Easterleigh Hall (22 page)

Roger was close now, his suit immaculate, his lips pursed, and then his mouth was on hers, and his tongue forcing its way into her mouth. She gagged. His hand still held her throat; she could barely breathe. He lifted his head, licked her cheek. His hand was away from her throat and grabbing at her breast while his other was on her back, pressing her against him. The egg basket was in her hand, dangling at the side of her. She mustn't break them.

He was kissing her neck, and he had backed her to the wall. Her ankle caught the hoe again. It fell to the ground with a clang. Something jabbed into her back. She thrust against him, pushing. He laughed and threw her arm to the side. She twisted her head away from his probing mouth. There were gardening hand tools on the shelf which ran along the side of the store. He was clutching at her clothes, tearing at them. Dear God, he might find the letter. Jack. Jack, I'm waiting for an opportunity, like you said to do.

She stopped fighting, relaxed against him, and he laughed. ‘That's what you are, eh, a whore that plays with men. I knew you'd want it but it won't be enough. You'll pay, Evie Anston, because of what you've done.' He was speaking against her throat. She felt along the shelf, made contact with a bucket, found the handle, and while he was pulling at her bodice she swung it round and made contact. All she hit was his shoulder, but it shocked him. She stamped on his foot and lifted the other knee sharply into his groin, and that did hurt.

She pulled away, slapping at him, hissing. ‘You bastard, lay a hand on me again and I'll hit you with more than a bloody bucket, d'you hear? I'll bloody well castrate you.'

He was moaning, bent over double. She ran out of the store, across the yard, down the steps to the kitchen, her eggs still intact though her sleeve was torn. Mrs Moore asked why. She said she'd caught it on the henhouse door.

‘Oh yes, or perhaps, oh no,' Mrs Moore sniffed, pouring tea. She stirred the kedgeree. ‘You've taken a long time about it, I have to say. Dress your hair, and what are those marks on your neck?'

Evie said nothing. The fewer questions the better and besides, she deserved her punishment. She had caused Roger grief by passing on the gossip but now they were even, and it was best no more questions were asked. She merely shrugged. ‘It's this chill and the henhouse dust made me cough, I expect I put my hand to my throat.' They set about the breakfast but first Evie stoked up the furnace and threw in Jack's note. It wasn't until they began to prepare lunch that the shaking started.

It continued until Roger came in after luncheon had been cleared. He found her in the big pantry, coming to stand next to her, bold as brass, whispering, ‘If you don't have me, I'll take your friend Millie just as I took that Charlotte. Think on, Evie Anston, it's up to you.' He stepped back into the kitchen, bowed to Mrs Moore. ‘Farewell, ladies. I'm not sure when I will be back for good, but back I will be.' He flicked another bow to Millie. ‘You keep yourself as beautiful as you are this day, Miss Millie, and we'll maybe have a chance to get to know one another better when I return.'

Mrs Moore snorted, looking from a flushed and smiling Millie to Evie. Evie stared at her trembling hands. She couldn't allow that, Millie was too frightened of life, too silly. All that day and the rest of the night she wrestled with his words and as dawn broke all she could think was that she would warn Millie and look out for her, because there was no way she was selling herself for anyone's sake, ever.

DURING THAT WEEK
and the next Mrs Moore and Mrs Green warned their staff against Roger in every way possible, because they were not going to have any girl of theirs getting to know ‘that snake in a suit' any better on his return. Mrs Moore was concerned for Evie. ‘I'm not a fool, I know perfectly well who the fox in the henhouse was,' she snapped at Evie, and her outrage seemed to energise her. Within days the swelling and pain subsided and there was no gin top-up in her tea. So, good things come out of hiccups, Evie told herself.

The atmosphere in the servants' hall was lighter without Roger, much as the weather now that they were into May. ‘Can't believe it's just little more than a month since I arrived,' Evie said as she started on the salt-bake mix which she would wrap around the roasting veal, and ten days since Roger had attacked her. ‘Aye, it seems to have galloped along,' Mrs Moore murmured as they worked together preparing dinner on Wednesday afternoon. ‘It'll all calm down a bit now with Lord Brampton gone, and I daresay we won't have to fiddle about with tea for his young ones for a while. They won't need the succour, and it's grand he won't be laying hands on Mr Auberon for a while.'

