Capinfell was a small village of some three-hundred-odd souls, situated in the county of Wiltshire, the village lying just north of the market town of Merinville, and twenty-five miles north-west of the city of Redbury. It boasted no railway station of its own, so that those hopeful of travelling by train had to walk or take a coach ride to Merinville where the nearest station was situated.
On the way to the village church of St Peter’s, Lydia and her father made most of the journey with little or no conversation between them. As they walked they encountered two or three other villagers bound for the church or on errands, and Mr Halley smiled in his grave way, murmured a good morning and lifted his hat to them.
The church was a little more full than usual on this particular Sunday morning, and Mr Halley muttered to Lydia as they entered that the past harsh winter days were making the people look to their sins. The sermon delivered by the Reverend Hepthaw, was, as usual, meandering. Fortunately, however, it did not last an unconscionable time, so before too long the last hymn had been sung, the last prayer prayed, and the worshippers, to a man feeling better for the experience, made their way out into the air and thence towards their welcome Sunday dinners.
At the church doors the Reverend Hepthaw stood shaking the Sunday-clean hands of his departing flock, smiling at them, and voicing his wishes to see them in a week’s time. When Lydia and her father drew level with him, the reverend’s ruddy face beamed and he took their hands warmly. But where, he asked, was Mrs Halley this morning? He trusted, he said, that she was well; it wasn’t often that she was missing from a Sunday morning service. Mr Halley replied that his wife had a slight cold coming on,
but should be better by next Sunday. They thanked the cleric and moved out of the shadow of the church walls into the weak winter sunshine. There Mr Halley glanced around to ensure that they were not likely to be overheard, then murmured into Lydia’s ear, ‘Reverend Hepthaw’s nothing more than a silly old fool. If I couldn’t do a better sermon that that I’d give up.’
As a lay preacher, and an evangelist, Mr Halley took his own sermons very seriously. He had become a devout believer in his late twenties, and his passion had not diminished in the intervening years. On two or three evenings a week he was away from the house, preaching at venues in Capinfell and the nearby villages where he had now become as familiar as the rain. For the most part he preached to the converted, rarely, to his regret, reaching those who would rather suffer their sins than give up their evenings at the local tavern. This coming week he was due to preach at the Temperance Hall in the nearby village of Pershall Dean, and also at a small community hall in Lipscott. Neither Lydia nor his wife would be accompanying him. Lydia had long ago made it clear that one morning of worship, that on a Sunday, was sufficient for her needs, and he had swiftly come to accept that she would not be persuaded otherwise. As for his wife, on his jaunts abroad she was more of a hindrance than a help, for in order to get to his various arranged venues he had to find shortcuts by traversing the fields, and she had proven irritating in her inadequate attempts to keep up.
Now, as the man and his daughter made their way through the churchyard, between the old gravestones on either side of the path, Mr Halley said to her, ‘I suppose you saw the letter that came from Amaryllis yesterday?’
‘Yes, Mother showed it to me,’ Lydia replied. ‘I heard from Ryllis myself, anyway, earlier in the week.’
‘You’ll be pleased to have her home for the weekend. Certainly your mother will be.’
‘Oh, yes. I’m so looking forward to seeing her. I can’t wait for Saturday. I’ll stay on in Merinville after work and go and meet her from the train. This’ll be her first weekend off so far this year.’ Lydia raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m afraid the Lucases are not very generous with their time.’
‘Well, that’s as may be,’ her father said. He was not about to admit that the employers he had chosen would be in any way deficient. After a moment he added, ‘I wish the girl would settle. She doesn’t seem to get any happier.’
Amaryllis – or Ryllis as she was generally known – was sixteen years old, and had gone away into service at the age of thirteen. At present she was employed at a household in the village of Barford, situated some miles distant, and south-east of Redbury. She had not chosen her employers, Mr and Mrs Lucas; they had been chosen for her by her father who, impatient with Ryllis’s perceived procrastination in finding a new post a year earlier, had taken it upon himself to find her a position. So it was that she now found herself a general maid of all work with employers who, if her letters to Lydia were anything to go by, used her with little regard to her strength and energy.
