‘Whatever have you been doin’, my love?’ Matthew was back beside her in a couple of strides, his concern heart-warming. ‘My, you’ve got in a pickle; your poor little arms! What happened, did you miss your way?’
‘Yes, I got lost in that so-called garden. Then I bumped into a statue – it was awfully dark, Matt – and fell over. The brambles scratched me and the nettles stung me and I’d probably still be there, only the gardener came out and showed me the way to the drive.’
Matthew ran a hand down her cheek, then stopped, an arrested look on his face.
‘Gardener? There ain’t no gardener.’
‘Yes, he said he was the gardener. John, his name is. He was rather nice to me. A tall, dark man, not very young.’
‘That’s the old man,’ Matthew said positively. ‘You
met him? I didn’t mean for you to meet him like that … he can be difficult.’
‘He was all right, but he said he was the gardener, or something very like that,’ Hester insisted. ‘Who’s called John, then?’
‘There ain’t no John up there, nor no gardener, and there ain’t no visitors neither,’ Matthew insisted. ‘It were Mr Geraint up to his games, I’ll swear it were. As for Mrs Cledwen, she’s a relative, so I believe, yet she’s a sort of housekeeper too, as you can see. I don’t understand it too well meself, but she’s been up there three year, now, and the old man hasn’t married her nor turned her out. Ne’er mind them, Hester love, come and have your tea. We can sort it out later.’
Hester did not know quite what he meant by sort it out, but she obediently sat down by the fire and drank her tea, glad of the warmth but gradually aware that she ached all over, that she had skinned her knee on the garden path and that her stings were throbbing. She could not believe that her John was Matthew’s Mr Geraint, but what did it matter, after all? She would find out in the fullness of time and right now the cheese sandwich was tasty and it was good to relax by the fire after her adventurous evening. Now and then she glanced at Matthew, uneasily aware that he was feeling rather pleased with himself, though she could not think why this should be.
‘Matthew? Why do you think it was Mr Geraint I saw? I’ve been thinking and maybe it was me who said he was the gardener, but he never said I was wrong and he definitely said his name was John.’
‘There isn’t a gardener and there’s no one up there named John,’ Matthew said patiently. ‘That’ll be the old man, playin’ silly beggars. Finished wi’ your cup? Want me to bring Helen through?’
Hester sat very still; something was definitely up,
Matthew looked so pleased with himself, yet a little apprehensive with it.
‘What have you been up to, Matt?’ she said suspiciously. ‘I’ll go through to the small bedroom and do Helen there.’
Matthew cleared his throat.
‘I moved your stuff through; the bed’s stripped down and the cradle’s on the bedstead,’ he said. ‘You’re comin’ back in wi’ me tonight, Hester love.’
Hester got to her feet. She went through to the small room and picked the baby out of the cradle. A glance confirmed what Matthew had said; the room was just the baby’s room, now. All her personal possessions, even the cracked swing mirror on the oak stand, had disappeared. She carried the child, rosy with sleep and reluctant to wake, back into the kitchen and sat down in her chair. Matthew was washing up their teacups and her sandwich plate. He clattered dishes as she fed the baby, washed her and changed her, puffing talcum on to her pink bottom, swaddling it in a nappy. Without a word Matthew worked around her, preparing for the night, making up the fire, getting out the breakfast dishes, never glancing across at her once, behaving as though she was not there. She contemplated telling Matthew that she intended to sleep in the small room a little while longer, but she was too tired to start remaking the single bed, far too tired for an argument. Besides, she had always known she would have to move back some day, so why not now?
She tucked Helen up, then sighed and went through into the main bedroom. Matthew was washing, his broad back, which tapered so surprisingly to such narrow hips, turned towards her, soap suds frilled around the base of his neck. He continued to wash while she changed and got into bed, her cotton nightie rucking around her knees and being hastily pulled down to her ankles again.
Matthew finished washing. He took his trousers off;
she could tell what he was doing though she was steadfastly regarding the wall, and pulled his nightshirt over his head. Then he climbed into bed. Presently he turned over and put an arm across her.
‘Hester?’
‘Yes, Matthew?’
‘It’s nice to ’ave you back beside me. You all right? Tired?’
