Replenish the Earth (25 page)

* * * *

When Sarah told Will that she thought she was with child, she saw tears rise in his eyes. ‘Are you - pleased?’ she asked.

For answer, he hugged her close and buried his face in her soft hair. ‘Nothing could please me more, nothing!’ he said when he’d recovered from his unmanly weakness. ‘You’ve given me everything a man could desire.’

She had completely stopped trying to flout Will’s orders that she was to do no heavy work, because she was afraid of doing anything to harm the child. She felt well enough, apart from a slight queasiness in the  mornings, which usually wore off by ten o’clock and which Jessie said was only to be expected, but she had to admit to herself that she was somewhat anxious about what lay before her. Twenty-nine was old to be having one’s first child, very old indeed to be facing such a dangerous experience. She knew as well as anyone the risks women ran every time they gave birth.

So when Will suggested casually one day that it might be as well to consult Dr Shadderby, because they didn’t want to take any chances, she agreed without the protests he had expected. Will was no fool. ‘Worried?’ he asked.

‘A little,’ she admitted. ‘At my age . . . ’ She shrugged and left the sentence unfinished, but he took her meaning at once.

‘If you were a cow, I should have no worries.’

She gaped at him. ‘Sh-shouldn’t you?’

‘No, none at all. You’re built nice and broad. It’s the narrow ones who usually have the trouble. I’d never buy a cow that’s narrow-built. I shouldn’t think women are all that different when it comes to calv - er - giving birth.’

She burst out laughing. ‘Then ’tis a pity I’m not a cow!’ But his words gave her comfort nonetheless. And the doctor also made her feel more confident, for he gave her an examination, then said the same thing, though he couched it in much more delicate terms.

Since Sarah had never had anything to do with babies and pregnancy, it was to Mistress Pursley that she turned for information and advice. Together the two women calculated the probable arrival date of the baby. Unasked, Jessie brought out the remains of Will’s baby clothes, which would serve as patterns for new ones, if nothing else. She also explained, with a countrywoman’s frankness, exactly what to expect, and advised Sarah to go and watch some of the farm animals giving birth if she wanted to see what it was all about.

The best midwife in the village was Mistress Bell and Jessie advised Sarah not to waste more good money on a doctor, but to trust herself to one who knew first-hand what it was like to give birth. 

‘Men don’t know about birthing!’ she scoffed. ‘How can they?’

But Will disagreed with this and commanded every member of the household, on pain of instant dismissal, to send for him the instant anything started. He would then ride over to fetch the doctor himself. Yes, he could see that they thought it funny that he was worrying about that now, when it was all months away, but he wanted it made plain from the start and let them just remember his commands when the time came.

‘Yes, Squire,’ said Mary, winking at Hannah. They all knew how embarrassed he was by this title.

He made an inarticulate noise and stamped out, leaving even serious-minded Hannah chuckling.

* * * *

The villagers might be starting to accept Will’s new status, but Edward Sewell naturally shared his father’s hostility to the Bedhams. He was a weasel-faced young man of twenty-five or so, with narrow shoulders and scrawny legs. In spite of his father’s mockery, he tried hard to figure as a gentleman of taste and refinement, but unfortunately, his tendency to overdress only emphasised his personal defects, and he could never understand why he did not get the respect he felt he deserved. In truth, he fitted neither into his father’s business life, nor into the life of a country gentleman, and so spent most of his time with his mother, who doted on him, or his tailor, who loved his open-handedness and offered him unlimited flattery in exchange.

One day, Edward encountered Sarah and Will on foot as he was riding through the village and, on an impulse which he was later to regret, deliberately rode through a muddy puddle near the pump and splashed them from head to foot.

In the old days, Will would have dared do nothing to avenge this deliberate insult, but this treatment of his wife made him see red. He wasn’t going to let a puke-stockings like Edward Sewell treat Sarah like that, especially in her condition! He ran forward and seized the horse’s reins. 

‘Get down off that horse at once and apologise to my wife!’

‘How dare you, fellow! Take your hands off my reins this minute!’

Will planted his feet firmly. ‘You’re going no further until you’ve apologised, and if you ever do such a thing as that again, you’ll feel a taste of my whip about your shoulders!’

