Daughters Of Eden: The Eden Series Book 1 (7 page)

She enjoyed no such good fortune. When she opened her eyes, she saw Basil staring down the table at her as if she were mad, before slowly turning his gaze up to the decrepit ceiling high above them while placing both his elbows on the table and then carefully connecting the tips of both sets of fingers.

‘It's a question of expenditure really,' he announced out of the blue. ‘Now we are married, what is mine is yours and what is yours is mine, so when it comes down to restoring this wonderful home of
ours
, this place you have in a way
inherited
…' he paused to look back down at Poppy and engage her eyes, ‘then it is only proper you should – since you will obviously care to do so – share in the costs.'

‘I thought that might be coming,' Poppy said, wiping her mouth carefully on her napkin and putting her knife and fork to one side of her plate.

‘Good. Then it is no surprise.'

‘I didn't say that, Basil. I simply said I thought that was coming.'

‘I do not want to do this, Poppy, but I must remind you of your place.'

‘Yes?'

‘You are my wife now. You are Lady Tetherington. You are the new mistress of Mellerfont. It is your duty to help restore what is regarded locally as somewhat of a treasure to its former glory. You are extremely well placed to do so, because you can well afford it.'

‘Yes, Basil. I know. But affording it is not actually the same thing as wanting to do something, is it?'

‘Are you defying me?'

‘I don't know, really.' Poppy shook her head and stared back at him. ‘What would happen to me if I did defy you? Would you take a horsewhip to me, as your Victorian forebears did to their disobedient wives? Or wall me up in a tower?'

‘I will not have you defy me, Poppy,' Basil said. ‘I wish to make that perfectly clear.'

‘And I will not have you bully me, Basil,' Poppy replied. ‘I hope I have made
that
perfectly clear. Now if you will excuse me …' She rose from her place.

‘Where do you think you are going exactly?'

‘To my room. That dreadful meal has made me feel unwell.'

‘You will do no such thing.'

‘I'm afraid I must, Basil. I feel really sick – actually. Not very British I know, but true.'

Basil stared at her, then throwing his napkin on the table pushed his chair to one side, lighting up a cigarette and ignoring his wife's premature departure from dinner.

Upstairs in the dreaded west wing the maid had tried to light the fire in Poppy's bedroom but
had not met with much success. Poppy huddled herself in front of it, with George sitting on her knee, and prodded the miserably smoking logs with a poker but could not get it to go any better. Outside the storm had worsened into what now sounded like a hurricane, the rain lashing the rattling windows and what seemed like great tongues of draught licking round the dark, shabby curtains and making the bedroom almost unbearably cold. Her so-called marriage, her husband, the awfulness of the house, everything was a sham. Her marriage unconsummated, her husband a dictator, it was all such a laugh, really. She clung to George, imagining telling Mary Jane the whole terrible tale, imagining her friend trying not to look gleeful, imagining her hurrying back to her mother to tell her. At least they would be able to laugh about it, most particularly about Poppy still not knowing about It. Giving in finally to her misery, Poppy wrapped herself in a blanket over her dressing gown and huddled herself into bed, where she did her best to finish the note she had been writing to await her mother's arrival in America.

Mellerfont is huge, horrid and freezing, the servants bad-tempered and impolite, and the food revolting. I keep thinking I am in a nightmare, and wonder what on earth I am doing here and if it were at all possible I would go home this instant – except I know Eaton Square is locked up for the duration, and you in America hoping that I have made a splendid match, which of course I have. A splendid miserable match. Please write to me. I can't tell you how lonely I am
.
George sends lots of licks and I send all my love, your Poppy. PS Basil hated the poppy dress … thinks it's vulgar, you know? PPS He and I sleep in separate rooms
.

The next morning she asked a small ginger-haired boy dressed in a much patched country tweed livery to take her letter to the post, but he refused, saying that he was only allowed into the village on Sundays for church and ‘nowt else' as he put it. He explained there was a post box in the main house where her ladyship could leave her letter to be taken to the village later. Since the post box was dust-ridden and looked remarkably unused, Poppy decided instead to walk to the village herself. She was about to set off when her husband appeared to manifest himself in the hall, staring first from her hand to her face, and then to the post box.

