Far From My Father's House (9 page)

Eleven

For a long time after he went away Annie hated Blake. Every time she thought of him the anger rose redly before her eyes and she spent time thinking up awful fates which she hoped would be his. He wrote very occasionally to her parents but her pride did not let her ask about these brief letters or read them and her parents, oddly she thought, said little about him other than that he had found work at the shipyards and was still living with her grandparents. The one time when Mary Ann came to stay during the first year Blake was not working and Mary Ann only mentioned him.

That first winter was a long one for them all. Her father could not afford to take on anyone to replace Blake and Annie found herself working as hard as a man and hating it and cursing him for leaving when they needed him so badly. She told herself that she didn’t understand why he had left, that there had been no need, that she had never told him or given him to think that she cared about him. Why did he have to be so stupid? The rain never stopped, the fields were sodden. Mud and stones came down from the top fields and flooded the road past the farm. It almost reached the back door and they were glad that there was a big step up into the house, otherwise the water might have gone in the back door, through the house and out the front and left the sundial surrounded.

She had never been as uncomfortable as she was that winter. The wind tore around the house and everything was dark and gloomy. The draughts were icy gusts in the barns, the cattle huddled together, her father complained because there was not enough hay for the animals. He talked of the sheep getting footrot and some of them did, the water stood in great pools in the fields and early in the year the lambing was the worst it had ever been with snowstorms. It felt to Annie as though she was going to spend the rest of her life getting up in the dark and going to bed in the dark and being cold and wet and exhausted.

Madge spent more and more time at the Hall where Mr Harlington and the two old aunts seemed to have accepted her as one of the family.

Sometimes Annie saw Alistair. He was spending as much time as he could away from Western Isle and his father’s ideas. He learned to do the farm accounts and to supervise the general day to day. His father wanted him to go to Houghall Agricultural College but Alistair refused. When he could, he and Tommy would take off in Alistair’s new car – his father’s guilty gift to him when he was not allowed to go away – and tour the pubs in the dale. On Saturday nights they went dancing. Sometimes it was almost morning when Tommy came home and his father was not pleased with him.

Annie went out with Paul Monmouth for a while almost out of defiance after Blake had gone. She revelled in his detached stone house, the garden where his mother grew roses, the way that his father wore suits. When you walked in the sound of Mozart filtered through from the music room, the smell of good food wafted into the hall from the kitchen. His mother played bridge, his father played chess, his sister was engaged to a doctor.

Paul talked to her about his ambitions to expand the family shops and Annie thought that it sounded good but the night that Paul Monmouth kissed her she realised that she didn’t love him, that she was bored with his talk about his father’s business, that his sister was silly, that his mother thought of nothing but her family, nothing in the real world. She was glad when he dropped her at the white gates that night. It was clear with a moon and not very late but cold and the stone dog stood out vividly beside the gate. When she got inside her parents were sitting talking quietly by the fire and she thought that she knew for the first time what it had been like for Blake when he left Sunniside. She wanted never to go away from here, not for good and that was when she began missing Blake, admitting to herself that she didn’t hate him, that she only wanted to be here with him. She wished that he would come back. There was nothing lost, he had no job, and then Mary Ann wrote and said that Blake had been taken on at the shipyard office. Annie couldn’t see Blake as a clerk but she realised then that she had no business and no right to ask him to come back to the farm.

She began to go out with other young men. Paul was not deceived. He noticed her inattention, that he was not foremost with her and he did everything that he could to bind her to him. There were flowers and chocolates and small presents. He took her dancing and to the cinema. He was punctual and courteous, he was rich and eligible. In vain did Annie try to love him. Every time she went to his house for dinner or tea and there were linen squares for her lap she smiled over Blake and his sharp retorts about the serviettes. Paul’s mother, being correct, called them napkins. It made Annie unhappy thinking about Blake and how her ambitious plans with Paul had come to nothing. The farm would never be the same somehow, it was all so boring without Blake and as time went on even with the winter long over the need for him grew worse.

Madge was seeing Frank when he was at home but doing her best to hide the meetings from her parents. Annie still went to Western Isle and here she saw Alistair daily. His father was always shouting at him and Alistair was miserable.

