Suki, p.20
Suki, page 20
‘Buried?’ Mrs Havers said. ‘Oh my dear life! Dead an’ buried, poor little mite. What a weary world to be dead an’ buried. ’Tis uncommon hard…’
But luckily she didn’t get the chance to say any more because at that moment Mr Brown came stomping into the kitchen, with his round hat in his hands, and his bandage trailing along the ground.
‘Little contree-tom,’ he explained, looking at Suki sheepishly. ‘You keepin’ well, are you? ’Tis all come adrift seemingly. They sent me back to get it fixed on account of Farmer Lambton. He reckon it’s a danger to the others. I s’pose you haven’t got such a thing as an old rag about ’ee, have ’ee, Mrs Havers?’
So Suki was able to escape, after telling her father she was sorry to see him hurt and hoped he would soon be better. But as she walked back to the farmhouse, she knew her going wouldn’t be the end of the matter and that her mother would have something to say about it sooner or later. And her heart quailed at the thought of what it would be.
It was said the next afternoon, when Mrs Lambton sent her up to the fields with a basket of bread and cheese and a flagon of ale for the farmer. William had been fed to capacity and was asleep in the cradle the Lambtons had provided for him, so she was able to leave him behind. It was actually quite pleasant to be out in the open air and striding along without his weight on her back. After a few yards she began to sing — ‘Heigh down derry derry ding, Life is a merry merry thing’ — her skirts swishing in time to the words. She was so happily absorbed she didn’t hear her mother until she was walking alongside her.
‘So now we may have the truth,’ Mrs Brown said, in her no-nonsense way. ‘There’s no one by to hear us.’
Suki swallowed.
‘That baby’s never a Bradbury,’ her mother went on. ‘Not with that face. You may fool the rest of ’em — though how you pulled the wool over Farmer Lambton’s eyes I shall never understand — but you don’t fool me an’ you needn’t think it. Did you really imagine I wouldn’t know my own grandson, you foolish child?’ The moment had come. Not in Bath among strangers but here, at home, among these familiar rolling fields, with the call of the reapers echoing in the distance and the smell of ripe corn filling the air around her, strong as new baked bread, here where she’d always felt secure and where the shock of being found out was doubly hard. Now she would be punished and made to tell the Bradburys and stood in front of the magistrate and publicly shamed.
‘Out with it,’ her mother said, watching her face. ‘I needs to know.’
‘Better not, Ma. I been telling lies.’
‘I don’t doubt it. All the more reason.’
‘We could both be in trouble if I tell you.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that.’
A skylark rose from the corn and spiralled into the blue sky, stringing pearls of joyous sound as it rose. A year ago Suki would have listened to it with a total and innocent pleasure, now it sounded more like an avenging angel than a songbird, mocking her hopes and calling, ‘caught out, found out, seeeee, silly silly silly’.
‘You got the look of a gel with too many burdens,’ her mother observed. ‘Share ’em gel. Don’t hold ’em to yourself. I’ll not tell another living soul if that’s what you want.’
The promise brought a flood of relief. ‘Truly?’
Mrs Brown was forthright. ‘You don’t peach your children.’
So the truth was told, at first hesitantly, then, as her mother simply listened and didn’t judge, at some length, for they had a mile to cover until they reached the field being harvested and they were walking more and more slowly.
‘I had to do it, Ma,’ Suki finished. ‘You do see that, don’t you?’
‘No I don’t,’ her mother said. ‘What was that husband of yourn a-doing, pray? He should’ve took you away an’ made a home for you an’ the babba.’
It was time for the worst confession. ‘Me an’ him never got married.’
Mrs Brown drew in her breath. ‘So that’s the humour of it,’ she said. ‘That’s the sort of man he was. Love you an’ leave you.’ Suki rushed to deny it. Because it could so easily be true. ‘Oh no. Nothing like that. He loves me.’
Her mother sighed. ‘They all say that, gel.’
‘No, no. He does. Truly. And I love him with all my heart.’
‘Oh, Suki, Suki! I never thought I’d live to hear you talk such nonsense.’
