Suki, p.56
Suki, page 56
She said it sounded handsome, since that was plainly what he wanted to hear and was true besides. But she was still puzzled and unsure of herself and wondered what they would talk about on their long walk back to Appleton House.
At first, he spoke at length about his plans for the home farm. ‘I have always hoped to farm,’ he said. ‘I shall need a manager, I daresay, for to tell ’ee true, Suki, I know little of farming as yet, but I mean to learn. I knew little of slavery when I first set sail from Bristol but I learned that trade well enough and ’twas a deal more difficult than any farming life could be. Besides I shall be breeding horses and there’s an occupation I have in my very blood. And Beau to put to stud what’s more.’
As no answer seemed to be needed, Suki walked beside him and kept her eyes down and said nothing. It was a bitter-sweetness to be so near to him and yet so far from his thoughts.
They walked on in silence for several hundred yards and then he suddenly spoke again. ‘I am much beholden to ’ee, I think,’ he said. ‘For you were the one who found my Beau, I believe, and bought him from that rogue Wenham and rode him to Lambton’s farm.’
She admitted that this was so, but did not look at him.
‘Then I owe you the price you paid for him.’
‘No,’ she said, looking at him at last and smiling because she was so pleased by what she was about to tell him. ‘The money was your mother’s. She sent me a note for five pounds to pay for William’s new clothes. ’Twas in my pocket at the time, so I spent it. Though what she’d have said had she known I do not dare to think.’
‘And what of William’s clothes?’
‘I made over his old ones.’
‘You are a sterling creature,’ he said, touched to think that she would put the care of his horse before clothes for this child she loved so much.
‘I could hardly stand by an’ see un beaten, poor crittur,’ she said, and as his expression was encouraging, she told him the story.
‘Then I truly am beholden to you,’ he said when she’d finished.
The more he talked to her, the more strongly she was attracting him, with those fine rounded arms and that pretty bosom and her dark skin glowing in the sunshine and those blue eyes looking at him with such candour, reminding him. But of what? The curse of it was that he couldn’t remember, although he sensed it to be important. Echoes rose to disturb him but faded away from him as if they were slipping into the untidy hedges. ‘I must make amends to ’ee.’
‘There’s no need.’
‘Were my mother to be believed, there is a pretty way to do’t,’ he said, smiling at her.
She was alerted by the smile and annoyed by the change in his tone, but he didn’t notice and pressed on. ‘She maintains,’ he dared, ‘that a farmer is twice the man with a good wife.’
Oh the misery of it. To be so near to a proposal from this man she’d loved so much — still loved so much despite his faults — and all for the very worst of reasons. ‘That, sir,’ she told him as coldly as she could, ‘is no concern of mine.’
‘But it could be, could it not, were we to marry?’
She straightened her spine, and moved two paces away from him, her face set. ‘Then my answer’s no,’ she said. ‘And you’d best know it now afore you ask. I’ll not have my life arranged for me by any milady, no matter who, and no more should you. ’Tis belittling. Insulting. We should be above such things. If I marry ’twill be for love, not for an arrangement. I thought better of ’ee, sir, indeed I did.’
Her fierceness was burning away the mists in his mind. ‘When you found me in Bedlam,’ he reminded them both, ‘you said you loved me.’
‘That was then and in the heat of the moment,’ she told him furiously. ‘A deal has happened since. I aren’t a pawn in Lady Bradbury’s game nor do I ever intend to be.’
‘You said that William was my child.’
‘Aye, so he is,’ she said. ‘But they ain’t no reason to marry neither, since I’ve birthed un and cared for un on my own and now he’m to be brought up as milady’s son and sent to school as a gentleman and to inherit Sir George’s estate and we’m to keep our secret.’
This time, to be told that he was indeed a father filled him with an unexpected pleasure — and some hope.
‘Then perhaps,’ he said, ‘we should keep our secret together as man and wife.’
‘No, no, no!’ she cried, stamping her feet. ‘I won’t marry for convenience. I could have took Farmer Lambton months since if I’d meant to marry so. And I won’t do it. Never, never, never. ’Twill be love or nothing. Don’t ’ee understand?’
