The Flight of Swallows (15 page)

Charlotte was wise enough to send Robbie over to the Dower House to ‘see if you can help Kizzie and the new girl Jenny who badly need the services of someone like yourself. And have your dinner with them, if you like,’ which flattered him enormously. She dressed carefully in one of her new evening gowns, a pale duck-egg blue, low-cut to reveal the slope of her white breasts and inclined to slip off one shoulder. In her hair she had threaded a duck-egg-blue satin ribbon, leaving curls to tumble beguilingly about her neck and shoulders. She felt sly in a way, for she was aware she was dressing to please Brooke but when she entered the drawing room where he was standing by the fireplace, one arm along the mantelshelf, a glass of brandy in his hand, she could see he was charmed. She was ashamed really, something of a fraud, artful, she supposed she would have called it in another woman, lulling Brooke into a false sense of . . . well, she didn’t even know what she meant. She only knew she wanted him to be in a better frame of mind than he had been this morning. ‘There are more ways of killing a cat than choking it to death with cream.’ Now who had said that to her? It seemed a bit foolish but she knew what she meant and if she was to get her own way in this –
in what?
– she must have Brooke’s approval, even if it was reluctantly given.

‘You look very nice, Charlotte, very nice indeed. That colour suits you. Now, would you like a drink: sherry, perhaps, or . . .?’

‘Sherry would be lovely.’ Then before she had time to think or even wonder at her own daring, she moved across the carpet to stand before him. Reaching up she placed her mouth on his and kissed him lingeringly. She felt him respond at once and for a moment she knew only brilliant happiness. His mouth was smiling beneath hers. His arms came round her, his hands clasped one another in the small of her back and he strained her to him. Their lips folded and caressed, for Charlotte had learned many things about the human body and what pleases it from her husband in their bed since that first awkward night and though she had never reached that strange rousing that Brooke did, she knew she had the power to stir it in him. His mouth wandered down her chin and the lovely arch of her neck. Her head went back and she made a small sound in her throat which he answered helplessly. This was the first time since their marriage that she had begun what seemed to be the preliminaries to making love and she could sense he was delighted. His hand fell to her naked shoulder, pushing down the neck of her gown and exposing the lovely, rosy-peaked globe of her breast. His lips took the nipple and bit gently and for some reason Charlotte began to moan and a delicate filament in the pit of her stomach unfurled and shivered. For a moment Brooke lifted his head, turning it as though looking round for somewhere to lay her, but at that moment the door burst open and in flew a small figure, babbling and laughing excitedly at the same time. Hastily Brooke covered his wife’s nakedness and thrust her behind him protectively to give her time to put herself together. She had begun to laugh quietly and for some reason the sound infuriated him.

‘. . . she’s ever so nice, Charlie, and said that any time I wanted to I could go over to see her. The Dower House, it’s called . . . no, get down, Taddy, for goodness sake,’ as the young dog had come in with the boy and the pair of them seemed to make up a whirlwind that threatened the safety of the many pretty ornaments that stood on low tables about the room. ‘Have you been over there, Charlie? It’s lovely and she – she’s called Jenny – is going to stay there with Kizzie. D’you suppose I could live there, too?’

‘What a bloody good idea,’ Brooke roared, startling both Charlotte and the boy, but Robbie was in no way dismayed. He had found a new friend who seemed to like him and he liked her and he could not wait to tell Charlie all about it.

‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘get
down,
Taddy . . . what do you think?’

‘Well, for a start you will get that animal off the drawing room sofa and remove him to the stable where he belongs with the other dogs. Dear God, you don’t find
them
leaping about in the house.’

‘Well, you don’t let them,’ Robbie began, ready for a fight since he had expected to be greeted with his sister’s usual loving interest in his concerns.

‘Isn’t it time you were in bed, boy?’ Brooke asked from between clenched teeth. He had the most painful swelling in the crotch of his breeches and his breath was not yet steady from the delightful and totally unexpected advances of his wife. She had been lovely in his arms, for some reason not at all the acquiescent young woman he had known in the past months. Exciting,
excited,
eager, whimpering in her throat as though begging him to take her but now this little sod had, as usual, spoiled it all and she was ready to laugh,
to laugh
at his exploits and even, he thought, to make excuses for him.

