The Town House (37 page)

I could make her notice me, but only in a way which did me no good. If I behaved badly enough she would give her full attention to scolding me; sometimes she beat me. Once, when Walter and I were seven, a very strange thing happened. It was in the winter and the horsepond had frozen solid and Walter and I had played on it for several days, old games which seemed new because we were playing them in the middle of the pond. Then one morning our grandfather came in and said there was a thaw and that we were on no account to set foot on the ice that day. However,
Walter had left his hobby horse on the ice, and he said to me, When the ice melts my hobby will fall into the water.’ He looked at me the way he always did when he wanted me to do something for him. So I went to fetch the hobby horse and had it in my hand when the ice bent under me. I shot the hobby across the surface towards where Walter stood, and managed, with my two hands to grip the edge of the hole and keep my head free. I yelled, and Walter, yelling, came towards me, and great cracks ran out under his feet; he went down too, screaming like a pig having its throat cut. Men came running from the wool and weaving sheds and we were pulled out.

Walter was blue in the face and very sick in his stomach; I was merely wet; so Mother beat me. She said I was bigger, girls should have more sense, and I went on to the ice first. I’d never had a beating like that, and I cried, saying I only went on to fetch Walter’s hobby horse, but that didn’t excuse me.

That night I woke to hear somebody crying and to feel a weight on me. I was frightened until I opened my eyes and saw a candle on the chest and Mother kneeling by my bedside with her arms spread out over me. She looked different, though where the change was I couldn’t have said; and she smelt different. Ordinarily she smelt sweet from the little bags of lavender and rosemary that hung and lay amongst her clothes. Tonight she smelt of something sharp and sour. She was crying and saying jerky words, calling me poor Maude and saying she was unfair to me, with many other things which made no sense. I thought she meant that she had been unfair to beat me and not Walter. So I struggled up in the bed and put my arms round her neck and said,

‘You didn’t hurt me.’ I would have had a beating every day if it meant that she would put her arms over me and let me hug her. She went on mumbling about being unjust and I said,

‘I forgive you.’ She gave a kind of squeal and pushed me off and jumped up, crying,

‘Holy Mother of God. That is all I lacked!’ Then she went out of the room, walking in a funny way, bumping against the foot of the bed, and against the side of the doorway. She left the candle and until it went out and I was in the dark I lay and wondered what was wrong in saying, ‘I forgive you.’ Perhaps it was a wrong thing for a child to say to her mother.

That must have been it; for next day she disliked me again.

We had another grandfather who lived in the country at Minsham and was too old, or too ill, to ride, so we had never seen him. He had a servant
called Jacob who used to come to the Old Vine every Friday and pick up some provisions and say, ‘Much as usual’ when asked about his master’s health. Mother sometimes rode out to visit her father, but as time went on she made more and more excuses not to do so.

One day however, on a fine summer morning, she said:

‘You’re eight years old now and able to make a longer ride. We’ll go to Minsham today and you can meet your Grandfather Blanchefleur and your Uncle Godfrey who is staying there.’

Walter and I had ponies which were much more like twins than we were, both brown with paler manes and tails. I called mine Browny; Walter who was much more fanciful than I was had named his Robin Hood, out of a story Father had told us.

Minsham Old Hall, we found when we reached it, was shaped like a barn, but built of stone, with very narrow window openings, unglazed. It stood in a yard, with no garden near it, just a tumbledown stable and a piece of pasture.

Inside it was even more desolate, and very cold, despite the sunshine outside and a fire on the wide hearth. In a chair sat an old man with grey hair and a beard, so overgrown that there was nothing else to his face except a loose wet mouth and eyes which had no life in them. I saw Mother brace herself, like she did once when a servant came screaming that there was a mouse in the meal-bag and Mother had to deal with it. She leaned down and kissed the old man, and then said to us,

‘This is your Grandfather Blanchefleur.’

Walter made his bow and I my curtsey, as we had been taught. Our grandfather seemed to take no notice of us at all, but he mumbled and I caught the word ‘Maude’ quite clearly. I thought he meant me and intending to be as brave as Mother I moved forward, prepared to kiss him. But Mother said,

‘It is not you he means. Go play in the yard.’

