No farmer can remain for long away from his fields, and Amyas soon brought his wife home to Clarrow Bottom.
‘My daughter has always been such an impetuous creature,’ announced Aunt Sibylla, returning post-haste from Bridlington to fill the farmhouse, so recently vacated by Maria Long, with jars of her own prize-winning marmalade, pies made from the fruit of the vicarage garden, hampers of household linen, the trousseau she had started putting aside when Alys had turned fifteen. ‘Naturally we knew – the vicar and I – how things were between them – have known for years – didn’t everyone? My goodness, Lady Potterton, do you really mean to say that you hadn’t noticed? It was only ever a matter of time – the vicar and I were convinced of that. And naturally one could only approve of dear Amyas. So upright and reliable, and doing so well now – buying more land. Had you not heard that either? Oh yes, naturally, I did implore him to stop her from becoming a Suffragette. But he was quite right, you see, to let her get it out of her system. He said it would make her a more comfortable wife in the end. The dear boy is so wise.’
And when it became known that Alys was expecting a child the initial tremor of speculation was soon stifled since no one could be quite certain just when the marriage had taken place.
‘I am so glad she has taken my advice and started a family at once,’ Aunt Sibylla confided to Dottie Potterton, ‘for when one is no longer seventeen one cannot afford to delay.’ And that was the end of it.
The house at Clarrow Bottom assumed a different character. Alys took down the net curtains, opened the windows, put branches of greenery and sprays of wild flowers in china pots and then forgot the house entirely, leaving it to the maids while she went out into the fields to talk to Amyas, or sat in the meadow with a book, her hair hanging loose like a girl; forgetting her hat, more often than not, so that by the summer’s end her skin was honey gold, her hair almost white. She seemed to be mellowing like the season, ripening rather than putting on weight, her careless appearance and her disregard of all domestic duties annoying her mother, charming Amyas who had had a surfeit of neatness.
‘How she will manage to look after that child when it comes I cannot imagine,’ said her mother.
‘Oh – they usually manage to look after themselves mostly, you know,’ said mine.
‘Nonsense,’ snapped Victorine, ‘child-rearing is both an art and a science and should not be left to amateurs. I will show her how.’
But Alys continued to pursue her own sweet dreamy path, reading her newspapers all morning just as she had done in Cheyne Walk, writing copious letters – her postbag as heavy sometimes as Max’s– talking to Amyas, staying up far too late, Aunt Sibylla thought, for a farmer’s wife; talking again – talking – talking. How could any woman – my aunt wondered – find so much to say to her husband? While Amyas’s attitude to maternal criticism was forthright and simple. He had a dairymaid to churn the butter, a housemaid to sweep the floor, a dear friend who did him the honour of sharing his bed, his table and his name.
‘Horses for courses,’ said Max. ‘After all one does not harness a thoroughbred to the plough. I’m glad my brother sees that.’
‘She should get on with her sewing or that poor mite will having nothing to wear,’ moaned her mother who, since the wedding, had been turning out tiny embroidered garments by the score. But Alys’s view of the role she had now undertaken was vastly different. She was a farmer’s wife and it was her task not to sit in her parlour doing the fine needlework she hated or to waste her energies fussing about pie-crusts and polishes and invitation cards as her mother did, but to concern herself with farming. Whenever Amyas had to get up in the night to attend a sick cow or deliver a calf she would get up too and help him. One morning when the dairymaid was missing, Alys put on her boots, went into the dairy and, despite her by now fairly advanced condition which made the three-legged stool somewhat hazardous, she milked the herd Amyas had bought from me.
Her aim was not so much to help her husband as to share his labours. She included farming manuals now among her books of poetry and political philosophy and studied them minutely. Did the topic in itself interest her? Not really. But political science – for its own sake – had never greatly fired her enthusiasm either. She simply felt that women should be well-informed on every possible issue. The struggle for the vote would eventually be won, she had no doubt of it, and in the meantime women like herself who were forced to be inactive for one reason or another, must use the time to equip themselves: to learn. One should not reap the rewards of any situation without first undertaking the hard labour and although she was now, however surprisingly, a married woman, it was with no thought of being maintained in idleness. If she survived the birth of this child, she told me, then she would immediately conceive another – Amyas was entitled to that, it was little enough to do for him – and then they would work together, not leading the separate lives of man and woman with all the false assumptions and resentments that such a strict division of roles implied, but sharing one life as partners and friends.
