The Care and Management of Lies (4 page)

Kezia turned and knelt to pack away her book, her journal, the spent bottle, and the white linen cloth in which she’d wrapped a sandwich. Hawkes knelt next to her.

“It’s all right, I can do it,” she said.

They stood, facing each other.

“Look, don’t worry—if you want to visit the lake, please, be my guest. You’re not hurting anyone,” said Hawkes. “It gives me pleasure, knowing that someone else enjoys my spot.”

“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Hawkes. But I think in future I will find plenty of interesting places within the boundary of Marshals Farm. Now I have to be on my way.”

They shook hands once again, and Kezia set off at as fast a clip as she could manage across the field towards the stile. She turned, once, to look back. Edmund Hawkes had not moved, and was staring in her direction.

T
wo days later Kezia had all but forgotten the meeting. She was in the kitchen, leaning across the table, wiping it dry following another swabbing. The top was a thick, solid piece of wood akin to the block upon which the butcher would swing his cleaver to chop through flesh and sinew into bone. It was more part of the kitchen than Kezia, or her mother-in-law before her; it had been in its place for generations. Now it had been scrubbed twice this morning, ready for Kezia to knead a lump of pastry dough into topping for a meat pie. The mix was too dry, but she had yet to get the feel of different types of dough in her hands. Meat pie had become her stalwart friend, a dish she could execute without too much ado.
Execute
might have been an appropriate verb to describe her skill, though her dexterity in the kitchen had improved. She had studied the recipe, and was confident in her ability to prepare the dish for her husband’s tea.

She was using leftover meat taken from a joint of beef, which she cut into cubes, pressing them into the meat grinder as she turned the handle. The grinder was screwed onto the table for this part of the job, and Kezia could never quite turn the nut tight enough on the screw—the grinder wobbled a good deal, so crumbs of meat dropped onto the floor. She fried onion and celery, along with grated carrot—her mother-in-law would never have grated the carrot, but would have instead cut root vegetables into small cubes. She added thyme and savory to the mix, along with the meat, onto which she poured some gravy.

The one ingredient not specified that Kezia added to each meal, and in copious amounts impossible to be weighed on the kitchen scale, was a love for her husband growing beyond affection, beyond the familiarity that led her to accept his proposal. It must be mentioned that there were those—both in the village and farther afield among others familiar with the Marchant family—who wondered if, and therefore, why, Kezia Marchant had married below her station. There was speculation that she might have envisaged spinsterhood looming and rushed into marriage at the first opportunity—though the long engagement would suggest not; indeed, the young couple had been putting money by for their future. Others thought Kezia had “settled” or that the Brissendens were attempting to better themselves. The truth was perhaps more simple. Each recognized the honesty in the other and felt—with an acknowledgement that had no need for spoken confirmation—that their trust was well placed. Their love was thus seeded in the rich soil of mutual understanding.

While kneading, rolling, and lifting the pastry to line the pie dish, Kezia could think only of Tom, imagining him in the distance, a moving speck against the plane tree on the hill, walking down towards the farmhouse and along the road, his jacket thrown over a shoulder and held by a single finger. Tom’s hands were working hands, broadened by shovel and pick, by steadying the harness and driving a saw to coppice a few acres of woodland. Soon the kitchen would be filled with the fragrant heat of pie blended with the aroma of vegetables overcooked. With the meal almost ready, Kezia kept an eye on the window, a vigil for her spouse. When she saw him, off came her pinafore, consigned to the hook on the back of the kitchen door. She pushed back a stray hair and quickly checked her appearance in the mirror on the back wall, to ensure no flour had rubbed off on her face.

“H
ello, Tom.” Kezia went straight to him, always, when he entered the house, and this day was no different. She took his jacket and pressed her lips to his. Tom could not help but smile, pulling her into his arms. He had never in his life known his mother to greet his father in such a manner, and wondered if she ever had.

“I smell a meat pie,” said Tom.

“Ah, but a different meat pie today,” replied Kezia, putting on her pinafore once more.

Tom washed his hands at the sink, scrubbed his nails with the brush, and picked up the clean linen towel Kezia had placed on the draining board. His father never washed his hands; never had water, soap, and a linen towel touch his skin between work and a meal.

