‘Yes.’
‘All of it?’
‘Most of it.’
Rose put up her chin.
‘She’s made a good choice. Alistair’s a fine young man and Sunniside will be a pretty place for them to live. What a day.’ She went over and kissed him. ‘I know Frank wasn’t what we wanted for Madge but I have a feeling things will turn out well. She’s so happy and if his father doesn’t go and drink everything away they should be all right.’
‘He behaved very well and the Hall looked wonderful, thanks to you.’
‘Madge will make a very good mistress for the Hall and if Mr Harlington can stay sober he might even live to see his grandchildren,’ Rose said and they put out the lights and went upstairs to bed.
Fourteen
Alistair’s father had not wanted them to get married. It had made Annie all the more determined. In her presence he had shouted and called her ‘the bloody dairymaid’ and said that she was common and beneath them. Alistair had said nothing. He had learned over the years that shouting back only made things worse and Annie wondered if one of the reasons why he wanted to marry her was because he had known that his father would object. She did wonder at first how she would ever learn to live with Charles Vane when he was her father-in-law. Was he going to go on as though she was the muck behind the tractor and he was some lord of the earth? For comfort she and Alistair spent a lot of time up at the Hall. She envied Madge her happiness.
The old man had stopped drinking, Madge had hidden the cellar keys with his permission and the Hall was like a different place now. Frank had taught Madge to drive and she taxied his aunties around. She had got them into a bridge club and they went to tea with their newly-found friends. She worked hard in the old house and every time Annie went there good smells came from the kitchen. Sometimes Annie went and helped with the housework because there was so much of it and they couldn’t afford any help.
Mr Harlington had actually begun to work outside and now rode every morning for hours, greeting tenants he had scarcely seen for years. It was as though a light had fallen on the house.
Frank had gained a first class honours degree that summer and began work, teaching mathematics at the local grammar school. Unlike Charles Vane, Mr Harlington did not think it was beneath his son to work. He said that he was proud of Frank’s achievements and glad that he was making his own money. Annie secretly believed that Frank hated having to teach and make money but he was so happy at home and glad he could help that he put up with the teaching job.
She had seen the way Madge ran to the door when she heard his car turn in at the big gates. She would run outside, regardless of the weather, and hurl herself into his arms the moment he got out of the car.
She had secretly told Annie that there were huge debts run up because of the death duties when Frank’s grandfather drank himself into an early grave. Annie thought she had never seen people so happy when so financially encumbered.
Annie was excited at the idea of not having to live either with Alistair’s parents or her own. She had never imagined that they would have their own house so soon. Alistair’s home was modern and elegant but it held no appeal and she had thought that they would live at Western Isle when they were married.
Mr and Mrs Vane had finally accepted that Alistair would marry her and she had tried to think positively about being there but she did not understand how she would ever feel like more than a servant. She would keep edging towards the dairy and worry about the cows and – horrible thought – would they expect her to go on doing such things? Alistair assured her that they wouldn’t and he laughed but Annie didn’t think any of it was funny.
Some parts were good. He taught her to drive his car and although it wasn’t as easy as it looked she soon got the idea and Alistair began to complain because she had his car all the time.
Annie knew that her parents were very pleased about her marriage, her mother was now happy to have daughters married to two of the most eligible men in the dale though she didn’t like the Vanes as people.
‘You mustn’t let him bully you, Annie,’ she said though how Annie was to stop Charles Vane from doing to her what he did to everybody was not immediately apparent.
Annie hated going there. Mrs Vane made her feel shabby and if they had tea Annie dropped her teaspoon on the floor or spilt tea into her saucer. Mr Vane made her feel as though she ought to creep back to the dairy and get on with her work. She no longer worked there, she stayed at home and helped her mother and for the first time in her life was grateful for domesticity. Her home had become a refuge. Some days she didn’t want to get up at all, just hide under the bedclothes and pretend that she wasn’t going to marry Alistair or anybody else.
So the news that his father was buying them the little hillfarm was such a relief that all Annie wanted to do was go up there and claim it as hers.
