Fragile Blossoms (2 page)

Julia sighed. ‘I do like the cottage. It’s a pretty place and the gardens are lovely. As for repairs I do have a little money set aside.’

‘There you are then! Settle here and be happy!’

‘Are you happy here?’

‘I’m not unhappy. The business thrives and my family are well. I don’t look beyond that. Luke can’t abide Bakers. He’d leave tomorrow. He reckons folk here are small minded with small minded ways. He’s right, of course.’ Nan jabbed the needle in the cloth. ‘I don’t like nodding to Fussy Gussy’s shrew of a wife but in business as in life you can’t be choosy. I go to church two Sunday mornings a month, I pay my dues, and I follow Cromwell’s advice, I keep my head down and my powder dry. I advise you to do the same.’

‘Do you?’

‘I do.’ Nan’s glance was steady. ‘You are young and lovely and a widow. There’ll be those wanting to help, and those wanting to hinder, and for a time you won’t know who’s who. Until you do there’s a place here with me and mine.’

‘You are very kind.’

‘No, not kind! It is our duty in this world to help one another. If you leave that skirt with me I’ll see it mended. There’s a good little dressmaker in Lower Bakers. You wouldn’t want a thing like that spoiled. You have beautiful clothes. That shawl you’re wearing is so soft.’

‘Do you like it?’ Julia laid it about Nan’s shoulders. ‘It’s yours.’

‘Oh I couldn’t!’ Nan passed it back. ‘I was admiring it, that’s all.’

‘You have been kind to Matty.’

‘Kind nothing, I love the little lad!’

‘Please take it! I do so want you to have it.’

‘Well then if you say so but things like this are costly. You have to work to earn them. They don’t fall from the skies.’

‘Sometimes they do.’

‘What?’ Nan took a closer look at her guest. Three days she’s been watching this young woman. Heavy silken hair and amber eyes, young Mrs Dryden is a rare beauty and her clothes costly in style and make. That blouse with the pin-tucks, there’s a similar garment in Bentalls priced at five shillings. And her skirt and the snakeskin boots? You won’t see boots like that in Norfolk. And why room here? Has she no relatives to take care of her?

Nan is proud of the Nelson. They don’t rent the Inn as do most victuallers. It’s paid for, lock, stock, and barrel, and not a farthing owing. She’s proud of her husband and her son and the work they do as builders, a reputation as the best in the business. That a lady should choose to stay is no surprise, many gentlefolk stop over on the way to Sandringham, but wouldn’t you think a person of such elegant manner would be accompanied by a maid?

Six months a widow and not in black! Now she gives shawls away and talks of them falling from the skies. What a thing to say! And why when she said it did her lovely face strike fear in Nan’s heart as though realising the kitten she nursed at her bosom was in fact a wild cat with yellow eyes and claws.

Nan rang the bell. A maid appeared. ‘Mrs Dryden is weary. Accompany her to her room, Maggie. Make sure she has everything she needs.’

In the room darning the skirt Julia lamented her foolish tongue. The shawl was gifted along with a travel coat and moleskin furs, Lady Evelyn Carrington of Russell Square, London, the benevolent giver. It’s what she meant by falling from the sky. So foolish! Her remark brought Bloomsbury to Bakers End and distance between her and Nan Roberts.

Julia pondered the cottage. Why the wall? What does it repel? Walls can’t make a house safe no matter how high. A window left open and rain will get in, a door unlocked and a thief will rob you of all you cherish. No one person can decide your fate. Only God’s good grace can give you safety.

It’s years since Julia felt safe. January 11, 1890, at three minutes past seven her mother, Abigail, climbed on a stool to take down a jar of pickles. She fell and never got up again. Sixteen year-old Julia fell with her and has not stopped falling. With mother gone the heart of the family was pinched out and safety invested in father, Rector Philip Dryden. Sisters Charlotte and May were married with children and lived in Cowper. The two of them alone in the Rectory it wasn’t long before Father began to fail. Julia tried shoring him up, every day a fresh egg in a Willow-patterned egg-cup for breakfast, and then a walk in the garden to see the hedgehog under a flower pot, and in the evening a chapter of
Oliver Twist
. Every day for two years she struggled to keep him here on earth. He hid in books escaping the bleak 19th Century for Homer and Ancient Greece. Thursday evening choir practice was his only joy. She’d sit at the harmonium thumping out a chorus from Handel’s
Messiah
, Father unable to resist the declamation, ‘
Wonderful
!
Councillor
!’