‘It ain’t nonsense, Ma. I do love him. I love him an’ he loves me an’ we’ll marry just as soon as he gets home again.’
‘What you propose to do in the meantime though? Tell me that.’
‘Look for him next summer and feed the babba till he’m three an’ then…’
Her mother looked a question at her. They were close enough to the harvest field to hear what the reapers were saying. The time for confidences was nearly over.
‘An’ if he don’t come back, what then?’
‘I don’t know,’ Suki admitted. ‘I just got to hang on an’ hope.’
‘Would you like your pa to find you a husband?’
The idea was abhorrent. ‘No. No. If I can’t marry the Captain I shan’t marry at all.’
‘We’d find you a good man.’
‘I wouldn’t love him.’
‘You don’t have to love a man to many him,’ her mother said. ‘That ain’t the way of the world. Marriage is a bargain. He gets a mother for his children and a woman to keep house for him, you get a roof over your head and bread in your mouth. Love don’t come into it.’
Defiance rose in Suki’s chest, making her lift her head and jut her chin. ‘Then it should.’
‘There’s only one love of any consequence,’ Mrs Brown told her, touched to pity by her boldness, ‘an’ that’s the love you feel for your children. That never changes, as well you know, for weren’t that the reason for all this?’
It was. It had to be admitted.
‘Life’s never easy,’ Mrs Brown said, as they climbed over the stile into the field, ‘an’ babbas make it worse, but we wouldn’t be without ’em. You’ll manage I daresay. Least you’m close by an’ I can keep an’ eye on you.’
To be supported when she’d expected to be rebuked and punished brought Suki to tears. ‘Thank ’ee, Ma,’ she said, leaning forward to kiss her mother’s cheek.
Mrs Brown gave a wry smile. ‘I ’aven’t been much of a help to ’ee in all conscience, you bein’ in Bath an’ me here.’
‘I thought you’d scold.’
‘Bit late for that now, gel,’ her mother said, striding into the field. ‘We just got to make the best of things, same as we always do. Hope an’ pray. You’m a good gel at heart.’
So Suki settled to her new life on the farm and tried not to think about her problems. She scrubbed floors, scoured dirty dishes, helped pile the corn into stooks and gather the gleanings, provided the reapers with food and drink, attended church on Sundays and kept Mrs Lambton company all through the week.
It wasn’t long before the two of them had established a happy routine. When the weather was warm, the farmer in the fields and the day’s chores done, they took their chairs out into the garden, set the baby on his feather pillow between them, free from his swaddling bands and his tacky clouts to lack his naked legs in the sun and give his poor sore bum an airing, and sat beside him against the garden wall to gossip as they did their mending.
Suki took to telling her new mistress about the Bradburys, mimicking the young misses as they roared at one another and giving a fair imitation of Lady Bradbury and her trick of falling into a faint to get her own way. Annie thought that was very funny, although she pretended to scold.
‘Oh Suki, you bad girl!’ she protested, holding her thin fingers to her mouth in shocked delight. ‘To poke such fun. She might’ve been ill in earnest.’
‘Not her,’ Suki said. ‘She’m as fit as a flea. ’Tis just on account of she have to have everything her own way. Which reminds me. I’m s’posed to write to her and tell her we’m arrived.’
‘You shall do it tonight. We’ve pen and paper.’
Suki seized her opportunity at once. ‘I would if I could ma’am, but I can’t on account of I can’t read an’ write.’
‘Oh dear. Then what shall you do?’
‘I been meaning to ask you if you’d learn me how, ma’am. I know some of my letters. S for Suki an’ B for Bath and suchlike. I’d learn quick.’
So the bargain was struck — a daily lesson in return for more tales of the Bradburys. ‘’M shall need to write this first letter for you to copy but you can sign your own name.’
‘Mr Jones shall take it to Bath for you when he goes to market,’ the farmer said when he was told.
‘I am to stay here then, sir?’
He smiled his nice slow smile at her. ‘I think so or Mrs Lambton will never let me hear the last of it.’
