Lakeland Lily (26 page)

Lily’s very first dinner party was a disaster. She had taken particular care with her gown, a beige-pink with burgundy trim, and Betty had piled her soft brown hair into a most becoming chignon. Lily was standing before the long mirror in her room, going over all Margot’s complex instructions in her head, when her mother-in-law walked in.

‘I’ve decided it would be best if you did not attend dinner tonight. One of the young men has cried off so our numbers are uneven, and you really are not ready for society yet, my dear.’

Lily was shocked. Days of acquiring the necessary etiquette, hours getting ready, and all for nothing? ‘But I must.’

Margot smiled and patted the air an inch from Lily’s hand. ‘I shall explain you’ve been ill. That you are not quite up to the mark.’ Which was true, for once the tears had started, they’d barely stopped. Lily had sobbed herself to sleep night after night, misery hanging about her like a shroud. Each morning she woke to a dark depression, wishing she needn’t rise from the safety of her bed to face the world. Only her wish to recompense Bertie for the terrible damage she had done him got her through the day.

‘Bertie will expect me to be there.’

‘He will understand perfectly that you cannot be.’

‘Yes, but...’

Margot was halfway to the door. ‘Help Mrs Greenholme in the kitchen, there’s a dear. I’m sure you wish to be useful, and all the maids will be fully occupied serving.’ A final frosty smile and she was gone, the door clicking firmly closed behind her.

And so Lily’s first dinner party was spent in the kitchen. Rivers of tears fell into the greasy water as she washed up at the big pot sink with a huge apron wrapped about her fine party gown. Mrs Greenholme studiously kept her opinions on the matter to herself.

The ban continued for two whole weeks.

‘How can I ever learn if I am not permitted to try?’ Lily persisted.

Bertie, still numb with grief, chose not to intervene and for once she felt like hitting him. At last Lily persuaded Margot to allow her to join them for a dinner party - a decision she was soon to regret. Lily used the wrong knife for the fish course, dropped a spoon from sheer nervousness, and earned herself a reproving glare by declining the oyster patties. Then, as Selene pointedly leaned over to adjust Lily’s napkin to the correct position on her lap, somehow a glass of red wine got knocked all over the white damask tablecloth.

Afterwards she was called to the little parlour for her sins to be listed. ‘You see, my dear. As I said, you are not ready.’

She wanted to protest that if Selene hadn’t interfered at exactly the moment she’d reached for her wine ... But what was the use? Even Bertie seemed bent on seeing her in the worst light.

‘Most embarrassing for Mama. For all of us, actually.’

Lily swallowed her misery and sense of failure. ‘I was nervous. I need more practice.’

‘Exactly. Mama has told me how you resent her offering advice - which is for your own good, don’t you know? You can’t go on sulking in your room, forever being difficult and refusing to cooperate. Life goes on and you’ve got to face up to your responsibilities, old thing.’

Lily’s mouth dropped open. She longed to protest. Margot had entirely twisted the truth, making out it was she who had refused to attend the dinner parties, rather than Margot refusing to allow her to come.

Lily wanted to say that she had never willingly spent time in her room. Someone, kind-hearted Betty perhaps, had removed the broken fragments of cradle. Now the room seemed emptier than ever, and she could scarce bear to stay in it for a moment longer than necessary. But what was the point? Why make matters worse than they already were?

The ‘lessons’ were redoubled and Lily dutifully, if somewhat reluctantly, accompanied her mother-in-law on a relentless programme which, as well as the recognised social events such as Grasmere Sports, Rydal Sheep Dog Trials and Yacht Club events, included soirees, picnics, tea-parties and balls which took place almost every week in one or other of the fine houses around Carreckwater.

Strangely, it was Bertie who was the one most likely to cry off these days. He spent less and less time at home, claiming he preferred to take long walks over Benthwaite Crag or up to Glebe Woods. He’d often disappear for the entire day on the surrounding fells, carrying his lunch in a pack on his back. He’d walk over Hollin Fell, or as far as Little Langdale. He never asked Lily to go with him on these rambles, nor did she offer, assuming them to be a necessary part of his healing process. Sometimes he’d disappear for days on end and tell no one where he’d been.