It was all to no avail, he yearned to follow Mother and faded away.

The Rectory passed to a new incumbent Julia must marry, and who better, and more to hand, than second cousin Owen Passmore. Julia begged for another way but Sister Charlotte, five years senior and strong of temperament, would have none of it. ‘He is Uncle William’s step-son. He is sober, solvent, and ready to marry. What other way is there?’

A night in Owen’s company and Julia knew he hadn’t thought to marry, nor, though he nightly battled to create them, had he thought of children. An ugly house in a row of ugly houses in the College grounds, a few sticks of furniture, a borrowed piano and a telescope, marriage was a means to an end for both. The telescope was parked in a front bedroom window. Every morning Owen would say, ‘I’d be obliged if you didn’t touch it, my dear. I have it in the right position. A quarter inch left or right and I must start all over again.’

Every night in their lumpy bed suffering his apologetic fumbles a riposte to his directive hung in Julia’s mind like a Sampler: ‘
Show me Thy way, O Lord and make it plain.
’ Owen rarely found his way to either goal. After Matty was ill he stopped trying. If Owen loved Julia he never said so, the words, like the deed, too worrying. Egypt was his love, Egypt and the stars, gazing through a telescope at Venus or digging in sand for centuries’ old broken pottery. A new bride was unsettling, though she did bring a body that nightly drove him crazy and eventually an annuity that helped him seek his dream.

Owen loved Matty. In the early months he’d sit by the cot hands clasped together gazing at his son as though doubting the fruit of his endeavour. Then Matty fell ill. As a baby he made the usual gurgling sounds, after surgery gurgling sounds were all he made. Owen was shocked. ‘I don’t know why he’s like this. The surgeon’s an awfully good fellow, I knew him at Caius.’

‘Damn your awfully good fellow!’ Julia had raged. ‘Look, Owen! Look at the mess he made of your son’s throat!’

Owen didn’t want to look. He went to Egypt seeking comfort in Heraclion, a sunken city. What he didn’t want to see he wouldn’t. He was like that with the annuity. St Mary’s, Bentham, is a small church with a small congregation. When Father died he’d nothing to leave but a blessing. Another blessing came in ’93 when Aunt Eleanor died and bequeathed an annuity of one hundred pounds per annum to each of Philip Dryden’s daughters. Nan Roberts says Julia has secrets. A second annuity and how it came about is a secret known only to Julia and an artist in Bloomsbury and is best kept so.

Matty stirred. Opening his eyes and finding her watching he smiled.

‘Why you not asleep, Ju-ju?’

‘I am asleep, dear heart,’ she whispered.

It is strange how in the warmth of sleep his speech is less constrained. Julia understands his every word. Owen tried signing for a time. ‘He’s not deaf,’ she would say. ‘It’s no good waving your hands about like that.’

‘I know,’ Owen had replied. ‘I was hoping he might sign I love you Papa.’

That was the last time they were together. Now Owen is dead and will never hear his son say anything.

Julia was woken by rain coming through the window. It was bitterly cold.

Shivering she got out of bed and leaned into the rain to close the window. In the yard below a man took shelter under the eaves a piece of sacking over his head. As Julia reached out to close the window he looked up. Brow furrowed and unsmiling he stared, rain from a broken guttering dripping on his face.

Such eyes, so dark and unfathomable they held Julia transfixed. Rain blew in soaking her nightgown. Still she stared until he with impatient gesture slapped the wall. ‘Go in why don’t you woman and close the window!’

She did.

The document is signed. As of this day, Monday 10th of April, in the Year of Our Lord 1897, the N and N, mice, mould, and wall is theirs. Knowing mother stayed here as a child has made the difference. Until Simpkin mentioned the connection other than a route to security the cottage had no meaning. Now it wears a loving face and not that of a spinster’s fading dream.

Matty has given his approval. Saturday afternoon a fur cap on his head and sturdy boots on his feet he came to view. ‘Mumma, look!’ he cried. ‘It’s smiling.’ Preoccupied with mice and mould Julia missed what a child would never miss water-logged thatch over an attic window created a winking eye.