So Mr Jones carried her letter on his next trip to Bath, putting it carefully into his money bag before he drove off and assuring her it would be delivered safe and sound. Suki stood in the porch and watched as the neat cart joggled through the dust towards the lane, with Mr Jones and his dog sitting bolt upright on the driving seat and swaying in harmony like two glove puppets. She would have liked to have travelled with him, just in case the Captain was in town, or to have sent him a letter, but she knew that neither of these things were possible.
After his second trip, he brought her back a letter from Lady Bradbury which Annie read for her, although by then she was beginning to distinguish the easy words and could have managed some of it herself. Milady was pleased to hear that William was well. Suki was to write to her every week and to keep her informed as to any requirements the child might have. Meantime she enclosed another bank note for five pounds.
So the weeks continued and William grew out of his clothes and discovered how to sit up and had the first cold of his life which puzzled him and made him grizzly. The fields were ploughed and the new seed soaked in lime and urine and left to set before being planted. And soon the first gales of autumn blew, scattering the first dead leaves and flailing the supple trees from side to side like river weed. The wind moaned down the chimney at night and set the fowls into affronted squawking by day, and Suki fretted too, alone in her white-washed bedroom, because time was passing and she hadn’t found the Captain and there was nothing she could do but wait.
Chapter 15
‘You won’t find a better horse in all Christendom,’ Jack Daventry said to his companion, stroking Beau’s thick mane. ‘He’s mettlesome, I’ll grant you that, but he’s a stayer.’
‘Better or worse, sir,’ the other man said, ‘they all eat hay, an’ they eats it prodigious every last animal o’ ’em. This here one’s a regular trencher.’ Beau had been stabled with him ever since Jack arrived in Bristol so he spoke with authority. ‘Which as I don’t need to tell ’ee sir, hay don’t grow on trees.’
The two men were standing in the yard of Mr Wenham’s livery stables alongside the Broad Quay, with Beau tossing his head between them, and the transaction Jack had just proposed wasn’t being well received, although for the life of him he couldn’t think why. Any stableman worth his salt should have been jumping for joy at the thought of accommodating such a splendid animal, not pouting and complaining.
‘You’ll be paid,’ he promised.
Mr Wenham sucked in his cheeks. ‘Aye but when, sir?’
‘Forty crowns now, the rest when I return,’ Jack urged. ‘In full. You have my word as a gentleman.’
‘Trouble is,’ Mr Wenham said stolidly, ‘you can’t eat words, sir, as I don’t need to tell ’ee. Now if you’d a mind to sell the animal ’twould be a different matter altogether.’
It was unthinkable, impossible. What a fool of a man he is, Jack thought, enraged by Mr Wenham’s swarthy face, by his bow legs and fustian breeches, his stink of stables, his asinine inability to see what a monstrous suggestion he’d just made. The thought of being parted from this splendid creature for a whole year was misery enough. The grief of it was a physical pain, tears tightening in his throat, an anguished ache in his guts. Now he understood what the Bible meant when it wrote of the prophet yearning in his bowels. But to be forced to sell him would break his heart.
Now that the moment of parting was upon him, he realised that he felt closer to this animal than he’d ever been to any other living creature. The series of slatternly women who’d been paid to feed and house him in his miserable childhood had been too careless and uncaring to offer him attention or affection, and although he’d professed love to many a young woman since he set out into the world alone, none of them had moved him much beyond desire, luscious though they were. There’d been a dark-eyed creature in Bath last summer who’d come closer to him than most but she was nothing compared to the bond he felt for this handsome, sensitive, noble creature, with his quick response to the merest touch of a heel, his speed over the roughest road, his sure-footedness, his wonderful intelligent obedience.
‘Selling is out of the question,’ he said, stiff-necked with distress.
‘I wonder you don’t take ’im with ’ee, sir,’ Mr Wenham said, ‘if that’s the humour of it.’
‘I would, Mr Wenham, depend on it, if there were room for him aboard ship.’ Which would be sailing in less than an hour. ‘So, sir, how say you? Shall you take him? ’Twould only be for a year.’ And when Mr Wenham still hesitated. ‘He could earn his keep, should you wish it. You could hire him out to the quality. I ain’t opposed to that.’
