A Time Like No Other (26 page)

She did not tell them, perhaps since she had not really noticed, that the moment the mistress entered the room he sprang to his feet and despite the protestations of the excited children became the rather stiff, polite master they all knew. But he did favour that baby!

That baby! How strange, Lally brooded as she still gazed at the curve in the drive where Harry had disappeared, that he should take to the child who was not his but the outcome of her and Roly’s one small indiscretion. One moment of madness up on the moorland. He had made love to her last night which had been pleasant, she supposed she would call it, and he had seemed satisfied, turning from her to fall asleep at once, his breathing deep and soft.

She started as a tap on the door sounded and Biddy entered carrying a tray with a pot of hot chocolate of which Lally was inordinately fond.

‘Oh, you’re up then,’ Biddy said. ‘Mr Harry said not to disturb you but I knew a morning like this would have you out of your bed. Where are you off to today? I’ve just come from the nursery and those lads are asking for you. Nice day for a walk up to Folly. Polly McGinley was asking after you t’other day, wanting to know when you were bringing Miss Cat up to see them. Their Kate’s about ready to present them with a second grandchild. Eeh, babies don’t half bring happiness.’

She put the tray down on the small table beside the fireplace, plumping up the cushions on Lally’s chair, watching as her young mistress pulled her diaphanous negligee about her and strolled across to the chair. She wasn’t awfully sure she liked these wisps of bedroom wear Miss Lally had taken to donning in the privacy of the room she shared with Mr Harry but then she was a newly married woman and if her husband – of whom Biddy thought the world – liked them who was she to disagree. She began to pick up items of clothing, Mr Harry’s velvet dressing gown, a pillow thrown from the bed – what had they been up to? – a discarded slipper of Miss Lally’s and a fine silk stocking, among other items, some of which surprised her. Miss Lally was not the tidiest of women and it seemed Mr Harry was picking up her habits!

Lally sipped her chocolate, staring into the empty firegrate in which an enormous vase of mixed roses from the garden had been placed. She hadn’t made any plans for today as since Susan had taken over the nursery and Cameron was in full charge of the farmland, under Harry’s instructions, she found she was a lady of leisure. She, after much persuading by Harry, had taken to calling on the wives of men who could perhaps be of use to him in his business. Mrs Fred Anson, the banker’s wife, Mrs George Bracken whose husband was in cotton and Mrs Albert Watson, wife of the builder who was at the moment in discussion with Harry over the proposed extension of one of his mills. She was bored to extinction, she told Biddy but she owed it to Harry after all. They had given a dinner party or two, inviting not only those who might help Harry in a commercial way, but younger members of the millocracy and always included was Doctor John Burton. One day, if she could prevail upon Harry and, not least, Susan herself, she meant to include her in one of their more informal gatherings, for already Susan, who was quick and intelligent, was taking on a certain gloss which would not look amiss among the down-to-earth members of Harry’s acquaintances.

For an hour each morning Susan sat Alec and Jamie round the nursery table, books spread out on it and was attempting to teach the boys their letters and with a rather surprising talent had managed to gain and keep their attention by some clever trick with crayons, big books which they coloured in the letters of the alphabet, each one an animal or an object of interest to two small boys, and without them realising it they had already learned to spell simple words connected to what they were colouring. A train, a cat, a dog, a tree, a ball, and though one hour was enough before their childish span of attention was reached it was reaping a rich reward. And somehow, just as important, it gave Susan an inordinate amount of satisfaction to know that she was doing a worthwhile job of work and was earning what she saw as a great deal of money for doing it. She loved the children and was good with them. And they loved her and though Dora had sulked for a week or two at having what she had considered her place in the household taken over by another woman, she had gradually settled down and was willing to follow Mrs Harper’s lead in the working of the nursery. After all, Mrs Harper could read and write. Dora couldn’t but while Mrs Harper gave the boys their daily lesson Dora was in complete charge of dear little Jack who was walking now and the baby Cat who was doing her best to crawl. All in all a very satisfactory arrangement.

They were drinking their milk, which Doctor Burton insisted on every morning though he was the first to admit that it was mainly for Jack that he had prescribed it since the Sinclair children were well nourished and healthy but it did them no harm to share with Jack, when Miss Lally marched in to the nursery, moving in turn to each child round the table and giving them a hearty kiss. Jack was not left out. Already he loved the sweet-smelling lady who was always ready for a cuddle, though not like his mam, of course. His mam who he was learning to call
Mama
as it would not do for the Sinclair children to pick up the Yorkshire speech of the working class. Even Susan Harper was smoothing out her broad Yorkshire accent!

