Summer's End (9 page)

Harriet smarted. Telling her off, and in front of Myrtle too! Old Dribble Dibble would pay for this. They'd all pay for it.

Caroline didn't envy her father his job. Every evening he must hold Evensong whether anybody attended or not, and this was followed by Rector's Hour, from which he always came in looking worried and preoccupied. There were few absolutes in human nature, he told her. Few all-good people, fewer all-bad. Every issue had two sides and the weighing of them demanded as fine an adjustment as the iron scales Mrs Dibble used. If Caroline were to help she must see Ruth Horner, she had decided, and made, as her preliminary gambit, an excuse to go to Aunt Tilly's room next morning. The room looked impersonal even taking into account the dullness of morning light and the fact that Aunt Tilly was a visitor, not a resident. Caroline perched on the bed, watching Tilly brushing her hair back into its usual severe coil. She had rather nice hair, and it seemed a pity that like Aunt Tilly herself it was tidied back so severely that it could never boast its glories.

‘You never told me whether you enjoyed your dance with Mr Toby Jug at the ball.'

‘It was rewarding,' Tilly said decorously.

‘Goodness,' observed Caroline. ‘How dull.'

‘Dull?' repeated Tilly. No, it had not been that, at least …

‘I hear you've turned poor Ruth Horner out on the street. Don't you have a duty to look after your servants' welfare?'

The jerk of William Swinford-Browne's hot hand on her back was highly satisfying to Tilly. But he merely laughed. ‘I pay them well.'

‘That's not what I asked.'

‘You ladies are too soft-hearted. I have a duty to keep standards. If I keep her on, what kind of example is that to the housemaids of Ashden?'

‘A compassionate one. What is she to do? The Relief of Fallen Women Society has turned her away. There is nothing but the workhouse for her.'

‘Nothing to do with me.'

‘Your wife sits on the committee, and you on the Union board.'

The hand scored into her back, the other crunching her hand till it hurt. He was not a man to march away from trouble. ‘Are you implying the decision was ours?'

‘I'm stating facts.'

‘Then I'll state a few to you, Miss Lilley. Ashden doesn't want your sort.' His hand moved up and down, caressing, threatening. She knew exactly what he meant. ‘Any more of this nonsense and Ashden will see you no more. You understand?' He relaxed the grip, and drew her closer. ‘Good to see the young people enjoying themselves.' He raised his voice heartily.

‘Provided they don't look to you for help afterwards.' She raised hers heartily too. The look on his face was worth the broken promise to Laurence.

Did plain costumes and dull hats necessarily go with being subservient in a household, as Aunt Tilly was to Grandmother, Caroline wondered, looking at Tilly's navy blue skirt and mauve blouse – smart, but oh how plain. She plucked up her courage to tackle her aunt now. ‘Now that Toby Jug has turned Ruth out, do you think Jamie should marry her whether he loves her or not?'

‘I believe in men observing the same standards of purity as women, Caroline,' Tilly answered after a moment. ‘Why should all the public censure fall on the woman?'

‘But if Jamie is not the father, why should he be forced by that public censure to marry her on Ruth's word alone?'

Tilly chose her words even more carefully. ‘It's becoming more and more possible for women to run their own lives, Caroline, but as yet most of us are dependent on men economically. And Ruth's life depends on economics. How can she
prove
who the father is? Or live on the five shillings a week a magistrate would order the father to pay for the upkeep of his illegitimate child? It takes pressure to bring feckless men to a sense of their own shame.'

‘But Jamie Thorn isn't feckless.'

Tilly ignored this, bent on her own thoughts now. ‘We can own property, more and more women are working. Some go to university, some are typists, even bank clerks now. Even the lot of the women in the sweatshops will improve. Society is a snail, but it will get there in the end.'

‘Too late to help Ruth and Agnes.'

‘The Ruths and Agneses of this world are in a sense immaterial –' Tilly broke off hastily, seeing Caroline's appalled face. ‘Here in Ashden, of course, they are far from immaterial. If something goes amiss here, it slows down the wheel of life until it is mended. Just like my Austin,' she added, to lighten the tone. But Caroline shivered; the temperature had dropped now, and spring no longer blew so gently.