‘What a firebrand you are,’ he said admiring her. But then he saw the gleam of tears in those wild eyes and realised that her anger was caused by pain. ‘I did not mean to hurt ’ee, upon my life,’ he said, putting his hands on her shoulders to turn her towards him. ‘I thought ’twould please you.’
The touch of his hands was more than she could bear. ‘Then you thought wrong,’ she said, and tried to twist away.
The movement triggered a memory that spun in his drug-tamed brain, caught, held and edged into focus. ‘The Spring Gardens,’ he said, staring at her. ‘The Spring Gardens in Bath. You wore a pink gown and little red slippers and I stole six pinks from the border and put ’em in your hair. You are Suki from Twerton. We went to the theatre and saw the silliest play. Oh, how I do recall.’
To be remembered was such an exquisite pleasure after so much hurt and disappointment that she caught her breath and stopped struggling. ‘You said I was your one true love,’ she rebuked him. ‘And then you forgot me. You recognised your horse and didn’t know me from Adam. Your one true love.’
He was so caught up in the power of the memory that he missed her rebuke. ‘And so you were,’ he said. ‘How I do remember. You rode before me on the saddle with your hair blown about and your bonnet on your shoulders. I loved you more than I could say.’
Her answer was bitter. ‘And have forgot me since.’
‘No, indeed, truly. I thought of ’ee on board ship and in the slave camp, even in Bedlam. I could not put a name to ’ee in Bedlam because of the laudanum. ’Od rot it. You were my comfort in the worst of times. I dreamt of ’ee in Bath not two nights since and a cruel dream it was, for I thought to hold you and lost you at every turn.’
‘You said nothing of it in the morning,’ she said, yearning for him. Oh if only he had spoken then.
He winced. ‘Fool that I was, I did not know who you were in the morning.’
Love was stirring in them both, pulling them together by its magical cords. ‘And do you know now?’ she asked breathlessly.
He caught her in his arms and held her so close she could feel his breath in her hair. ‘You are a sterling creature,’ he said. ‘A wench of pure gold. My one true love.’
She knew he was exaggerating, but it was sweet to hear the words even so and she put up her mouth for his lass as though they were still the lovers they had been all those months ago. And the lass was sweeter than any words could have been and a deal more true.
‘How I remember now,’ he said. And indeed he did. Those arms about his neck, those blue eyes growing languid with desire, that sweet breath playing against his lips before he kissed her again. He was restored — full of strength and hope in a world rich with colour and possibility — and confident enough to tease.
‘A thousand pardons,’ he said as their third lass ended. ‘I had forgot. You do not wish to marry me.’
She could tease, too. Now. ‘That was afore your memory returned to ’ee.’
‘How say you now that it has?’
‘Now that it has,’ she told him with mock seriousness, ‘I will give your proposal thought, sir.’
‘And in the meantime I may hope?’
She knew she would marry him, although he was no longer the dashing gallant she had loved in Bath all those months ago, but a man a deal more complicated, changed by suffering, made vulnerable, needing help and support as much as she needed it herself. But, oh, a man she loved more than ever. ‘In the meantime,’ she said, putting her arms round his neck in her old easy way, ‘we will try what a little love may do.’
Hearts of Oak
Beryl Kingston
Chapter 1
Admiral Lord Nelson, hero of the Nile and darling of the nation, was leaving Portsmouth. It was one o’clock on a fine September afternoon and the air was shore-side busy, pungent with the smell of spilt beer and gutted fish, and boisterous with the cheers and shouts of a surging crowd of locals, who had gathered in the narrow streets of Spice Island, to escort him from The George to the jetty and bid him farewell. His barge was ready to carry him out to his flag ship, its crew sitting to attention with oars raised; the entrance to the harbour was full of small ships waiting on the calm water to salute his departure; but for the moment, as he walked down the steps by the bathing machines, he was dramatically and obviously alone, his handsome face pale and withdrawn under his black bicorne hat, that pitiful empty sleeve pinned to the breast of his blue jacket, scarlet sash bold as blood across his chest, white breeches and white silk stockings immaculate against the sea-stained wood of the steps.