But he never missed one of Margot’s steamer picnics. The steam yacht would sail, silently and majestically, out to one of the many islands with only a passing moorhen to disturb the peace.

A huge table would be spread with the finest china and glass upon pristine white cloths. Should the weather appear uncertain this would take place aboard the yacht beneath the striped canopy; otherwise in the open at the selected spot.

Several bounteous hampers would be unpacked, the quality of the food being beyond description. There would be the finest game pies and roast duck, smoked salmon and potted char, and a choice selection of desserts to tempt the most jaded palate.

Fothergill the butler would serve champagne from a silver bucket marked with the
Faith’s
crest, and two maids in frilly aprons likewise decorated, so no one was in any doubt about the wealth of the boat’s owner, would serve tea to the ladies and offer delicacies to tempt fragile appetites.

And while the food was consumed, Margot would instruct her guests upon the scenic beauty around them or launch into a well-rehearsed history of the chosen island.

‘A hermit monk once inhabited this place,’ she informed them as they disembarked upon Martinholme. ‘He spent his entire time planting trees, when he wasn’t on his knees praying, poor man.’

At another she might give details of the Civil War, and how the island had been defended against capture by the opposing forces. Or how a man once held an auction to rid himself of a wife who had become a trial to him.

‘Darling Edward would never do such a thing, would you, my dear?’ she simpered, and he harrumphed and lit another cigar.

No one could say that Margot Clermont-Read was not the perfect hostess, always prepared to entertain and educate her guests. She made very certain that her elegant party was not inconvenienced by sailing too close to the Public Steamers with their unsightly cargo of trippers and mill girls.

‘Heavens, at times there are as many as a thousand people milling about the bandstand, tennis courts, and steamer terminal. Why do they clutter up the lake so? They quite ruin its tranquillity.’

‘It’s a pity they have nothing better do,’ Edith Ferguson-Walsh agreed.

Edward’s favourite occupation was, of course, steering, while George tinkered with the engine or fed it chips of wood from the two barrowloads he’d put on board for the afternoon’s sail.

Lily sat with a frozen smile on her face, hoping her wide flowered hat would not blow off in the breeze, while she strove to remember everyone’s name and all she had been taught. Once more she could feel the trap closing around her. It was no comfort at all to realise she had created it for herself.

Lily felt quite unable to take her troubles to Arnie. In any case, she guessed what her father’s reaction would be. She’d made her bed and must lie on it. That would be his view.

In any case, he had enough problems of his own to worry over with a sick wife, work to find, and the girls to bring up.

Her main source of friendship came from an unexpected quarter. Her regular visits to The Cobbles necessitated her using the ferry to cross from Barwick House, which lay on the western shore of the lake, to Carreckwater on the east.

The ferry was largely responsible for bringing the outside world to Barwick House. The butcher and grocer’s boys brought their deliveries on it, the postman the letters and even a telegram once in a while. Coal and wood came the long way, by road, but milk was delivered in huge metal churns, right to Mrs Greenholme’s kitchen door.

Passengers used the ferry to go to town and back for shopping or to visit a friend further down the lake. There were various small jetties used as pick-up points, all marked with a bell or whistle to call the boat over.

Lily would make her way along the shingled shoreline to where a small folly stood some hundred yards from the perimeter of the gardens. Here a bell was sited, the sound of which would carry across the lake, alerting the ferryman, Bob Leyton.

Then she would sit, arms curled about her knees while she waited for the old man to set down his mug of tea or leave his fishing line safely secured then ease the small boat from the stone jetty and row across the lake to fetch her.

Sometimes he would have several customers: walkers, climbers, couples on holiday, children wanting a special treat. At others there would be only herself. Lily liked it best when she was alone.

