Theirs Was The Kingdom (34 page)

“What kind of woman is that?”

“You know very well what I mean. She’s a woman who would be attracted to a man mentally more than physically, someone who could do without one if she had to. Oh, I know very well that you think every woman in the world prefers a man of her own to the inside of Aladdin’s cave, but that’s only male vanity. It isn’t necessarily so at all. Your own Aunt Charlotte was one. I remember when I went to her seeking advice, of the kind I needed so badly at that time, she was absolutely scandalised. Not at my asking but at the notion of my thinking she could provide any of the answers.”

He said, chuckling, “If you plied my Aunt Charlotte with those kind of questions you deserved a Victoria Cross at least. The wonder is she didn’t upend you and lace your backside with a raspberry cane, the way she used to handle some of the saucy little madams who went to her school when I was a boy.”

“She probably would have done if she hadn’t been so embarrassed. But don’t sidetrack me. You should know Edith. She was madly in love with you for years. Did she ever strike you as the saucy type?”

It was his turn to think back on Edith Wickstead. “No,” he said, thoughtfully, “she was always out looking for something more lasting than a tumble in the bracken. She wanted to insure against lonely old age. She wanted children, too, and I’m glad she had the good sense to make the leap before it was too late. She’s a good wife and a good mother, I’m told, but the source of my information is prejudiced. Tom still looks at her like… well, damn me, that’s odd!”

“Like what? What were you going to say?”

“I was going to say ‘Like Denzil was looking at Stella when he put the ring on today.’ Did you notice it? Some would call it the Prince-in-the-Sleeping-Beauty look but he reminded me more of a newly landed salmon!”

“You’re insufferable,” she said, and reached out to turn the lamp screw, reducing the wick to a red glow. But then, as the glow faded and her eyes adjusted to the moonlight penetrating the curtain joint, she said “Yes, I noticed it, and any little difficulty that does arise while those two are getting used to one another is in that look. He’s a good, sturdy boy, but it must be an odd feeling to be worshipped like a goddess by someone twice your size and weight. I daresay Stella can cope with it, but I confess it would make me uncomfortable.”

She heard his sleepy chuckle and then, after a moment or two, his snore. The old feeling of escaping from everybody and everything stole over her, as it never failed to do when they were alone in this room in the dark and she thought, sleepily, “The first family wedding behind us… the first real wedding that is. And in two years Adam and I will be celebrating our silver wedding. With luck I’ll be a grandmother by then. I’ve earned my luck…” She turned, stealthily enlarging her sleeping space already invaded by him. As she settled, one arm across him, the other tucked under her cheek, she had another pleasant thought, “I don’t envy the young, as I once did… this is the best stretch of all… the middle stretch, when you know where you are going and why.”

5

Dusk had fallen before they had turned the horses loose in the pasture, still scarred with half-burned rubble. Stella was too excited to eat, but she stirred the log smouldering in the open grate so as to boil water for their cocoa. It was very pleasant, she reflected, to be able to do a simple, humdrum task of this kind, to work in one’s own kitchen, instead of someone else’s, or in the outhouse that had served as a kitchen for the last six months. Already Dewponds seemed more familiar than Tryst. Parts of its structure dated from the fifteenth century, but most of it was his creation and hers, so that the strangeness and the feeling of desolation she had experienced on her arrival at Courtlands as a bride did not trouble her now. Instead she pottered about happily, reminding herself every few minutes that she was mistress of the place in fact as well as name.

She understood, of course, that one hurdle lay ahead. Somehow—she was not clear how—his veneration of her would have to be moderated. Somehow she would have to teach him to take the initiative as master of the household and not defer, as he had been inclined to do ever since she had proposed to him, on everything pertaining to the establishment, even the purchase of new stock concerning which he knew more than she would ever know. There was so much to learn and he would have to teach her, but how did one convey this to a man stunned by the swift rush of events, from the moment he had picked her up and carried her over his threshold as far as the stairs?

Adoration, of the kind that stemmed from his every glance, was well enough during courtship, but she had no wish to reign here as a goddess or a fairy queen, waited upon by a chosen mortal, who moved and spoke as if he was under some kind of spell. He had reverted, in the last few days, to the gentle, dutiful boy who had plucked her out of that ditch all those years ago.

She thought about this seriously whilst she went about her unpacking and he was pottering about downstairs, doing some job that had been overlooked in the final stage of renovation. She accepted the fact that any significant advance in their relationship would have to be prompted by her, and she had a feeling that it had best be begun at once, before his shyness hardened into an attitude that could easily reverse the pattern of marriage. Her mother’s hints concerning physical submission were irrelevant in a situation of this kind. Ordinarily, she supposed, all that was required of a bride was passivity, but theirs was not an ordinary marriage, not by any standards. Denzil Fawcett—indeed, all the Fawcetts—had lived in the shadow of Tryst all their lives, and this was sure to inhibit him, apart from his evident difficulty in acknowledging the reality of his dream. In a way, she felt, she was like the Queen on the eve of the Prince Consort’s arrival at Windsor as bridegroom-elect. He might see any approach on his part as lese-majesty, and this simply would not do as a basis of marriage between master and mistress of a run-down farm. Before she knew it she would be acting out a parody of her life at Courtlands, this time with herself as the patron and Denzil as the hanger-on. The thought, whilst making her wince, hardened her determination to resolve the situation without delay. She went down to the kitchen, made the cocoa, and called his name so that he emerged from the dairy in his shirt sleeves, a saw in one hand, a square of plywood in the other, looking, she thought, more like a workman interrupted in a task than a groom whose word, from here on, was manorial writ.

She said, gently, “I’ve made the cocoa. I’m sure you won’t want any supper after all that food. I couldn’t manage a mouthful. I was too busy and excited to eat anything except cake. What on earth are you doing with that saw and piece of wood?”