Lydia, on the other hand, had remained living at home, finding employment in the Merinville button factory, Cremson’s, where her father worked as a foreman on the factory floor – though not for her the work at the finishing tables engaged in by some of the other local girls, her father had made sure of that. Through his instigation she had gained a place in the office, writing up letters and accounts and bills of trading. She did not enjoy the work; it was dull and repetitive – but for the time being she must put up with it. Still, she was glad of it, glad of the steady employment and clean work, and extremely glad, too, that she had not gone into service like her sister.
As Lydia and her father came to the church gates a young woman of near Lydia’s age broke away from a small group of four people and came to their side. She was Evie Repple, a friend of Lydia’s from years past. Of Lydia’s height, she wore a brown straw bonnet and a pale brown cape with a darker brown ribbon threaded at the hem.
‘Hello, Lyddy,’ she said, smiling warmly, and then turned to Mr Halley. ‘Good morning, sir.’ Her smile of greeting to Lydia’s father was tentative, for she had never been at ease with him.
While Lydia responded with smiling words of greeting for her friend, Mr Halley gave a nod and a cool smile. ‘Evie,’ he murmured. ‘And how are you this morning?’
‘Very well, thank you, sir.’ Evie turned then to Lydia. ‘Shall I see you later, Lyddy?’
‘Yes,’ Lydia nodded, ‘I’ll call round for you this afternoon, shall I?’
‘Yes. If it stays fine we can go for a little walk if you like.’
They parted then, and Lydia and her father passed through the gates into the lane. As they turned their steps in the direction of home, two or three of the other villagers murmured good mornings to them. Lydia returned the words of greeting pleasantly, but when her father responded his smiles rarely reached his eyes. For the most part he held many of the other villagers in contempt, despising them for their lifestyles which he saw as loose – and even those who regularly attended church services he somehow managed to see as hypocrites. For the most part, only those who came to his own prayer meetings did he seem to regard as somehow worth saving. For the rest he had little time.
As the two of them emerged from the lane and moved to cross by the green, a dog came bounding towards them. The creature, familiar to them, was a young, good-natured cross-breed, appearing to be part Welsh border collie and
part unspecified mixture, the property of one Mr Alfred Canbrook, who now came across the green in the dog’s wake.
‘Good morning to you, Mr Halley, Miss Halley,’ Mr Canbrook said, briefly raising his hat and exposing his balding grey crown.
Returning the man’s greeting, Lydia and her father halted before him. Lydia, finding that the man’s eyes lingered on her own, for a moment trying to hold her gaze, immediately lowered her glance and bent to pat the dog and stroke him.
Mr Canbrook said, ‘Oh, he always had a soft spot for you, Miss Halley, but don’t let him become a nuisance.’ Bending, vigorously patting his knees, he called the dog to him. ‘Tinny! Here, boy!’ Obediently the dog moved to his master’s side, and at a further command sat down on the grass. ‘There, that’s better.’ Mr Canbrook gave the dog’s head a pat and straightened. He was a widower in his early fifties, in physical stature barely an inch taller than Lydia herself. He had small, rather pinched features, his noise and cheeks reddened by a little network of fine broken veins. Now his cheeks lifted as he smiled warmly at Lydia.
‘So you two good people have just been to church, have you?’
‘For our sins,’ Mr Halley replied stiffly.
Mr Canbrook said, ‘Perhaps one day I should go.’ He spoke with a slight smile, as if the matter were one for levity. ‘I’m sure my soul must be in need.’
‘There are no souls that are not,’ Mr Halley said. There was no trace of humour in his own expression.
‘Ah, no doubt.’ Mr Canbrook nodded. ‘But not this morning. This morning I had to drive over from Merinville on a little business – and now, having done it, I thought I’d give Tinny a little run on the green before we start back.’
He looked down at the dog which, tired of sitting still, got
up and looked at his master. Mr Canbrook said to him, ‘All right, Tinny, we’re going. You really should learn to be a little more sociable, shouldn’t you?’ Again his hat was lifted. ‘I’ll wish you both good day,’ he said, smiling to the pair, then, turning, started away over the grass.
As Mr Halley and Lydia continued on their way, Mr Canbrook went off towards his pony and trap and Lydia waited for the disparaging words to be uttered about the man. They weren’t long in coming. ‘Conducting business,’ Mr Halley said with a little snort. ‘Conducting business on a Sunday. The man has no shame whatsoever. It would do him good to spend an hour in church now and again. Even a minute wouldn’t come amiss. The man’s naught but a self-avowed atheist.’ He shook his head and clicked his tongue. ‘For the life of me I can’t see what your mother finds laudable in the man.’