Evie stopped in her mixing. The flour was up to her elbows. She grated in more salt. Mrs Moore looked through the windows into the passageway and whispered, ‘I shouldn't have said that. We have to be careful. Just think, someone repeated to someone else, which set off a right to-do, that the Bramptons were to buy Froggett's houses, or so the gossip goes.'

Evie snatched a look at her and then concentrated fully on rolling out the salt bake. ‘I can't imagine who that could be.'

Mrs Moore laughed quietly. ‘Strange, isn't it, Miss Evie Anston? Now, it's your afternoon off, so away with the apron. I'll finish that.' She was studying her recipe book, running her finger down the page and tutting. ‘They've requested ice cream. It's such a nuisance.'

Evie removed her apron and hung it on the peg, passing behind Mrs Moore who said quietly, ‘I'll unlatch the pantry window, just in case, and you give my wishes to Miss Manton.'

Evie sped down the back paths to the bothy, intent on the time, and on her bicycle and the glory of the cowslips in the wild area, and the primroses. Soon the bluebells would be out and the air filled with their fragrance. Everything seemed good, and it was only in flashes that she felt Roger's mouth and tongue again, and his hands tearing at her.

As she approached the bothy she could see Simon inside whittling a long thin branch into a walking stick, waiting for her. She hesitated, knowing that she had avoided him for well over a week, since Roger's attack, to the point where Millie had said as they lay in bed one night, ‘Gone off him, have you? Poor lad, he likes you. You don't know how lucky you are, Evie. You have so much more than I will ever have.' Her voice was harsh and angry. Evie had pretended sleep, wishing yet again that Annie hadn't asked to share with Sarah, leaving her with the dubious pleasure of Millie's company.

Simon looked up, his mouth pursed in a silent whistle. ‘Hello there, Evie Anston. I wondered if I had grown two heads or something?' He smiled but his eyes were bruised beneath, as though he hadn't slept. She knew hers were the same.

She stopped for a moment, wanting to run away, but Miss Manton was waiting for her, and she wasn't another Millie, for heaven's sake. She pushed back her shoulders and laughed. Even to her own ears it sounded false. ‘You have one head still, bonny lad, and a grand one it is too.' Yes, that struck the right note.

She entered the bothy but couldn't reach her bicycle because she'd have to go through Simon to get there, and he clearly wasn't about to move. He folded up his knife and put it in his pocket. He blew on the walking stick. Shreds of wood flew into the air, spiralling to the ground like sycamore seeds. He held up his handiwork, eyeing it up and down. ‘I've been working on this as I've waited for you in the storeroom, but it's been Millie. I don't want to see Millie.' His voice was firm. ‘See how much I've done when I could have been snatching words with you instead.'

He dropped the walking stick and removed his cap, running his hand through his red hair. He did not move towards her but waited, and she knew that he'd wait all day if he had to. He was like Jack, solid, fierce, strong, kind, understanding.

She approached. Her handlebars were almost in reach. They were rusted and would need sanding with emery paper. She would buff them until they gleamed like the fender. He crossed his arms. ‘Don't you like me any more, Evie?' She couldn't bear the pain in his voice.

She shook her head and he straightened, reaching for the walking stick, slapping on his cap and striding to the door, but she called out, ‘No, I didn't mean that. Stop, please Simon.'

He did, turning in the doorway. She couldn't see his face against the brightness of the day, in which the last remaining petals of blossom clung to the branches, and the clouds scudded towards the Stunted Tree. ‘What did you mean then, Evie? If things have changed, then they have and that's all there is to it, but I need to know.'

She told him then, of Roger and how she couldn't quite get her head straight enough to be with him, Simon. It came in fits and starts and throughout it he said nothing. Finally he swung round to face the sun and as she watched he raised his walking stick and broke it across his leg, throwing away the two halves. He stayed there. So, that was how it was. Like everyone else he thought the woman was to blame. Why had she said anything? Why?