‘My daughter has always entertained these progressive notions,’ said Aunt Sibylla, her eyebrows growing supercilious again now that disgrace no longer seemed to threaten, ‘but time and a little experience will show her that there is no place for progress in marriage. What a man requires is a good dinner on his table, piping hot and not a minute later than dinner-time. And no amount of clever talk can hope to compensate him for the lack.’
‘I do believe,’ said Max, ‘that she is about to devote herself to my brother with all the fervour she gave to Suffragism – in which case, happy man. One cannot deny that he has the knack of inspiring devotion.’
‘He is entitled to yours, Max. If you are fond of him, then why not tell him so?’
‘My dear Olivia, he would be considerably startled were I to ride into his farmyard and make him a declaration.’
But he rode over to Clarrow Bottom just the same – possibly to see Alys – although Amyas was never far away, reacting with quiet humour and taking no notice whatsoever when Max outlined scheme after grandiose scheme for doubling and trebling his profits.
‘He doesn’t want to be a rich man, Max.’
What had he wanted? Approximately what he now had. Warmth and peace and friendship. And a full acknowledgment at last of kinship. The facts of his birth remained suppressed but, as the husband of my first cousin, he was beyond question a member of the manorial family, coming late and in a left-handed fashion but most truly welcome to the situation for which he had been born. The sight of him, even glimpsed in the distance, gave me pleasure. I wanted him to be happy. That was what I felt about Amyas. But not with me.
Mr Samuel Greenlaw finally retired to Bournemouth that summer, my mother and Emil Junot and even little Mr Cross accompanying him. There was to be no marriage. Neither Mr Greenlaw’s heart, it was decided, nor the financial expectations of his daughters-in-law could stand the strain of a wedding. But, in compensation, my mother was to have an allowance small in her view, princely according to Bessie Greenlaw – for her lifetime, not his. And although Bessie and her watchful partner Hattie did not know it, Mr Greenlaw had already transferred to my mother the ownership of his seaside villa in which, one presumed, she would live very comfortably with Junot when Mr Greenlaw should be no more.
‘I do not wish to discuss it,’ said Aunt Sibylla, for perhaps the fortieth time. ‘For the way my sister is exploiting that poor old man sickens me. I cannot imagine what his relations are thinking of to allow it.’
But my mother had far more skill with a jar of ointment than one might have supposed, far more patience than Bessie and Hattie combined, was infinitely warmer of heart and much prettier to look at; while no one could choose Mr Greenlaw an after-dinner cigar or tell him a more amusing after-dinner story than Papa Junot.
‘Parasites,’ said Aunt Sibylla.
‘He will die happier with those two around him,’ said Max, ‘than those strait-laced bitches who married his sons.’
‘Shall I sell the house in Aireville Terrace?’
We went together and walked through the familiar rooms still furnished with Miss Jemima Copthorne Heron’s heavy Gothic pieces, the garden very much as Victorine had left it years ago.
‘We painted this house ourselves from top to bottom, Victorine and I. It nearly killed us.’
We had been close together then – Victorine, Madelon, Luc – in that distant time before other loyalties or disloyalties or our separate natures had set us on such diverse pathways.
‘Keep it,’ Max said, his arm around my shoulders, ‘as a souvenir.’
‘A house? As a keepsake?’
‘What an idea,’ snorted Victorine. ‘I shall come and live here myself and annoy Frances Grey who will certainly not care for my noisy children as neighbours. You will not expect much. I daresay, in the way of rent, for one cannot do wonders on an M.P.’s salary.’