Ferryman Bob would take his time then. She’d sit on a log, suck one of his mints, and listen to his stories of his adventures at sea, or the day the Windermere ferry sank with a load of quarrymen aboard. Forty men had perished, Bob’s uncle among them.

‘Not my father, he ran the ferry here. My family has held the licence for the Carreckwater ferry for three generations, and I’m to be the last,’ he would tell her, shaking his head over what he termed his sad bachelor fate.

Lily would only laugh and call him an old sea dog with a woman in every port.

‘Just as well I never did wed,’ he’d finally admit. ‘Would’ve made the poor woman’s life a misery.’

Since then she’d taken to ringing the bell whenever loneliness or the ever-present pangs of her loss threatened to overwhelm her. It seemed to Lily at times that she had no one else to turn to.

On this day in late September, when the woods all about glowed with bright colour, she knew she should feel glad to be alive. But her heart lay cold as stone, heavy and still in her breast, as if there were no longer any point in its functioning. She’d tucked a shawl about her shoulders and walked for miles. Finally she reached the small folly and rang the bell. The sound of it echoed over the water, splintering the golden silence with its silvery notes.

A cormorant flew across the lake, skimming the water, sharp as a black dart. She could see the familiar thread of smoke coming from Ferryman Bob’s cottage chimney. It comforted her just to see it.

She sat on a handy log, prepared to wait.

Ferryman Bob was a round little man with a shining bald head, usually kept covered with a knitted cap into which were stuck a selection of fishing flies and old badges from his navy days. From somewhere within its folds he could produce a stub of a cigarette, a match, safety pin, or even a boiled sweet. He claimed his pockets were too full of string and important tools to find any space for such delicate objects.

When he wasn’t attending a call for the ferry, or warming his stockinged feet by the fire in his tiny cottage, he was usually to be found on the end of the jetty or sitting on a rock with a line out in the water. There was nothing he enjoyed more than gazing silently upon the broad expanse of water, gemmed with emerald islets. This was his world, and he loved it.

‘You’re lucky I bothered to come,’ he said now, tying up the small rowing boat. ‘I could see the water creaming wi’ trout. I’ve probably lost me only chance of catching one now.’

Lily only smiled, well used to his taciturn manner and knowing he meant none of it.

‘I felt like a bit of crack.’

‘Talk away,’ he said, joining her on the log. ‘I’m all yours till the next bell rings.’ He pulled out a crumpled cigarette stub and, cupping it between yellowed fingers in the palm of his hand, sucked it into life with the flare of a match. ‘What d’you want to talk about then?’

Lily shrugged. ‘Anything.’ Anything but Margot, or Edward, The Cobbles, or Bertie’s endless sulks, she added silently. As usual it was Ferryman Bob who did most of the talking.

He told her of the ghost who rang the bell on cold winter evenings, when there was no one wanting a ride. Lily laughed at his solemn expression, refusing to believe such a tale.

‘It must be the wind.’

‘Not on a cold, starry night.’

‘Have you ever seen a ghost?’

‘I have. A poor woman whose bairn drownded in a storm. She keeps looking for it, poor mite, calling the ferry to help her.’

Lily shivered, thoughts of her own lost child piercing her sharply. She reflected on this sad tale with wide, believing eyes then saw the crinkles about his own. ‘You’re having me on.’

‘Every word is true as I’m sitting ‘ere.’

‘Well, I’ll not believe it.’

‘I see your chap sometimes, out and about.’

‘Do you?’

‘Don’t say much, do he?’

‘Not a lot.’

‘I takes him to the steamer pier quite a bit.’

‘Oh?’ Lily didn’t want to talk about Bertie but wondered, fleetingly, what purpose he could have in Carreckwater. She rarely saw him these days, and whenever she did the glazed hardness in his once soft brown gaze troubled her more than she could say. ‘No doubt he meets up with Nathan Monroe and they go off fishing, or more likely on a drinking spree together.’