The Care and Management of Lies (3 page)

Whether walking on the farm or meandering around the shops in London, Kezia would stop to peruse anything that caught her eye, and would not be rushed. Thea had found this trait annoying at times, cursing Kezia as their bus pulled out in the distance or as they arrived late at the cinema, forfeiting the first fifteen minutes of the picture on account of something Kezia just had to see. Later, though, Thea found she missed those little things about Kezia that had once been the source of some frustration. Kezia had a throaty laugh that, when she came to know the family, seemed to have no governor. Jack Brissenden would laugh with her, and Tom would notice the sparkle in Thea’s eyes as she tried not to giggle, at which point he could not help but laugh. Only his mother executed control—her cheeks twitched, but her stare was less than warm. Tom knew then that his mother was jealous of Kezia, for it irked her that all her family was in love with this girl who seemed to know little of the country, and nothing of the farm.

What Tom knew, now, was that he wanted Kezia by his side. His work was hard, and despite his apparent success in managing without his father’s guidance, he often felt as if wolves paced the perimeter of his land. Not only had he been fortunate in his inheritance, but his father’s foresight had bolstered his chances of running a good farm in what were proving to be troubling times. Jack had realized that Tom would need more tools to serve the land than he had ever had in his day, if the land were to serve him in turn, and his son after him, God willing. He might have the theory of agricultural college under his belt, along with a deep innate understanding of the soil, but the days were long, and a farm could take its pound of flesh in return for a good harvest. Tom wanted to come home to a warm, fragrant kitchen, a fire in the hearth at night, and a woman with whom he could share his joys, his worries, his laughter—and he so wanted laughter. In truth, his parents had thought Kezia unsuitable, and would have preferred to see him paying court to a daughter of the countryside, to a girl who understood what it was to put her apron on in the morning and take it off at night only when her spouse had made his way up the creaking farmhouse stairs to the room above. She would bank up the fire, swab the red tile floor just one more time. Not before she had settled the wicks in flickering lamps would she take to the staircase and then to their bed. In marrying a Brissenden, Tom’s mother had set aside a desire to continue her education, and devoted her heart to the farm, had given her spirit to the business of her husband, her complexion to worry, and her hands to hard work. Though her formal learning had ended early, she had been a steady reader in her day, and now she harbored envy that Kezia, with her light touch in the world, the way she skimmed across the surface of concern, might find the softer way of being a farmer’s wife that had eluded her.

E
dward nudged Tom as the organ bellows wheezed, drew breath, and exhaled fresh energy into the ancient church. The “Wedding March” filled the rafters with joy. Tom felt a line of perspiration run down his neck and along his spine, and fingered the starched collar that would leave a red horizontal stripe on his skin. He felt a warm blush reach his cheeks and ears, and thought the entire congregation must see this sign of his delight, fear, anticipation, and—yes—excitement. Edward nudged him again. And again.

“Look, you bloody fool. Look and remember. She’s right beautiful.” He pronounced the word “boodiful” in his rounded rural Sussex brogue.

So Tom turned his head, and at once a shaft of light seemed to render all others invisible as Kezia walked towards him, one hand on her father’s arm, the other clutching a bouquet of white garden blooms—her mother had begun to cultivate a bed of white flowers next to the house on the day Tom had called to ask for Kezia’s hand. No veil could keep the bride’s wide smile from captivating her groom, and no crown of orange blossom could shadow the coppery nut-brown hair drawn back in a braided bun. Kezia had been the wife of his heart for years, long before the minister asked who giveth this woman and her father lifted her hand towards his; long before he set a ring of gold upon her finger, and long before the bells pealed and they walked past a blur of faces as man and wife. And she would be his wife for as long as they both might live. God willing.

Chapter 2

A good housewife will not rest content with the fact that the meals in her house are well-cooked. She will also see to it that they are well-served, knowing that dainty table equipment and skillful service does much to enhance the enjoyment of the fare provided.

—
THE WOMAN’S BOOK

T
om looked up from his plate and began to laugh.

