A Country Marriage (36 page)

‘I came directly from the dairy,’ she said, as though reading his thoughts, ‘and I’m in desperate need of a warm-up. I can scarce feel my feet.’

With the yellow flames now beginning to lick about the kindling, he stood up and went to check that the door was closed, returning to sit in the chair on the opposite side of the hearth from her.

‘So what’s this I hear about goings-on up at The Stag, then?’

‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘You tell me. What
do
you hear?’

‘Oh, come on, George. Word spreads fast in a place like this an’ I got eyes an’ ears of my own.’

‘So, what you been hearing, then?’ he asked, knowing enough about the dangers of idle gossip not to volunteer anything.

‘Only how Ezra Sharpe and his
Radicals
are particular busy just now.’

He shrugged, doing his best to affect indifference.

‘And suppose they are?’

‘George!’ she exclaimed rather more loudly than he would have liked and then catching sight of the way his eyes flicked towards the door, lowered her voice to say, ‘I’m only asking because you told me that it’s of great import and if that’s so, then I’m minded to understand.’

‘It
is
of great import,’ he agreed, ‘and maybe it’s better you hear the truth than fall prey to the rumours that get spread about. Although if I tell you, you got to promise me you won’t talk about it to anyone, not even Ellen or Mary. Especially not Ellen or Mary.’

‘I give you my word. And you know how I’m true to that.’

He exhaled a long breath, reflecting that maybe confiding in someone would ease the burden of constant secrecy; after all, like she said, she
had
kept her word on other matters. And whereas he hadn’t wanted to talk about it with his wife, he found now that with Annie, he did.

‘Very well, then. You heard of a place called Ashbridge?’

‘I’ve heard talk of it. Why?’

‘Well, a couple of weeks back, the labourers, all of them workers for the estate there, took their grievances to the parson and the squire.’ He watched her nod and started to recount the events of that Sunday, by now as familiar to him as if he had been there himself. ‘See they thought that if they could persuade the clergy to take less by way of tithes, then the farmers could pay higher wages,’ he heard himself saying, his mind absorbed by the gentle rise and fall of her chest.

‘Go on. It ain’t difficult to follow,’ she said calmly.

‘Well, they all went to the rectory, and after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, the rector agreed to their demands; not to the amount that they were wanting, mind, but to take a lesser amount, at least.’ It was hopeless; under any other circumstances, recounting the tale of their struggle for justness would have fired him with a burning enthusiasm but faced with the sight of her staring back at him, the details of that day, normally so stirring and so vivid seemed lost to him.

‘Good for them,’ he heard her say and wondered what she was agreeing with.

‘Aye. Right. Well. It was the first hurdle overcome,’ he concurred, and wrestled back his concentration, turning his eyes away from her and addressing them instead to the orangey flames in the grate. Skipping parts of the tale he considered to be of less interest to her, he moved on. ‘So then they started out for a place called Moat Hall; by all accounts the biggest of the Ashbridge farms. And by now, supposedly their number was three hundred.’

‘A fair old mob.’

‘Aye, indeed. But the farmer said that it wasn’t down to him to agree a matter such as wages and that they should take it up with the squire’s man. But by now their blood was up and they weren’t going home with anything less than higher wages.’

‘So what happened?’

‘Well, as I heard it, part of the mob broke away from the so-called negotiations with the farmer and went off to dismantle his threshing machine.’

‘And did
that
get them what they wanted?’

‘No, no it didn’t. He said he wouldn’t be threatened. So they told him they’d be back the next day to see if he’d changed his mind.’

‘Good for them. And did they
go
back?’

Unable to help himself, he smiled and leant forward in his chair, heartened by the way she was following this; by the way she genuinely seemed to understand.

‘They did, well, some of them at least; those without work to go to or those that didn’t much mind losing it, I suppose. But overnight, the estate had sent a messenger to Winchester and, next day, a group of constables, by common reckoning especially sworn for the purpose, were waiting there for them.’

‘So they were all arrested.’

‘Well, by all accounts, most of them were able to get away and lay low but a good many others, mainly those at the front, the leaders, were set upon and aye, they were arrested.’

‘And it don’t take much to know where they ended up.’

‘No. They’re in the Bridewell, waiting to be tried.’

‘And most likely they’ve got families as well,’ he heard her say with a sigh.

‘Most likely, since otherwise they wouldn’t feel the need for such desperate actions.’

Moving to sit more upright, she reached to pull the pins from her hair and he watched as it tumbled to her shoulders.

‘Well it sounds like madness to me.’

No, oh no: what he didn’t want now was to lose her sympathy. At this moment, more than anything, he wanted her to see; to understand the point of it all. He wanted her to be supportive of their aims and revere him for his part in it – and then, suddenly recalling the words the Captain had used to persuade the hesitant among them, he said, ‘Some might see it as madness, aye but fact is, Annie, for there to be change,
real
change I mean, someone has to suffer.’ In the firelight, he could see her studying him and for a moment he was uncertain what to read from her expression, suddenly willing her not to laugh or make light of it.

‘Well, since you’re better placed and better informed than me to know whether or not that’s true, I’ll bow to your wisdom.’

With a surge of warmth for her, he stood up and went across to where she was sitting, crouching in front of her like an eager lad.

‘So you understand then; you understand what it is we’re trying to achieve?’

The wait for her answer felt like an eternity.

‘The way you tell it to me, aye.’ Unaware until then that he had been holding his breath, he exhaled. ‘I see plain enough what it is you’re about. But I want you to give me your word, George, that it if there
is
any suffering to be done, then it won’t be you doing of it because if
that
came about and it was
you
in the Bridewell, then I shouldn’t ever be able to forgive you.’

‘I give you my word.’