One afternoon about eighteen months after Blake had gone Alistair wandered into the dairy where she was about to finish work and go home.

‘Are you going to the dance?’ It was Saturday.

‘No,’ Annie said.

‘Why not?’

‘Nobody’s asked me.’

‘Paul would ask you.’

‘I don’t want to go with him.’

‘I thought you liked him. I thought, for a while, that you might marry him. Isn’t that your type?’

‘What type?’

‘Cultured, well-dressed—’

‘No, that’s not my type,’ Annie said crossly.

‘Maybe you’d go with me then.’

She couldn’t help smiling at that.

‘I might, if you would promise not to get drunk.’

‘I never get drunk.’

‘Last time I went out with you and Tommy it was the most embarrassing night of my life.’

‘Tommy’s taking Clara.’

‘I think he likes her,’ Annie said secretly pleased because Clara was still her best friend.

‘And Madge is going with Frank because he told me.’

‘All right.’

‘I’ll pick you up.’

‘Just to the gate. I don’t want my parents to know.’

Alistair looked as if he would have liked to say something about that but he didn’t.

‘Eight o’clock,’ he said over his shoulder.

*  *  *

They went to the pub first, it was the custom. Annie liked pubs. She had developed a taste for gin and tonic and she was glad to be with Tommy and Clara, Madge and Frank and Alistair. Being with people you knew made it so much more fun.

Things had not been fun since Blake had left, she thought, but they were now. And she needed fun. Now she was almost happy. Alistair was too frustrated at being stuck at Western Isle to be any fun usually but that night for some reason it was different. In the first place she had slightly too much to drink and for once Alistair didn’t talk about the farm or his parents or problems. They came out of the pub laughing and went into the hall to dance.

She danced with Alistair and with Frank and then with other young men. By the end of the evening Annie was happy like she had not been in a long time. Alistair had his car and was taking her home but when they were driving along the road at the top side of the valley she said suddenly, ‘Pull over. I want to see the dale.’

It was late but not dark. The lights twinkled in the farmhouses, the shadows showed up the square neatness of the fields. Annie got out of the car. Alistair got out of the other side and came round to where she was standing leaning against the car.

‘I love this place. I could never love anywhere more.’

‘How do you know, you haven’t been anywhere yet?’

‘Do you hate being at home?’ Annie said softly.

‘It feels like a prison. If I didn’t have to be there it would be all right. I wouldn’t mind. Western Isle’s my home but because of my father it feels like a gaol.’

‘Poor Alistair.’

‘I’m not poor. Perhaps I’d be better off if I were – at least I wouldn’t have any responsibilities. Then I could leave.’

Annie put a hand on his shoulder and as she did so he leaned over and kissed her. It was not as first kisses should be somehow, Annie thought, it was as though they had started halfway through and although he had once kissed her years since it had been just a touch of lips. She didn’t normally object to a kiss when young men took her to a dance – usually the kiss was a goodnight one but this wasn’t. He got hold of her and because his hands and mouth were gentle there was nothing to object to. Most young men were clumsy with inexperience but Alistair wasn’t. She found herself in his arms, wasn’t quite sure how she had got there but she knew one thing. She didn’t want the kiss to end.

‘Do you do that a lot?’ she said, finally breaking away.

‘What a suspicious mind. Who on earth with?’

‘I don’t know. You go out in the evenings.’

‘What is this, the inquisition?’

‘You taste nice.’

‘I should think it’s gin and tonic.’

‘You haven’t been drinking gin and tonic.’

‘No, but you have. Shall I take you home?’

‘Do it again.’

‘Annie—’

‘Don’t argue. Kiss me.’

It was even better the second time. After that they went home.

Late that night when she and Madge had gone to bed and Elsie was asleep Madge turned over in the darkness and said, ‘Frank’s asked me to marry him.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t shriek, Dad will hear.’

‘You can’t marry him.’

‘Why not?’

‘He hasn’t finished university yet.’

‘He’s going to come and see Dad. I want to marry him, Annie, it’s all I’m ever going to want.’

