Netherwood (4 page)

I
t had surprised and pleased the earl that his wife had raised no insurmountable objections to his plans for the twenty-first birthday celebrations of their eldest son Tobias. Given her aversion to encouraging the masses, he had expected an attack of the vapours at the suggestion that a party should be held on a scale never before seen in Yorkshire. There would be thousands of guests, from the highest-born aristocrat to the lowliest tenant. Clarissa had only insisted that there must be strict segregation, and her husband had agreed; even Teddy Hoyland couldn’t countenance the Duke of Devonshire stripping the willow with a Netherwood scullery maid. But nevertheless every family, however mighty or humble, would receive the same embossed invitation to the party, which would take place in June.

He was immensely pleased with the prospect, which was more than could be said for the birthday boy. Tobias Hoyland, made in his father’s image, was although absolutely not cut from the same cloth. There was a long list of things in life that Toby enjoyed – girls, clothes, horses, beer, baccarat, dancing – and very few things he disliked. But one of them, and the thing he loathed above all else, was being obliged
through birth to do what he didn’t wish to. If only, thought Tobias, he could swap places with Dickie and be second son. All the privilege and none of the obligations. When Dickie’s twenty-first dawned, there’d be a family breakfast and a glass of fizz and that would be that – lucky devil. Toby, on the other hand, would have to endure a veritable festival of a celebration populated by thousands of people he’d never seen before and would never see again. He knew how it would play out, too. He’d be stuck indoors at a banquet with the blue bloods, while under his nose but out of bounds would be the beer tents and the pretty girls. It was six months away and already it loomed like an endurance test, clouding the blue skies of his existence. When he allowed it to, as now, it put him quite out of sorts.

He was hemmed in by other people’s expectations, he fumed inwardly; cornered by his damned
noblesse oblige.
Even now he wasn’t able to do as he wished. He had assumed that his actual birthday, in ten days’ time, might at least be spent in London where the multitude of diversions would take his mind off his wretchedness. But no. His father had insisted that he remain at Netherwood because there was an air of excitement among the people, and Toby would be obliged to wave at them from the back of a motor car before he was free to please himself. The countess – in truth just as keen as Toby for the delights of London and the comforts of Fulton House – had agreed that as soon as duty was done, they would flee south. This, at least, was a crumb of comfort.

He was in the library, the best place for Toby to be when he didn’t want to be found, being the last place anyone would look for him. He sat crossways on a green leather wing chair, his long legs dangling over one arm, and he gazed morosely at nothing in particular. The past half hour had been spent aiming scrunched up balls of unused notepaper at a nearby waste bin, and the evidence of this sport lay in and around the target, as if a frustrated writer had tried and failed again
and again to frame the perfect letter. As a form of entertainment, Tobias had found it perfectly acceptable, and infinitely preferable to the alternative, which had been a site meeting with his father and the land agent at the newly-dug Home Farm cess pit. At the thought of it now, Toby’s face puckered in distaste. His father’s enthusiasm for the disposal of human waste seemed to him to be deliberately controversial, as if he was displaying to his family that, though he was an earl, he was first and foremost a countryman with a countryman’s tolerance for the stink of decomposing ordure. Well, if he expected Toby to fall in behind him on his endless tours of duty, he could whistle for it.

A squeal followed by a sharp bark of laughter outside stirred him from his mutinous lethargy. In a moment he was out of the armchair and crossing the library towards the window; if there was merriment to be had, Tobias was your man. At first, with his face pressed against the glass, he saw only the usual dull vista of neatly swept gravel and serene swathes of lawn. There it was again though: a breathless squeal of laughter, evidence that there was the possibility of amusement on this dreary Wednesday morning. Tobias frowned, looking this way and that for the source of the fun. And then his face broke into a great grin because all in a rush and none too steadily, his older sister Henrietta travelled past the window on a large, black bicycle, her expression grim with concentration as she tried to keep her balance, momentum and dignity intact. The squealing, Tobias discovered, came from Isabella who, somehow released by her governess, ran behind her big sister, red-faced with the effort of keeping up and clutching at her skirts in a manner most unbecoming to a fine young lady of eleven years old.

Tobias hammered on the pane. ‘Bravo Henry!’ he shouted. She turned to look at him – big mistake – and started a wobble from which she had no hope of recovery. By the time Tobias
appeared on the path outside, she was on the ground with the bicycle on top of her. She made no attempt to get up, however, but lay rather contentedly on the gravel, making the most of the unscheduled break.

‘Good God, what happened there?’ Toby said, standing over her. He hauled the bicycle upright then held out a helping hand which, for the moment, she declined.

‘You distracted me,’ Henrietta said. ‘It seems I can’t steer, work the pedals and look over my shoulder at the same time.’

‘So it’s my turn now,’ said Isabella. ‘As you fell off.’

Henrietta shook her head.

‘Scram,’ she said.

Isabella considered tears but opted for a scowl instead, Henry being in general immune to waterworks.

‘Don’t you have some French to translate or flowers to catalogue, Izzy?’ said Tobias, in a conciliatory tone. ‘If Perry catches you out here she’ll have your guts for garters.’

Isabella knew he spoke the truth. Miss Peregrine had taught them all at various stages in their lives, and while she was kind enough when obeyed, she could show a heart of flint when her instructions were flouted. She’d left her reluctant charge alone in the schoolroom with a variety of irregular verbs and the ominous promise of a short test in half an hour. But, like Toby, Isabella had seen Henry through the window, and the bicycle had proved too great a distraction to keep her at her books. Anyway, Isabella had reasoned to herself, as she had no plans ever to visit France, indeed could only imagine herself in either Netherwood or London, the point of mastering the language was lost on her. Mastering the art of bicycling, on the other hand – now there was a useful pursuit. But now she was being thwarted; Henry and Toby were being beastly and Perry’s wrath was a fearful thing. She glowered as she flounced away. Tobias returned her scowl with an amiable grin.

