The Honeymoon (4 page)

She was a child so filled with love, an overflowing river of it, a need to give love, a hunger to receive it, a need for someone to whom she could be all, who would focus only on her. Sensitive, easily moved to tears. Even as a little girl she was a jealous lover.

Ten days later, the babies were dead.

After two weeks her mother came down from her room, but she lay mostly on the divan, covered in her quilt, pale and weak. Before, she’d been such an energetic person, used to taking care of everything, seeing that the house was cleaned and scrubbed to perfection, supervising all, doing the sewing and mending, but now she couldn’t accomplish the things she was accustomed to. She was tired and
frustrated and sharp-tongued because she didn’t feel well. Marian longed to lay her head upon her lap while her mother stroked her hair, but her caresses were fleeting and slight. “There, there,” her mother said. “Be a good girl and go outside and play.”

Aunt Mary came every day to help, bustling about, in charge of them all, her voice loud, the curls of her wig bobbing under her bonnet. Her mother’s family, the Pearsons, were of a higher class than her father’s, the Evanses. The Pearsons were yeomen farmers, their father a churchwarden. The Pearsons knew their superiority, they did things the proper way, their way — bleaching the linens, brewing the cowslip wine, curing the hams. But Marian’s father, Robert Evans, had started out as a humble carpenter with hardly any “eddication.” Still, he was clever and ambitious, and a good worker who’d risen to be agent for the Newdigate family’s Arbury Estate. The Newdigates gave him Griff House to live in, a big, warm, ivy-covered red-brick house, with lots of places to explore and hide.

Her mother had desperately wanted more boys, but after the death of the twins no more came. Isaac, the only boy now, three years older than Marian, was her favorite child. After that, her mother loved Chrissey, the oldest, best — Chrissey was named “Christiana” after her, pretty and well behaved and no trouble, and she looked just like their mother had, with her perfect blond curls, her button nose and rosebud lips. Marian was the youngest child, plain, with dark, sallow skin and the big Evans nose, her dull, auburn hair forever tangled. She was like some discombobulated bird, flapping about all the time, and always bursting into tears.

“That child looks like a mulatter,” Aunt Mary said.

“Marian,” her mother asked, “did you wash your face today?”

“Yes, I did!” she replied, affronted.

“That child’s hair is a mess,” her mother said to Aunt Mary. “Fetch me my wool from the bedroom, then,” she told Marian.

Marian climbed the stairs, twisting her hand on the bannister, and soon became fascinated by the squeaking sound it made on the wood. At the top she called out, “What was it you wanted, Mama?”

“For goodness’ sake,” Aunt Mary said. “That child’s head’s always in the clouds. Come here and let me brush that hair. If your mama won’t do it, I will.”

Aunt Mary rose and came up after her. She grabbed her roughly and dragged her down the stairs. Then she took up the hairbrush and began pulling at the hated, tangled hair until sparks of agony emitted from Marian’s tender child’s scalp. “Ow! Ow! Ow!”

Her scalp was burning. She escaped Aunt Mary’s grasp and fled, her mother calling out after her, “You come back here and let Aunt Mary brush that hair! You hear me, now? That child’ll be the death of me.”

She ran into her mother’s room and snatched a pair of scissors from the bureau. Gulping down her tears, she began sawing off great chunks of her hair until it stuck out like a shorn cat’s. Now she was
really
ugly. She would punish them.

Slowly, defiantly, holding her head high, she descended the stairs. They looked up and caught sight of her.

“Good God!” her mother said. “What’ve you gone and done now?”

“Come here till I give you a spanking,” Aunt Mary cried. She leapt up and grabbed her roughly by the arm, pinching her, and there and then she tore down her knickers and walloped her hard until she screamed. She’d exposed her bare bottom to the world.

She escaped again, up to the attic this time and out of their reach. The attic was her refuge, quiet and smelling sweetly of woodworm and dust and cobwebs. She kept her old wooden doll there, naked and discarded, its painted-on face faded and washed away. It was her “Bad Doll,” her “Naughty Girl Doll.” Now she grabbed it and she began stabbing at it with a pencil. “Bad girl! You are a bad girl!” Again and again she stabbed it. “Will you never learn?” she cried.

Her mother was too tired and weak to love her anymore. She was a rebellious, difficult child, the youngest now, wanting attention, too much for her mother, but her father loved her.

In the morning, after the incident with the hair, her father came down and saw her cowering angrily in the corner, her face smeared with dried tears. He saw the catastrophe of her hair and sensed the irritation of the women in the room. “What’s the matter, little wench?” he said, and picked her up. Her mother reported to him her misdeeds. “There, there,” he said. “I’ll take her with me today on my rounds.” He patted her on the back, and she lay her head on his shoulder and glared at her mother. He carried her outside, lifted her up onto the gig, and off they went.

The Arbury Estate was her father’s kingdom, it was thousands of acres, a country unto itself. They sped along in the gig in the sunny, spring-scented air, on the rutted
lanes, wildflowers everywhere, speedwell and starflowers, the hedges filled with wild roses. Beyond was the Coventry Canal with its brown waters, the boats passing by, loaded with coal and timber from the estate, bound for the city.

Every now and then her father stopped to collect the rents from the tenants and to talk to the workers about repairs on the barns. All the while, she asked him questions. “What is ‘measuring timber,’ Papa?” “What is ‘rotating crops’?”

“Questions! Questions!” He laughed. “Tha’s a clever little ’un. Tha’ shouldsta been born a boy.”

They came to the colliery, which lay not far beyond the green meadows surrounding Griff House — all day and night you could hear the sound of the machines pumping water from the pits. There was the steam engine house and the water wheel, and a rail line connecting the colliery to the canal. The earth around the colliery was black with coal dust, and so were the miners, their knees permanently bent from crouching in the underground tunnels. Some of them were mere boys, just a bit older than she was. When they saw her father coming, they stopped work and stared sullenly at him. He spoke only to the foreman.