“What’s the matter with it?” asked his wife of two and a half weeks, herself smiling, unable to resist her husband’s apparent amusement.

“Kezzie, love, what have you done with this cauliflower?”

“What do you mean?” asked Kezia Brissenden, rubbing her hands on a pinafore still bearing the crisp creases of newness amid a garland of stains. “What’s wrong with the cauliflower?”

She leaned across to look at the food she had set before him. There was a meat pie; admittedly, she’d had some trouble with the pastry, and it seemed pockmarked. The mashed potato was quite well divested of the lumps she’d fought against earlier, and the cauliflower appeared well cooked. Tom liked his vegetables well cooked, color drained from the green to the extent that it appeared bleached, with creamy white florets almost indistinguishable from the mash.

“I just wondered why there was string in it.”

“Oh, dear, you’ve got the string. I didn’t see it when I dished up. Here, allow me . . .” Kezia leaned towards him, pulled at the string he’d lifted with his fork, and removed it with a flourish. Gravy splattered the tablecloth. She giggled as she carried the length of twine towards the sink to wash in cold water and hang to dry on a pipe running from the copper at the side of the stove, which supplied hot water to the tap. “Waste not want not. Your mother would be proud of me!”

“I daresay she would, but why did you cook the cauli with string in the first place?”

“To keep the bits in, silly. All those little flowery bits might drop off, if you don’t tie them up.”

And with that Tom shook his head, tried not to laugh, and slipped his fork into the pie. They were in the first flush of marriage, and this was another source of fascination for the young husband, that this wife of his had no attachment to her prowess as a cook. She didn’t seem to care that pastry might be underdone, meat overdone, that bread was too doughy in the crumb, too hard on the crust, or that the men looked at their eggs and bacon and then at each other every morning. She seemed like a sprite assigned to a factory job, flitting from stove to table, then out to the kitchen garden, cutting rosemary to garnish an egg on toast—and not one of the farmworkers had ever seen garnish, nor would the word be part of their vocabulary.

Other women, Tom knew, set stock by their accomplishments in the kitchen, as if their identity, their essential wifeliness, were attached to the range, the mixing bowls, knives, crockery, and cutlery. His mother had entered her rich eggy sponges in the annual show, though at home cake baking was generally left until Saturday so that Sunday tea might have something special about it. She’d had a limited repertoire, his mother, though the food she set upon the table was good and hearty, each day assigned a menu that never changed. You knew it was Monday when pie topped with mash was dished up, the meat minced and left over from the Sunday joint. Tuesday toad-in-the-hole, Wednesday hotpot. And so on. No fish on Friday, though, unless one of the men had brought trout from a summer’s eve spent with rod and line. Experimentation was not his mother’s forte; setting up a good table for hungry men who showed appreciation with the doffing of a cap or a nod in her direction as they set off for their day’s work was good enough for her. She did not ask for more.

But Kezia had taken to heart a nugget of advice discovered in a hardly used recipe book found in her late mother-in-law’s larder:

Never omit that trifling touch of decoration which makes the simplest dish seem appetizing, and the homeliest table attractive. Even a jar of woodland or hedgerow blooms makes all the difference—a meal at once appears, something more than merely eating to satisfy the wants of the body. It becomes a pleasant affair, beneficial and a tonic to the soul.