‘I have been considering whether or not Jamie
is
the father,' Tilly continued carefully.

‘Father asks why else Ruth would have named him.'

‘Suppose the real father were disinclined?'

‘And that she may have thought Jamie was so gentle he'd give way immediately under pressure?' Caroline was interested. ‘Aunt Tilly, surely Ruth needs evidence? Has she any?'

‘In Ashden,' Tilly pointed out drily, ‘rumours fly without wheels and settle as judgements.'

‘I want to talk to Ruth. I'm going now.'

Tilly considered this. Could it help? It could do no harm. ‘I'll come. I'll talk to Nanny.'

Nanny greeted them suspiciously; their visits were not usually quite so frequent. ‘Ruth?' She looked from one to the other. ‘Don't you go upsetting her, Miss Caroline, I'm just getting her trained. Those Swinford-Brownes don't seem to have taught her anything. Fancy putting
linen
sheets on the bed and me with my rheumatism! Mind you, she's never going to make a parlourmaid. A general, that's her limit. No interest in their work nowadays, that's the trouble with young gels. She's supposed to have put the pie in,' she banged the hearth with her stick for emphasis, ‘half an hour ago and I don't smell nothing yet.'

Thanks to Father's help, an efficient oil-heated Excelsior kitchener stood in the scullery, and the cottage had its own well, which was more than many of these cottages did. Caroline went through to find Ruth. A flat iron was warming on the kitchener, though Nanny's ironing day was always Tuesday. A basket of clean washing waited patiently in a corner next to the copper. The hip bath hung above her head, ready for the ritual Friday night bath tonight. The pie, however, was a long way from ready. A bucket, used for storing dairy foods in the well to keep them cool, stood on the draining board, while Ruth slowly and incompetently peeled apples in the stone sink. The pastry dough on the scrubbed table was apparently left to roll itself. Caroline rolled up her sleeves. Elizabeth was an expert pastry-maker and had insisted on all her daughters being equally proficient, on the grounds that it would stand them in good stead whether they made their lives in palace or pantry. Only with Isabel had she totally failed.

‘Morning, miss.' Ruth greeted her guardedly. With her auburn hair and heavy-lidded eyes she would have been handsome if her face had
been less sullen and her stance less drooping with resignation. She had always been so and the current crisis had not improved matters. Her waist was noticeably thickening.

‘Come to plead on Agnes's behalf, have you?' Ruth continued without malice. She looked pale, and Caroline suddenly felt sorry for the girl. She might dislike her, but Ruth was quite definitely in trouble. In a way Ruth reminded her a little of Phoebe but she had an instinct for self-survival that Phoebe, her sister suspected, lacked. Ruth had, Caroline reminded herself, found her way to Nanny Oates' haven in very little time.

‘Come to help get your pie in the oven first.' Caroline set about the dough with the rolling pin.

‘You want to know whether it were Jamie or not,' Ruth continued plaintively. ‘Why does everyone think I'd make a mistake over Jamie? He courted me, told me Agnes were a dull old stick. No fun, and Jamie likes fun. He took it and now he can pay for it.'

‘It seems so out of character. They were planning to marry soon, and to move into Ebenezer Thorn's cottage.'

She saw Ruth's eyes shift suddenly. ‘So I heard. Well, now it's going to be Jamie and me. That's where we did our courting,' Ruth added nonchalantly.

‘In the cottage?' Caroline was aghast.

‘It were January. Hardly likely we'd romp around in the fields, is it? Love don't keep you that warm, miss. Ebenezer pops into the Norville Arms most nights, so Jamie and me slips in the back and no one's the wiser, certainly not the old gentleman. You should have heard Jamie laugh. Ebenezer never uses his parlour and there's nice old sofa there. That cottage will do me nicely, and you can tell Agnes I said so,' she ended up triumphantly.

Caroline got no further, indeed she seemed to have moved backwards, for there was now an explanation as to why no one had seen Ruth and Jamie together. They had only to cross the field behind the almshouses and they could enter the cottage from the rear path. Her lack of progress and the seeming impossibility of Agnes's plight left her deeply uneasy, as she walked back to luncheon leaving Aunt Tilly with Nanny. She just could not see Jamie stealing in to the back of a cottage with a girl he did not love, not just to kiss and cuddle, but to create a baby.