‘Au revoir, ma chérie. À bientôt,’
he said.

‘Gosh, well done,’ she said, without turning. ‘Sum total of your command of French, all in one go.’

Henrietta laughed, if a little grudgingly. As a general rule she tried not to encourage Isabella, who in her view lacked the firm parental control that she herself had been subject to at the same age. The youngest Hoyland offspring was indulged and precocious, the undisputed darling of the earl, with the capacity – indeed the tendency – to be what the household staff, in the privacy of their own quarters, called ‘a proper handful’. It piqued Henrietta, for example, that the child had been dining with the adults since she was ten, and often ended the meal on her father’s lap as he popped
petit fours
into her open mouth. The rest of them – Henrietta, Tobias and Dickie – had all been confined to nursery suppers until well past their twelfth birthdays and when they finally graduated to the dining room it was backs straight, elbows off the table, and woe betide you if you spoke out of turn. However, Henrietta found little support when she voiced this particular complaint to her brothers, both of whom claimed they would still rather be eating shepherd’s pie with Nanny than enduring the tedious ritual of family dinners.

Henrietta stood now, unaided by Toby. She was as tall as her brother, though there the resemblance ended because she was the only one of the four Hoyland siblings who possessed none of the physical characteristics of either their father or mother. Isabella was the countess in miniature, a doll of a child with an adorable cupid’s bow mouth which was always primed and ready to pout. Toby and Dickie each shared the earl’s sandy hair, high complexion and distinctive, pale-blue eyes. Henry, on the other hand, was simply herself; thick blonde hair, which tended to unruliness despite the best efforts of her maid, eyes more green than blue, and a determined set to her mouth and chin which gave an outward indication of her personality. Some people thought her beautiful, others
thought her plain, while Henrietta herself thought the matter barely worth consideration. This blithe indifference was of grave concern to her mother, and four seasons after her society debut Henrietta was still resolutely single; she attracted suitors but then would somehow, infuriatingly, turn them into friends. The countess was at a loss: she herself had married at twenty and was considered one of the great beauties of her age. It was said that Clarissa once caused an orchestra to stop playing when she walked into a ballroom, such was her beauty. No one would ever stop what they were doing to stare as Henrietta passed, but no one ever forgot her after they had met.

The gravel had left imprints in her palms and there would probably be bruising from her impact with the ground, but she’d suffered worse many a time when riding. She dusted her skirts and smiled at her brother.

‘Have a go?’ she said, indicating the bicycle which he was still holding upright.

‘Whose is it?’

‘Parkinson’s. Isn’t that a scream?’ The two of them enjoyed for a moment an imagined snapshot of the butler, revered in the household for his dignity and rectitude, wobbling along on two wheels. ‘It’s for his health, apparently,’ said Henrietta. ‘Modest exertion to quicken the pulse.’

‘Good Lord, I can think of more interesting ways to quicken the pulse than this,’ said Tobias.

‘Doubtless. But you’re you, and Parkinson’s Parkinson. Any pulse quickening on his part has to be morally defensible. Go on, have a go.’ She stepped back to allow Tobias a clear run. ‘Be bold and forthright as you begin with the pedals. He who hesitates falls off.’

Tobias swung his right leg over the saddle and settled himself into position. Then he pushed off strongly with his left foot and began to move, precariously at first but more securely as he gained momentum, away from the front of the house.

‘Oh I say! Well done,’ called Henrietta.

She stood, hands on hips, and watched him go, and Toby, with the confidence of one who knows he is watched and expects to be admired, raised an arm and waved it in triumph. Henry realised that her own experiment with the bicycle was clearly over, though she didn’t begrudge Toby in the least; it was an unnatural contraption in her view, and in any case she had a date with Dickie in the stable yard in thirty minutes to canter out to the top coppice and back before luncheon. Much more fun. She turned and ran back into the house to change.

Meanwhile Tobias, pedalling furiously up the gentle incline of Oak Avenue, had had the sudden, marvellous thought that if he carried on all the way into Netherwood he might pay a social call on a certain warmly pliable barmaid, the latest in a succession of local girls to delude herself into believing that a willingness to please the young heir to the Netherwood fortune might result in a wonderful, glamorous twist of fate. Tobias smiled at the thought of her, even as he puffed at the effort of keeping the pace of his forward and upward trajectory. It was all that talk of pulse quickening, he thought to himself. Henry’s fault entirely.

A
rthur Williams had a miner’s build. He wasn’t tall, but he was strong, and his power was concentrated in his torso and arms, the parts of his body that needed strength for hewing coal from a seam. He could walk the mile-and-a-half to chapel with Seth on his shoulders and Eliza and Ellen in each arm, and never have to pause for breath. He always said he could carry Eve along with the children, but she never gave him the chance to try. She didn’t doubt it though. He was barred from the bell-and-mallet game when the feast came to New Mill Common, because four years ago the prizes had run out as Arthur delighted the crowd and infuriated the owner by hitting the sweet spot with every easy blow.

It was his strength that had drawn Eve to him in the first place; his strength and his steadiness, certainly not his looks. He had the Williams ears, jutting out like jug handles, and rather forbidding dark eyebrows which gave him the appearance of being cross when he wasn’t. But Eve, the most beautiful lass at the chapel dance, had looked at no one else after Arthur sauntered into her life. She knew instinctively, without any promises from him, that he would love her and provide
for her and keep her out of harm’s way. It was the feel of his hand on the small of her back as they moved together around the dance floor, and the directness of his gaze when he looked at her; she was reassured by him, without words, that after a childhood and adolescence racked by poverty and uncertainty, all would now be well.