‘Well, it’s just that he was once kind to her,’ Lydia said. ‘I suppose she speaks as she finds.’
‘Yes, well, I don’t find the man to my liking at all. I could never condone his heathenish ways.’
The Whitehouse, the Halley family’s home, was a cottage of whitewashed Cotswold stone with a red tiled roof, situated in Cobbler’s Lane on the western side of the village. The house had two bedrooms on the first floor, one shared by Mr and Mrs Halley and the other occupied by Lydia, who shared it with her sister when she was at home. The ground floor of the house comprised a front parlour and then a small entrance hall that separated it from the kitchen and a lean-to scullery. There were few signs of anything approaching luxury in the house, but its humble furnishings were homely and comfortable and clean. Little had changed in it during Lydia’s lifetime that she could readily recall; everything seemed to remain the same, from the religious pictures that hung on the walls, to the antimacassars and
the mantel drapery embroidered by her mother. The rear of the house looked out over the kitchen garden to fields and woodland that swept down into the vale, and this too was constant, only changing with the seasons.
It was just past noon this particular Sunday when Lydia and Mr Halley got in from church. Lydia took off her bonnet and cape, then went into the kitchen to find her mother preparing vegetables at the table. Mr Halley, after taking off his hat in the hall, had gone straight into the front parlour, where a bright fire was burning.
Lydia was glad to see that her mother looked a little better. Her face was still swollen, but she appeared not quite so downcast. As Lydia took her apron and put it on, her mother said, ‘Did your father go into the front parlour?’
‘Yes, he said he wants to work on his sermon.’
Mrs Halley nodded. ‘How was the service?’
‘The same as always. Thank heaven Mr Hepthaw’s sermon didn’t go on too long today. Perhaps Mrs Hepthaw has something special going into the oven and told him not to be late. I saw Evie outside the church; I’m going round to see her this afternoon.’
‘Who else did you see?’
‘The usual people. We met Mr Canbrook.’
‘In church? Surely not.’
‘No, not in church. He was out with his dog. He said he’d come to Capinfell on business.’ She peered a little more closely at her mother. ‘How are you, Mother? Are you feeling a little better?’
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ Mrs Halley said. ‘I’m absolutely fine.’
Lydia looked at her and gave a nod, then glanced around her. ‘Right – so what shall I do?’
‘I’ve prepared the meat, and it mustn’t be overcooked this time.’ Mrs Halley straightened from the table and set down the knife with which she had been cutting up the
carrots. ‘How was he – while you were out?’ she asked in a whisper.
‘The same. He was no different.’ Lydia kept her own voice very low. ‘Though he had very little to say.’ A pause, then she asked, ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’
‘I shall be, dear.’
After a moment of hesitation, Lydia said, ‘I heard you cry out last night. I could tell when it happened.’ There – it was said; she had never before dared bring it out into the open.
Mrs Halley’s eyes briefly widened with surprise at Lydia’s words, then she turned her head, looking towards the hall, as if fearful of being overheard. ‘It’s all right,’ Lydia said, ‘he’s busy with his sermon.’ After a moment she reached out a gentle hand towards her mother’s bruised face, not quite touching. ‘Does it hurt much?’
‘Not much now. Hardly at all.’
‘Tell me,’ Lydia said. ‘Tell me what happened.’
‘Oh, my dear, it does no good to dwell on such things. He didn’t mean it.’
‘But, Mother –’
‘No, he didn’t. And afterwards he was so – so remorseful.’
‘Yes, I’ve no doubt of that.’ A pause, then Lydia added, ‘There are moments when I feel I could almost hate him.’
‘Oh, no, dear, don’t say such a thing. Don’t think such a thing.’
‘Well – I hate what he does. I can’t help it. Was he always like it, since you were married?’ She waited for her mother to answer. ‘Was he?’
Mrs Halley was not comfortable with the theme of their conversation. Avoiding Lydia’s eyes, she said, ‘No. No, not at the beginning. At the beginning things were all right. At the start he was always kind and considerate. It was only later that his temper became so – so volatile.’