A Country Marriage (8 page)

Chapter 3

The Uncomfortable Truth

‘We’ll fetch some hens from market on Thursday,’ George had said to Mary once the henhouse was finished. ‘Pa takes Ma and Annie into Wembridge to sell the butter and cheese every week so I’ll ask if we can journey in with them.’

At the mention of Annie, she had noticed how her stomach had knotted, but three mornings later, she found herself standing with George, stamping her feet against the cold and blowing into her hands while they waited for the cart to come up from the farm.

‘Sharp this morning,’ she commented, pulling her shawl more tightly about her and noticing how her breath hung in the chilly air.

‘Aye but hark; this’ll be them now.’

Hearing the splash of wheels through the ford, she turned to look down the hill and saw the swaying arc of lantern light drawing closer.

‘Mary, back here,’ a voice called to her as the cart came to a halt beside them. ‘I got a blanket for warmth and we can have a good old hob an’ nob on the way.’ To her surprise it was Ellen. And as George handed her up into the rear of the cart, she could see that she was alone. ‘You’re coming to market, then,’ she was remarking, reaching to tuck the blanket over their laps. ‘That all right?’

She nodded, watching while George climbed up to sit with his mother and father. By what stroke of luck was it Ellen going to market rather than Annie? Not that it mattered. She would just be grateful that, somehow, her prayers of the last few days had been answered.

‘Yes. George has finished the henhouse so we’re going to buy hens.’

‘And how are you settling at Keeper’s Cottage?’

She still needed to be careful with what she said, though. Ellen may appear to have taken a liking to her but her first loyalty would surely still be to Ma Strong.

‘Oh, fine, thanks.’

‘I do envy you, you know, in a place of your own.’

She frowned, and then as the cart lurched forward, reached out to steady herself.

‘Truly? But the farmhouse is lovely, an’ you got all the family there.’

‘Aye, I won’t disagree with you that it’s a lovely house,’ Ellen responded with a quick glance to the backs of her in-laws, ‘but the family, well, that’s a different story; they’re a real… funny lot. And although it might seem to you that there’s plenty of space, truth of the matter is that you’re never alone; not even for a single minute. And there’s always someone ready to tell you what to do, too and you don’t get no say in what it is or when you do it, either.’ She, too, glanced to her in-laws. Surely Ellen was courting trouble to talk like this? ‘If you stay on the right side of Ma Strong, though,’ she was continuing, her voice little more than a whisper now, ‘then for the most part, she’s fair-handed. And Annie can be friendly enough if the mood takes her but
Tabitha
, well, she’s a real…’ she glanced again at the shadowy profile of her mother-in-law, ‘…nuisance. Always skulking off, that one. And even though everyone knows how she is, she still gets away with it. Don’t get me wrong Mary, I know it’s not my place to mind these things but when she doesn’t do her share of the work, it just means that someone else has to.’

‘Yes, I see that.’

‘And that’s why I envy you, even if envy
is
such an ugly sin. My point, though, is that at least at Keeper’s Cottage, the two of you are on your own—’

‘Aye, that’s true but—’

‘—with only yourselves to look out for.’

She pressed her lips together. The prospect of life at Keeper’s Cottage clearly seemed more attractive to Ellen than it did to herself. In fact, in her own mind, it had already taken on a rather bleak air. And while she wouldn’t admit that to anyone else, perhaps she
could
share those feelings with Ellen. It might help her to work out whether they were normal or not. Or at the very least, understandable.

‘A place of our own is… well, it’s nice, of course it is but…’ The problem, she realised then, was that it would be all too easy to appear ungrateful. ‘…and no doubt you’ll think me silly but you see, before I came here, I didn’t know that George wasn’t going to be working at the farm any more. I only found out a few days back that he’s going to work for the estate. And when he does, well, being up at the cottage means that as often as not, I shan’t see another soul all day long.’

When Ellen’s woollen mitten clasped the bare skin of her hand, it felt cold and rough.