‘Oh, Brooke, let him tell us what he has been doing. I haven’t seen him all day. Now then, darling,’ turning to her young brother who ran into her arms followed by the puppy. ‘Tell me all about your new friend. Brooke and I are about to have dinner and—’

Brooke strode across the carpet and rang the bell with such force it nearly came away from the ceiling. Both Charlotte and Robbie watched him in amazement and when a breathless Nellie knocked on the door and entered bobbing a eurtsey her master snarled at her.

‘Where is that woman who has the boy in her care? What’s-her-name?’

‘Kizzie, sir?’ Nellie bobbed another curtsey just to be on the safe side.

‘Fetch her here at once.’ He glared round the room and Robbie huddled next to Charlotte which further incensed her husband.

‘She’s over at Dower ’Ouse, sir, wi’—’

‘Yes, yes, well, send for her immediately. It is time Master Robert was in his bed and—’

‘’E ’asn’t ’ad ’is supper yet, sir,’ Nellie was unwise enough to say.

‘I believe he has had something and if he hasn’t Kizzie can give him what he needs. Now look sharp, woman. My wife and I are waiting to dine.’

Again Nellie curtseyed then scuttled from the room.

‘He’s in a tearing temper,’ she told the others, managing to speak without dropping her aitch.

‘He were in one this mornin’ an’ all. What’s he want?’

‘Someone’s ter fetch Kizzie an’ get Master Robbie ter bed. Not that lad’s happy about that, I can tell yer, an’ that dog’s enough ter give yer the screaming ab-dabs, yappin’ an’ . . . oh, fer the Lord’s sake, Rosie, run over ter’t Dower House an’ fetch Kizzie or there’ll be murder done in’t drawin’ room.’

They ate the delicious meal Mrs Groves had prepared for them, barely speaking. Brooke Armstrong was not a man to make small talk and every attempt on Charlotte’s part to start a conversation was brusquely parried.

‘We’ll take coffee in the drawing room, Johnson,’ he told the butler. He stood up and politely held his wife’s chair, took her hand and led her, somewhat bemused, in to the drawing room where, when they were settled with their coffee and the servants had left, he addressed her coldly.

‘Why should you feel the need to dress tonight, Charlotte? Usually you run in to the dining room in whatever you happen to have on. More often than not in your riding clothes but tonight, for some reason, you are beautifully dressed, correctly dressed and I wonder why.’

He had lit a cigar and as he waited for her answer he blew a perfect smoke ring up to the ceiling.

She smiled defiantly. ‘Well, and why shouldn’t I put on one of the lovely gowns you bought me in Paris. I particularly like this one—’

‘The truth if you please,’ he interrupted her, dragging on his cigar.

‘That is the truth.’

‘You wanted to impress me, did you not? To please me. To – what is the expression? – soften me up, so that you could persuade me to let you have your way on this new scheme you have devised.’

‘It is not some scheme, Brooke, or if it is then I think it is a charitable one. That girl out there has been wronged.’

‘It takes two, my dear Charlotte, unless she is claiming young master Denton raped her.’

‘No, she is not but he lied to her. He is to go to university and told her she was to go with him. He would put her in a cottage where she would have their child but when his mother questioned him he said that Jenny had made it all up. It is disgraceful . . .’

‘It is disgraceful, if it is true.’

‘Brooke, how can you say that. She is—’

‘Clever, I would say. She has deceived you and thinks herself to be lying in a bed of roses but that is not my problem. What I don’t like, Charlotte, are your efforts to deceive me.’

She was shocked. ‘I have not deceived you, Brooke. You were not here and—’

‘Is it not a deception to dress up like a—’ he almost said whore but stopped himself in time. The bitterness and disappointment of an hour ago when he had been triumphant in his belief that the gown and the embrace, the kisses, were from her heart, that she truly felt what he did, were like ashes in his mouth. ‘It has all been done to slither me quietly into something I might be sorry for. A woman in my grandmother’s house, a woman bearing an illegitimate child, perhaps more than one, for when it gets abroad that young Mrs Armstrong is offering a comfortable bed under a dry roof and food galore, all the prostitutes in Wakefield, Leeds and Huddersfield will come flocking.’