She did not see the need, she told me, of moving to London with Andrew when he went to take up his parliamentary duties. Politics – talking about a fatal wound, she called it, instead of stopping the bleeding – did not interest her. If Andrew imagined he could save the world that way then he was welcome to try. But she had the boys to consider, schools, a permanent home, her work behind the tramsheds and at St Winefrede’s Hospital. Much better, she thought, for Andrew to have a flat somewhere in Westminster where he could talk Liberal policies and write his speeches, while she moved into Aireville Terrace, at a nominal rent, where the boys could have a bedroom each, she could re-plant the garden and convert the back kitchen into a still-room for herbal remedies. Andrew would come home during the recess, which amounted, she thought, to six months out of every twelve. And far better for him to interview his constituents in Aireville Terrace than Corporation Square.
‘I’m sure he’d like you to go with him, Victorine.’
She shrugged. ‘I daresay he would. But he’s a grown man you know. He ought to be able to manage perfectly well without me.’
Clearly her boys and the residents of St Saviour’s Passage could not.
I had a letter from Luc announcing his engagement to a Miss Magda Kellermann; a good family said Max, and a reasonably pretty girl from her photograph; thin and dark and very stylish.
‘We can go down to the Cape after Christmas,’ Max offered, ‘to have a look. Would you like that?’
He wanted to please me. I wanted him to be pleased.
‘Darling – I’d love it.’
We had started to touch one another a great deal lately, not amorously but the small precious contacts of deep affection, trust, mutual reassurance, his hand suddenly closing over mine, my cheek pressed against his fleeting little caresses too brief for others to notice but which gave warmth to every day.
‘That’s settled then. We’ll call and see my mother on the way back.’
‘Your mother is an old vulture, Max.’
‘Yes, but regrettably she’s the only one I possess.’
‘Will you take me to meet your daughter?’
‘If you like – although you won’t care for her. She’s a vulture too, or will be in her day.’
‘Then how lucky that you have me.’
‘Yes. I do so absolutely agree with that.’
I began to feel not only compelled to touch him, to make certain that he was well and happy and whole, that he was there, but with a great desire to give him small presents, little surprises, to produce – like a rabbit from a hat – a certain bottle of wine he believed to be unobtainable, magazine articles he thought he had missed, friends he had not expected to see again for years. I began to talk to him, every remark I made – no matter how great a crowd was present – intended for his consideration, his amusement, his defence should anyone dare, by the slightest hint or the most obscure deed, to criticize. I began to flirt with him, consciously, openly, to my frank delight and his. I began to laugh with him. And it was no surprise to me. The potential had always existed.
‘Your husband looks very pleased with himself these days,’ said Aunt Sibylla, growing tart again since, after all her trouble, she did not seem to be making anything of Alys.
‘My husband would not like this to be generally known,’ I told her confidentially, bubbling over, as I so often seemed to be doing these days, with laughter, ‘but he is something of an imposter. You may not have realized it but he is an exceptionally kind and responsible man.’
Alys, contrary to all expectations, had her child easily and quickly in the autumn, a boy who was referred to by both Alys and Amyas as ‘our son’. I went carefully to see him, testing myself, steeling myself a little, and there he was, healthy, sound, no mark of violence or disease or disgrace anywhere upon him. A brand-new life, unblemished. Neither the child of a stranger’s brutality nor of the concern of a true friend. Himself. The clean, unsullied future.
I put my hand into the cradle and touched him lightly, my fingers enjoying without hunger his warm fragility, his perfect freshness. He was not mine. No child ever would be mine. I regretted it. But what troubled me most was the thought of Max, waiting at the Manor tense and anxious about what I could be feeling now. I must go home at once and set his mind at rest. Children had mothers, and fathers, if they were lucky. Max had me.
We entertained with enthusiasm all through the Christmas season, the house full of friends, acquaintances, friends of friends, complete strangers, champagne for breakfast, Viennese waltzes at noon, strange, staccato music from America thumped out on our grand piano until the small hours of the morning by a pale young man who had simply wandered in, I suspected, to escape the cold. There were letters and parcels from Luc on Christmas morning; my mother and her whist table arriving from Bournemouth with the news that Madelon was finally divorced and had married Clive Potterton just in time for the birth of their child.