Annie lay awake long after Madge slept, thinking how lucky Madge was, knowing exactly what she wanted. There was a chance she would get it too. How could her father turn down the family who owned his farm?

That Monday morning Charles Vane had gone to the mart. Annie knew that Alistair would be in the study so as soon as she could get away without being seen she tiptoed along the hall through the house and noiselessly opened the study door. He was sitting with his back to her, writing.

‘Alistair!’ she whispered. ‘Is it all right if I come in?’

He stopped writing and turned around.

‘You don’t have to whisper. Close the door.’

Annie did so.

‘I just wanted to say I was sorry about Saturday.’

‘Sorry about what?’

‘I think I had too much to drink.’

‘Oh, that.’ Alistair got up and Annie could not help but think how nice and tall he was.

‘I—’ Annie could feel herself blushing.

‘Don’t worry about it. It’s all right, really.’

‘Are you sure?’ Annie’s face was fiery. She wanted to get back to the dairy before her face burned to ashes.

‘I’m sure.’ He smiled at her and Annie smiled back hastily and fled.

*  *  *

When Frank saw her father one bright spring Sunday not long before he went back to Oxford he came out of the parlour with a set mouth and flushed cheeks and after Madge was called in there she came out crying.

Annie and Tommy sat on the big white gates at the roadside to stay out of the way.

‘I thought he would have agreed,’ she said.

‘You didn’t really think so.’

‘Why shouldn’t he?’

‘With Frank’s history? His mother and father drinking like that and they’re in debt.’

‘Mr Harlington owns the valley. How can you say that they have nothing?’

‘Because it’s true. If Frank’s father is ever in his right mind for long enough he’ll realise that he has to sell the farms. I’ve heard Dad say so, and I’ll say this for him – he’ll be right. He always is about things like that.’

Later when she was alone with her mother in the kitchen making the tea Annie asked carefully, ‘Aren’t you going to let Madge marry Frank?’

Her mother didn’t look at her. She only said shortly, ‘Madge is far too young to be thinking about marrying anybody.’

‘But she loves him.’

‘Stuff and nonsense,’ her mother said. ‘Frank’s hardly out of short trousers himself. What does either of them know about marriage? Marriage is a serious business, my girl, and if it’s to work it needs more than all this poppycock about love. Now go and set the table.’

Annie dared say nothing more but in the quiet of the night when Madge had finally stopped weeping she listened to her sister say, ‘I’ll go to bed with him and when I’m pregnant they’ll have to let me marry him.’

‘Oh, Madge, you can’t do that. If you just wait a little—’

‘I can’t wait. I don’t want to wait and there’s no reason why we should.’

‘They’ll come round to it when they get used to the idea.’

Madge choked on her tears.

‘Daddy says I’m not to see Frank any more. He says that I’m too young and that Frank would make me unhappy. I don’t see how he knows.’

*  *  *

Madge cried so much and was so miserable over Frank that her parents eventually gave in but not until Frank’s father appeared at the farm, sober and grave and spent two hours sitting by the parlour fire with Rose and Jack.

‘What made you change your minds?’ Annie asked her mother when Madge had gone back to the Hall with her father-in-law to be, taking with her a face so shiny it would have been good competition for the moon, Annie thought.

Rose hesitated over the teacups she was stacking to wash and then said stoutly, ‘Madge will be mistress at the Hall. Mr Harlington – Joe – is going to make sure that they’re happy. He’s very fond of Madge. I wasn’t very old when I met your father, you know.’

‘But you were so against it.’

Rose looked at her.

‘It isn’t what we wanted but Madge wants to marry him so badly and I know what that’s like and when I met your father my mother said nothing but good things. I remembered that.’

‘And Dad?’

‘He’s still not very happy about it. You’re all his little girls, you know.’

*  *  *

That summer Annie stopped going out with half a dozen different young men and stayed at home. When she was not at Western Isle she worked hard on the farm, helped her mother and refused all invitations. Finally one Saturday evening when she was sitting in the garden among the roses Alistair turned up. She hadn’t seen him for weeks except at work.