Fiercombe Manor (28 page)

“I'm going to carry on up to Stanwick, I think,” said Tom when we reached the kitchen garden. “The White Rose will open by the time I get there, if I walk slowly enough. They've a pretty garden there—have you been?”

I shook my head. “Who would take me? Besides, I'm not sure Mrs. Jelphs would approve of my visiting a public house in my condition.”

“Oh, never mind about her. She has a good heart, Mrs. J, but she always was the most dreadful worrier. It was the same when Henry
and I were boys. I'll take you up there some time. We can go in my MG, to save your legs. Later this week, perhaps—once I've gone through the accounts in Stroud. I'll need another visit by then.”

I smiled and turned to go, but he called after me.

“By the way, I'm sorry if I was a bit of a misery earlier. In the meadow.” He stopped. “I blame myself, you see.”

I turned to face him properly, but he avoided my eyes, looking off into the distance instead.

“For Henry, you mean? But how can you have been to blame?”

“Look, I'm at it again,” he said, with a weak grin. “Too morbid for words. Forget I said anything.”

“But . . .”

“Really, Alice. It's family business, and I shouldn't be talking about it to a stranger. I'm not usually so loose-tongued, I can tell you.”

I flushed, hurt that he'd referred to me as a stranger.

“I didn't mean to be rude. It's just that we Stantons don't discuss the past. That way lies plenty of grief, you see. It should be on the coat of arms as our motto. Anyway, I'm off. Perhaps I'll see you later. I don't think I'll be here for dinner, but you never know.”

He turned and began to walk away, raising a hand without looking back.

I stayed there for a few minutes, breathing in the fragrant air of the kitchen garden. What had he meant, about being to blame? Whatever it was, I thought my earlier instinct had been correct and that Henry had died here, in the valley. I looked around at the steep wooded inclines that had kept Fiercombe's inhabitants cut off from everything else for centuries and wondered where the answers lay. I had a momentary fancy that if I listened hard enough, I would find out, but there was nothing to be heard but the whispering of the beech leaves.

S
he thought it must be late when she woke the morning after the party, but in fact it had only just gone seven. The servants would be up, of course, but her part of the house was silent. Only a dozen or so guests had been invited to stay, those who were elderly and who had travelled furthest. With luck they would leave after breakfast, which she had asked Mrs. Wentworth to make mountains of, in the hope that they didn't think of staying for lunch.

She levered herself carefully out of bed, holding her back as she stood. On her chair was the dress from the previous night, which she picked up. It felt cold and insubstantial as it rippled through her fingers like water. She brought it to her face and breathed it in, remembering the music and voices and the moon over them all. It smelt of fresh air.

She dressed comfortably and pulled an old shawl around her shoulders. Outside, under the lemon-coloured sky, Midsummer's Day was not yet warm. She left the house the way she had entered it the previous night, through the morning room's double doors. Despite her body's need to take her time, it was not long before she was halfway across the Great Mead, the distinctive chimney stacks of the old manor coming into view.

The baby was as still as she—or perhaps he, after all—had been the day before. “Come on, little one,” she murmured, “I didn't mean that you should never move again.” And then, as if her entreaty had been heard, she felt something. Not a kick, nothing so definite; something closer to a flutter or a vibration inside her. She put a hand to her stomach and smiled. The embers of happiness she had felt glowing within her as she lay back in the bath chair the previous evening might not, after all, have been entirely extinguished by the conversation with Edward that followed. She still felt lighter for having been honest with him, and she also remembered his words about her perfect health and realised that he was right. Bodily she did feel well, if ungainly. She looked well, too. That much had been obvious in the glances she had received all night.

The new day's sun cast a transformative light on matters. There was no reason to think that she would lose this baby if it was a boy, just as there was no reason to believe she would succumb to the blackness if it turned out to be a sister for Isabel. She had also survived the party she had secretly dreaded for weeks. She felt buoyant now that it was in the past, with no disgrace of her making attached to it. She would find Edward after her walk and ask him to forget she had said anything. No, there was probably no need. Edward would be glad never to mention it again.