It was a bright warm day. They had got up early and gone riding together and Alistair had come back to her mother’s hearty Sunday breakfast. Sunday had a special feel to it, tranquil and slow. They went to the little village church and there Annie thought about her wedding day and how happy she would be wearing the white dress which her mother had promised her. She would be Mrs Alistair Vane. She glanced sideways at him while she sang the last hymn, he was so tall and dark beside her and he was hers. She couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t think now that she had ever cared for Blake. It had been nothing but a childhood thing associated with memories. She thought of Blake teaching her to tickle trout in the summer river, carrying her home when she fell off her horse and hurt her leg. She thought of sitting by the fire with him reading and talking, walking up the fields in the twilight, riding home in the sunset slowly with the dale all around.
She dropped her hymnbook and bit her lip. He was not her farm boy any longer, some tall stranger in a suit with the same grey-blue eyes that Alistair turned on her now as she glanced at him before picking up her hymnbook with trembling hands.
Blake was hurt now, irreparably perhaps, and there was a part of her that had wanted to run after him, shouting.
When the service was over she walked out with Alistair into the fine morning and she knew that she had been right. Her future was here with him and her family. She couldn’t leave them and Blake didn’t belong here any more, he had no place.
They had their Sunday dinner and then she and Alistair drove most of the way to Sunniside until the track got too bad to take the car and then they left it and walked up the deeply rutted track, opening the gates as they went.
The Austins had, for some reason, not lived there long. The gates were heavy and fastened with string. The fields were neglected and overgrown. There had been no tenant at Sunniside for some time. When they came in sight of the little hillfarm she stopped and looked at it. Blake’s family had lived there for generations. His name was all over the churchyard. She thought of seeing Hannah Blake’s grave which was politely put away in one corner of the graveyard but it stood out in her mind’s eye. Hannah Blake who died at Sunniside, it said.
The small buildings were covered in sunlight. Annie thought of the girl dying there, she had been very young, dying of childbed fever or whatever it was, of having no husband and no future and of the disgrace of expecting a child when she had no man. She thought of Hannah growing Blake inside her, knowing how the people of the dale shunned such things. She thought of how Blake had gone away from the dale without saying goodbye to her and she stopped within sight of the house and thought how lucky she was compared to Hannah Blake and whether this had been a mistake. Alistair stopped too.
‘It’s a long pull up the hill,’ he said, ‘I’m going to have something done about that road. It’s no good if we can’t bring cars up.’
The little house was empty in a certain way, it was more than just vacant. There were ashes in the grate. Annie didn’t think much of Mrs Austin’s housekeeping. Blake’s granny would have had a spotless house. The rooms were covered in dust, the windows were thick with cobwebs and streaked with rain. The garden beside the house where Blake’s grandfather had grown produce was covered in weeds and out the back she found Bessie’s grave with a small stone marker and her name scratched on it.
‘Too many memories?’ Alistair said, coming up behind her.
She smiled brightly at him.
‘I was never here,’ she said.
‘Neither was I. I don’t think Blake ever had any friends.’
‘He was always working,’ Annie said.
‘Annie . . .’
‘What?’
He looked straight at her and then hesitated. ‘Nothing.’
‘Don’t say nothing like that. Tell me.’
‘You don’t regret it, do you, saying you’d marry me?’
Annie felt such a rush of love for him that she laughed. ‘Of course I regret it, you’re so little and ugly and simple-minded and impossible—’
He grabbed her and kissed her. Alistair Vane’s kisses were, Annie always thought, one of the reasons why God had created the world, they were so essentially wonderful.
‘But really, Annie,’ he insisted.
‘Really, I love you so much I think I’m probably going to die from being so happy.’
* * *
They pulled the insides out of the little house. It made Alistair shudder to think of it. The workmen trod all over the garden and broke a branch off one of the fruit trees so that he had to go around anxiously preventing more damage, sectioning off Bessie’s grave and the other trees. He didn’t say anything to Annie because for once she and his father were in agreement, the house must be brought up to date. Alistair thought of Western Isle and determined not to let that happen here.
There was a generator for the electricity, a new Rayburn was put into the kitchen. The old fireplaces were ripped out, the floors were pulled up and relaid. The walls were replastered. There was a brand new bathroom made by breaking in two the room where Alistair felt sure Blake had been born and Hannah had probably died.
The rooms were redecorated until there were more flowers inside the house than there could have been outside in the last hundred years. A bright new tiled fireplace gleamed in the little parlour.