‘’Tis irregular.’
‘A plague o’ that. Think what you stand to gain.’
‘There’s gains an’ there’s losses, sir, if you take my meaning. ’Twill mean a small fortune spent on hay.’
‘I’ll pay ’ee. Forty crowns down, the rest…’
Mr Wenham sucked in his cheeks again. Thought, breathing noisily. ‘Sixty.’
Jack relaxed. It was a concession. The arrangement was possible. Now it was simply a matter of haggling. ‘Forty-five.’
The bargain was concluded thirty gambling seconds later. Time only to stroke Beau’s nose and lay his head once more and for the last time against the graceful arch of that familiar neck — and then to run. Across the quay. Don’t look back. An unnecessary leap down on to the deck. Cheerful greetings to his shipmates. Too soon, he grieved, holding a bold smile, too soon, too fast, too final. But the pilot boat was heading towards them, implacably purposeful, its long oars edged blood-red by the setting sun. His adventure was upon him ready or not.
The pilot climbed aboard, three sails were unfurled and the Bonny Beaufoy gave a shudder like a horse under the spur, seemed to gather herself, timbers creaking, and began to move. Jack was the only man aboard who didn’t have a job to do and the lack of one left him feeling exposed, as the master boomed instructions and the crew ran to obey them, pigtails dancing, feet slapping the deck. He watched as the breeze filled the canvas with a sudden crack and the ship began to lumber after the pilot boat like a great full-breasted swan ludicrously following a duckling, stirring the stagnant water of the floating harbour as she went. Then more sails were unfurled and they were out in the great highway of the river, away from the stink and clamour of the quays and picking up speed.
Jack was exhilarated despite his grief, for the roll and dip of the ship’s progress made him think of the flight of a great bird and the thought lifted him and comforted him. Was he not an eagle among men? And was this not the perfect place for him, a noble, powerful creature sailing effortlessly into the glory of the setting sun? The clouds before him massed in imperial colours, scarlet, pale gold, purple, and the water parted by the ship’s black prow flowed on either side of him like arcs of melted gold.
There is nothing to keep me here, he thought, with sad satisfaction. I’ve no prospects and no hope of any, no family to care for me, no one to love me, not a living soul to grieve at my going except for Beau. He straightened his shoulders, lifted his chin, flexed his feet against the movement of the deck, feeling how well this new life would suit him. I shall return a rich man, he vowed. No matter what lies ahead of me, one thing is certain. I shall prevail.
‘I shall be sick presently,’ Mr Reuben said lugubriously, padding up to stand beside him at the rail. ‘’Tis allus the same, every blamed voyage.’
‘The Bonny Beaufoy has sailed, me dear,’ Sir George told his wife with great satisfaction two days later. ‘I had a billet from my brother this morning. She caught the evening tide on Thursday so she should be past the Scillies by now. Good news, what?’
Hermione nodded her head but, apart from that, she took no notice. She was much too busy supervising the installation of her new silk curtains. With three important dinner parties planned to start the season — one for each of her daughter’s prospective suitors — she had decided to redecorate the drawing room. White was utterly passe, as she’d realised the moment she stepped into the blue and gold extravagance of Lady Fosdyke’s newly decorated salon, and as she explained to her husband as soon as they were back home. ‘We must be a la mode,’ she’d said, ‘or the Honourable Sir Humphrey will think us nothing but clod-hoppers. The dining room will pass muster, I daresay. At least for this season. Nobody sees anything very much at table, as I’m sure you will allow. They are all too fully occupied perusing at the other guests. Howsomever, this room will be under inspection.’
So the walls had been covered in the finest blue wallpaper she could find, every bit as expensive as that ordered by her rival, doors and shutters positively gleamed with white paint and she had invested in two perfectly splendid Venetian chandeliers, each one holding four and twenty candles and hung with four and twenty dazzling glass pendants. And now the new curtains had arrived and if only Barnaby and that stupid new boy would pay attention to what they were supposed to be doing, the transformation of the room would soon be complete.