She was tempted to answer the unspoken question rather than the spoken one with a sharp, ‘No I don’t feel like any of that old messing about, so leave me alone, I’m here to sleep,’ but she thought of John with his thick, grey-streaked hair, the way he had held her, caressed her. She had not refused him, not pulled back as quickly as she ought, so she should not refuse this man who had given her his name, who had fathered her darling Helen.
‘I’m fine, Matt,’ she whispered. ‘It’s nice to be back beside you too.’
He rolled over and took her in his arms. She could feel his mounting desire, knew he would harness it if she so wished. Instead, she moved her body against his and put her mouth to the base of his throat, licking the little hollow there, kissing up until she reached the lobe of his ear, taking it between her teeth, giving it little mock-fierce bites.
He groaned deep in his throat and rolled her on to her back, then began to caress her. He tried to take her nightdress off gently, then lost patience with it and tugged it free, nearly removing both her ears in the process. She squeaked and complained, then laughed and grabbed his ears, only somehow the horseplay turned into loveplay and suddenly, before she really knew what had happened, they were making love, their movements at once sweet and fiery, their mouths melting as limbs tangled, hearts pounded, and the rush of their mutual desire mounted and peaked into ecstasy.
‘Hester, Hester, I love you more’n anything in the world,’ Matthew muttered as they lay quiet at last. ‘I’d die for you, Hester.’
Hester sat up and patted his cheek, then struggled into her nightgown and lay down again, curling round him.
‘Don’t be daft,’ she said drowsily. ‘I don’t want anyone to die for me. And I don’t want to die for anyone else either. Let’s go to sleep now; Helen will be shouting at six.’
Matthew chuckled. ‘Eh, I’m a lucky chap. G’night, Hester love.’
‘Goodnight, Matthew.’
His breathing steadied and deepened. Hester lay awake for a little longer, puzzling over her day, but soon enough it no longer seemed to matter. Whether she loved Matthew truly, or just loved being a married lady, whether she could have resisted John’s blandishments had they continued, whether she was a good girl or a bad; none of those things mattered, not really. She was comfortable, her body warmed by lovemaking, her mind relaxed by it. Soon she slept, a hand pillowed beneath her cheek.
Rather to her own surprise, Hester enjoyed working at the castle. And the half-crown, though she had been prepared to despise it, made a considerable difference to their finances. It enabled her to buy meat more than once a week, and to splash out, now and then, on fruit, or a vegetable other than cabbage or carrots. What was more, Mrs Cledwen welcomed Hester’s company and before long she and Hester were, if not friends, at least on moderately friendly terms.
Hester, scrubbing her way across the kitchen, the hallway, up the big stairs and around the gallery, did not discover precisely what Mrs Cledwen’s relationship was with their employer, nor did she find out whether
her John and Matthew’s Mr Geraint were one and the same, since for the first month she worked at the castle Mr Geraint was in London, attending to business. But since no John appeared when she went to the back door and called the men in for elevenses she began to conclude, reluctantly, that John was Mr Geraint and that he had deliberately deceived her.
‘If that fellow – who told me his name was John, that one – really is Mr Geraint, then why do you call him the old man?’ she asked Matthew crossly one day as the two of them sat at the kitchen table, eating cauliflower cheese and frizzled-up bacon pieces. ‘Because he’s not old really, is he?’
Matthew chuckled and crunched bacon. A thread of fat ran down his chin and Hester leaned over and wiped it off as though he were no older than Helen, tutting at him.
‘He
is
old, love. He’s pushin’ fifty.’
‘Well, he doesn’t look it,’ she said obstinately.
Nor act it, she thought, eating cauliflower cheese, but she kept such thoughts to herself. It was a lot easier to forget how she had felt in John’s arms when he wasn’t there, but she had always known, of course, that such expert and practised lovemaking denoted a misspent past at least. He was a rake, a seducer of little girls, but he had roused feelings in her which she had never known she possessed, filled her with desires which it seemed only he could satisfy. Matthew’s lovemaking, his solid, dependable affection, paled into insignificance beside the inferno of feeling which his master had aroused. Indeed, though she never allowed herself to acknowledge it, deep inside her she knew that when Matthew made love to her it was of John that she thought, it was his body she responded to when she and Matthew lay together.