Alistair decided that he’d had enough when she wanted in the house the kind of comfortless angled furniture he had at home. She was just like his father, she had no eye at all.
‘But Western Isle is like that,’ Annie said.
‘I know it is.’
They went out and bought a few good pieces of oak furniture.
‘I think you have taste,’ she admitted as they surveyed the big bedroom.
‘It’s more than could be said of some of us.’
Annie pretended to hit him and he gathered her into his arms and kissed her all over her neck.
‘Want to try the bed?’
‘No, I don’t.’
But he picked her up and carried her the few steps to it and put her down there without letting go and he pressed on her the kind of kisses which he knew Annie couldn’t say no to. She dragged her mouth free eventually and he stopped and released her.
‘I love you,’ he told her. ‘I think I’ve loved you all my life.’
‘As long as you love me all the rest of your life that’s what I care for.’
‘I will,’ he said.
Fifteen
The Sunday that Blake was not there it rained in Sunderland. Irene minded the rain. She minded everything when he was not there. She wished that she could have feigned an illness and stayed in bed but her father would have had none of that so she got up as usual and helped with the Sunday dinner, went to church with her father in the morning and went on as though nothing was the matter when in fact everything was.
Irene had spent a lot of time denying to herself that she liked Blake as anything more than a friend. She knew very well that he was not the kind of person her father would have wanted her to care for. She was not surprised that her father encouraged him to come to the house because from time to time he had taken to unsuitable people and encouraged them. He would not have thought that there was anything about Blake which attracted her.
In the first place he had no money, in the second he had no background of any kind. He had a rough accent, his clothes were worn, his manners were just average, he had no address and no confidence. He had looks of course but her father would not see that or the indefinable something which women liked. She did not think her father acknowledged that such things went on, not since her mother had died.
The trouble was that Blake had got better right from the start because he was intelligent. He learned quickly and not just work but how to dress neatly and modestly, how to talk to her father (and thereafter other people) and from being in their house he had learned about food and drink, manners and clothes, about books and newspapers and music and art, and there were some things he didn’t have to learn, his dark eyes, his smile and his bearing did the rest for him. She knew that her father had watched Blake improve and was glad with his progress, pleased that he had helped and happy to find somebody who would be what Simon would not be, willing to learn and to take part both at home and at the shipyard. Blake was the son that Sylvester wanted, she thought, though he would not have believed that. She also knew how fond of her father Blake had become. Her father did not see that she yearned for Blake’s company and she rather hoped that Blake could not see it especially now when he had gone home to ask the girl to marry him. She knew that he had, just by the look on his face. She had cried a lot that week though late and privately. To her father Blake was nothing more than a family friend, somebody to be entertaining on Sundays and to be relied on at work. He liked Blake’s influence on Simon because he rarely drank and never to excess and he seemed capable of keeping Simon out of trouble.
That Sunday Robert came to lunch and the rain stopped so that during the afternoon they went out into the garden. Robert was in a particularly good mood and chatted easily. She was glad he was there because Blake left such a space to her and she chatted back and comforted herself that next Sunday he would be there. Her father stayed inside and Simon had gone she didn’t know where.
‘I’d like to talk to you, Irene,’ Robert said.
‘I thought we were talking.’ She smiled at him. The garden was lovely in autumn with its leaves all turning different colours. There had been a frost the night before and the grass was still wet, showing like diamonds in the afternoon sunshine. She liked autumn best, the idea of fires and dark nights and Christmas. She thought of Christmas Day, the big tree in the hall, sitting down at the table with her father and Simon and Blake—
‘Particularly,’ Robert was saying. ‘I don’t see you alone often. I think you already know what I want to say. I’ve mentioned it to your father and he laughed at me for being formal but I wanted it that way. I want you to marry me, Irene. I love you and I think you’ll make me the perfect wife.’
Irene stared at him.
‘What?’ she said.
Robert looked startled.
‘It’s a shock to you? I thought you knew how I felt. We’ve spent so much time together recently. You do feel the same way? You must.’
She had a ridiculous impulse to be like heroines in old-fashioned novels and tell him that it was very sudden except that somehow it wasn’t. She had always known that Robert liked her, it was just that when Blake was there he was somehow in shadow and nothing to do with her and she had not wanted to know that Robert had a particular regard for her since she could not care for him.