‘Right, who’s for a walk up to see Mrs McGinley?’ cried Lally, swinging her daughter up into her arms, holding her high and making her squeal with excitement. Cat was not sure where they were off to but with her young mother it was always somewhere fun.

‘Can we feed the hens, Mama,’ Jamie beseeched, ‘and the piglets? Mrs Polly says there are some ’ittle tiny new ones. I’m going to hold one,’ he said importantly, looking round at the others. ‘In fac’ I might bring one home with me to keep in the nursery.’

‘Me too . . . me too . . . Hens, Mama, and ’ickle pigs.’

‘You can all feed them if Mrs McGinley says you may. Now then, Susan, do we have your permission to have an adventure? We can put Cat in the perambulator and then if anyone gets tired,’ meaning Jack, ‘they can be popped in with her.’

The excitement was intense, for Polly McGinley was a great lover of children and very indulgent of their inquisitive, if sometimes chaotic ways. Even the two big dogs were not unwelcome though they were still not allowed into her spotless kitchen. Polly McGinley would never forget Mrs Sinclair’s wonderful kindness in respect of the repairs to their farmhouse and the renovations to the cottage at the back where their Denny and Kate awaited the birth of Polly’s new grandchild.

Barty and Froglet, Wilf and Evan watched with indulgent smiles as the erratic procession burst from the side door of the house and spread itself across the side lawn, Jamie in the lead followed by Alec and, tottering unsteadily on increasingly plump legs, Jack in the rear. Dora, like an anxious sheepdog, did her best to contain them, begging Master Jamie to wait for the others but to no avail. Following behind came Lally and Susan, Susan pushing the perambulator in which Cat was propped, yelling her disapproval, for it seemed to her the others were having all the fun. Susan passed her a favourite soft toy, an unrecognisable object with arms and legs, two ears, two eyes and a vacant stitched-on grin, which went by the name of Pinky. At once Cat quietened, for Pinky was much loved.

Susan had put on weight since she had come to live in the Sinclair household which was not a bad thing for she had been painfully thin when she was employed at High Clough, giving what food she had to her Sam and only eating barely enough to keep herself alive. She was still dressed in the black of mourning but she had allowed herself to be taken to Miss Hockley’s, protesting that it was far too grand and expensive but giving in just the same, since she could hardly move about the impressive establishment of the Sinclairs in the threadbare garment she had worn for years in the home she had shared with Jack. Now she wore a neat well-fitted gown of good black cotton which showed off her pretty figure. Lally longed to get her in a dress of blue or yellow or rose like Dora’s, for she did like bright colours about her and she knew Susan would suit any of them. She was bonny, not as lovely as Lally but her hair and eyes shone and her cheeks were rosy and rounded with health and it had not gone unnoticed by Lally nor Harry that John Burton missed no opportunity to call at the Priory to, as he said, check on the progress of her small son. And as he had told her sternly, she needed to regain her strength by eating the good food supplied by her employers. Which she did and it showed.

Lally sauntered beside her in a gown of azure-blue muslin, with a wide blue satin sash around the waist. It showed off her neat waist, her well-rounded breasts which were fuller since the birth of her three children and the curve of her slender hips. Her hair tumbled about her head in glossy curls in which the brilliant sunshine put a touch of chestnut and her amazing blue-green eyes reflected the brightness of the day. Dora would have liked to wear a neat uniform to denote the importance of her job as a nursemaid but Mrs Sinclair did not care for it in the nursery where she wished her children to be brought up in a more informal manner. She had on instead a dress in a shade of pale rose, plain but very becoming and her hair, the colour of a new penny, was arranged in a curly bun at the back of her head. She was not pretty but then neither was she plain and her mam had high hopes for her in the marriage market. Not with a labourer as her pa was but perhaps a small farmer or a man in a respectable trade. Her sisters, Jenny and Clara, who were older, seemed very set in their employment at the Priory and Mrs Akroyd had more or less resigned herself to the pair of them remaining spinsters. Still, they did have decent positions.