After a few minutes they took off again. “Can I drive the gig, Papa?” she entreated. “Can I?”

He moved her over between his legs and wound the reins around her little hands. “Pull ’er a little to the left,” he commanded, and she did, and lo!, the horse moved to the left. It did what she told it to!

Holding the reins tight, she cried out in glee as they went and his strong legs gripped her tight and she was safe.

Ahead of them, they saw a tall, gray figure walking determinedly along the road. A group of boys was chasing after him, throwing stones. But the man ignored them, his eyes on the ground.

“Who is that man, Papa?” she asked.

“That’s that poor old weaver. He’s a hermit, lives over in Coventry Wood. Hey, youse!” he shouted at the boys. He slowed the gig. “Get thee away from here ’til I give you a beating with my own hands.” The boys, caught, looked at him fearfully and slunk back. The weaver didn’t acknowledge any of them, but just kept on his steady walk. Her father hated injustice. Once when he was riding in the stagecoach to Kent a sailor was behaving rudely to a fellow passenger, a woman, and her father grabbed the youth and with his huge hand held him down all the way through the rest of the journey.

After a mile or so, rising before them out of the flat fields like an apparition was a great Gothic mansion, with battlements and turrets. It was Arbury Hall, the Newdigate family seat. “I’ve got to stop and see Mr. Newdigate,” he said. “Be a good gel and say not a word and I’ll let you come in with me.”

They pulled into the long driveway and drove through the park, passed a wide lake on their right, white swans drifting slowly across it, and drew up to the house.

A footman in livery came out to greet them. As they entered the great front door of the mansion she held tightly onto his hand, looking up all around her. The ceilings were high, vaulted like a cathedral, white with elaborate patterns traced all over the plaster like lace, speckled with gold. There were immense chandeliers and huge oriel windows looking out onto the park.

The footman escorted them to the study, their footsteps echoing in the great space. An old man with rheumy eyes and wobbly wet lips was sitting at a desk in the window. It was Mr. Newdigate.

She stood there with lips sealed while her father spoke to Mr. Newdigate about “disturbances with the colliers … dissatisfied … the price of corn,” his tone anxious, assertive. “We’re setting up petitions in every parish to continue the Corn Laws. As you know, the Radicals want to do away with the import duties to lower the price …”

There was turmoil in the land, and the baronet listened, frowning and cold, and shaking his head, as her father reported on it to him.

It was he who gave her her first book, when she was five. It was called
The Linnet’s Life
, and she made him sit down at once and read it to her. The linnet was a homely little brown bird, just like her.
“None of its colours are splendid,”
her father read.
“Its want of gaudiness is well made up by the sweetness of its song, and its rich variety. Its manners are gentle and docile …”

There were pictures of the linnet sitting in the tree, and of the mother linnet feeding her babies. But it was the picture of the little girl and her mother looking out the window when the bird flees its cage that gripped her. The girl in that picture had a dark complexion, just like her, and a big nose, and she was plain, not pretty at all. The little girl in
The Linnet’s Life
was
her
.

Every night she made him read the book to her, sometimes twice over again. “But I jes’ read the whole thing to you,” he protested.

“Please!”

And he would comply.

“You left out
‘Useful virtues I’ll acquire’
!” she cried.

“How’d you be knowing that then?” he asked.

She had memorized the entire thing. But she didn’t tell him that because then she wouldn’t be able to lie against his chest and listen to his deep, comforting voice as he read it to her, while her body relaxed and she drifted off into sleep, waking only when he picked her up and laid her down on her little bed and covered her with her quilt and kissed her good night.

Her father was her first love. But after him came Isaac. Isaac, sturdy and strong, rosy-cheeked, with the big Evans nose, only on Isaac it was good-looking. She trailed about after him like a puppy.

“Come on, Polly,” he ordered her. “It’s ten o’clock!” She couldn’t yet tell time, of course. He ran toward the gate and she hurried to keep up with him.

They could hear the thrumming of horses’ hooves in the distance, and there it was, the mail coach dashing by on its way to Coventry. You could tell the time by it, green and yellow, its gold crest flashing on the side,
HIS MAJESTY’S MAIL
, drawn by four grays, the pounding of their hooves filing their ears, the coachman and the guard in scarlet uniforms
with top hats, the guard stationed at the rear by the mailbox holding his blunderbuss, in winter the outside passengers bundled up in furs and blankets, their luggage and baskets of game tied to the back. Fast! So fast! The fastest thing you’d ever seen. It stopped for nothing. The coachman lifted his hand to wave to them. “He knows us!” cried Isaac, as if it was the same man each time, and he appreciated their waiting for him, their friendliness and loyalty, and he liked them.

She and Isaac played “house” for hours and hours on end under the yew tree. “You be the father,” she told him. “And I’ll be the mother and Dolly’ll be our baby.”

She held the doll out to him. “Kiss baby,” she said, and he kissed it perfunctorily, shyly, like a boy. She pulled the doll back toward her. It was as if he were really kissing
her
, for in real life, of course, he never kissed her.

“Off to work,” he said, like their father. And he went out from under the shelter of the tree, and a few moments later returned.

“Here’s your supper,” she said, and handed him a saucer from her tea set on which she mixed earth and water into mud for his “food.” He pretended to eat it, smacking his lips. They played this game over and over again for hours, as if in a trance, hating to be interrupted in its rhythmic repetition, stalling when it began to grow dark and Aunt Mary called to them to come in for supper.

He let her go fishing with him. She carried the bait basket while he marched ahead to Round Pool bearing the line like a banner.