The Wild Dark Flowers (5 page)

T
wice a month, Edwin Bradfield walked from Rutherford into the village. He was always alone; he did not mix with the staff beneath him, nor the family above him. Others might have considered this fact both a blessing and a burden; but he was not a man to dwell on his personal requirements. In fact, after so many years of serving the Cavendish family as their butler, he did not know what personal requirements he might have. The pursuit of happiness was, in any case, an empty thing, he had found. It rarely brought satisfaction.

He walked steadily, as he did so much else: calmly, at a measured pace. For a young man—and he had indeed once been a young man on this walk—it might have taken an hour or so to cover the four miles. Now, in his sixtieth year, it took him considerably longer than that.

He stood on the bridge and watched the water go by, and then took himself to the bench seat built into the churchyard wall. The little village—much like the great house hidden now beyond the trees and slight hill—was a picture of perfect peace. Mellow stone cottages were grouped around the green, and the Norman church was framed by a large and picturesque lych-gate; the churchyard itself was surrounded by horse chestnut trees. Bradfield looked out along the lines of graves to the modest new stone in the grass on the west-side corner:
Emily Maitland,
read the inscription.
1895–1913
. He frowned, and folded his hands in his lap.

Emily Maitland. He could see her now, a frail little thing swamped by her uniform: thin and pretty. She had been hardworking, he would give her that. But she had made two errors: she had listened to Harry Cavendish, and she believed what he told her. Young men tell lies to young women; he might have advised her of that, had he himself been more watchful. Mrs. Jocelyn, the housekeeper, lectured the maids about proper behavior and quoted the Bible at them mercilessly; but it was of no practical use once the girls were alone with a man. Especially a young man like Harry Cavendish.

Bradfield had been a young man himself, just thirty, when he came to Rutherford. The year was 1884, and he had replaced old Watbridge, who had worked for Lord William’s parents for fifty years. Times were very different then; Rutherford had been a man’s house. Lord William’s parents were soon to go and leave their son alone in the place. A year or two later, Mrs. Jocelyn was hired as housekeeper, and between them they ran Rutherford—Bradfield in charge of the men, the cellars, the service, the practicalities; Mrs. Jocelyn in charge of the kitchens, the furnishings, the maids.

He had known early on that there would never be any chance of a friendship with Mrs. Jocelyn; she killed any instinct at close harmony. Edwin had realized within hours of meeting her that they would each live in their assigned kingdoms in their rooms belowstairs; each in a small, hot furnished room along at either end of a stone corridor. The housekeeper was a frightening woman.

But it was only lately, in the past year, that Mrs. Jocelyn had actually begun to worry him. She kept to her room more, and the maids said that they often found her fervently praying. She had taken against Lady Octavia in a serious way after the young American, Gould, had visited last year. She talked obliquely, at odd times, about loyalty and disgrace, and gave dark warnings about the war being the visitation of God on mankind. She had frightened some of the younger girls, he knew. But he was at a loss as to know what to do about it.

Bradfield had always thought that Lord William would never marry. In the old days he had been a silent and self-conscious man. Busy with his Parliamentary life in London, his lordship would come back at Christmas, Easter, and in July. By rote, Bradfield and Mrs. Jocelyn went to London to run the house there, and occasionally they traveled together if a large occasion were planned in the capital. But that was hardly ever the case, for his lordship had rarely entertained.

Bradfield had partly admired his lordship’s simplicity; part of him felt that it was a shame. He had looked at William and seen himself: obsessive, upright, lonely. All the master’s affection was lavished on dogs; mastiffs sat by his lordship’s side in the breakfast room, they traveled with him, they slept in the bedrooms. Mrs. Jocelyn, surprisingly, tolerated the mess. “It is his lordship’s wish.” She idolized the man.

Rutherford had become Bradfield’s world from the moment he had stepped through the door. In that first year of his service, he had read news of outside events in the newspapers—the siege of Khartoum, the presentation of a great statue depicting Liberty to the USA, the publication of a book called
Huckleberry Finn
, which would much later become young master Harry’s favorite—but these had all very quickly become distant echoes. He had heard Lord William discuss Gladstone with the men who came to shoot, and of course the Queen’s name was uttered with holy respect. But they had not been matters of importance to Edwin Bradfield.

Nevertheless, times changed. And the greatest change had come with Lord William’s marriage. Rutherford had been torn apart, physically, after Octavia came. In went the enormous staircase to link the two wings of the house; in went the broad upstairs gallery; up went the glasshouses and the two extra cottages for the “outsiders,” the gardeners and undergardeners; up went a suite of extra bedrooms, and two upstairs bathrooms where none had been before. The kitchens were extended, and a new range added, and a proper laundry. Octavia Cavendish’s wishes had flowed through the house like fresh, cleansing water. Instead of a man’s house reeking of dog and dust and mildew came a glamorous, gilded home. Rutherford had emerged like a butterfly from a chrysalis.

“I see you are enjoying the day,” a voice said. Jolted from his reverie, Bradfield looked up into the face of Stephen Whittaker, the village vicar. He had not heard him walking towards him along the path. The man smiled. “May I join you?”

“Please do.”

Whittaker sat down. “Fine weather.”

“It is indeed.” Bradfield was not the best at conversation; he was used to keeping silence. Opinions were rarely required of butlers.

“What news at Rutherford?” Whittaker asked. “Your employers are well?”

“Yes, quite well.”

“The staff have been seriously depleted, I hear.”

“Yes,” Bradfield agreed. “I have been speaking to Mr. Gray, the land steward, about it today. There is no one from the tenant farms whom we can bring up to the house; no one suitable. We have only Edward Hardy now as second footman. I need at least two others.” He paused. “Although I doubt that I shall find them.”

