The Reckoning (39 page)

She laughed too. 'Now I know you're funning!'

‘
But I assure you! If only France had had our English
weather, their revolution might never have happened. A wet
summer or two might have kept old Louis XVI on his throne.’

*

Héloïse drove herself back from the village, where she had
been distributing advice and help to what had become the
usual number of families in want. She remembered John
Anstey saying that they would be glad to say goodbye to 1816:
for her, 1817 was already giving as much trouble.

Yet there was comfort in nature: today was the first really
spring-like day, when the mildness of the air matched the
tender colour of the sky. The black thorn hedges that marked
the track and sheltered it from the prevailing wind were
beginning to be blurred with the surprising, bright green of
new shoots; and under them the primroses were opening
amongst their clusters of oval leaves, like pale eggs in frilled,
green nests.

In the fields beyond the hedges the sheep were grazing
intently on the delicious new grass; and the early lambs,
instead of huddling together for warmth, were stretched out
on their sides like small fallen clouds to enjoy the sunshine.
The renewal of growing things every year was like a renewal
of hope. However hard the winter had been, it was always
possible to go on.

She came to the bend of the track, where the clump of
twisted trees hid the view beyond. She slowed the ponies for
the turn, and as they rounded it, she stopped them, as she had
got in the habit of doing lately, for the first view of the house.
It was still a shock, every time, for her mental eye carried a
picture of Morland Place that only years would eradicate; and
it was reality, fitting so ill against that image, that her mind
wanted to reject. The house looked so lopsided without its
chimney; and its outline was foiled and cluttered by the ugly
scaffolding, and by the piles of rubble and building materials
on what had been open greensward.

Even so, it was better than it had been, presenting at least
the hint of order being imposed upon chaos; and it was the
chaos, almost more than anything, which had been so hard to
bear. She didn't think she would ever be able to forget the
heartbreaking, defeating mess in what had been the kitchen,
for instance. Plaster-dust and soot covered every surface,
drifting in choking clouds, cloaking the catastrophic piles of
rubble, stones, crumbled mortar, tiles, moss, dead leaves,
twigs, twisted pieces of lead, pot-shards, broken glass, metal
and splintered wood. The night before the disaster, the room
had been left scoured and cleaned to perfection as usual,
every shining pan and spoon hung in its accustomed place, the stone floor washed spotless, the tables scrubbed white.
Héloïse would never forget her cook, Monsieur Barnard,
standing there the next day, staring at it all, his face blank
and white, too utterly shocked even for tears.

John Skelwith had said that the chimney must have been
fatally weakened by the fire a year ago, which had been a particularly bad one, and had spread to the chimney of the North
Bedroom, which was in fact a subsidiary flue of the main
kitchen chimney. Héloïse had hastily denied it, and John,
probably understanding her concern, had not repeated the
suggestion.

Yet Barnard was not a stupid man: probably he had
thought of the same thing himself. He had borne his exile in
his 'field-kitchen', as James called it, meekly at first,
managing somehow to feed the family and the servants under
very difficult circumstances. The estate outworkers had taken
the house-servants home to dinner with them on a rotation
basis to ease the strain, and kind neighbours had sent up pies
and hams and other useful supplies in the most generous
manner. But Barnard's temper had been more than usually
erratic of late, probably because he blamed himself for the
whole terrible incident.

‘
But you know, in any case,' Skelwith had said, 'that
chimney was much too high. You don't need a chimney of
those proportions nowadays. You could look upon it as a sort
of blessing in disguise: now you can have the whole kitchen
rebuilt and made beautifully modern and convenient.’

He didn't mean to be tactless; but even leaving aside the
death of Edward, and acquainted as she was with the coy
nature of the average blessing, Héloïse felt that this one was
masking itself unusually well. A large part of the chimney had
fallen into the moat, not only blocking it, but, it was
discovered, damaging the retaining wall below water-level. Water had started to leak into the cellars; half the moat had
had to be sealed off and drained for repairs to be carried out.

Because that was the more urgent work, the rebuilding had
to take second place. Héloïse sighed. It seemed that for
months now, their mouths and hair had been filled with grit
and dust, their hands and clothes permanently dirty, without
any progress having been made towards ending the situation.
And washing was such a problem, even though the
kennelman spent every spare moment boiling up hot water in
the coppers in which he cooked the hounds' pudding. It was time and past time for the great annual cleaning, but though
Héloïse's housewifely soul yearned for it as a dying man for
water, it would clearly have been as nonsensical as impossible
to attempt anything of the sort in the present conditions.

