Hope (75 page)

‘I can say it for I was with her through thick and thin,’ Nell said firmly. ‘I loved her; I would have done anything for her, and I think I knew her better than anyone. She didn’t want to be an old lady, she’d settled everything, and I think she was happy to go. Maybe William did come back for her. There was a lot of love between them despite all the problems they had. So we should be happy for her.’

‘Would you like to see her now?’ Rufus asked, biting back tears. ‘I was going to get Jane Calway in to lay her out later, and then we’ll bring her down here.’

‘Let me lay her out,’ said Nell, her voice as soft as a prayer. ‘I know how she liked her hair, how she’d like to be dressed. And I’d like to say my goodbyes that way.’

‘Of course, Nell.’ Rufus wiped his eyes on his sleeve. ‘Shall Hope and I go out while you do it?’

Nell nodded. ‘Yes, you go for a walk, I’d like to be alone with her.’

Rufus and Hope walked in silence into the woods. The trees were bare, and the recent heavy rain had swollen all the streams so they gushed over rocks, making a beautiful, peaceful sound.

‘All the times we came here as children, we never knew we were brother and sister,’ Rufus said sadly as he threw stones into a stream. ‘I was miserable because Mother and Father were always arguing; you had Albert to contend with. Now they are all gone, it’s just you and me, back here again. I’m a farmer, and you’re a mother yourself. And the troubles go on and on.’

‘Not for ever,’ Hope assured him. ‘Bennett will come home, I’m sure, and you can get married now. There’s nothing to stop you.’

‘Maybe in the spring,’ he said lethargically. ‘That is, providing Bennett is back, because I’d want you there at my wedding, happy again. Was it a mistake to let Nell lay Mother out? I’ll wager she’s crying over her!’

Hope nodded. ‘She’s as good at holding in her feelings as she is at keeping secrets. But now the secrets are out there’s no reason not to let the feelings out too.’

Nell was indeed crying. She had stripped off Lady Harvey’s night dress, washed her from head to foot, and put on her undergarments through a veil of tears.

It felt so strange to be back in the bedroom which had been a source of such unhappiness, but it was no longer a stark, sterile space, for Lady Harvey had filled it with frippery. She might have lost all her old belongings in the fire, and only worn mourning since then, but Nell had to assume her sisters had sent her some of their old things.

A pink velvet dressing-gown was tossed over a button-back chair by the window; there were pretty hat boxes piled up, and an array of perfumes, necklaces and combs for her hair on the dressing-table.

The bed itself was a beautiful carved mahogany one which matched the dressing-table, and the carpet on the floor was as fine as any Nell remembered in Briargate.

Dressing her mistress now she was dead was like dressing a life-size doll, and it grieved Nell to see how thin she’d become. Her breasts were little more than loose flesh, and her hip-bones jutted out through her petticoats. But Nell put two rolled-up stockings into the top of her camisole to give her more shape, then went to the wardrobe to look for a dress.

They were nearly all black, but right at the back she found a turquoise one. She guessed that Lady Harvey’s vanity had got the better of her sense of decorum at some time since her husband died, for it had always been her favourite colour.

An hour later Nell stood back to admire her work. The dress had long sleeves and a high neck, and she’d padded it a little on the hips to give it a good shape. Gauze pads inside her lady’s cheeks had filled them out perfectly, and with a little rouge she’d managed to bring youthful radiance back to the once beautiful face. Even her eyelashes had been given a smudging of ink to darken them. Nell thought the hair was her very best achievement, for she’d taken it up over hair pads so it looked fuller, and fastened it becomingly with two artificial rosebuds. With a few tendrils curled around her face to soften the gauntness, and gloves on her hands to hide the cruelty of age, she could pass for thirty again.

‘You look beautiful, my lady,’ Nell whispered. ‘Rest in peace. I’ll be watching over both your children.’

She tried to suppress her tears, for it seemed ridiculous that she should still care so much for this foolish, self-centred beauty. But such a large proportion of their two lives had been spent together, and everything Nell knew about society, fashions, love and marriage came from Lady Harvey. She’d been to grand shops in London with her, to concerts in Bath, to country houses ten times larger than Briargate. They’d ridden together on the Great Western train, and even shared a bottle of champagne on many an occasion.

