A Country Marriage (44 page)

Having until then lain perfectly still, she shivered and cast a furtive glance towards the shape of George asleep beside her. No, it was all just too frightening to contemplate, so much so in fact, that the only thing she could think to do, was put it out of her mind,
right
out of her mind, and hope that the time when all this would come to pass was still a very, very long way off.

*

‘Lottie, love, I need to talk to the family,’ Thomas Strong said, looking across the table at her when the meal came to an end. ‘I mean no offence but this is for the family firstly, so take yourself off outside for a bit and we’ll call you back when we’re done.’ With the quickest of looks to Hannah, Lottie nodded and left, closing the door quietly behind her, and as the family settled back at the table, Mary felt her pulse quicken. But, clearing his throat and having evidently decided not to beat about the bush, Thomas announced simply, ‘Tom’s passin’ has meant that I need to change my will, since, as you know, he stood to inherit the farm when I’m gone.’ At this point, Mary couldn’t bring herself to meet anyone’s eyes. What she wanted more than anything was to see what Annie’s reaction would be but knew that she lacked the courage to look. She did, however, glimpse Ellen exchange a fleeting smile with Will and felt how her heart sank; just as she had been expecting, they had clearly been discussing this very point and come to what had always seemed to be the obvious conclusion. A wave of hot, prickly, guilt washed over her; after all, it was largely Ellen’s failure to produce a child that was handing George the inheritance. ‘So I’ve taken advice,’ Thomas ploughed on, ‘and if I want to ensure that Summerleas has a – what did John Sherfield call it, a smooth succession? – then I only got one choice an’ so I’m changing my will to leave Summerleas to George.’

In the astonished silence, Mary’s ears thumped with the pounding of her blood and she grasped for the edge of the table, aware now that, as if by way of torture, all of the family members most affected by this news – Annie, Will and Ellen – were seated facing her. In recognition of this, she snapped her eyes shut, but it was too late and the three faces, wiped of their usual animation, had already become branded into her memory. Anxious to be rid, she turned towards the bright square of light at the window, its four tiny panes craning open into the yard. Snatches of ordinariness floated into the silence; sparrows cheeping insistently and soft breezes swishing the oak. More distantly, fitful lowing drifted up from the meadow but here, inside the farmhouse that she would now one day occupy as mistress, the solitary sound – the soporific ticking of the longcase clock in the hall – served only to intensify the agony. Still trembling, she forced herself to look quickly around the table, her eyes falling on Ellen, distractedly biting at her bottom lip, her eyes pressed shut but her tears nevertheless coursing down her cheeks, while alongside her, disbelief seemed to have drained Will’s face of all colour. People talked about the deathly pallor of shock, but, until this precise moment, she had never seen what they meant. Unsettled by the notion that she was, in part at least, complicit in Will’s distress, she directed her attention instead towards Annie, but in contrast to the obvious shock of the other two,
her
face was surprisingly blank.

‘I fancy you might need to explain
why
, Thomas,’ she heard Hannah taking it upon herself to say.

‘Well, presumably, Robert, you ain’t got a problem with it?’ his father asked.

Robert shrugged his shoulders.

‘It makes no difference to me,’ he said flatly. ‘I weren’t ever going to inherit it.’

‘True,’ Thomas agreed. ‘And you, Annie, I fancy it ain’t your main concern, either.’

She too shrugged her shoulders.

‘I suppose not,’ she replied neutrally. ‘Although I did always imagine that one day it might pass to James.’

‘Aye. An’ I know it’ll come as little comfort to you but I thought long and hard on that very point afore reaching my decision.’ For a moment, as he paused and looked towards Will, Mary thought she could see genuine regret in his expression. ‘Will, son,’ he began, his tone already weighed by apology. ‘It grieves me greatly to watch as you and Ellen have such misfortune with the babies, but ’tis so vital for Summerleas to remain in the family that in truth I have no choice. I’m sorry, truly. I mean, in a way, ’tis the same for your ma, though it pains me to say it.’ In their surprise, everyone seemed to turn to look at Hannah. ‘When summat happens to me, your ma might want to get herself wed again. And if she did and the farm was in her ownership, then it would become the property of her husband, passing out of this family for all time, and that’s a risk I just can’t allow. And likewise, I can’t burden her by leaving her the farm and then stating that she mustn’t wed.’ He paused and looked at their faces. ‘So George is the safest pair of hands. And he has a son.’

In the silence that followed his last remark, Annie got up from her chair, and without saying anything, walked from the room. Moving to go after her, Ellen also stood up but Hannah motioned her to remain.

‘No, leave her be, love. ’Tis particular upsetting for
her
since
she
was in line for it all.’

‘But what about
me
?’ Ellen asked, her fists clenched in front of her and her knuckles straining white through her pale skin. ‘Don’t you
see
? Annie may well have expected to be mistress of Summerleas one day, and I’m sure she wishes fervently it was still the case, but at least she has
children
. What about
my
dreams? And
Will’s
?’

‘Ellen,’ Will began to say, clearly uncomfortable at his wife’s outburst.

‘No, Will, I won’t be silenced on this,’ she said firmly and turned back towards her in-laws. ‘Don’t you think it’s
bad
enough
for me to be barren and empty and childless, having to watch as Mary and Annie bring sons into this family, while inside I ache for such a chance? So can you even imagine for
one
moment
, how it feels for Will an’ me to now be passed over on account of my failure, when already I grieve every day for the babies I’ve lost?’