The scattered group strolled round to the back of the house, making as usual for the paddock where the horses were placidly cropping the grass. Ebony and Jeb, the moor pony, stood nose to tail beneath the shelter of an enormous oak tree, their tails swishing lazily to keep off the flies, but the rest, Merry, Blossom, and the two sturdy ponies, named Snowy and Teddy, that Jamie and Alec were to learn to ride, all wandered over to the fence, poking their noses over the top bar to be fondled by the enthusiastic boys. As usual Jamie set up a wailing to be allowed to climb over, or under, the fence to get at his papa’s ebony gelding which he told them he would ride one day but Susan, who had let it be known that she required obedience right from the first, not the obedience that their stepfather demanded which made them jump to obey, but serious nonetheless, moved them on firmly in the direction of the farm. Lally, as though she were a child too, trailed after them.

‘I believe there’s kittings at Folly,’ Susan told them and at once they began to run with Dora in full pursuit. The dogs chased round them in a surge of enchanted joy and the baby was moved over to make room for Jack who was beginning to tire. He fell over so many times his mother told him he looked like a ragamuffin in his grass-stained outfit and he made no objection to being put in with the baby who clutched him with delight though she would not allow him to hold Pinky. Their heads nodded together as the perambulator, pushed by the two women, since the slope was steeper now, waded through a field of poppies and buttercups until they reached Folly Farm.

The buck stood in the clearing deep in the woods at the back of Folly Farm, almost invisible in the undergrowth and closely growing oaks, hawthorn and larch. His head was up, his antlers proud and strong and his ears twitched. His nostrils quivered, searching for signs of danger, of some threatening aroma that would alert him to the presence of his enemy, of man, of those who, for many months now, he had managed to avoid. He knew they were about but his cunning was greater than theirs. Hearing and scenting nothing to alarm him, he bent his strong neck and sank his teeth into the juicy leaves of the tree under which he stood. The breeze blew away from him towards the east and the two men who froze in the bushes in that direction both lifted their guns, barely breathing, fingers on the triggers, their caps dragged with the peaks at the back so as not to impede their view. They had been after this stag for months now and there it was in their sights, unaware of their presence, waiting for the death shot and its final arrival on the counter of a local butcher who would pay dearly for its carcass.

A sound lifted the magnificent animal’s head, a sound from some way off but enough to explode him into a leap and a run which carried him through the woodland and out of sight of the two men who lay on their stomachs, their guns still at the ready but with nothing to aim at other than the quivering leaves of the trees and shrubs that had been disturbed by the buck’s passage.

‘Bugger it! . . . bugger it! . . . bugger it!’ one of the men said, rolling over on to his back, his face a mask of fury, while the second man swore even more obscenely, lifting his fist into the air and hitting out as though he would dearly love to murder whoever it was who had disturbed their quarry.

Then they heard the sound again but this time more clearly. Children’s laughter, children shouting, a dog barking in excitement and the faint cry of a woman. Slowly they got to their feet and without a word moved silently through the wood until they reached its edge, and the field in which Sean McGinley had planted hay that was ripening luxuriantly in the summer sunshine. It would be ready for harvesting in a few weeks and when it was cut would be stored for winter feed for Sean’s milk herd. The growing crop waved gently in the tiny breeze and sighed as though in great contentment at the care Sean and his son Denny had lavished upon it. Proud they were of their continuing success with their farm, thanks to Mr and Mrs Sinclair, but mostly to Mrs Sinclair, once Mrs Fraser, for it was she who had provided them with the brass and the encouragement to work all the hours God and daylight allowed.

The two men watched as the squealing boys, Mrs Sinclair’s boys, not even waiting to open the gate but climbing over it, hurled themselves into the arms of Polly McGinley at her front porch, yelling to see the ‘kittings’, the piglets, the chicks but first could they have one of Mrs Polly’s gingerbread men of which they were inordinately fond and which they knew she made especially for them, or so they imagined. The baby was lifted out of the perambulator and cuddled by Polly, behind her Kate, who was enormous with her second child but wanted a ‘hold’ as soon as her mother-in-law would allow it. Jack had clambered from the perambulator and was making a valiant attempt to follow Jamie and Alec who could not make up their minds whether to run into Mrs Polly’s kitchen for the gingerbread men, or make for the enclosure where the chicks and the hens clucked and pecked, the pig pen and the new piglets, or the small barn where the new mother cleaned her family of week-old kittens in an ecstasy of purring. There was so much, so many delights, it was hard to know where to start.