“Such a fine good man,” Molly Simmons said to her neighbours, as they struggled to keep their footing on the slippery cobbles, straining forward for a last look at their hero. “I means for to say, when you think what’s ahead of him, poor soul, off to fight them pesky Frenchies, no wonder he looks peaky. They say ’twill be a fearsome battle. This could be the last time he sets foot on English soil, think a’ that. I means for to say, the last time we shall ever see him again.”
“Don’t talk morbid,” Lizzie Templeman said sharply. “You don’t know what’s to come no more than any of us.”
“Quite right,” Mary Morris agreed, frowning at Molly. “No point meeting trouble half way. If ’tis coming, ’tis coming, and we’ll face it when we must, that’s my opinion of it. Meantime I’ll trouble you to keep your opinion to yourself.”
Molly had seen her mistake as soon as the words were out of her mouth and now she regretted them, remembering that Lizzie Templeman had a son in one of Nelson’s ships. “Time goes on, that’s the trouble,” she apologised. “You sort a’ loses track.” And she tried to make amends for her clumsiness by saying something complimentary. “Seems only yesterday we was all at your Jem’s wedding. Such a pretty wedding. All them flowers an all.”
It had been a pretty wedding, Mary thought. She and Lizzie had made sure of it. A pretty wedding, a good match, and everything starting off so well and now look where they were. There was no sense in the world.
It had begun on a quiet evening in March when no one in her family was expecting it. The wind had been blowing all day, which had been a fine thing because it had dried the laundry beautifully, and now the wash was indoors, folded up and put in the baskets and standing in the corner of the kitchen ready to be ironed, and she and Marianne were setting the table for supper. Marianne had made the bread that morning and it had turned out well so she was feeling pleased with herself too, because you can never be sure with bread, and Pa and her brother Johnny were back from the yard and had washed their hands and were sitting up to the table waiting for the stew to be served. A quiet, ordinary, humdrum sort of evening. A time for taking their ease after the hard work of the day.
When they heard the knock on the door, Mary sent Johnny to answer it without very much interest. It wasn’t usual to have callers at that time of night, but the neighbours were always popping in and out for one thing or another. She was rather surprised when he came grinning back into the kitchen with young Jem Templeman following behind him. A handsome creature young Jem, with those thick, dark curls all over his head and those fine, dark eyes and that easy way of walking and he was looking particularly well that evening in a red shirt that looked as though it was new made.
“An’ what can we do for you, young man?” Mary asked, stirring the stew. “Laundry, is it?” Most of her callers came carrying bundles of dirty linen and she was always ready for trade.
“No,” he said. “Nothin’ like that, Mrs Morris.” And he gave Jack Morris one of his bold looks. “Fact of it is, I come for to ask Mr Morris a favour.”
“Then ’tis wheels,” Jack said, because he was always ready for trade too. “Is that the size of it?”
Jem grinned, showing his nice white teeth, and Marianne watched him admiringly. He really was very handsome. “No, sir,” he said. “’T’en’t wheels neither. As a matter a fact…” and then he lost confidence for a second and hesitated, for, despite his bold appearance and his easy smile, he was more unsure of himself and more easily put down than anyone would ever know, or he would ever admit.
“Well come on then, my sonny,” Jack Morris said, laughing at the hesitation. “Sit ’ee down an’ spit it out. We don’t bite.”
“Well then,” Jem said, sitting on the nearest chair and gathering his courage, “’Tis like this here, sir. I come to ask your permission to come a-courting.”