‘No, no, that will not happen and besides, if they are as badly done to as Jenny, then let them come.’

‘If you want something, Charlotte, ask me for it, honestly. I cannot bear you to come up on the sly . . .’

‘
Sly
, I am not sly.’ She was incensed. She stood up, trembling with rage and dishonour. ‘I don’t know how I got the idea but I always thought you were a generous man, with a good heart, but it seems I was wrong. But hear this. I will not put Jenny out nor will I turn away from my door any woman in need.’

He was consumed with a black snarling anger as he reached for her. Sweeping her from her feet he lifted her into his arms and slammed through the drawing room doorway, knocking Nellie, who had come to see if more coffee was needed, to one side as he raced up the stairs. He shouldered his way into their bedroom and with an inarticulate cry threw her on the bed, stripped first himself then her and for the first time since their wedding night made her cry out in a voice that could be heard in the silent kitchen. Well, if mistress wasn’t with child by morning it wasn’t for want of trying on master’s part!

10

The servants were to be disappointed, as was their master when, during the following months it was made clear that the mistress was not with child. When she was not over at the Dower House, which the servants quickly got used to, she rode out most days on Magic,
astride,
which Mrs Dickinson and Mrs Groves grieved over, for how was she to give the master a son – which was everyone’s hope – if she was forever galloping about the park. It was well known that riding jiggled a woman’s inside about allowing nothing to settle, meaning the heir to King’s Meadow. Mind you, it certainly kept young Master Robbie happy to ride with his sister at the weekend and Percy was heard to say the boy was becoming a grand little horseman. He was allowed to ride out on his own now and was a different lad from the mardy kid who had come with his sister to King’s Meadow on her marriage last June. The tenant farmers kept an eye on him when he played with their children round the farmyard and the fields and his one wish was to join the hunt with his brother-in-law and his own father who was Master of Foxhounds. When he was a year or two older, the master told him, he might consider it and in the meanwhile stop sulking!

That was another thing the master and mistress had argued about. His schooling! It was not the thing for a boy of his social standing to go to the village school although it certainly made life easier for every one of the staff since the boy had started to attend the school where the children of the tenants went. Well, as the mistress said to the master, and Nellie overheard it, her brother was no scholar and he would be off to join his brothers in a year or two where he would learn to be a little gentleman. At the grammar school he made no friends other than Webb but Webb lived some distance away and could not be expected to come over to King’s Meadow to play with Robbie except infrequently. In the meanwhile, if she was to make life easier between herself and her husband the boy must have friends of his own age closer to King’s Meadow and the grammar school in Dewsbury was too far away.

Before she made her final decision Charlotte drove the little gig into the village of Overton with the idea of investigating the standard of education at the school which the children of their tenants and the village children attended. It stood on the main road with a bare playground to the front and on the ground hopscotch squares were painted and skipping ropes were available, plus whips and tops which suggested that some enterprising person had made an effort not only to teach children but to make their play more varied. She was pleasantly surprised. She had expected a sort of mix between Dame and Sunday school but the Education Act some thirty years ago had led to the first state schools and this was one of them.

‘May I help you?’ a pleasant voice asked her as she stood hesitantly in the doorway. A young woman in her mid-twenties wearing a dark, serviceable dress with a white apron over it stood in the doorway of a classroom. She could hear childish voices chanting what she was later to learn were verses from the
Child’s Easy Reading Book
dating back to mid-Victorian times but found to be very effective.

Higgledy, Piggledy, my black hen,

She lays eggs for gentlemen,

Sometimes nine and sometimes ten.

Higgledy, Piggledy, my black hen,

One, two, three, four, five,

Once I caught a fish alive,

Six, seven, eight, nine, ten,

Then I let it go again.

Why did you let it go?