She was not sorry that she and Mr Geraint had not encountered each other since that first evening at
the castle because she had not, as yet, decided what attitude she should take when next they met. She would be cold, that went without saying, but should she show that she knew? Or should she pretend she still thought him a gardener, an employee of the big house like herself? And then there was Mrs Cledwen; how would she feel if Mr Geraint behaved affectionately towards his scrubbing woman while she, who appeared to have a much closer relationship with their employer, stood by? All in all, keeping well clear of Mr Geraint seemed the safest thing to do. In the meantime, life had to be lived, so Hester went off to work each day at ten, and earned her half-crown. She worked hard and uncomplainingly, partly because she needed the money and more, perhaps, because a huge curiosity about the castle and those who lived there drove her. But for that first month she found out nothing new, though she did get to know the castle quite well.
The big kitchen was the heart of the house for her, for Matthew on the rare occasions when he entered the premises, and for Willi and Dewi Evans, who worked with Matthew on the land. Mrs Cledwen was very much the boss so far as Hester and the men were concerned and this, it appeared, was quite usual.
‘The old man comes out from time to time, tells us what he wants done,’ Matthew confirmed, ‘but the little, everyday things he tells Mrs Cled and she passes them on to we.’
Once a week, after she had finished in the big kitchen and the drawing-room, Hester had to scrub her way across the black and white tiles of the hall, up the graciously curved staircase and along the upper gallery. She had been told by Matthew that the bedrooms were in a bad state of repair but since she never saw a door open, she was unable to agree or disagree with that statement. And despite her hopes, Mrs Cledwen kept a close eye on her
when she was upstairs, so she didn’t get the chance of a quiet snoop.
Downstairs, however, was a different matter. One afternoon, when she had worked past her usual time to oblige Mrs Cledwen, Hester asked if she might see the great hall and was told, abruptly, that she might please herself. Interpreting this as permission, Hester went through the small, heavy oak door and saw for herself the vanished splendour, the roof open to the sky, the birds swooping and quarrelling in the rafters, the pigeon-droppings underfoot. She smelt the smell of damp and decay and mourned the passing of what must once have been a magnificent sight, for even though the wood was riddled with worm and dry rot the carvings remained, still complete in places, the serene faces of saints and the mild countenances of animals gazing out across the ruin of a once-beautiful room.
There were other ruins too. Rooms open to the four winds, their rafters rotting, plaster crumbling, floorboards a danger to any but the lightest of footsteps. The old man had managed to rescue a dairy, a shippon, a couple of cowsheds and some stabling, but with only Willi, Dewi and Matthew to see to it all, it was a constant fight against the elements, the proverbial bad luck of the farming fraternity and the fickleness of supply and demand, just to keep the place going and pay the wages. And that was the farming side of things; the house, with only Hester to scrub and Mrs Cledwen to manage, was clearly in a parlous state.
‘Cursed it is, see, girl,’ Willi told her, when they were chatting over a cup of tea, Mrs Cledwen having gone off with Matthew to town to buy provisions. ‘Long ago a nun was ravished by the lord of Pengarth here, and with her dying breath she cursed the castle and them that live ’ere. That’s why they can’t get no girls from the village to housemaid up at Pengarth. They won’t live in, see, and it’s too far to walk each day.’
‘Nonsense, Willi. I walk, don’t I? And you and your brother walk,’ Hester said bracingly. ‘Besides, if the nun was ravished how could she curse the castle?’
Willi looked shifty; Hester concluded that she had caught him out and stopped believing a word he said, even when she discovered that being ravished wasn’t quite the same as having a sword thrust through your heart.
‘Though to a nun, it might be worse, I suppose,’ Mrs Cledwen said, having enlightened Hester as to ravishment in general and the ravishing of a nun in particular. ‘They’re brides of Christ, so possibly … but there, it’s just a foolish tale told by foolish and ignorant people. The reason we’ve no live-in servants is because Mr Geraint would sooner spend money on his land than on his home.’
‘I’ve never seen Mr Geraint,’ Hester observed. She was cleaning the cutlery with a saucerful of pink powder and water and enjoying the chance to sit down, though she had done her scrubbing work first and, strictly speaking, should have been on her way back to get Matthew’s dinner. But Mrs Cled was fair and always paid her extra when she worked late, and besides, if she was still working at one o’clock she would get fed here, which was a rare treat, for Mrs Cled could make a delicious meal out of almost anything. ‘He’s away a lot, isn’t he?’