‘Then it seems we understand each other’s concerns.’

Taking hold of her hands, he squeezed them tightly.

‘Good. But now you ought go up and get some rest,’ he said and getting to his feet, bent to kiss the top of her hair, the smell of it like balm to his crumpled mind.

*

To begin with, Mary thought nothing of the fact that George was spending fewer and fewer evenings at home, especially since whereas once he had routinely headed to The Stag, he now seemed to go to the farmhouse. Having for some time found the atmosphere there depressing – and still inwardly concerned at the chance of bumping into Francis – it was somewhere she kept away from as much as possible, sometimes only going once a week, for their Sunday meal. But gradually she came to notice that his visits were becoming even more frequent, and that in fact were assuming something of a routine.

‘Shall I come with you?’ she asked on a couple of occasions. But by way of response, he seemed able to pluck any of a number of vague reasons for leaving her behind.

‘Looks like you got a lot on your hands,’ he’d say with a wave at whatever she was doing. ‘No need for you to come out and get cold,’ was another but the most usual seemed to be, ‘No, no need for you to come, not tonight.’

And when he returned, often as much as a couple of hours later, it was hard, if not impossible, to find out what he’d been doing, her polite enquiries about the well-being of the various family members meeting with only the barest of responses. Ordinarily, she would have paid little further heed but at the same time, another curious pattern to his behaviour also began to emerge; something that she noticed quite by accident. For most of the week, his desire for her – if desire had ever been the right word – seemed to be non-existent. But on the nights when he had been to the farmhouse, he appeared to return with a particular appetite for physical relief.

‘Go up and get undressed,’ he came in to say one night on finding her still sitting downstairs. By most reckoning it was early yet and she looked at him with a puzzled expression on her face.

‘What, right now? Only I’m—’

‘Yes, Mary. Right now. And try to look a bit less put out about it, for goodness sake. It’s not like I make many demands on you.’

‘No. Course. Forgive me,’ she said, blushing, and quickly did as he requested, hearing what sounded like a sigh of exasperation behind her as she climbed the ladder.

As she stood undressing, she briefly wondered whether perhaps he had finally developed a desire for her, but the ensuing experience – as cold and remote as ever – told her otherwise; the impression she was left with being that he was simply trying to relieve some sort of frustration. Lying with her head turned to the side, flattened uncomfortably beneath his weight and, with one of his knees piercing the flesh of her leg, she thought back to the moment when he had first come through the door. She couldn’t recall anything particularly unusual about his demeanour; it was more that he hadn’t said a single word by way of greeting, merely instructing her to go upstairs. And her response, which had so annoyed him, had been solely through surprise.

She stared across at a cobweb spun between the shadowy roof timbers and watched it moving in time with his efforts, backwards and forwards against the uneven tiles behind. For some reason satisfaction wasn’t coming easily to him tonight, something that only served to heighten her resentment. She had no idea what it was that had roused him in the first place, only that she didn’t seem sufficient to satisfy him and so, with her teeth gritted, she lay still, her body crying out for a different kind of touch. ‘Touch me, touch me like this,’ she wanted to scream at him, knowing full well though that even the mere act of asking him to do so would be to open herself up to a state of intimacy with him that she didn’t really want any more anyway. And so she simply pressed her lips more firmly together, closed her eyes and determined to hold back her tears, distracting herself instead with the notion that tonight the patient spider in the silvery web looked to be going without supper.

*

‘You going to market this morning?’ George asked Mary as he reached to the hook on the back of the door for his jacket.

‘Well, the eggs don’t walk there and sell themselves, come Thursdays,’ she replied, aware that what she had intended as a light-hearted comment, in truth sounded rather brusque.

‘Only I’ve put some coins on the mantel for you,’ she heard him add, apparently oblivious to her tone.

‘No need. I shan’t be buying much,’ she told him with a shrug. ‘The money from Dunne’s ought to be sufficient.’

‘It ain’t for provisions,’ he said, opening the door to leave. ‘It’s for you.’ Assuming that she had misheard, she looked up sharply from the bread crusts she was mashing into warm milk. ‘It won’t go far, I know that but buy yourself summat. I ain’t the least idea what, nor do I particular mind, but make sure ʼtis summat for
you
. Think on it as a gift for Christmas,’ he added, and without further explanation, went through the door and closed it behind him.

As the clomp of his boots receded towards the lane, she hastened to the fireplace. But sure enough, there, lying alongside the candlestick, were some coins. A gift for Christmas? But why? One by one, she picked up the coins and placed them flat on the palm of her hand. Then, one at a time, she turned each of them over. What on earth could have prompted such a gesture? It was by no means a paltry sum but the by-the-by manner in which he had given it somehow detracted from the joy of receiving it. She stared across to the door and frowned. Ah well, it was as she always told herself; he was a kind enough man. It was just a grave pity that he was also a rather distant one.

*

After church on Christmas morning, Mary took her time to dress. Without a moment’s hesitation, she had decided to spend George’s coins on a skirt-piece of fabric from the mercer’s in Wembridge. Sheeny emerald with a fine, black line, she had fallen in love with it immediately and asked her mother to make it up for her. Fastening it now at the waist, she savoured the way the cloth felt so rich and heavy. Then she pulled on her new blouse – a gift her mother had fashioned from one of her own – and smoothed it over her chemise. The neckline had a waterfall ruffle to which her mother had sewn a trim of the material from the skirt. And, unused to having anything so pretty to wear, she adored it. She fingered now the deliciously crisp, white cotton, savouring the way that it made her feel grown up and ladylike, the effect being to make her want to hold her head high and walk in a dainty manner. Yes; in a moment or two, she would do her best to make a favourable impression on George and later, all being well, on Annie Strong, too.