So she set the table with best silver brought from the parlor for men who tied their trousers in place with rope. On her first day as the farmer’s wife, she’d put out fresh linen towels on the kitchen draining board as the men walked in through the back door, and soon it became a habit for them to form a line at the sink as they waited to wash their hands. At first they looked at Tom in dismay, wondering what life must be like with this woman who didn’t appear to know her place, who pulled up a chair to the table, her mug of tea held with both hands, asking them questions about their wives, their children, and what they thought of this or that, when the only thinking that engaged their minds was whether cows were to be moved from Barnaby to Pickwick, and whether their wives might get a bit of work, pin money earned darning pokes up in the oast house, still bearing the spicy must of last year’s hop-picking season. But soon there grew among these men something akin to envy. Though not a soul could articulate such feelings, it was clear that the farmhouse had been bathed in new light, as if it had been given a stark coat of white paint—and they wouldn’t put that past Mrs. Kezia Brissenden, Miss Marchant, as was. They could see that Tom had a freshness to him too, as he left with his workers to go out into the fields each morning. And it wasn’t that Kezia didn’t respect her role, or Tom, or the farm she had married as much as the man. She took it as it was, loved it for what it would forever be, just as she loved her husband. Kezia was Kezia, and nothing, it seemed, would change who she was, or who she might be in her world. Tom knew all this, could see and feel her establishing her place. She was not simply filling the role of another woman before her. It entertained him, this Kezia-ness that was enveloping Marshals Farm, named for a dark prison in Dickens’ day. And it never bothered him; he knew that at the center of Kezia’s rural life, they stood together, hand in hand, and all else would grow from there.

I
t was when they had been married precisely twenty-four days that Kezia realized that she had become somewhat disengaged from life beyond Marshals Farm, and decided to venture out beyond her immediate wifely domain of the house, the kitchen garden, or the village shop. She had been thinking about her mother. Mrs. Marchant had supported her husband in the many ways expected of a parson’s wife. She was active in the parish, with coffee mornings, flower arranging, visits to the sick and bereaved, and committee work. But she took her “days out” without apology or explanation, and Kezia could never remember a time when she had questioned where her mother might have gone at those times, or when she would return. Was it weekly that this happened? Or every fortnight? She wasn’t sure, but she supposed her mother had taken the train to London, or to the coast. A visit to an exhibition, or to Whitstable, where she might enjoy a plate of oysters, a cup of tea, and a walk along the seafront. On the morning of Kezia’s wedding, Mrs. Marchant came to her daughter’s room—not, to Kezia’s surprise, to give a lesson on married life, on what might be expected in the kitchen or the bedroom, but to slip into her hand the grand sum of ten pounds.

“Keep a nest egg, Kezia, your private money. Keep it safe and add to it, if you can, but never let it go. A woman needs money of her own, as much as she requires time beyond the home. Start as you mean to go on, Kezia, dear. Claim what you require at the beginning with no explanation, and beyond that day you will never have to account for yourself, as long as the house is a good house, the food is on the table, and your husband sleeps well at night.”

Then she kissed her daughter, placed her hand on her cheek, and left.

Kezia had a nest egg of her own, held safe in the bank—money earned while working at Camden, together with a small bequest from a maiden great-aunt. But she took her mother’s advice, and kept a tin in the bottom drawer of her dressing table, into which the ten pounds was duly placed.

O
n this, the first day that Kezia claimed for herself, she dressed in a sturdy walking skirt, her stout leather boots, and an old cream linen blouse that had seen better days—all good enough for what she planned. She packed a sandwich, placing it in a knapsack along with an earthenware bottle of lemonade. She took a book and a bound journal—she had kept such a daily record of her life since childhood. Kezia left Ada to the kitchen and the cleaning, and upon the table set a fresh pork pie and a loaf of crusty bread—probably too crusty, again—along with a wedge of cheese, two tomatoes, and an apple. She added a jug of lemonade covered with a doily, and set off. Tom might expect a cooked dinner at noon, with a pot of strong tea, but Kezia knew there was enough food to see him through the rest of the day. She would be home in time to prepare a hearty tea and have it ready when he walked through the door at six. It was coming on harvest time, and he would go out again later. There was always more work to be done on a summer’s night.