‘And I ended up with Angus,’ Nell whispered. ‘I know he can never love me the way he loved you. But I’m in his house and in his heart. Thank you for that, my lady.’

Hope and Rufus looked down at Lady Harvey and tears rolled down their cheeks. To both of them the clock had been turned back and she looked just how they remembered her from when they were children.

‘Sleep peacefully, Mother dearest,’ Rufus whispered as he bent to kiss her cheek. ‘And thank you for giving me a sister.’

Chapter Twenty-seven

‘What are you doing?’ Nell yelled from the kitchen as Hope opened the front door and a squall of icy rain blew in. ‘You can’t go out, it’s pitch dark and you’ll catch your death of cold.’

But Hope could hear nothing but the voice inside her head telling her to run.

Once out on the road she ran headlong down the hill. The driving rain was so heavy that she was soaked to the skin within seconds and she lost one of her slippers in thick mud, but all she was aware of was her own misery and the need to end it.

The day had begun with torrential rain, and Hope had a sinking feeling that such weather on the day of Lady Harvey’s funeral was a portent of worse things to come.

The cab which took her and Nell to Compton Dando had a leaky roof, and by the time they’d got to the church both she and Nell were wet through. Their umbrella blew inside out in the high wind as they got out of the cab and the church was so cold their teeth were soon chattering.

The church was full, the front few pews all taken up by gentry, some of whom Hope recognized as people who had called at Briargate in the past. Nell whispered that the rest were Dorvilles, Lady Harvey’s family from Sussex, most of whom she’d met on her trips down there.

But the bulk of the congregation were ordinary people from the surrounding villages and their wet clothes created a steamy, evil-smelling fug. Hope recognized a great many faces from her childhood. The Nicholses, the Webbs, Boxes, Pearces, and Calways, all so much older now and all looking as cold and uncomfortable as she herself felt.

Rufus, Matt, Joe and Henry carried the coffin in on their shoulders, Rufus’s blond hair standing out like a beacon against the Renton darkness. The wreath of holly and Christmas roses on the top of the coffin seemed to Hope to be too stark for Lady Harvey, who had always favoured flamboyant flowers. But she had to suppose that in December it wasn’t possible to get anything more colourful.

The Reverend Gosling seemed to have shrunk since Hope last sawhim and his voice was quavery and uncertain throughout the service. When he spoke of Lady Harvey it was as if he had no memory of when she was a young and vivacious woman, but had only met her after Briargate was burned down when she was frail and disturbed.

Even the hymns were gloomy, tuneless ones, which Hope knew Rufus would never have chosen.

Hope had not expected to be uplifted by this service, yet she had thought she’d gain some kind of comfort that her true mother’s earthly struggles were over, and that she had gone on to a better place. But there was no comfort in this cold, pitiless rite, not even a few well-chosen words spoken with some emotion by a family member.

When they moved outside for the interment, the strong wind, driving rain, and the mud underfoot made most of the village people scurry for the shelter of the Crown Inn without so much as a thought for the final words at the graveside. Hope saw Rufus’s desolate expression and she knew he felt his mother had been slighted.

Hope herself was emotionally confused for she wasn’t sure which camp she belonged in. She was aware that many of the village people had already lost a day’s wages to come and pay their last respects to Lady Harvey; to also expect them to risk their health by standing in pouring rain was perhaps asking too much. Yet she was very disappointed as she had expected, and perhaps needed, to see a huge outpouring of grief from everyone today. But to want that seemed ridiculous; she’d scarcely shed a tear herself, and in fact only the previous night she’d been nasty enough to remark that she sawno good reason why anyone in the village should attend the funeral.

Nell had been outraged at that, but Hope had pointed out that Lady Harvey had never done anything for the villagers, not even back in the days when she and Sir William had been wealthy.

Yet the sight of the yawning grave, already half-full of rainwater, suddenly made her feel utterly bereft. Taking Nell’s arm firmly, she drew her through the ranks of women holding black-edged handkerchiefs to their eyes and ignored their sharp, disapproving looks. Maybe they didn’t think anyone but gentry should come so close to the grave, but Hope felt she and Nell had the right to be among the chief mourners.