‘You do not walk to the village to post a letter,' he said, eyeing her walking shoes. ‘It would not be proper.'

‘Now the rain has stopped, I rather wanted to explore my new surroundings,' Poppy returned, taking her letter back, Basil having confiscated it. ‘Would that be terribly improper, do you think?'

‘You can explore them to your heart's content,' Basil replied. ‘But from the back of a motor car. Leon will drive you.'

‘Who's Leon?'

‘My chauffeur. Come with me – he'll be round in the mews.'

Poppy followed Basil as he strode round the house, finally to disappear under a stone arch into
a yard where Poppy discovered a row of garages, mostly closed but some with open doors revealing various types of cars within. There was no one about other than a small, bald-headed thickset man polishing the vast chrome headlamps of a dark red motor car, one of which, as Poppy could already see, was broken. Basil had arrived well ahead of her and was already engaged in conversation with the man, who Poppy immediately assumed must be Basil's chauffeur. He now glanced briefly round at her approaching figure, before jumping hurriedly into the driver's seat to back the car into the depths of the garage immediately behind.

‘Leon will drive you down to the village,' Basil announced to Poppy. ‘He'll take the Austin – since you're to be the only passenger. Anywhere you want to go in future, Leon will take you. I wouldn't bother trying to engage him in any of your small talk, he prefers silence.'

‘Gracious, Basil, you certainly do have expensive tastes in motor cars.'

Poppy peered in and out of the garage doors at the assembled immaculate machinery.

Basil looked at her coolly.

‘Yes,' he stated, almost proudly. ‘I do, don't I? Yes, I like good motor cars.'

‘More than warm rooms, obviously.'

‘My dear, shoring up an old house takes years. Besides, my business interests take care of my passion for motor cars.'

He patted one of the shining bonnets as if it might be the nose of a horse as Leon reappeared, squeezing his bullet-shaped head into an ill-fitting chauffeur's cap, nodded at Poppy and opened up a
garage further down the row. Poppy waited for the car to be backed into the mews, then lifted George up in her arms and climbed into the back seat as Leon held the door open for her. He quickly closed it again and joined Basil once more. They engaged in yet more dialogue, the chauffeur turning every now and then to look at Poppy in the stationary car, and then he jumped into the front seat and drove at high speed down the winding drive towards the road that led to the village.

‘Excuse me!' Poppy called from the back, leaning forward to tap the driver on the shoulder. ‘I'd rather you didn't drive so fast, please!'

A pair of dark close-set eyes regarded her in the driving mirror, the expression in them one of dull hostility, until, after Poppy once more called for him to slow down, he did so. After that nothing was said.

The village of Mellerfont proved to be as pretty as Mellerfont the house was not, but perhaps because it was a tied village the prevailing atmosphere was in direct contrast to the neat, cloistered appeal of the place, its inhabitants apparently disheartened and downtrodden, as if ruled by some sort of unenviable feudal system. The car that Poppy was being driven in was an altogether more modest model than most in Basil's garages, but it still bore the Tetherington coat of arms on the driver's door. This meant that even if Poppy had wished to disown any association with the big house, she could not. It also meant that her arrival elicited sullen stares.

Stopping the car by the post office as requested, Leon remained firmly at the wheel, ever silent,
dumb insolence obviously being his stock in trade, which meant that Poppy was forced to let herself out of the back. Biting back any comment that might have sprung to mind, she walked into the post office with George at her heels.

‘No dogs in 'ere, if you please,' a sharp voice called from the gloom behind the high counter. ‘Particularly Kraut dogs.'

The two women gossiping in the main body of the shop looked startled when they saw Poppy and heard the remark of the unseen postmistress. There was an immediate exchange of whispers, prompting the appearance of a large, heavily whiskered woman behind the post office grille. She stared furiously at Poppy and finally, raising herself by her hands on the edge of the counter, peered down at the floor.

‘I said no dogs,' she repeated. ‘P'rhaps your ladyship din't hear me?'

‘There's no notice on the door.'

There was a silence while all three women in the shop exchanged looks.