She gripped the handlebars and pulled her bicycle out from amongst the others. It would be all right. She would be fine. She would paint placards and listen to the speaker and worry about the wisdom of votes before taxes and none of this would matter at all, none of it. She would cook, and one day she'd have her hotel, and her family would be out of the pit, that was what was important. She wheeled her bicycle towards the entrance but still he stood there with his back towards her. She said, ‘Please excuse me.'

He shook his head, then stood aside, half in and out of the bothy. She pushed past but suddenly his arm came up, creating a barrier. His voice was hoarse as he shouted, ‘You never ask me to excuse you, Evie Anston, do you hear me? You never have to ask anyone to excuse you. You ask for help, that's what you do. You could have called, I would have come. How dare anyone hurt you? How dare he lay his hands on you?' Then his arms were round her, at last they were round her, and he was speaking into her hair. ‘I'll kill him, I'll bloody well kill him if he ever comes near you again.'

Her bicycle fell against her and slid to the ground as she lifted her arms and held him, feeling safe for the first time since Roger. Simon kissed her then, on her forehead and cheek but not her mouth, and she was glad because even though it was Simon, all she saw was Roger.

The meeting was under way by the time Evie and Grace Manton arrived, and by then they were on first-name terms. The doors were unlocked to their coded knock. Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat. It was locked after them, ‘To repel boarders,' the doorkeeper whispered, grinning. They tiptoed to the back row. A young woman was onstage talking of the strength of the female sex, the need for their vote in order to help shape the country, and annotating the price women had so far paid. They heard how the speaker had been arrested and imprisoned along with many others, after heckling and throwing bricks through shop windows. They heard how one of her friends had even put a burning rag into a post-office letter box. She paced the stage and told how though the Pankhursts' campaign of damage had created harsher sentences it had also driven Asquith to reconsider the question of votes for women.

Grace murmured, ‘How pleasant to have such a smart hat. Ostrich feathers, eh? I suspect it cost more than a worker would pay to keep his family for a month.' The woman next to her swung round, surprise showing on her lined and weary face. ‘More, I reckon. It's said that unlike her sister and mother Sylvia Pankhurst is on the side of the workers. She's got her priorities right.'

The applause was polite, and their chairwoman took the stage and announced that a member of the Liberal Party would be talking in Newcastle to support the People's Budget. ‘We must go, we must heckle and disrupt. We must insist on the vote before taxes. I have chalked on the board the time of the train we will take and we need as many of you as possible. I know all the excuses – you would lose your jobs, your husbands, your children, but think of the cause, think of the women coming after you.' Some women were stamping their feet, cheering, clapping.

Some of those towards the back were not, including Grace and Evie, and their new friend, Betty Clark. Grace muttered, ‘I daresay she doesn't need to work, never has, never will. What's going wrong here, we're losing our way aren't we?'

Mrs Dale, the newly appointed chairwoman, waved the hall to silence. ‘I invite comments from the audience.'

One by one, women stood and agreed with Mrs Dale. Grace whispered, ‘Will you or I risk getting hung and stand up and say what we think?'

Evie smiled. ‘I will. The parson might not like me taking you home with a rope round your neck.'

But then someone from the front of the audience stood, and Mrs Dale waved for silence again. It wasn't until she began to speak that they realised it was Lady Veronica. Evie gripped Grace's arm. ‘She mustn't see me, I'll be dismissed.' Grace said, ‘Shh.'

Lady Veronica was saying, ‘It's irresponsible to take this attitude. How does it show that we are worthy of the vote? We need to give more to the poor, we should concentrate on that and support Lloyd George, not disrupt . . .' The hall erupted with boos and some cheers, all of which drowned out the rest of her words. Evie stood up to see better but Lady Veronica was being pulled down by someone sitting next to her. Who? They peered but couldn't see.

Grace pulled Evie down too, saying, ‘I saw her here once but thought she was on a fishing trip, something to tell her friends, something to laugh about. We were polite and neither of us ‘recognised' the other. We need to get you out before she sees you, but isn't she magnificent?' She resumed clapping and cheering, and Evie too. In fact, all the back row were clamouring their support. Evie shouted above the melee, ‘Shouldn't she have a chaperone? What on earth would her family say?'