Mary looked into her lap. Her first instinct was an urge to comfort Ellen but how would it look? After all, she had just gained so much, and all of it entirely at Ellen’s expense.
And
she and George didn’t know the heartbreak of being childless, either. She bit her tongue hard and tried to hold back tears, feeling, as Ellen obviously did, that the whole business was unfair twice over.

Slamming her fists onto the table, Ellen’s crying turned to anguished howling and Mary noticed Hannah nod at Will, who scraped back his chair to help his wife up and lead her away.

‘Well, it was never going to be easy,’ Hannah remarked to her husband, as she watched them go, and then, levering herself up, walked across to the window. Leaning over the sink, she tapped on the glass and beckoned to Lottie. ‘And I
do
feel for her, poor maid, especially seeing how it’s her problem that’s deprived Will of what he might rightly have expected. But, well, at least now I suppose it’s all out in the open.’

‘Aye and I’m not chancing the farm, either,’ Thomas said with a sigh, watching absently as Lottie now set about clearing the remains of the meal.

Dabbing at her eyes and noticing that beside her George seemed oddly fidgety, Mary looked up to see him watching his father stepping out into the yard.

‘Well, maybe I’d best go and see if Annie’s all right,’ he mumbled.

‘Annie?’ she asked, looking back at him in surprise.

‘Aye. She seemed upset—’

‘You think
Annie’s
upset?’ she remarked, the unwitting sharpness of her tone betraying her utter disbelief as she watched him set off along the hallway in search of his sister-in-law.

*

Just as George was expecting, he found Annie in the parlour, sitting on the window seat staring out across the garden, and as he pushed the door closed behind him, she looked up, although the flat expression on her face didn’t change.

‘How long have you known?’ she asked, as he sat at the other end of the seat, wishing now that he had rehearsed this conversation beforehand.

‘Pa came up last night. It was summat of a shock, I can tell you.’

‘Hmm.’

Despite being quick to detect the distrust in her tone, he knew that showing even the smallest hint of exasperation would only rile her further.

‘Truthfully, Annie. I had no idea.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Be
reasonable
,’ he implored her. ‘How could I have known what Pa was up to? And anyway, you must have known that Summerleas wouldn’t pass straight to James.’

‘George, don’t be foolish.
Of
course
I knew that but the only good thing about being wed to Tom was that, one day, all of this would’ve been mine.’ He watched as she waved her hand vaguely about. ‘I can’t claim it made it all worthwhile but at least it offered
some
comfort. Then, when he died, I thought, well, at least Will and Ellen won’t throw me out. So surely even
you
can imagine how it feels to find that not only did I lose Summerleas but that, as it turns out, I lost it to your
wife
.’ As he watched her spit the last word, he bristled. ‘Now, I’ll be faced with living here –
if
I’m
lucky
– alongside your adoring little Mary and all of her offspring. And do you have
any
idea how that makes me feel, when
I
have your sons
too
and by any normal reckoning it’s
me
you should be wed to?’

‘I’m not fond of you when you’re bitter,’ he said firmly. Her response, though, was to glower at him. ‘
I
didn’t marry Mary until you were
long
since married to my brother. You can’t hold me to ransom for wanting to get on with my life. You got on with yours.’ With that remark, he saw her shoulders sag and hoped it was a sign of a softening of her attitude.

‘I know,’ she said, exhaling heavily. ‘Forgive me. I’m sorry, truly I am. It’s just that it’s hard enough seeing you with
her
all the time, but then to have
that
thrown at me without the least warning.’

‘Look, believe me when I say that if I’d known earlier, I would have told you,’ he said, wondering whether in fact that would have been true, since he realised now that she would have reacted badly whenever she had found out.

‘I know. And I don’t want to fall out with you.’ With what sounded to him like a resigned sigh, she lowered her voice, ‘I love you so much, George, and our boys, too. And at least I know that if the farm is yours, I won’t ever be homeless and you’ll see that our sons learn to farm and have work, too.’ At that moment, something seemed to fall across him and it felt like a dark shadow. ‘And anyway, who knows how things will work out in the future, eh? Maybe you and me will end up together here yet…’

Prickling at her remark and determining to ignore it, he stood up.

‘Well, I’m glad to hear that you’re being reasonable,’ he told her quietly, thinking that in truth she was being anything but. ‘And I urge you now, just think long and hard afore you go creating any
difficulties
between me and Mary, because if she has
any
suspicions, any at all, then it’ll just make it harder for me to come down here to see you, you understand that, don’t you?’

‘Oh don’t go gettin’ all werrety. You overlook that I know well enough what’s what in that regard.’

‘Well, good, then,’ he said decisively and without further comment, left the room and went rather stiffly back to the kitchen.

‘Can we go home, now?’ Mary greeted him.

Fighting back the irritation left from his previous conversation, he confined himself to a single word.

‘Aye.’ A further falling out was the last thing he needed.

‘Is she all right?’

‘Annie?’

‘Yes.’

‘Right enough in the circumstances.’ Well, he consoled his conscience; it wasn’t a lie.

‘I mean, I can understand her being a bit…
put
out
but she can hardly blame
you
, can she?’ he heard his wife persisting as she grabbed for Jacob’s blanket. Stepping outside, he purposely quickened his pace, only to hear her skipping alongside him to keep up. ‘George?’

‘Mary, can we leave it be, please? This has already caused enough upset—’

‘
Upset
?’ Will’s raised voice stopped them dead; his sudden appearance ahead of them suggesting that he had been lying in wait.

In that brief instant, he saw in his brother’s face a frightening likeness to Tom in one of his uglier moods.

‘Will, I’m sorry about how this has happened, truly I am. I knew nothing of it.’

‘Oh, save your breath, George. Your apology means nothing.’