Edward, as lacking in courage as he was in inches, took fright at the expression on Will’s face and slashed at him with his riding crop. Will tore it out of his hand and sent it whistling across the village green. ‘Let’s see how brave you are without a whip and a horse to use it from!’ he roared.

Faces began to appear at the windows and peer round corners. Sarah, watching aghast, saw Will seize the blustering young man by his embroidered coat sleeve and drag him down from his horse. 

‘Apologise!’

Even greater than his present fear of Will Pursley was Edward’s fear of what his father would do to him if he publicly apologised to a Bedham.

‘No!’ It was a squeak of despair, rather than a defiance.

The next moment Edward Sewell found himself being frog-marched across the village green, yelping and flailing ineffectually at his captor. His yelps grew shriller as he realised that their destination was the big stone trough of water outside the smithy, then they cut off abruptly as he was thrust into the greenish liquid that filled it and pushed right down.

Will didn’t wait for Edward to surface, spluttering and yelping, but marched back across the village green to slap the horse on its fat rump and send it galloping home to its stables. 

Those villagers who were fortunate enough to witness the incident laughed about it for years, and took great glee in telling and retelling the tale of this exquisitely humorous occurrence to those who had missed it. All were agreed that ‘It served’n right’ and that ’twere best not to get on the wrong side of that Will Bedham.’

‘Proper Squire he’s turnin’ into,’ they added with a grin. ‘Us’ll hev to watch what us do, eh, or us might end up in that old horse trough too.’ And they’d roar with laughter again.

Matthew Sewell went off into a near apoplexy when his shivering, dripping son squelched up the drive and spilled out his tale of woe. His face turned such a dark red that his wife froze in her seat. She had seen her own father die of a seizure and wouldn’t be unhappy if her husband followed suit. But she didn’t dare hope for this. Men like Matthew always seemed to escape scot-free from the consequences of their wrongdoing.

She worried constantly about whether she, too, would roast in hell, for Matthew had forced her to use her artistic skill to forge signatures on false debts on several occasions, and guilt for that lay heavy on her conscience. As the tirade continued, she clasped her hands together tightly to prevent them trembling.

‘You palsied maw-worm!’ Sewell roared at his son. ‘Can you do no better than splash the fellow with mud? And have you no more wit than to do it in front of witnesses? Next time, take a carriage and drive them down - but do it somewhere quiet, where there is no one to see!’

‘But Father, I . .. Pursley put me in the horse trough. Absolutely
ruined
my new coat! Aren’t you going to do anything about it?’

‘What can I do, you snivelling turd? You started it - you finish it! I’m not going to enter into litigation I haven’t a chance of winning. Think Tarnly would judge in favour of us, if we took Pursley to court for this? Eh? Do you?’

Several pokes with a bony forefinger emphasised this point and left livid bruises on Edward’s thin chest.

‘Well, I’ll tell you the answer to that, since you haven’t the wit you were born with,’ Sewell sneered. ‘Tarnly wouldn’t. So leave the men’s work to me and stay with your mother. She can wipe you wet arse for you! I have better things to do.’

Edward shuddered and looked across at her. She had her head bent over her embroidery as usual when his father was ranting on.

‘And stay out of the village for a week or two!’

Hugh, who had just come in, eyed his master’s son curiously.

Sewell ground his teeth, but they would find out one way or another. ‘Pursley tossed him in the horse trough.’

Hugh, a man of few words and only one loyalty, threw his master a puzzled look.

‘Don’t worry! We’ll make Pursley pay for that later. If we did anything now, they’d connect it to us, thanks to Master Piss-Breeches, here. So pay off those men you hired and tell them to come back in a week or two.’

‘Yes, Squire.’

‘And you, you jelly-brained fool, get out of my sight! How I sired a half-wit like you, I’ll never know! Or a gawking lump like your sister who can’t attract a decent husband! There must be bad blood on your mother’s side.’ The sight of his cowering son so angered him that he picked up an ornament and threw it at Edward, narrowly missing his head.

Edward ran out of the room like a startled rabbit and took refuge in his bedroom.

His mother stayed where she was, head bent, praying her husband wouldn’t turn on her now. And this time, at least, her prayers were answered.