Kezia had no idea where she was going, only that she would set off towards what she believed to be the perimeter of the farm beyond Micawber Wood, and then along the edge, which she expected to be marked with a fence. She planned to explore the forested acres flanking Twist, the largest of the hop gardens, where the spicy hops with their dense, green, and pungent fairy-wing petals lay heavy on the bine. She thought she would even ramble to the edge of the Hawkendene estate. She knew little of the property abutting Marshals Farm, only that there was a wealthy man and his wife, their son—older than Tom, or Kezia—and a host of lackeys to do their every bidding. The family opened their gardens once a year, in late August. Trestle tables would be set up with linen tablecloths rippling aimlessly in a light breeze, like sails on a ship becalmed. There would be triangled sandwiches and small fancies with pastel icing. The tea would have a fragrance to it, and at least one of the villagers would be heard to comment—in a low voice, of course—that the lukewarm beverage was only fit to dab behind the ears, and wouldn’t set you up for anything, of a morning. When Kezia went into the village, it seemed that everyone was talking about the party, even with a month to go before the anticipated day. Thea had written to her—since the wedding, they were both endeavoring to nurture the friendship, for weren’t they now joined as family?—and told her that she should not go. She maintained that this inequity, this fawning on the rich by the poor, should have died with the old queen. Kezia thought she had a point, but at the same time found herself getting caught up in the excitement. She wondered, though, as she jumped over a stile as if she were a schoolgirl, if her enthusiasm was due to the fact that the people who set such store by the party were referring to her as “Mrs. Brissenden” for the first time. After almost a month she was getting used to her new name, and in the village shop now ceased to look round when greeted, in case the ghostly specter of her late mother-in-law had appeared behind her.

Hawkendene Lake was still, the summer sun reflecting surrounding trees into the water as if copied there with oils. Kezia chose her spot, a place at the foot of a giant oak where thick roots reared up from the earth, providing a place for her to sit and rest her head. She pulled a square embroidered cloth from the knapsack, setting out her repast. She closed her eyes and sighed. This was it, a perfect place. Across the lake, just visible, the house in which the Hawkes family lived appeared to lounge amid perfect lawns and pruned hedges. It was, she thought, somewhat intimidating. Spires rose up from rooftops, poking their way skyward as if in competition with the pines. It was a tableau to be painted, one day, this image now scored into memory; the house, the woodland, the lake with water lilies in bloom. The light buzzing of worker bees toiling in the fields behind her seemed to settle her soul. Bliss, she thought. For two hours, perhaps more, she would read her book and pen whatever thoughts came to her. Soon, though, despite her best efforts to resist the heat of the day, the gentle swoop of birds across the lake, and the meadow fragrance, her eyelids grew heavy and she slept.

“Did you know you’re trespassing?”

At first the voice seemed to come from far away, and, she thought later, had even entered her dream, though she could not remember any detail of that slip into another world. But then, when she realized she was no longer alone, Kezia’s eyes opened in a snap. She shook her head and leapt to her feet, only to find herself looking down at a man who had, it seemed, been sitting alongside her for some time.

“And who are you, sir?” She felt as if she had fallen down a hole marked “Slumber” and was struggling to grapple her way out.

The man laughed, leaning back on one elbow. He was dressed in twill trousers, his white shirt open at the neck and a kerchief tied at his throat. He wore a brown weskit and leather shoes that appeared to have been polished to a shine before he set off across fields of hardened ochre Kentish clay soil, picking up dust along the way.

“It’s all right, I’m not going to take you to the constabulary. I just wondered if you realized you had encroached beyond your land.”

“How do you know what or where my land is?” Kezia leaned forward, her hands on her hips as if to establish an impression of importance.

Splaying his fingers on the ground to steady himself, the stranger stood up and faced her. He rubbed his earth-soiled hand on his trousers and held it out towards her.

“Edmund Hawkes. You’re in my favorite spot—since I was a boy, actually—but I won’t scold you for it.”

“How long were you there?”

“And you are?”

“I beg your pardon, sir.” Kezia took the proffered hand. “Kezia Mar . . . I mean, Kezia Brissenden.” She felt her cheeks redden. “Mrs. Tom Brissenden. From Marshals Farm.”

“Yes, I know that much—Tom’s new wife. I guessed who you were, but I didn’t know your name. Congratulations, Mrs. Brissenden.”

“Thank you. I apologize for the encroachment. Now I must be on my way. I will be sure not to come here again.”