion that Miss Lally made her son far too excited and it was Dora who had to settle him down after she had left. She was lovely with the baby though, nursing him against her empty breasts and kissing the silken curls on his head, then his rounded cheek, because by now he had accepted the milk from the bottle and was beginning to thrive, for which Dora took the credit. She had helped her mam with half a dozen bairns and, her and her mam being so busy in the smallholding her pa kept, had no time for pandering to mardy children. They should be bathed – though not a lot of that went on in their cottage – changed, fed and put down to sleep. Miss Lally swore the baby was the dead spit of Master Chris, which he was, they both were, handsome and lively, but must not be spoiled and Dora meant to make sure they weren’t and with Miss Lally busy about the estate Dora had a good chance of keeping them in line.

  Lall
y turned page after page, the books recording the events of each farm, the acreage, the tenants, the stock, the crops and the names of the farms and their occupants. Thickpenny, Cowslip, Prospect, Folly, Foxwell, and then the Home Farm which belonged to the Priory. It was from there came the milk Alec drank, the eggs, bacon, cheese and butter which would be their staple diet soon if she didn’t apply herself to the task of picking up where Chris had left off and it was then that the thought came to her that she had no idea what or when that might have been, for never once in their three years of marriage had she seen Chris take the slightest interest in any of them.

  4

  As she rose from her chair, her face lighting up at the sight of him, he strode across the room and dragged her into his arms. Her own arms went round his back, holding on tightly, and from the doorway Harry watched, the furious darts of jealousy taking him by surprise. Six weeks after the death of Christopher Fraser, Roly Sinclair had come home from his travels!

  ‘Lally . . . Lally darling,’ he murmured, holding her close for longer than Harry thought necessary, then he held her away from him and looked deeply into her dry eyes, expecting her to be tearful, which he was ready to be if she required it, though how sincere it was Harry couldn’t guess. His brother was the best salesman that was ever born, selling miles of Sinclair cloth all over Europe and America, journeys planned well in advance, carrying his cases of samples from country to country, at the same time selling himself as the charming, impish, boyish chap he showed to the world. His smile illuminated a room and drew people, especially women, to him and he had an easy assurance and a total conviction that everyone liked him, which they did. ‘Harry telegraphed me but I was in Rome and couldn’t leave. Dear God, poor Chris, and he was such a good horseman. I shall miss him. Come, darling,’ leading her to the sofa by the fire, stepping over scattered toys, a spinning top in what had once been bright but were now faded colours, a soft rabbit, a golliwog, balls, a duck and several tattered rag books all of which had once belonged to Chris.