* * * *

Lord Tarnly laughed so much at the tale of Edward Sewell’s ducking that he burst a button off his waistcoat.

Passing Mr Sewell senior in the street in Sawbury one day, he chuckled quite audibly and the words, ‘horse-trough, egad!’ floated back to further stoke that gentleman’s ire.

His lordship took great pleasure in repeating the tale on several further occasions during the next week or two to divers gentlemen friends over a glass of port. ‘Dumped him in the horse trough, damme! They say he was as covered in green weed as a water meadow. And since Bedham had sent Sewell’s horse galloping back to its stables, the fellow had to squelch all the way home! Damme, but I wish I’d been there to see it!’ 

So pleased was he with Will’s hasty act that Lord Tarnly insisted his wife invite the young couple over to dine with them. ‘Better show people we approve of the fellow. Not a gentleman, but a man after my own heart, damme, right after my own heart. And besides, her mother
was
my god-daughter. You won’t forget to invite them, will you, my dear?’ 

‘No, Henry, I won’t forget.’

He suddenly guffawed. ‘Perhaps we should buy another water trough for Sawbury. It might deter the Sewells from comin’ into town, eh?’ He nearly choked at the brilliance of this witticism, but his wife was growing rather tired of references to water troughs and did not so much as blink at it, so he eventually subsided.

* * * *

When the summons came to dine at Tarnly Hall, Will was fetched in from the fields and a conference hastily held. 

 ‘We’ll have to go,’ said Sarah. ‘We can’t refuse.’  

‘Dine with Lord and Lady Tarnly! Me!’ Will was horror-struck. ‘I wouldn’t know what to say or do with grand folk like that!’

‘You managed well enough when they came to our wedding.’

‘But - ’

‘We’ll
have
to go! It’s an honour to be invited. We have no choice in the matter.’

Will advanced a great many arguments as to why he could not go. He had no clothes fine enough for such a visit and they’d no money to buy new ones. He wouldn’t know what to talk about and would surely make a fool of himself, and that’d do no one any good, would it? He couldn’t leave the stock. It was her they wanted to see, anyway. Why couldn’t she go on her own?

Sarah was adamant, though she had hard work persuading him firstly that he’d have to go, and secondly, that he would definitely need to buy himself a good suit of gentleman’s clothes for the occasion. In the end, after consulting parson, he agreed to submit himself to this dual ordeal, and they drove into Sawbury together. But he had his sticking point and nothing she or the tailor said could persuade him either to purchase a wig or to cover his hair in flour! Some things a man could stomach, declared Will, folding his arms, and others he couldn’t. To walk around with flour all over your head was just plain silly, and he’d never do it. It was nearly as bad as shaving off your own hair and borrowing some from a horse!

In the event, the visit to Tarnly Hall went off better than anyone had expected. Her ladyship had very wisely invited only a few guests, and those carefully picked for their interest in agriculture. Will, primed by Mr Rogers not to try to appear anything he wasn’t, let the others do most of the talking and listened attentively, which offended no one. However, he did contribute one or two shrewd remarks about stock-breeding, which won him the accolade of being a sensible man and a forward-thinking farmer.

He also displayed perfect table manners, thanks to Sarah’s tuition, far better than those of his host, and since he was a rather good-looking fellow when properly dressed, if a trifle serious, that was enough to win the ladies’ approval too. Moreover, he didn’t drink to excess, a thing Lady Tarnly deplored in everyone but her husband.

‘Fellow shows a deal of sense,’ said his lordship afterwards. (Will had agreed with everything his host said about the political scene, being too unsure of the finer points to have any opinions of his own.) ‘We’ll invite ’em over from time to time from now on, eh?’

‘Certainly, my dear. The experience will do Mr Bedham good. He lacks somewhat in style and polish, but he cannot do better than to model himself upon you.’

‘And maybe I will buy that horse trough. What?’ He choked with laughter again.

She rolled her eyes at the ceiling and discovered pressing business elsewhere.

* * * *

After a week of seclusion, during which his mother’s tender care narrowly averted a cold settling upon his chest, Edward Sewell left the district, ostensibly to deal with some business affairs in Bristol for his father.