A flicker of movement caught her eye and she turned her
head to see that a robin had flown down onto the curve of the
dashboard, and was eyeing her speculatively, a green cater
pillar dangling from its beak. He must be feeding his mate
as she sat on their eggs, she thought. She smiled, and the
robin was gone; but it had reminded her of spring again.
Regeneration, renewal, hope. Whatever was made could be
mended — that was a saying in these parts.

And the tragedy had not been entirely unproductive of
good. It had changed James, for instance, in a way that could
only be for the good of them all. She had known him for
twenty-four years, since he was a young man, and there had
always been a vein of restlessness and discontent about him.
It was that which had led him into all the mistakes he had
made, had caused him to do things that hurt not only him,
but all those around him, and had shadowed even his happy
times. She had never had any idea why he was the way he
was; she supposed it was the way the Creator had chosen to
make him, but it had always saddened her.

Yet since the death of Edward, it seemed to have disap
peared. She sensed it; she knew it in some atavistic way that had nothing to do with intellect. It was as though a lingering
infection that had gone on half-healing and breaking out
again, year after year, was suddenly, miraculously gone.
James, who had always idled and pleasured and fretted his
way through his life, was now heartbreakingly busy from
morning till night, shouldering the tasks and responsibilities
which had been his brother's in addition to his own, and it
had been the making of him. The discontent and destructive
self-criticism were gone; he was simply too tired at the end of
the day for reflection or analysis. If it existed at all,
that
was
John Skelwith's true 'blessing in disguise'.

The estate people knew it, too. At first they had come
reluctantly, calling him by the cadet title of
Maister James,
and referring wistfully to what Maister Morland had always
done about this, what he had always said about that; and
looking mulish at any proposal not hallowed by centuries of
use. But as James had taken up the slack, they had seen, with
surprise in some cases, that this small and handsome man —
the popular one of the family, the 'best horseman in the
Ridings' and 'a devil wi' the ladies' as he had always been
known — was big enough to fill Edward Morland's shoes. Now
they called him simply
Maister,
the title of honour, and they
came to him willingly, with that sturdy, judicious respectfulness which made the English lower orders so different from
the peasantry of other countries.

She had never been the Mistress of Morland Place in the
same complete sense that Jemima had been. She hadn't the
education or the intellect, for one thing, and though she loved
it as dearly as anyone could, she had not, after all, been born
or brought up there. She was the guardian of its spirit, that
was all. She had never been able to take the material decisions
about it — that had been left to Edward. Now James had
taken over that role from Edward, and he had usurped a little
of her function too. Well, she was happy that it should be so.

She thought that if Jemima could have seen what James was
now becoming, she would have been happy to leave every
thing in his hands.

The ponies were growing restless, and she shook the reins
and sent them on down the gentle slope towards the house.

As she entered the hall, Ottershaw came from his pantry to
take her hat and gloves from her, and she asked, 'Where is
your master?'

‘
He's in the steward's room, my lady. He did ask if you
would step in to see him on your return.'

‘
Very well,' she said happily, for it exactly coincided with
her own wishes. 'Has Monsieur Barnard begun the paupers'
soup for this week yet?'

‘I believe not, my lady.'

‘
I think we shall need more – another gallon, perhaps.
There are two more families gone onto relief. I shall come and
speak to him later; and Mrs Thomson shall tell us what roots
can be spared.'

‘Very good, my lady.’

She crossed the two halls and opened the steward's room
door, and stood for an instant looking with content at her
husband. His head was bent over the accounts, and the
slanting sunlight from the window picked out the sheen of
grey hairs over the fox-brown. There was a stack of ledgers to
either side of him, and he had ink on his fingers and his cuff.
The end of the bar of light fell across the floor to touch the
rim of the basket by the hearth, in which a brindled hound-whelp was sleeping in the absolute manner of puppies, too
deeply to have heard her come in. Its name was Kai, and it
was one of Tiger's great-grandchildren. A smile touched her lips. Soon, she thought, he would take to wearing shapeless
brown coats, and drinking beer for breakfast instead of
coffee.