“They are all enlisting,” Whittaker observed. “It is the same everywhere. My mother tells me that in London women have been taken on to drive the omnibuses, and to take tickets and so on. And they are making munitions in the factories, I believe.”

“Good heavens,” Bradfield murmured.

The two men sat in silence. After a moment, Bradfield noticed the agitation in Whittaker; he was sitting forward, his face pale. Bradfield saw how thin he was; the sunlight only made him look paler. His neck looked scrawny in the clerical collar.

“I have been making a decision,” Whittaker suddenly announced.

“Yes?”

“A decision . . .” Whittaker’s voice faded away momentarily.

“I ought to be in France. There is a need there for me.”

“There is a need here.”

Whittaker smiled briefly. “Oh, to utter platitudes. That is all. And two burials, but no marriages or christenings or confirmations—that does not constitute a busy life.”

Bradfield was shocked. He gazed at the man, at the blue eyes that always looked on the verge of weeping. He knew that Whittaker was not entirely well; he had suffered tuberculosis as a child. He kept very much to himself, isolated here with his books and his prim daily walks that never muddied his polished shoes.

“But surely you can’t abandon your parish here?”

“I don’t see it as abandoning my parish, Mr. Bradfield. I see it as following my parish. There are chaplains in France, you know, doing essential work. Men like those who have left Rutherford will need me far more in France than they ever did here.”

“I don’t doubt it. But . . .” Bradfield’s unease was as much for the feeling that England, in all its little villages and towns, was being pulled to pieces, its very fabric threatened, as it was for Whittaker himself. What would communities do without working men, or priests? What did cities do without transport drivers? What did homes do without women in them?

“I have asked for a commission.”

“Will you get it?”

Whittaker put his head on one side, shrugging. “You mean my health.”

“I do. Is it wise?”

The vicar paused. He looked across the road to the fields beyond. Four horses were grazing in the narrow pasture between the river and the hedgerow. “These are going, too,” Whittaker said.

“You mean the horses?”

“Yes, the horses. Don’t you recognize them? They pulled the dray carts for the brewery.”

Bradfield followed Whittaker’s gaze. He could not honestly say that he was familiar with dray horses.

Whittaker turned in his seat to face him. “Do you know that they are shipping thousands of horses from America to France?” he asked. “And from India and China. From China! It is unimaginable, is it not? The poor beasts. Do you know what happens to them, out there?”

Bradfield shook his head.

“I have a distant cousin who writes to me,” he said. “He is with the signalers. The horses are used for everything. They take them down to the front. In this last winter, both men and horses drowned. In the roads. In the transports. Horses and mules and men. It is mud, you see, just there. Those areas are crisscrossed by canals and marshes. And the ground is . . . well, mud. . . .”

He lapsed into silence. Above them, the horse chestnut trees lazily danced in the wind. Bradfield looked away from the horses, and down at his hands. He was quite certain in his own mind that there must be some exaggeration about the mud or the horses coming from China. It was this kind of slack, inaccurate talk of which he deeply disapproved.

Whittaker sat forward on the bench. “But I’m keeping you.”

“Not at all.”

The younger man held out his hand. Bradfield took it, dismayed at the bony grasp. He saw that Whittaker was not only young and frail, but also fired by a determination that was probably beyond his capabilities. But he also saw that the man’s conscience was gnawing away at him. “I can’t stay, you see,” Whittaker murmured. “I feel I can’t.”

Bradfield stood up with him. “It is very good of you. Honorable.”

“Is it?” Whittaker said. He leaned forward as if he was anxious to hear the answer.

“Of course.”

The younger man smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Bradfield,” he replied, nodding. “I should like to think there is honor in it. And I shall do my best, you know. That’s what we all need to do, don’t you think? For king and country? Our very best.”

Bradfield watched him go—a scarecrow figure in an ill-fitting set of clothes. Then, sighing deeply, and abandoning his idea of tea on the green, he turned again in the direction of Rutherford.

*   *   *

O
ctavia Cavendish was in rather less peaceful surroundings.

She was sitting in the glass-walled office of the overseer, looking down on the huge floor of the largest of the Blessington mills. It was one of many rooms, and the glass failed to shut out the noise of the looms. Inside here, it was necessary to raise her voice to make herself heard; but down on the floor, Octavia could see workers using sign language to make themselves understood.

With her was the mill manager, Ferrow, and the overseer himself, Capthwaite. But this visit was quite different from others in one respect: today, Harry was with her.

As they had got out of the car—Harry’s sporty little Metz that he had been longing to drive again—Harry had stopped, and stared up at the huge black building.

“When was I last here?” he had asked her.

“Probably eight or nine years ago.”

He had companionably taken her arm. “And now you think I should take an interest?”

“It will all be yours,” she replied. “Rutherford comes from one grandfather . . . Blessington from another. So . . . yes, dear. You should take an interest.”

“Doesn’t Father come with you?”

“No,” she said. “Not always.”

Her son had raised an eyebrow; she could tell that he thought William’s absence was unusual.

“And at any rate, he has gone to see someone today. Something urgent, apparently. But we shall all be back for luncheon.”

She did not tell Harry that the running of the mills and the well-being of the workers had been an issue with her husband the previous autumn. John Gould had offered her freedom, and, although she had not gone to America with him, he had inspired her to be more than a pretty picture sitting aimlessly at Rutherford. There, William still wanted her as his gilded rose; but she had to have something to do outside the house. And the Blessington mills had been her property entirely before her marriage. She went back to them as much for her own sanity, for a sense of purpose, as for an interest in their industry.