He said, abstractedly, “I didn’t have time to put the dairy window in. I thought I’d board her up for the night and set about it in the morning.”

She could have laughed at this and told him that she did not propose spending the first night of her married life in the dairy, but she was learning something new about him every moment and assumed that he had only begun the task as an excuse to absent himself whilst she was unpacking a trunkful of feminine garments. Then it occurred to her, with relief, that he must be familiar with feminine garments, for he was a boy brought up in the company of a string of girls, whose small clothes must have fluttered from the clothesline every Monday since he was a child. This thought led her on to an acknowledgement that he must be equally familiar with mating, for he had never spent a day of his life out of sight of a byre or barnyard. She understood then that all that was really required on her part was some positive encouragement, of the kind she had given him the day they hung the door—a final but necessarily spirited attack on the class barrier that stood between them as two people reared in circumstances so widely separated by money, manners, and education. That and heaven only knew what else prescribed by the rigid county class structure that she had accepted as complacently as she accepted the passage of the seasons.

She said, drawing a deep breath, “Put that stuff away, Denzil. This is your wedding night.
My
wedding night. We’ve been working on this house for months and heaven knows, there’s still plenty to do. But not now and not for a day or so, seeing there’s no hope of a farmer’s wife having a honeymoon.”

He smiled, a little nervously she thought, but laid aside the saw and the piece of wood and took up his cocoa, sipping it as though it was a love potion she had prepared for him, avoiding her eye over the rim of the mug. She waited patiently for him to set down the mug before rising, crossing to him, and taking both his hands in hers.

She said, encouragingly, “Well, now, tell me what you thought of it all? Were you nervous waiting for me to appear at the church? Did all those people back at the house scare you?”

He replied, “Scare me? No, they didn’t. Not like I thought they might, for they weren’t grand folk, of the kind I expected. As to waiting at the church, by God I was scared an’ don’t mind admitting it.” He grinned and she accepted the grin as a slight thaw. “I kep’ thinking—‘she’ll like as not change her mind las’ minute, for it can’t be true, none of it!’”

It elated her that he should admit to this for it gave her the opening she was seeking. She said, “Then let
me
tell
you
something.
Two
things! First, Papa must have had it in mind that you would feel easier with his work people than the kind of guests he would likely invite to my wedding. He’s like you in that respect. I never did see him put on airs in all my life and those people he brought in from the network don’t either, for he wouldn’t keep them five minutes if they did. As to you acting as though I’ve conferred the greatest favour on you by marrying you, it’s very important you put that right out of mind, Denzil Fawcett! I love you very much. I’m happier now, at this moment, than I’ve ever been in the whole of my life. Will you please keep that very much in mind and something else along with it? It’s natural for you to feel the Swann family is still, well… looming over you, in the same old way, but it isn’t, not any longer. For now you belong to it, just as I belong in your family, and for my part I think I’ve got the better of the exchange. I really do, Denzil. I’ve never been involved in Papa’s business. None of us have, except perhaps my brother George. It’s always been ‘The Network’—something Papa concerned himself with, quite apart from our lives down here, but with Dewponds it’s different. I was about the place all the time you were rebuilding, so that already I
feel
a farmer’s wife. I feel a Fawcett too, more than a Swann, for the first day I came here, when it was all in ruins, was like being born all over again but with a new name and a different place in life. I’ll never cease to be grateful for that, or to you for letting me help and grow into the place, as if there had never been a time when I belonged anywhere else. But now it’s more than the kind of game I played with myself all autumn and winter. It’s real, and I’m part of it. I
am
Mrs. Fawcett, Mrs.
Denzil
Fawcett, of Dewponds, Leatford, in Kent, and it makes me very proud and very happy to be so! But I shan’t enjoy it if you go on treating me as if I was somebody in a dream and you were likely to wake up in a minute. Can you understand that, Denzil? It’s very important that you should, from the very beginning.”

He had been listening to her like a schoolboy having a lesson explained to him, and it seemed to her that she was making very little impression upon him. She was wrong, however, as she so often was about his power to reason. It was so easy to mistake his ponderous deliberation for stupidity, the way some of the wedding guests had done. He was very far from stupid. All he needed was time to mull over everything he saw and heard and sensed, and then evaluate it, in the way he would consider the potential of a stubble field, a cart horse, or a crossbred cow.

He proved as much by saying, “I can’t understand it right off. Or not like that. It’s too much in one helping, I reckon. But I’ll get around to understanding in time, though I don’t see myself as ever thinking of it as anything but the best slice of luck anyone like me could expect. Why wouldn’t I do that, seeing I never give a thought to another maid from the time I was fourteen? I reckon we all have our fancies, and like to think on how it would be if they come true. But you know all along they
are
fancies, and in my case, making you Mrs. Fawcett and bringing you here to bide as my wife, well, it’s like one of them miracles you hear about in the Bible. You read ’em but you can’t really believe ’em!”

He paused and frowned, as though the effort of putting such complex thoughts into words taxed him to the limit of his capacity; but then, quite suddenly, his expression cleared and he beamed down at her, almost indulgently. “However that may be, there’s things a grown man don’t
have
to think on and one of them is how it feels and what it does to have his arms round someone as pretty as you, the way I did back in February, the day we hung that door over there. And that goes back longer than I can tell you, to the day you rode up bold as brass under Shortwood, and put your arms round my neck and kissed me, just that once. I daresay you’ve forgotten that, but I never did and in a way it kept me hoping. Not much mind, but enough. Enough to make any other maid not worth a look.”

He had surprised her a little. It was common knowledge at Tryst that he had always mooned after her, but she had taken it for granted that, notwithstanding this, he had done his share of larking with village girls and the young women about his father’s farm.