‘No,’ she said.
Robert gave a half-smile.
‘But you do feel something for me, I know you do. I wouldn’t have spent so much time here if I had thought any different. I know you like me and we have so much in common. You enjoy my company and I have such a lot to offer you, everything, Irene. Shall we go and tell your father that we’re engaged and go on from there and get to know one another a little better and then—?’
‘Robert, I couldn’t,’ she said.
He frowned and she saw that it was impossible for him to imagine that she had no regard for him. How could she not? He was tall and good-looking and well-connected. He had brains and money and a good family. He was charming and competent and a dozen girls she knew would have given anything to have landed him, girls who were beautiful and accomplished and agreeable.
‘You couldn’t? What kind of an answer is that?’
‘Robert, I like you very well, you know that I do, as a friend. I could never think of you as anything else.’
He didn’t say anything for a moment or two and she wished that they were not quite so alone in the garden, it was awkward.
‘I don’t understand this,’ he said. ‘Are you telling me that you didn’t encourage me?’
‘I didn’t know that I had.’
‘Your father knows it and so does your brother. How is it that you claim not to?’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to make you angry.’
‘Perhaps there’s someone else?’ Robert said stiffly.
Irene thought of how warmly Blake had spoken of the girl he was going back to and how much she had been hurt and she shook her head.
‘There’s nobody,’ she said.
Robert’s eyes had taken on a rather ugly hard stare.
‘It’s David Blake,’ he said.
‘David is engaged to be married,’ Irene said. This was embroidery, she knew, but by now it would be true. ‘He’s had the same girl since they were children together. He comes here because my father enjoys his company. It doesn’t have to be someone else just because I don’t care about you, does it?’
‘What other reason could you have?’
‘I’m quite happy with my life as it is.’
‘Every woman wants a husband.’
‘A husband like you?’ Irene said scornfully and she ran back into the house and up the stairs and stayed there until teatime.
When she came down her father called her into the drawing-room and by his face she knew that Robert had told him what had happened.
‘I’m very disappointed in you,’ he said. ‘I understand that you turned young Denham down.’
‘Whatever made you think that I wanted to marry him?’
‘He’s a nice enough lad for a lawyer, he thinks a lot about you and you seem to like him well enough. Or is there another reason?’
‘I don’t understand. I do like him. That doesn’t mean to say that I want to marry him.’
‘He thinks that young David is the cause of this.’
‘Nothing of the kind. David has gone home to ask his girl to marry him.’
‘Has he indeed? I knew nothing about it. It seems to me that you’ve grown very fond of him.’
‘I’m not especially fond of him,’ Irene lied. ‘I like them both but I don’t like anyone sufficiently to marry him. Are you wanting to be rid of me?’
‘I want to see you happy, established. If you didn’t like Robert Denham why keep him hanging around like that? It doesn’t seem a very kind thing to do.’
‘I didn’t realise—’
‘And what did you think he came here for, the exercise?’
Irene was astonished at her father’s anger. Had he really expected her to say yes? He looked so disappointed.
‘What else do you intend doing with your life?’ he asked her roughly.
Irene hadn’t thought about that.
‘I’m quite happy here with you and Simon, running the house. Don’t you want me to do that? I’ve done it ever since mother died. I—’
‘I can get a housekeeper to do that.’
Irene said nothing more for a few moments and then, ‘I can go out and find some work—’
‘Women of your calibre don’t work, Irene. They marry and have children, that’s what they do best. Young Denham is perfect for you. I can’t imagine why you turned him down. I can’t imagine what you were thinking of,’ and her father walked out of the room and left her there.
* * *
On Tuesday Irene went shopping in the town and she thought that she saw Blake from a distance. She ran across the road and followed him around a corner and was sure that it was him. She ran on and caught up and then, a little breathless, she grabbed him by the arm so that he stopped.
‘I thought you were away for a week,’ she said.
Blake stopped and when he looked at her Irene realised immediately that something was very wrong though she was not quite sure what betrayed him. He was like someone who had been laid low with bad flu and was just out of bed, pale and dull-eyed and slow.
‘I came back,’ he said unnecessarily.
‘You don’t look well. What is the matter?’