So much work needed inside and out and Matty so cherished at the Nelson it was a while before they moved in. Renovation is to be undertaken by Albert Roberts & Sons. So far Julia is only aware of one son, Luke, the grim-faced individual who sheltered that night under eaves and whose imperious hand commanded her retreat. The Roberts soon proved worthy of hire, arriving early and staying late, the son tackling heavy work while chivvying labourers along, and the father, an amiable fellow, more inclined to chat. Even with a biting wind coming off the Wash Julia kept to the garden. Muffled in furs, her hands and feet developing chilblains, she pulled weeds, hoed borders and shivered, only going in when her opinion was sought.

With only an estimate to go by and a diminishing purse she worried about mounting costs. ‘Is this really necessary?’ she asked Monday through a haze of dust, the upper rooms gutted and pipes laid bare. Luke Roberts paused in hammering. ‘It is if you want water on tap and a decent plumbing system.’

‘I do want such things but am conscious of escalating costs. Last night looking at the upper floors and new bathroom fittings I wondered if we were not exceeding the original intention.’

‘Did you not like what you saw?’

‘I did. I thought it exceptional work.’

‘And do you know what we need to do to make it exceptional?’

‘Well no.’

‘Then rest easy. You’re right to worry about cost but spare a thought for your future peace of mind. We’re on the brink of a new century. The modern and fashionable lady needs to move with the times.’

‘That’s all very well, Mr Luke, but after all this will I be able to afford to be either modern or fashionable?’

He shrugged. ‘Can you afford not to be?

Julia is perplexed by the man’s manner. He rarely speaks and when he does it is to challenge. ‘What were you thinking for the walls plain white-wash?’

‘I thought to have them papered.’ She passed a scrap of wallpaper. ‘There is this William Morris damask that would look well in the sitting-room.’

‘No,’ he shook his head. ‘I’m not putting that on the walls.’

Taken aback by the blank refusal Julia stared.

‘This is heavy stuff,’ he said. ‘It’ll drag on the size.’

‘Then perhaps a lighter paper? He does a lovely Japanese print. I saw it at an exhibition last year.’

‘English or Japanese it makes no difference. I’m not hanging William Morris on any of your walls.’

‘Then perhaps you’ll suggest someone who will!’

‘I can hang wallpaper. I didn’t say I couldn’t. I won’t hang William Morris. We stopped using it years ago. The paper has arsenic in the patterning. In time it would make me sick to hang it and you to watch it.’

‘Good Lord! Is that true?’

‘It is.’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘Why would you? It’s not common knowledge. Find me paper you like that isn’t Morris and I’ll hang it for you.’ A blood-blistered thumb caressed the scrap of paper. ‘Do you usually carry bits of wallpaper in your pocket?’

A memory too intimate to be picked over by a hostile stranger Julia took back the sample. It was Freddie Carrington who did this, tore a strip of wallpaper from his sister’s dining room. Julia had watched in horror.

‘For heaven’s sake!’ she’d whispered. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Tearing a strip off the wall.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you like it and might need it to match the pattern.’

‘I do like it but not for you to do this!’

‘Evie won’t mind,’ he’d said waving a long strip. ‘I took it from behind the dresser. She’ll never know it’s gone.’

Leaving the house that day Julia offered apologies. Evelyn had raised her big blue eyes. Lips soft and breath smelling of violets she’d kissed Julia’s cheek. ‘Don’t worry, Ju-ju. I’ll not hold you to blame.’

‘I’m sure he meant no harm.’

‘I’m sure he did. It’s what angry children do to gain attention of the one they admire. They shout or slap. At least he didn’t slap.’

Julia is getting to know and love the cottage. Walking the gardens she learns of the sisters and the animals they loved by the headstones scattered about. There are dogs, Marlow and Meribone, buried behind the herb garden, and cats, Samson and Saraband, opposite the dogs. Exploring her new home she had good moments and bad, wonderful finds and terrible losses. A double tragedy was found in the wash-house tea-chests filled with broken china.

‘Oh no!’ She covered her mouth in horror. ‘That’s too dreadful.’

Albert Roberts removed his cap. ‘So it is, ma’m.’