As the Reverend Gosling intoned the last words of the burial service, Hope looked down at the polished oak coffin with its brass handles and plaque bearing the inscription ‘Lady Anne Harvey, 1806–1855’, and thought of the burials in the Crimea. There were no coffins for those brave men; often their boots and clothing were snatched before they were even cold. They would be shoved unceremoniously into mass graves, the only marking a roughly made cross which would probably be lost in the first storm. Bennett, who had spent his whole life caring for others, might be in such a grave, while Lady Harvey could sleep for eternity next to her husband, marked by a marble headstone.

Hope was reminded too of the day they buried Meg and Silas Renton and how abandoned and angry she had felt then. Their grave was over by the churchyard wall, next to Prudence and Violet, with only the smallest and simplest of headstones. She remembered with a pang of conscience that she always felt jealous when Meg came here to put flowers on the children’s grave.

Yet the incident which set off Hope’s rage came later. Lady Harvey’s two sisters were standing in the shelter of the lychgate waiting for their carriage and Nell went over to them to offer her condolences. To Hope’s astonishment and outrage, they brushed her aside as if she were a beggar asking for money.

To Hope it was unbelievable they could be so callous as Nell had met the sisters before on innumerable occasions and had even attended both their parents’ funerals. Hope almost ripped into them, telling them that Nell had been far more than a loyal servant, she was also Lady Harvey’s one true friend. But angry as she was, she was aware that once she started she might very well follow it up with a loud proclamation that she was in fact their niece. Knowing that such an admission would only distress Rufus, Nell and her other brothers, she forced herself to turn her back on those women and lead Nell away.

The wake was being held at Hunstrete House, and it was very clear that common folk like the Rentons wouldn’t be welcome there. Rufus came running after them as they made for their waiting cab to go home, but Hope told him they had to get back for Betsy.

The bleakness in his eyes told her he understood the real reason they were leaving, and she urged him to go back to his relatives for a while, then perhaps join them later at Willow End.

The journey back seemed endless, and when they reached the mill at Chewton the river had burst its banks, flooding the road. The horse was reluctant to go through the swirling water at first, and Hope had visions of being forced to retreat and take the long way home. But fortunately he moved with a touch of the whip, and eventually they arrived home, very wet and chilled to the bone.

Betsy was screaming fit to burst because she hadn’t liked the milk Dora had tried to give her while they were out, and she latched on to her mother’s breast like a leech before Hope could even change her wet clothes. And Nell kept going on and on about the funeral and the sisters who had been so hurtful.

‘I shouldn’t have spoken to them,’ she said with a quiver in her voice. ‘It was my own fault, they probably blame me for everything as Albert was my husband. Of course they wouldn’t have wanted the likes of us up at Hunstrete.’

‘What on earth do you mean by “the likes of us”?’ Hope snapped indignantly. ‘We are all better mannered than that stuck-up lot. Sir William took Albert on, it was he who allowed the man to run the place, and therefore his own fault things went badly. I despise those sort of people – who do they think they are? I pity poor Rufus having to suffer an hour or two with them, he’d have been better off in the Crown with our boys who at least care about him.’

‘I saw them all looking at Matt, Joe and Henry. They didn’t think it was fitting they were carrying her coffin.’

‘Are they numbskulls?’ Hope exploded. ‘Matt rescued Lady Harvey from the burning house, all three of them spent the whole night trying to put out the fire, and they’ve done countless jobs for her without ever expecting payment. Who could be more fitting? And who else would have done it? Most of that family are too decrepit to wipe their own backsides.’

‘You mustn’t say things like that,’ Nell exclaimed. ‘You should showthem some respect.’

Hope launched into a bitter tirade about the upper classes, including the fools of officers she’d met out in the Crimea. It was only when Nell began to cry that she stomped off to her bedroom with Betsy. But she had no intention of apologizing to Nell, for why should she? It was all true.

It seemed to her that she had no ‘place’. She had got too much spirit and fire to be anyone’s lackey, and she couldn’t ever pass for gentry because of how she’d been brought up. Even if Rufus was to acknowledge her publicly as his sister, that wouldn’t change anything. They would just tag ‘bastard’ on to her name, ‘fly blow’, or any of the other ugly words they used for illegitimate children. The Dorvilles wouldn’t want to be associated with her, and after seeing them today she wouldn’t want to lay claim to being related to them anyway.