As she got closer to the old manor, she saw that the holly bushes that crowded the little summerhouse were full of birds. They trilled and bickered, flying in and out of the dense foliage in search of a better perch. She watched them for a time, and became aware that she was not thinking about anything in particular. Even the memory of Edward's threat to demolish the manor house couldn't blow her off course that morning. Though their exchange the evening before had been painful, it had also been disarmingly honest, reminding her of a time when she had been able to ask for his
help and he, for his part, had not abused that power. Besides, even Edward, great advocate of progress and rationality, must see that he couldn't destroy such a magical, tranquil place.

At the bank of the stream, she lowered herself gently so that her feet dangled over the side. Taking off her shoes and stockings, she reached out a swollen toe and dipped it in the water. It was so cold that it burned like fire. Slowly, slowly, she tried again, and this time it was just bearable. Soon she was able to rest the soles of both feet on the very surface of the water. When a breeze blew and lifted the water higher, she sucked in her breath from the chill of it. It was blissful.

After a time, she dried her feet and got up carefully. Cutting past the summerhouse she had begun to use as a secret refuge just before Isabel was born, she reached Creephedge Lane, where she crossed the stream. She couldn't possibly get through the old squeezebelly stile to reach the manor from that direction, so she went round the long way, up to the chapel, past the graveyard, and into the passage of rhododendrons. Edward had told the gardeners not to bother tending the plants here, so far from Stanton House, but someone surely had been. What should have been weed-choked and ragged was glorious, the scarlet and magenta flowers ablaze.

As if the thought had conjured him up, she saw a figure in the lane ahead of her and stopped short. Sensing her presence, he turned, and she saw it was Joe Ruck. He was only young, surely no older than Edith. She could see that he was holding a pair of long-handled secateurs. Farther on was a ladder. Her slight annoyance at being disturbed was tempered by the fact that it was he who had made it so beautiful there.

He stared at her for a long moment and then touched his cap. She went towards him, the distance between them slightly too great to speak comfortably.

“Good morning, Ruck,” she said brightly, in the tone she found she always adopted with the younger staff. “You're up and at your work early today.”

His already ruddy cheeks darkened. “I'm not supposed to be 'ere,” he said, his accent almost impenetrable. “The maister said to leave the manor gardens be.”

“Well, I certainly won't be telling him,” she said in a rush. “You've made it lovely again.”

He looked down and scuffed at the ground with his heavy boots, painfully embarrassed.

The fragrance of the flowers was heady, the air seemingly thicker where they grew, and for a moment she wondered if she would faint. The thought of how awful that would be for poor Ruck kept her upright.

“Well, I shall be on my way and out of yours,” she said as briskly as she could. She suddenly remembered. “And thank you, Ruck, for your help with the bath chair. It was wonderful.”

She smiled, and he lowered his eyes again.

When she looked back, he had resumed his inspection of his work. When the moment was right, she would suggest to Edward that he be promoted to undergardener, charged with bringing the manor's garden back to life. This morning she felt as though she could persuade Edward to do anything. She patted their unborn son gently. For the first time, she began to see him as Edward did, both as a boy and as the glue that would bind all of them back together. She had done the right thing; by finally speaking her fears aloud, her tongue loosened by the champagne, she had dispelled their power.

She decided not to go inside the manor. The morning was too spectacular to miss. Besides, it was Isabel who loved to go exploring inside the old house. There was a game that they played there,
invented by her daughter. Elizabeth was cast as the old witch, a terrifying old harridan whose main pleasure in life was to chase the naughty Isabel, berating her as she did so. All Isabel's games were intricate, with many details that had to be attended to in the correct order. When the baby came, Elizabeth vowed she would bring both of her children here. Soon enough Isabel would forget all about the game she had played the previous day, and the looming threat of the magician too.