‘With respect,' the postmistress said, without showing the least sign of it, ‘we are all but at war wi' 'em.' She nodded at the dachshund.

‘George is a dog, not a German.'

‘'E's a German make a'right,' the postmistress asserted. ‘Dachshund's certainly no British dog. If it were it were called dachs
hound
.'

‘He was born here and he lives here, and that makes him British. Might I have stamps for America, please?'

The whiskered woman glared at Poppy before easing herself down from her vantage point behind
the counter and opening the large stamp book on her desk.

‘Ah should imagine thy little dog's more than at 'ome up there,' she muttered, tearing the stamps off the sheet. ‘Ah'd imagine that'd be just the 'ome for 'im.'

‘My husband likes dogs, certainly,' Poppy agreed, once more uncertain as to what the woman was getting at. ‘We both like dogs.'

‘German dogs. Lord Tetherington's partial like thyself to German dogs. They say 'e 'as two or more of them Alsatians an' all.'

‘I haven't seen any Alsatians.' Poppy paused. ‘But then we have only just arrived up here.'

‘Aye,' the post mistress agreed. ‘Aye, you did an' all.'

Having paid for her stamps and posted the letter to her mother in the box outside the post office, attracted by the smell of fresh baking Poppy decided to stroll down the little high street in search of the bakery, which she soon found a few doors down. There were not a great number of people about on the street, but she made sure to smile at those she did pass. In return the women nodded and the men raised their flat caps, but no one returned the smiles. Even the woman in the bakery who was laughing and chatting to her customers as Poppy entered fell silent, and while she served her without the insolence Poppy had met in the post office, she nevertheless volunteered nothing more than the price of the buns she bought.

Despite knowing that what she was about to do would be considered improper by her husband,
Poppy was so hungry that by the time she was seated once again in the back of her car she could not have minded less if anyone saw her eating the delicious currant bun she had purchased in the shop. She was also well aware that Leon was watching her via his driving mirror and would doubtless report back to his master, but the food at both dinner and breakfast having been inedible she had no compunction in satisfying her hunger pangs. In fact, when she had finished her snack, her only regret was that she had not bought a lardy cake as well.

Life got no better during the next few weeks, and since she had received no letter from either of her parents her spirits sank to a new low, imagining that they must be travelling around America, visiting relatives, or had not received her missive. She rarely saw Basil other than at dinner, when despite her initial great efforts to interest him in conversation the meal finally always passed in silence. Basil was invariably down to breakfast at an early hour, so happily they rarely saw each other in the morning at all, and lunch was usually a solo affair since Basil was almost always busy with the estate or coping with visiting shooting parties. In the beginning he had tried, in a vague sort of way, to interest Poppy in picking up the dead birds after the guns, but seemed only too relieved when she had refused.

On this particular morning there was a note waiting for her at the breakfast table. In it Basil informed her that he was entertaining a large shooting party that weekend, and that since it was
an all male affair, perhaps she would be good enough to confine herself to her wing whenever possible, taking her meals in the small downstairs dining room. Poppy was only too happy to agree. It might mean worse food, but it could not mean worse company. She could listen to the wireless while she ate with George tucked up beside her on the chair. George, as always, being infinitely better company than Basil.

In actual fact she was more than grateful to put distance between herself and Basil's sporting friends, for on the only occasion when she had been forced to play hostess to them Poppy had ended up feeling less sorry for herself than for the poor women to whom they were married. It was, as she subsequently discovered, wasted pity. The women, despite becoming quite candid about their unhappiness, were, it appeared, content to put up with their husbands, just so long as there was still plenty of money in the bank.

‘You'll feel just the same,' one of her guests had remarked to Poppy as they sat crouched around the smoking fire in the drawing room, trying to keep warm, while waiting for their drunken husbands to rejoin them. ‘At first one feels quite neglected. Then one day one wakes up and realises just what sort of an oaf one has married, and one feels quite different. One lets them behave exactly as they want, always provided they give one exactly what
one
wants – namely two or three nice houses, a big bank balance and a large box of jewels, not to mention clothes, and a yacht, in the south of France if possible. Long as they do that, they can do whatever they please behind closed
doors. At least if they get tight it puts paid to having to sleep with them.'