‘My lodging is just around the corner. I have to go.’
‘I’ll go with you.’
‘No.’
‘David, you look awful. Let me come with you.’
He didn’t argue but she wasn’t glad that she had gone. She didn’t realise that he lived in such a place. It wasn’t the worst area of town, it had a kind of desperate respectability. The house was brown inside and the sitting-room where he took her burned a meagre fire, had grey curtains and linoleum and dusty plants and dark pictures. It made Irene want to run back out into the street. She tried not to think what his room was like. The fire smoked and the day beyond the window was dull and she had never been in such a cheerless room in her life.
‘I think you should be in bed,’ she said.
‘There’s nothing the matter with me. Would you like some tea?’
‘No. No, thank you. Come home with me and we’ll have supper.’
* * *
He refused at first but Irene persuaded him. Her father was just coming back from work when they arrived and for the first time ever her father frowned darkly when he saw Blake and Irene knew that she had made an important error. Irene worked hard at conversation but only Simon helped and when Blake left as soon as he could after the meal she saw him down the path and grabbed his arm and said, ‘I wish you would tell me what happened.’
‘There’s nothing to tell. Go in, you’ll get soaked.’
It was raining hard now.
‘I know that something has happened. Is it your family?’
‘It’s nothing.’
‘David, I’m your friend. You can tell me.’
‘If you don’t go in your father will do more than scowl at me. Go on,’ and Blake pushed her gently towards the door and strode off into the evening so that she had no choice but to go inside. Her father was shouting to her from the study and when she went in he was standing there in front of a blazing fire. Irene could not help noticing as though for the first time the leatherbound books, the oak desk, the thick velvet curtains. It looked so rich compared to the room that Blake had invited her into earlier that day.
‘I don’t want that young man here any more,’ her father said, ‘and you are not to see him again.’
‘But—’
‘I don’t want to hear an argument about it, Irene. If you disobey me I shall send you to stay with your aunt.’
Her aunt had a school in Newcastle. It was not a prospect that anyone of sensibility could look forward to with pleasure, Irene thought.
‘What is he to think?’
‘I don’t care what he thinks,’ her father said, ‘now go to bed.’
* * *
The following afternoon she went again to his lodging and this time was ushered upstairs by the woman who helped his landlady.
It was the barest room that Irene had ever seen, nothing but a bed, a chair and a small cupboard. The window-frame was rotten, the window overlooked a yard and other buildings and it was dark. It was bitterly cold too and foisty-smelling as though there had never been a fire anywhere near it. He had been sitting on the bed, reading, but got up as she opened the door and said as soon as the woman had gone, ‘You shouldn’t be here.’
‘Why shouldn’t I?’
‘If Mrs Southwark comes back I’ll be thrown out for having you in my room.’
‘I don’t think that would be such a great loss,’ Irene said, looking distastefully around her.
‘No, of course it wouldn’t be to you.’
‘Can’t you really afford anything better than this?’
‘I was saving my money.’
‘You don’t look any better.’
‘Irene, do you know a polite way to tell a young woman to mind her own business?’
‘How was the wedding?’ Irene sat down in the one chair and almost got back up again immediately, it was so uncomfortable. She wondered how the bed was and then blushed at herself.
‘None of it is anything to do with you and if your father finds out you were here I’ll be out of a job.’
‘Your job and your room. Dear me, what havoc.’ Irene went on looking at him and then plunged on because she had done a lot of thinking since the day before. ‘She’s not going to marry you, is she, the girl you wanted?’
He wandered around the room like somebody penniless at a fair and then he said, ‘It was nothing new. She told me before I left that she wouldn’t.’
‘And you thought you could make her change her mind.’
‘I thought she cared for me. I thought she would wait. I have a job now. I don’t know why I thought it, it was stupid. I have nothing to give anybody, as you can see.’
‘But you will have if you go on working like you have done. My father speaks very highly of you. He doesn’t do that to just anybody. I’ve heard him say that you’ll do very well, you just need a little time to learn and to work.’
‘I don’t have any time. She’s engaged to somebody else. They’re planning to be married at Christmas and her parents are pleased. His family have money. They’ve bought them a small farm.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He smiled at her. Irene wanted to take him into her arms but didn’t know how.