“What did you do this time?”

“I’ve added a little something to the gravy, and some herbs to the vegetables—but don’t worry, I’ve massacred the greens for you.”

Tom laughed and sat down, waiting for Kezia to set plates upon the table. The tea had been made and left to brew, so Tom reached for the pot, removed the knitted cozy—a wedding present from one of the villagers—and poured for them both. He had noticed that Kezia was thinner. Not awkwardly so, but in contrast to his own weight. One of the women working in the blackcurrant fields commented upon it, saying, “Ah, love, you’re a married man now. It’s contentment in your belly, that’s what it is.” And he’d blushed, then measured the woman’s picked fruit and moved on to the next row to check the trays.

“You need a bit more food, Kezzie,” said Tom, pointing his fork towards her plate.

“It’s enough for me, Tom. Plenty. What do you think of it?” Kezia waited for his appraisal of the dish before lifting her own cutlery.

He had never heard his mother ask for an opinion upon her cooking. She put food on the table and expected it to be eaten. She would nod when his father patted his belly and said it was a good table she’d set for them, or she might add, “It’s entitled to be, it took me all morning.” But Kezia liked to talk about each dish, what he liked, what he thought would have been better. So Tom became used to this discussion as he ate his dinner, a meal that Kezia’s family would have called luncheon. His tea was their supper. His mother’s supper was a thick cheese sandwich after mopping the floor at ten o’clock at night, whereas Mrs. Marchant’s was likely a cup of cocoa with a slice of toast, and possibly the only meal she prepared herself each day. It was funny, thought Tom—this naming of each meal, and how it changed from here to there, whether the here and there was a division by geography or by the station of the person sitting down to eat. But one thing Tom knew—he liked to recognize the food on his plate.

“What’s this bit?” he asked, cutting into his pie again.

“Oh, a few sprigs of rosemary laid under the crust. Gives it a more piquant flavor.”

“Piquant, eh? Well, it’s very nice, but it gets a bit stuck in my teeth.”

Kezia frowned. “Hmmm, I should probably have cut the leaves off the sprig. Never mind, I’ll do it next time.”

Tom commented on the gravy, the potatoes—fried, not mashed—and in general was well pleased with his meal. He added that he thought it would be fit for one of those restaurants—not that he would ever set foot in one, after all, you don’t know what you’re eating when it comes from a kitchen you can’t see into.

Kezia, resting her arms on the table, looked poised to counter this opinion, but instead shared news gleaned from the village that morning. “It’s getting very tense, you know, this talk of war. I’m rather nervous about it. I mean, what will we do, if it comes to it? Mrs. Coombes said her husband went up to London last week and came back with all sorts of stories about what people are saying up there. He said it was like another planet down here, when all we think about is the hop picking, or the barley.”

Tom reached across, took her by the arm, and pulled her to him, seating her on his lap. He wiped his mouth with a napkin; now they had table napkins, boiled white so that they might continue to match the wedding-gift linen cloth that covered the old table. Mrs. Marchant’s housekeeper told Kezia about boiling for whiteness, and adding a blue bag to the water.

“I don’t pay much mind to it all, Kezzie. I’ve too much to do all day with the farm. Don’t worry, love, it won’t come to us.”

“Tom, you have four men on this farm, two apprentices, and pieceworkers besides. What if they all go to war? What if you have to go to war?”

“I’d like to see Bert try to go to war—he’s my right-hand man, and he’s too long in the tooth; they’d send him packing. Danny wouldn’t get into the army, on account of his leg, and Bill Hicks and Mattie Wright, we were nippers together—they’ve worked here all their lives, and their fathers too. As for the young lads—they’re still so wet behind the ears, it’s all they can do to lift a shovel, never mind a rifle. War’s a young man’s game.”

“But you’re young, Tom.”

“Come on, Kezzie, I’d better get back to work—if I linger too long, we’ll be up those stairs, won’t we?” He kissed her on the mouth. “Don’t worry about me, I’m a farmer born and bred, and if there’s anything that’ll be needed if it comes to war, it’s what I’ve got—food to put on the table.”