‘You had no reason to know otherwise, I suppose. But oh, Mary, I’d still rather be in my own home, even if it did mean being alone all day. ’Tis surely preferable to the constant frettin’ an’ bossin’ an’ arguin’ that goes on all day at Summerleas. George was always all right and of course, Will, too but you should hear how Tom and Pa Strong do set about each other. And anyway, I fancy you won’t be on your own for long.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Once you start with the babies.’

‘Oh.’

‘Won’t have a minute of loneliness then.’

‘No, I suppose not.’

‘But then you’ll be used to all that, what with you being the eldest daughter.’

Half turning from Ellen’s gaze, she sighed. A half-dozen siblings hardly felt like adequate preparation for having a child of her own. Or for being left on her own with it all day long, either.

‘You ain’t got any yet, then?’ The speed with which Ellen ducked her head took her by surprise. And then it didn’t: five years wed and no children? That there was some sort of problem ought surely to have been obvious to her. ‘Forgive me, I didn’t mean to pry.’

‘No, it’s not an unreasonable question. See, Mary, I’ve
fallen
several times, three, in fact. But God called them all back.’ And now what was she supposed to say? Nothing that came to mind felt in the least helpful or sincere. ‘But it’s more than a year now since I lost the last one and well, while it’s a terrible thing to lose a baby, Mary, to my mind, it’s just as bad not to fall in the first place. I pray feverish hard every day, too; we both do. But despite our prayers, every month it’s the same. I try to draw comfort from the words of the Bible but just lately, I’ve oftentimes come to thinking that maybe God’s
never
going to let us have a child. And I’m not sure I’m strong enough to bear that, even if it is His path for me.’

‘Oh, Ellen…’

‘You know, Mary, when me an’ Will first wed, I dreamed of a house filled with children; you know, a big family like I grew up in but now, well, now I’d settle for just one child. Just one. After all, ʼtis what we’re here for, ain’t it, to serve God an’ to have children?’

Ellen’s face – a pale and ghostly oval peering out from her shawl – seemed to have lost all of its life. How unfair things had a habit of being. How deeply unfair to want a child and not be able to have one when, by all accounts, a good many women felt themselves to be in precisely the opposite predicament.

‘Well, perhaps it’ll still happen one day.’ It was a sentiment that she offered uncertainly, though; Ellen’s long, tremulous sigh by way of response seeming to suggest that she didn’t agree.

‘I do hope for it, Mary, although I’m not rightly sure I know
what
to think any more. See, what I can’t fathom, is how with one hand God can give a husband and wife such an act of love for creating new life but then, with the other, see fit to let all of that tenderness… go to waste; to
not
produce a child. It just don’t seem right, do it?’

Although she hadn’t intended to, she shook her head. What act of love? What tenderness? What, precisely, was Ellen talking about? She knew of course that eventually, George’s
efforts
would give her a child – always assuming that God was willing – but surely that wasn’t love? Surely, love meant two people sharing deep feelings or a bond of some sort. George hadn’t said that he loved her and in fairness, she didn’t think that
she
loved
him
, although having no scale by which to measure such things, it was hard to say. But she did feel certain that if by some chance she did love him, then she would somehow know it. She was beginning to quite
like
him and as a husband he did seem, much to her relief, to be a considerate one. But tender? Already she had become used to his needs and rather indifferent to his efforts to satisfy them but the whole thing was still largely just a fair bit of discomfort and a lot of grunting; definitely not something she could describe as an act of love. And, when he was on top of her in the dark, her original notion that she was missing the point still insisted upon creeping back. No, Ellen, it seemed, was talking about something altogether different.

Raising her head, she stared out over fields that were now slowly beginning to emerge from obscurity into the first fingers of daylight. Was it possible that there
was
something that she still didn’t know? And if so, how was she ever going to find out? Clearly, this wasn’t the time to ask Ellen and anyway, she wasn’t even sure that she knew what to ask.