The words had an impact like a bomb exploding. It would have been hard to tell which of them was the most surprised. Young Johnny’s eyes were as round as saucers at the thought that anyone should want to court his sister, Mary was beaming fit to split her face and Marianne was blushing with disbelief and pleasure. She could feel her cheeks turning red. He couldn’t mean her, surely to goodness, not when he was so handsome, and she was so plain. Because she was plain there was no denying it. It was a private sorrow to her. When she was little, she’d watched the fine ladies driving about Portsmouth in their carriages or out shopping in the fine new shops, and she’d thought how tall and superior they looked with their haughty faces, all those long noses and big eyes an’ all, and their fine clothes and their white hands, and she’d wondered if she would grow up even half as pretty. But she hadn’t, of course, although she’d watched the mirror every day. She looked what she was, the daughter of a wheelwright and a laundrywoman, short in stature, plain in feature, altogether ordinary, with nothing about her to catch the eye. Her legs were too short and her face too dull, with little grey eyes and a blob of a nose, and she wore hemp and linsey-woolsey and her hands were always red-rough with soda and scrubbing. They were red and rough at that moment. And yet, she was the only one he could mean, and he was looking straight at her and smiling. My dear heart alive! she thought.
Her father was the first to recover. “Well now,” he said, “as to that, ’twill need some consideration.”
“I finished my apprenticeship last week,” Jem told him. “I’m a master carpenter now, master carpenter an’ cabinet maker, what’s a good trade. I means to set up a workshop hereabouts, which should make me a good livin’. Which bein’ so, I needs a wife to help and support me, like. So what I means for to say is, I been watching your Marianne in church, ever since I was ’prenticed, admiring her like an thinkin’ about it, an I’ve talked it all over with Ma an’ Pa, what’s agreeable to it, an’ now I’d like your leave for to come a-courting.”
“My stars, Jem Templeman,” Jack said, laughing again. “You don’t beat about the bush.”
The laughter was encouraging. “Is that yes or no, sir?”
“Well as to that,” Jack said, “you’ll have to ask our Marianne.”
Jem turned towards her and looked directly at her for what seemed a very long time, half bold, half hopeful, but not saying anything, while she tried to catch her breath, for really he’d taken it quite away. But when he spoke, he was splendidly proper.
“What do ’ee think, Miss Morris?” he said. “Shall we walk out after church on Sunday?”
She accepted his offer at once before he could think better of it. “Yes,” she said. “I would like to.”
So that Sunday they walked out of the town and into the countryside, she in her Sunday best and he in his new red shirt and, after a long silence during which they both wondered what he was going to say, he told her all about the work he was going to do and how he was going to hire a workshop and how hard it had been being apprenticed and what a long time it had taken. “Seven years from start to finish, what seems for ever. I was fourteen when I began.” And she listened and marvelled to think that he would confide in her. She might not be the prettiest girl in town, but she knew how to behave.
It was quite a relief to him that she listened so well and said so little because he’d been awake half the night wondering how this courtship would begin. Wanting a wife was simple. ’Twas what everyone did. You got to a certain age, you found yourself a job, you settled down, you looked around and found a wife to cook for you and mend your clothes and share your life, bed and board sort of thing. Even to think of it was a pleasure. Bed and board. What could be better? ’Twas just the persuading of her that was the problem, for, if he was honest, and he prided himself on being honest, he really didn’t have the first idea how to go about it. He’d seen plenty of courting couples walking out, naturally, hand in hand, or with their arms about each other, or kissing in quiet corners, but he didn’t know how they’d managed to get the whole thing started. What were you supposed to say? And what if you said the wrong thing? But now, they’d taken their first walk together and he hadn’t said anything wrong and it had all gone well. She’d listened and she seemed to like him, and she’d certainly approved of what he’d said. When he escorted her back to her parents’ house at the end of it, he was smiling with satisfaction. “I will see you next Sunday,” he said.
Now that he’d discovered how to talk to her, the next Sunday was easier. He told her all about his master, Mr Henderson, and what a stickler he was. “Allus had to be the best you could do. Take your time, he used to say. Take your time an’ then you won’t spoil the wood. Very partic’lar about that he was.” And she listened again. On the third Sunday, he told her about his parents’ pie shop and what hard work that was. “Which is why I made certain to have me a trade.” And she listened again.