As we went out she moved to the foot of the stairs and called up,

‘Godfrey!’

There was nothing to do, or see in the yard; but Walter happened to say, ‘Grandfather is like Daft Jimmy.’ That was a poor witless creature who lived in the row of huts behind the stables at the Old Vine; his grandfather had been deaf and dumb we were told, and Walter and I had invented a game in which we pretended to be thus afflicted and bound to make ourselves understood by signs. We played it now, until we were called in to dinner.

We were then introduced to our Uncle Godfrey, who was very handsome and finely dressed.

He greeted us by name, and very kindly, and – the first person ever to do so – seemed to notice me more than Walter.

‘So this is Maude.’ He looked me over, and smiled and said something about lovely curly hair. ‘A real Astallon,’ he said. ‘Ralph and his golden Eleanor have managed to breed two little fawn-coloured creatures. Isn’t it odd?’

Our grandfather’s chair had been turned so that he sat at the head of the table. He ate as we had been forbidden to do, sucking and slobbering at his food and wiping his fingers, now on the cloth and now on the front of his soiled robe. Walter gave me a kick under the table and a meaningful look, like when we played ‘Dummy’. I kicked him back and made faces, trying to say, without words – Yes, and wouldn’t we be in disgrace if we did it?

Over our heads the talk went to and fro between Mother and Uncle Godfrey.

He said, ‘You hated it so much.’

‘I went to Beauclaire with one pair of shoes. When my feet grew I had to curl up my toes, and they are crooked to this day. You hated being at Cousin Fortescue’s; you wanted to farm here. Do you remember that? Are you sorry now that you didn’t?’

‘Not now. You saved me, Anne. You sent me the money so that I could buy my knight’s equipment and I ….’

Mother interrupted him.

‘And that wasn’t easy; it wasn’t a cause that either of them would have understood or sympathized with, let me tell you. That was my dressmaker’s money for two years, and it meant re-furbishing old ones, turning and twisting. I say this to show that what I ask you isn’t so outrageous.’

‘I know. I know.’ He looked about the cold room with its damp grey walls and smoke blackened rafters. ‘Here too, you have taken responsibility, while I, with your good destrier between my knees rode in tourneys. Nothing that you asked of me in return would be too great.’

‘You see,’ Mother said, ‘when I made the suggestion he rejected it, flat.’ She put her hand down on the table. ‘For me to raise it again would …. You may find this hard to believe, but they have a pride of their own, more stubborn and stiffnecked than ours. When they speak of “my good money”, that is the same as “my good name”. I told you what he said. But an invitation, from you, would allow me to open up the matter again.’ She looked at Walter and me and said, ‘If you have finished, you may go back to play.’

We played until we were called in to make our adieus. As we stood there, my Uncle Godfrey looked at the figure in the chair and said,

‘My God, Anne, what a way to end! I can just remember when he won the King’s Cup at Windsor. If you ever pray for me, pray that I never stop a half-fatal blow.’

Mother turned the colour of the heaped-up ashes on the hearth. She looked towards the stairs.

‘He was all right,’ she said. ‘Flying his hawks, riding his old horse. Until Mother ….’ She broke off and shuddered. My uncle took her by the arm and said,

‘Poor Anne, you had that too! I was in Poitou. You’ve borne it all.’

‘More than you will ever know. But this one thing. You will do it?’

On the way home she set such a pace that Walter and I on our ponies and the servant who attended us on his thickset sold horse had much ado to keep up with her.

Shortly after this visit Walter was told that after Easter in the next year he was going to the Choir School at Baildon. The idea disgusted him; the schoolboys lived monkish lives, slept on hard beds, ate horrible food, washed in cold water.

‘I don’t want to. Why must I?’

‘Because you will be a merchant, with a great business to run. You must learn to read and write and reckon.’

‘I don’t want to be a merchant,’ Walter said. ‘I want to be a minstrel … you know, walk about from place to place, playing the lute and singing.’

Mother said, in a way in which I have never in all my life heard anybody say anything,

‘You want
what
, Walter?’