Caroline found herself almost stumbling up the driveway and in at
the ever-open door of the Rectory. Within the safety of these walls, with the voices of her sisters coming faintly from the morning room, the smell of lunch, and her mother's laugh as she talked to Mrs Dibble, normality restored itself. This was solid ground, no matter what might lie outside.

Rector's Hour had taken longer than usual this evening, and Caroline suspected Father's last problem had been Aunt Tilly since both looked remarkably flushed when they entered for dinner. From the way Mother looked at them she obviously thought the same. Caroline knew she'd never hear about it, not from her parents, anyway. Sometimes, she decided, there were distinct disadvantages to being young and unmarried. Why did everyone think she had to be protected against the world? She had to live in it, after all, and yet Mother seemed to think anything to do with their minds above household affairs and fairy stories or their bodies below their chins was an unfit subject for discussion. Even their chins had to be protected against spring winds. It had been Nanny's job to initiate them into the mysteries of puberty, but the general messiness of being a woman she had learned about from her schoolfriends, and then in turn herself became an instructress, based on the fine art of theory.

Dinner was always, or nearly always, by common assent a time at which they were encouraged to talk over the day's events. Problems were left for morning or luncheon, as were politics and putting the world to rights, So whatever it was he had been arguing with Tilly about (and that took not much guesswork) Father was making an effort to forget.

‘It seems, as we thought, my dear,' Laurence nodded to Elizabeth, ‘that the cinema will run into a few problems.'

‘What?' Isabel looked up belligerently, obviously prepared to take anything to do with the Swinford-Brownes personally.

‘Mr Thorn refuses to move, but Mrs Leggat, being a Mutter, is therefore only too happy to oblige. She claims that ever since her ale house was forced to close nine years ago, she's been living with the smell of stale beer, and she cannot wait to leave.'

‘I think Mr Thorn's a nuisance,' declared Isabel. ‘It's most generous of Mr Swinford-Browne.'

There was an awkward silence.

‘A good deed, if not from a good egg,' George broke in.

‘A curate's egg.' Phoebe sniggered, till she saw Caroline's eye on her.

‘Can't the cinema be built somewhere else?' Felicia contributed.

‘Mr Swinford-Browne has apparently decided upon a central village position. That is the only one available – owing to the pond, the village oak, ourselves, the churchyard and the general stores inconsiderately taking up his other choice positions. However,
where
this cinema goes is immaterial. The more important issue is what it would mean for Ashden.'

‘It'll be jolly exciting,' George enthused.

The Rector looked grave. ‘For such excitement we have Tunbridge Wells and London. In Ashden we have a community that would be threatened by such an intrusion.'

‘We could visit it sometimes, couldn't we, Father?' Felicia asked eagerly.

‘I fear not.'

‘Whyever not?' George was aghast.

‘Pictures are exciting,' cried Phoebe, horrified. They would at least be
something
to look forward to in her visits back from finishing school. Besides darling Christopher, of course.

‘And informative,' Caroline put in hopefully, but in vain.

‘I fear, Elizabeth,' her father said, ‘our community seems already split.'

‘Between Mutters and Thorns,' answered Isabael impatiently. ‘It always will be.'

‘Not that.'

‘Between chapel and church?' Tilly asked.

‘No. Those rifts are surmountable, but this one is between the older generation and the new, and in that there can never be compromise.'

‘It's nice here.' Agnes looked primly around her in the crowded Pantiles teashop in Tunbridge Wells; she looked everywhere but at Jamie.

‘But you don't like towns, do you?'

‘I'm a farm girl.' She tried to joke.

‘You're my girl,' he replied quietly. ‘Aren't you?'

Agnes swallowed as she felt tears pricking at the back of her eyes. To be sitting here with Jamie, hearing his laugh, and him so handsome, with his strong arms and that special twinkle just for her, and the
prospect of being kissed on the way home, would have meant heaven only a week or two ago. Now everything had changed, and he was looking at
her
in appeal, reversing their roles and leaving her floundering.