The Clarrow Hunt met at our front door on Boxing Day, drank their stirrup-cups, rode off and finding no sport, came back for cold beef and pickles, mulled wine, mince-pies, flirtation. We sent hampers to every house in the village whether we owned it or not, a case of champagne to Clarrow Bottom, gave a children’s party in the church hall, sent Christmas presents – chosen by Victorine with an eye to usefulness rather than artistic merit – to every patient in St Winefrede’s Hospital. I took my nephews to the pantomime in Leeds and deeply regretted it, realizing that I would have difficulty in facing Miss Frances Grey when she learned what little monsters I had released upon her. The weather remained frosty and clear, pale pink mornings deepening to afternoons of strong, cool sunshine, the air crisp and delicious on the tongue, dark trees and hedges feathered with snow. The season had never touched me so deeply. I was aware of every scent and texture of it, every nuance, woke early every morning eager to explore every minute of the day.
I was happy.
I was happy with Max.
I was complete.
On New Year’s Eve, half an hour or so before midnight, Mrs Charles came gliding unobtrusively through the crowded hall with a message that Mr de Haan would like to see me – at once, be had specified – in the garage courtyard. Was something the matter? Mrs Charles, of course, could not say, could only express an opinion that Mr de Haan had sounded urgent.
The garage courtyard! It was a place I rarely visited, Stevens invariably bringing the car to the front of the house for me just as the grooms brought the horses. What had happened? What could go wrong now? Please – not now. I shivered and ran, no time to think of finding a coat, the December night by no means ideally suited to a woman in a scanty evening dress of black chiffon held together by a few sequins.
‘Max …?’
He was standing by the car, my long pale fur over his arm, which he threw quickly around me.
‘It’s all right darling. I’m just re-living an adolescent fantasy. Would you care to join me? When I was a young man I thought how very stylish to walk into a room crowded with beautiful women, beckon the very loveliest of them to my side and drive off with her in the most dashing vehicle of the day. It wouldn’t have been a Rolls, of course, when I was a young man – a high-perch phaeton probably. And I did send the housekeeper. But then – I knew you’d come.’
We drove up the hill – not far – to the top of Clarrow Moor and sat for a while in a most comfortable silence, the village a dim tracery of lights below us, Max smoking a cigar while I, leaning against his shoulder, wrapped like a Christmas parcel in my fur, watched him smoke it, every movement he made a deep and absolute joy.
There was no need to say anything. We sat close together in the dark, enraptured by the simple precious gift of solitude. I was happy – happy with Max. There was just one more thing to wish for.
He finished his cigar and we slid into a familiar embrace, my head against his chest, my furs covering us both.
The year, which had been so good to us, was nearly over. In a little while now a bright New Year would be handed to me, vibrant with possibility and promise, and I knew exactly what I meant to do with it. I wanted – more than that I fully intended – to compensate Max for every bad moment he had ever suffered. I would, one way or another, be sufficient in myself to make up for his greedy, self-centred mother, his impossible father, the harsh discipline of the Squire. I would fill his mind and his senses – and his heart – so that it would no longer matter to him that his daughter was a stranger, Amyas not quite a brother, that so many people regarded him as a man who took and won – when in fact he had given far more than anyone realized. Now I would give to him.
‘It’s almost midnight,’ he said.
‘Then kiss me darling. They say that whatever one happens to be doing as the year changes will go on all year long.’
I closed my eyes, sighing and smiling at the word which had materialized inside my head. Bliss. A silly word, I’d always thought. But this sensation of dissolving my body into his was – even assisted a little by wine – blissful. Magical. I was as enchanted, giddy, bemused as if I had never been kissed before.
‘Happy New Year, darling.’
Yes. It would be glorious. Down below us in the village church bells began to chime, heralding the first moments of my brief New Year, the best one ever, the year in which I knew, from the moment of its commencement, that everything I most desired was safely within my grasp. Lovely, lovely New Year. I could hardly wait to begin this first eager month of it.
It was January, 1914.