A mindless jigsaw of razor edges the tea-chests were full to the brim with precious, worthless, Meissen porcelain. She didn’t know the exact contents, it couldn’t be counted, but from what Luke said who’d sifted the debris the chests contain at least two dinner services. ‘There’s something sick about this,’ said Albert. ‘Hidden away year-after-year, why would you keep such ruin?’

‘It’s a reminder,’ said Luke.

‘Of what?’ said Julia.

‘Of how it felt when he or she took a hammer to them.’

Luke buried the china as one would bury the dead. For a time then nothing in the cottage gave pleasure, not even the finding of full size beds and truckle beds beneath. Nothing gave pleasure until the piano.

It was discovered hidden in a back closet. Hearing of the find Julia rushed to the cottage. Albert was in the kitchen supping from a mug. ‘Mornin, ma’m.’

Julia shook her umbrella. ‘Mr Luke not here yet?’

‘Aye, he’s up in the attics and none too happy about it.’

‘Forgive me for asking but is he ever happy?’

‘He’s not the cheeriest of men, I grant you, but today having been here since early light he’s got cause. Last night’s storm shifted tiles on your roof and with the downpour you’ve rain coming through.’

‘Is there much damage?’

‘Nothing that can’t be fixed.’

‘And you say he’s been here since early light?’

‘He has. He heard the rain and couldn’t sleep.’

‘And I called him miserable!’ Julia was mortified. ‘What an ungrateful wretch! Your son is entitled to do what he wants. He wasn’t hired to smile and play the fool, only to prove worthy of hire and that he has most assuredly done.’

‘Don’t fret, lass,’ said Albert. ‘He is a moody chap. Nobody knows that better than me. He’s never been what you might call a smiler. That was his brother. Our Jacky smiled for Queen and Country.’

‘Jacky?’

‘Jacky, my youngest lad that was drowned.’

‘Drowned!’

Albert nodded. ‘In the quarry.’

‘Oh, Albert, I am so very sorry!’

‘As are we all.’ Albert stood contemplating the piano. ‘You’ll be alright with this. It was stored with lovin’ care as the china wasn’t. We’ve an upright in the public bar a chap plays of a weekend. You play the piano, do you?’

‘I do.’ Afraid of again speaking amiss Julia patted the keys. ‘You’re right it is well preserved. It speaks well of the cottage.’

‘Speaks well of the cottage?’ Hair plastered to his head and shirt wringing wet Luke stood on the stairs. That he’d overheard their conversation was evident. ‘I’d say it speaks well of the ladies that took care of it.’

‘I’m sure it does,’ said Julia. ‘I meant only that the condition of the piano might’ve been helped by thick walls and an ambient temperature.’

‘I got what you meant! Next time I’m up at two in the morning, rain dripping down my back, I’ll think of ambient temperatures and take comfort.’ He strode into the kitchen pulling his shirt over his head as he went. ‘And you never know if the mood takes me, miserable man that I am, I might jig about a bit.’

The day continued as heavy and unrelenting as the rain. Albert took the labourers to another job. ‘We were to whiten ceilings but not wi’ muck flying about.’ He hooked his thumb. ‘Why don’t you pop over to the Nelson for a cup of tea! Hangin’ about indoors won’t help.’ He smiled. ‘Not wi’ misery guts in charge.’

Misery Guts was clearing the attics. Arms braced and head down he swept all before him, sodden rugs and bird’s nests, tangled messes of mice and moth thrown through the window to gather beneath. News spread of a house clearing and a queue formed by the wall. All was going peacefully until a man snatched another’s wire bedspring and a fight broke out.

Black hair peppered with dust Luke leapt to the window. ‘Get you gone, Nate Sherwood!’ he roared. ‘You’ve thieved your bit of junk now clear off and don’t let me see your ugly mug within a mile of this place!’

Bedspring a portcullis over his head the man ran.

‘Who was that?’ said Julia.

‘Nobody worth knowing.’

‘I gathered that by your tone.’

‘My tone! What’s wrong with my tone? Is this another aspect of me you’d see different? Should I have danced a two-step with him?’

‘I don’t know what you should’ve done! I only wonder why it need be so violent. After all it was a bedspring he took not the crown jewels.’

‘It was your bed-spring and you don’t want him sleeping on it!’

‘It wasn’t my bedspring!’ Julia was sick of his testy ways. ‘It wasn’t anybody’s bedspring! It was junk as you said so why couldn’t he have it?’