As Kezia began to clear the plates, Ada came into the kitchen, a pail in her hand. Kezia blushed.

“Anyway, this’ll never get the cows moved, will it? See you later, love.” Tom walked towards the back door, rolling up his sleeves. “Did you put something in the gravy, by the way?”

“A little sherry, actually.”

“Sherry? Mother only kept that for Easter and Christmas.” Tom winked at his wife. “Nice in gravy, I must say.”

K
ezia had become more worried about this business of war. She’d bought a newspaper in the village and read every word reported on the subject. No one she met seemed to be paying much attention. Perhaps Mr. Coombes was right; perhaps they were cocooned in their round of work on the land, in the home or a wealthy someone else’s home. The Brissendens were considered somewhere in the middle of the village social order, better off than most, with Tom becoming more of a gentleman farmer than his father before him. In fact, most people didn’t quite know where to place Tom, especially following his marriage to Kezia. But they liked him—he was one of their own—and they couldn’t help but take to Kezia, whom many considered very ladylike, though not perhaps lady enough to have someone else to do her shopping. She drew attention when she rode the mare into the village on days when she wanted only a few bits and pieces, putting them in her knapsack before riding back to the farm. It was clear she was something of a novice in the saddle, though she was trying to learn. Sometimes she brought the gig, but it was generally considered that if the mare, Mrs. Joe, hadn’t known her job, Kezia Brissenden would have been in a good deal of trouble.

By the end of July, and wed all of twenty-seven days, it seemed to Kezia as if the roots of her marriage were beginning to break through into the earth, ready to grow deeper with each year. For Tom, she knew, it was as he expected. You sow a seed and it either flourishes or it withers, and it never crossed his mind that his marriage to Kezia would ever be anything other than a good one. He saw his future clearly. The farm would be strong, and there would be no setback that he could not counter with hard work. He had never looked at the land through rose-tinted glasses, and he knew how it could break a man, how it could wound body and soul. He had a responsibility that came with providing a living for men who worked on the farm and their families—men he had known his entire life. That the farm was his at all had been down to sheer luck—and he knew better than tempt fate. In time there would be children, and their children after. Tom trusted—though he had never thought about it consciously—that he would die on this land and be buried in the churchyard, and that his son and his son after him would work the fields that generations of Brissenden men had farmed.

But there was something beginning to scratch at the smooth veneer of Kezia’s new married life. It was not a constant annoyance, like the branch that scrapes against the windowpane night after night, but more like a small fragment of grit in the shoe, something that is felt now and again. Though Tom would have argued otherwise, had she confided in him, Kezia wondered if she was on the cusp of losing an element of herself. She had claimed two half-days alone, walking, reading, and writing in her journal, but she considered Thea’s life—and, indeed, her own before marriage—and wondered if in time she would feel that she was missing something, and whether she had bartered her character for contentment. Indeed it was in the village hall, which also served as a library of sorts, and where Kezia had stopped to read a women’s monthly or two—she was still undecided upon the question of placing a subscription with the newsagent in Brooksmarsh—that she came upon a comment that caused her to sit down and read further. Women’s books in the village library were always out of date; however, from a copy of
Woman At Home
, dated January 1913, she copied down a paragraph on the back of her shopping list:

The modern girl prefers to live independently, and earns two hundred pounds a year, rather than marry a man with an income scarcely more than her own.

The writer asked if it was surprising, then, that the latest statistics on the matter revealed that 1912 reported the lowest marriage rate ever? Kezia wondered if she was a statistic, perhaps a dying breed—the married woman.

She had given up a reasonable income to be married, but more so had given up a job she loved. Would her new life sustain her? And of greater importance, would she have enough about her to hold the love of her husband? A line in another book taken from the same pile declared, “The twentieth century is discovering the woman.” Kezia was appalled. Weren’t these questions she asked of herself simply indicative of her self-interest, and at a time when her husband was working his fingers to the bone to build a life for them? She cast the book back onto the pile, but not before making a note that Hoe’s Sauce provided an excellent flavoring for soups, stews, and other dishes.