When the two of them played the witch game, they always began amongst the yews, Elizabeth trying to catch Isabel, first at walking pace and then a little faster, until they were both running, out of breath, Isabel screaming in mingled delight and horror. Elizabeth understood that a small part of her daughter believed the old witch was really there, lumbering after her between the overgrown flower beds.

In the house they always had to visit the nursery, as it had once been. Isabel led the way through the dim passages to the small, narrow staircase that she preferred to take because it frightened her a little. It frightened Elizabeth too, who had never liked the dark as a child and who had always wished for a sister to share her room.

The nursery, like many of the manor's rooms, was not quite empty of furniture. This appearance of unforeseen desertion—along with the warped oak floors and panelling—gave the place an air of the
Mary Celeste
. An old rocking horse gathered dust below the window there, its white mane matted with it; despite Elizabeth's warnings of dirt and sneezing fits, Isabel always insisted on petting it. She didn't ride it as she did the new one Edward had bought her in London, but handled it with the utmost care, whispering in its ear and pushing it gently so that it creaked back and forth.

Elizabeth took one of the bluebell paths back towards the house. She ambled slowly along, in no hurry to get back, only wishing
that Isabel was with her. She wouldn't tell her she had been to the manor: Isabel would only be hurt she hadn't been taken along. She wished her little girl had a thicker skin; that she could know to her marrow that she was loved and be content. Of course it was partly Elizabeth's own fault that she couldn't.

Just then she heard a cry behind her, triumphant but also close to tears. She turned, and there was Isabel—the girl of her thoughts made flesh and blood—careering down the path from where Elizabeth had just come, her flaxen hair streaming out behind her.

“Mama!” she forced out, short of breath, as she rushed into her mother's legs. Her grip was surprisingly strong.

“Darling, where did you appear from? I was just thinking of you, and then there you were. Something like it happened with Ruck, too. It's an enchanted morning.” She thought of the flutter in her belly and put her hand to it again.

“Why didn't you take me with you?” Isabel's face was mottled red, and there were streaks of grass and mud on her dress, which Elizabeth saw was yesterday's. She must have dressed herself and slipped out past the careless nurserymaid.

“I didn't want to wake you. It was early when I left.” She stroked Isabel's tangled hair, unbrushed and loose.

“I wouldn't have minded what time it was,” said Isabel reproachfully, but already she was forgetting the slight, and her fear that she would never find her mother, whose hand she now took. “Where did you go? Did you go to the nursery?”

“No, I would never go to the nursery without you. I put my feet in the stream and then saw the rhododendrons—the pink and purple flowers near the churchyard—said hello to Ruck and—”

“I saw Ruck too, after I had gone to look in the chapel for you. I ran past him,” said Isabel. “We went just the same way as each
other, except that I was so far behind. I thought I might have got it wrong, that you hadn't gone out at all.”

“But you didn't get it wrong, and you caught me in the end, didn't you? Let's walk together for the last part of it. We'll have a private breakfast before the guests come down, just you and I.”

Soon they were passing the lake that had been dug at the same time the house was built. No one had thought to turn the fountain on yet. They walked around its perimeter, past the little folly that hid the pump, and Elizabeth looked up to glimpse Stanton House. She waited for her breath to shorten, for her thoughts to start crowding in on top of each other, but nothing happened. This morning it was just a house. The mild early sun lent it a benign air, the immoveable granite blocks sparkling, or so she imagined. A clock somewhere chimed eight. She had only been gone an hour.

Isabel led her to the front door and skittered across the tiles in the hallway.

“I will tell Mrs. Wentworth that we want our breakfast now, just you and I,” she called.

Elizabeth put her finger to her lips. “Don't wake our guests,” she whispered.

“You're back.” Edward had appeared at the door to the library. His tone was curt, and his face looked strange. It occurred to her that he was furious. But there was something else there too, in his white, set expression. When she identified the emotion, it was because she had seen the same look on the face of the daughter who so resembled him: he was also frightened. He wouldn't look at her, instead gazing intently at Isabel. Elizabeth began to feel the old anxieties twist inside her. The little girl hesitated, looking from one parent to the other.