‘Because he’s a bad ‘un and you don’t want him near anything of yours!’

‘Such a fuss!’

‘There was no fuss until he came. If you’d nothing against folk taking stuff neither had I! But oughtn’t it be decent folk that benefit from cast-offs not one that spends half his life hurting those that can’t defend themselves and the other half ripping the shirt off an honest man’s back.’

Julia recalled Luke pulling his shirt over his head and compared his back, the ripping muscles and breadth of shoulders, to the stooped back of the man with the bedspring. She smiled. ‘You had a shirt ripped from your back by such a man did you, Luke Roberts?’

He saw her smile, heard the scorn in her voice, and colouring left the room.

Rain or not Julia retreated to the terrace garden. The Mole had been at work there were bulbs in need of securing and footmarks in the border. When she returned to the cottage the attics were empty, the ground beneath the window cleared, and the parlour ceiling in process of being whitened.

Maggie Jeffers, a maid on loan from the Nelson was mopping floors.

‘Everything gone, Maggie? ‘

‘Looks like it, ma’m.’

‘Did I see you out there earlier?’

Maggie nodded.

‘And did you find anything nice?’

‘I wanted the blue ribbons you flung but a parlour maid at the Big House got ‘em. Shame! Blue ribbons mean a wedding in the family.’

‘They were terribly tarnished.’

‘They might’ve washed.’

‘I suppose they might.’ A trunk from the attic stood by the door. ‘I wonder if there are ribbons in here.’ Julia knelt at a chest and Maggie with her. The smell of camphor rose from folds of linen and a not so pleasant smell from Maggie.

‘It has to be blue,’ said Maggie, ‘or the spell won’t work. You bind a ribbon to your left wrist seven days and nights. If it stays tied the beloved will come.’

‘I’ll remember that should I be looking for the same.’ Julia held up a lace collar. ‘This is pretty and may prove cause of a wedding.’

A bone to a starving pup the maid snatched the collar and ran.

‘Is that wise?’ Luke Roberts splashed paint on the ceiling. ‘Stand too close to Maggie Jeffers and she’ll have you spitting over your shoulder when the moon is full and counting your children through apple seeds.’

‘Maggie can say and do as she likes. I think we make our own luck.’

‘Do you?’ He wiped his face on his sleeve white chalk on his cheek making his eyes sapphire blue. ‘Then God knows I must be doing something wrong.’

*

It was cold in the church. Julia wished she’d worn a fur cloak as well as the muff but heeding Nan’s advice not to put her head above the parapet she came clad in plain bonnet and woollen cloak. Two minutes and she realised she may as well have gone the whole hog people stare anyway.

The vicar conducted Julia to an ornately carved pew. ‘This is the Lansdowne pew. As mistress of the former gatehouse you are entitled to worship here. I don’t know exactly where in the pew you sit. No doubt there is a hierarchy but as the house is yet unattended it won’t matter today.’

‘I suppose I must sit here.’

The vicar smiled. ‘Indeed you must. St Bedes is small church. Every member of the congregation has his or her own seat. The occupying of another even when the church is half empty is a dark sin as I am sure you understand.’

Julia took her seat. ‘I am a parson’s daughter. I understand only too well.’

A solitary figure in a wooden box she knelt to her prayers. Matthew attended chapel in Cambridge. It’s cold in here. Until he’s stronger he will stay home. His absence will have been noted by the congregation as will all of her doings. A newcomer to the village her household is under assessment. The issue today will not be the whereabouts of a child or why he croaks like that, poor lad, it will be why a widow of six months wears brown instead of black.

Owen didn’t want her in black. ‘If anything should happen to me while I am away promise me you’ll not wear widows’ weeds. I do like glossy shades of black but only when worn by a bird or a bear. You are neither.’

The keeping of this particular promise hasn’t been easy. Even on campus where the modern scholar disowns God in favour of Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution the absence of black raises eyebrows. The day they were due to leave the Bursar’s wife came to call. Julia said they were to stay in London. The Bursar’s wife was doubtful. ‘I went with my Papa. London is a big city. One could easily lose one’s way.’ She’d then offered a parcel. ‘Here you are my dear, a black alpaca skirt and a half-crown. The skirt may serve until you purchase your own.’