Biting her bottom lip, she saw Ellen looking back at her. She seemed to be expecting an answer.

‘I still don’t think you should give up hope.’ How deeply unhelpful that sounded. But then given the misfortune of the matter, it was hard to know what would sound any better.

‘No. I know. You’re right of course. It’s not too late yet. But enough of my problems: you don’t want talk of my misery when you’re on your honeymoon!’

‘Hm.’

‘Do you know, I can still remember as plain as plain those first few weeks of being wed; such a perfect time.’

At the brightening of Ellen’s face, she smiled. Perhaps after all, now might just be a good time to share some of her concerns.

‘Ellen, when you first met Will, did you… you know, did you fall in love with him straight away?’

‘Oh, most definitely I did, yes.’ There it was: that liveliness back in her eyes again, that sparkle. ‘It’s summat I shan’t ever forget. You see, me an’ Annie slipped out of home one night to go to Wembridge Fair. Needless to say, it was her idea, not mine. Anyway, that’s where we met them; the three lads, that is. Course, as you might well imagine, it was Annie who spotted them first and wanted to get a closer look. Me, I was mortified. I didn’t want anything to do with that sort of thing.’ She watched Ellen pull the blanket up to her chin, seemingly in a bid to quell laughter, her subsequent glance to the front of the cart suggesting that she didn’t want to be drawn into explaining what it was they were talking about. ‘Then Tom caught us looking at them and before we knew it, they were coming over to talk to us. And as soon as I saw Will proper, well, all I felt was giddiness and the sense that I’d forgotten how to breathe; such a powerful feeling that I’ll never forget it as long as I live! But I was so naïve that I didn’t know it for what it was. I thought I’d taken ill! All I could do was blush and stare at my feet, so it never occurred to me, even for one minute that Will would be interested in courting me.’

‘But he obviously was.’

‘He was, yes! And next thing we knew, him and Tom started walking all the way over to Wych Green just to see us. And when they walked over on the last Sunday of Advent, we all went up the church and I remember how me and Will sat in the porch talking and watching a washy sort of a sunset. And that’s when, out of the blue, he asked me to marry him. And even though I scarce knew him, I said yes, right away.’

‘But weren’t you ever… you know, nervous?’

‘Nervous? No, I don’t remember bein’ nervous. I just remember being excited and impatient to be wed and well, completely in love, I suppose.’

Looking away from Ellen’s smile, she directed her eyes out beyond the dark hedgerows and into the fields, still characterless in the flat, early light.

‘And once you
were
wed, was it, you know, everything you thought it’d be?’ In truth it was a half-baked question to start with. Worse still was the fact that Ellen’s answer was never really in any doubt.

‘More even, if that don’t sound daft because I’d never before imagined the pleasure to be had from tending to a good man. See, to my thinking, Mary, love between a man and a woman is God’s greatest creation and all I can say is that it made a better person of me.’

It was hard, she thought when Ellen stopped talking, to imagine this woman as anything other than a good person anyway, married or no.

‘So…’ But her thoughts about her own situation were far less straightforward. ‘You never had any… doubts?’

Feeling Ellen’s hand on her arm, she glanced up to see what looked like understanding on her face.

‘George is a good man, Mary; a decent man. You’ve no need to fear him. And I’m sure that if you do as he asks and give yourself freely, then your union will be truly blessed.’

She cast her eyes down to the blanket covering their laps. It would be no use talking to Ellen, then, about all of the other things bothering her because clearly she had never experienced such anxieties. Perhaps, though, the basis of her advice about doing as George asked was sensible enough.

With the cart continuing its swaying progress over the deeply rutted track, she pulled the blanket back up to her chin and let out a long and shivery sigh. Above them, the heavens were a cloudless indigo, and looking across, she could just pick out the morning star clinging low to the easterly horizon. But by the time they reached the outskirts of the town, its twinkling had been consumed by the daylight and when, shortly afterwards, they finally arrived in the square, she vowed to try and set aside her preoccupations. After all, what would be would be.