Confidently he repeated his statement. She snatched hold of him and kissed him.

‘One day you’ll know better. You wouldn’t like to be poor. And at the Choir School you will learn all about music.’

‘Church music,’ he said. ‘Not the same thing at all. Besides, it isn’t fair that I should go to school and Maude should stay at home.’

Mother said, ‘Maude is not staying at home. When she is twelve she is going to the nuns at Clevely, but in the meantime she has received a very pleasant invitation. She is going to stay with your Uncle Godfrey, at Beauclaire.’

For a moment that took the sharpest edge from Walter’s dissatisfaction,
but he was soon grumbling again. I, he said, should be leading a merry life with ordinary people, while he was shut up with monks. If anyone beat me I should have Uncle Godfrey to complain to, he would have no one.

When the arrangements were first made, ‘after next Easter’ sounded a comfortably long time away; but the months sped past. When the details were fixed and Walter learned that I was to ride into Sussex on Browny, while he must leave Robin Hood at the Old Vine, he flung himself screaming on the floor, shouting that it was unfair. My grandfather came to see what the noise was about and said, in an uncertain manner,

‘Anne, is it worth it? Perhaps we were hasty. I heard recently of a young clerk who might serve our purpose.’

Mother simply said, ‘Walter is jealous because Maude is to take her pony. Imagine his state if she were staying at home!’ She took Walter by the arm and jerked him to his feet, speaking more firmly than she usually did to him.

‘Straight into bed with you, you naughty boy!’

He was still in bed, being given possets and mixtures to bring down his fever when I left for Beauclaire.

My grandfather, always a man of few words, gave me a broad gold piece, and kissed me.

‘I hope you’ll be happy. You mustn’t mind too much if you find things different there.’

Mother came into the yard where one of the men, named Jack, was ready, with my little clothes chest fixed behind his saddle. She kissed me, and for a moment I clung to her, hoping even at this last moment for some sign of love. She loosed herself from me in the old familiar way.

At the end of the covered passage which led from our yard to the highway I turned and looked back. Mother was staring after us and her face was just like Walter’s when I had let him win a game. Whatever we played at I could always beat him if I tried, but now and then I would hold back and lose deliberately. Then he wore a satisfied look, a look that said, ‘Well, I managed that!’

I puzzled over it for a long time. Much later, when I learned that Walter never did go to the Choir School, but stayed at home and had his lessons there, I did understand all too well. I saw then exactly what Mother had managed; she had kept the child she loved and got rid of the one she disliked. At the time I could only wonder
why
she looked like that. All the same she had done me, all unwittingly, a good turn. Had she gazed after me with the slightest affection I should have broken down, for I still loved
her then. As it was she sent me on my way exercising my head and not my heart, and that, in many of life’s turning points, is an excellent thing.

Three days later we approached Beauclaire from the east at the end of a sunny afternoon, so that it stood up against the gold and rose of sunset’s first display. I thought to myself – But this is a town, not a house; and my homesickness deepened.

A great castle of grey stone stood in the embrace of a wide moat which was spanned by two bridges, one directly in front of us, at the end of the road which we travelled, and the other to the side, at the right. The second bridge linked the castle, which was very old, with the house, much of which had been built within the last sixty or seventy years. The face which the house turned to the road was very handsome, and large, but – as I was soon to learn – it was only one small part of the whole. It was built of brick at the bottom and above of timber and plaster, the plaster moulded into patterns. There were many windows and all glassed, but I could see no doorway at all.

We clattered over the drawbridge, through a gateway at its far end and there turned sharply to the right and through a small deserted courtyard, then over the second bridge and into a larger yard full of bustle, several men mounted, and servants running about. We then passed through an archway and into a stable yard, where I thankfully dismounted.

Almost immediately there appeared a solemn-looking man, by his dress neither gentleman nor servant, to whom the man who had been sent to fetch me said,

‘I’m back and all’s well, Master Sheldon.’

Master Sheldon glanced at me as he might have done at any package or parcel that had been conveyed from one place to another, noted that I was all in one piece, and nodded his satisfaction.