The People of This Parish (Part One of The People of this Parish Saga) Read online

  But maybe there was an excuse. The last few weeks and months had been nerve-racking and also exciting. At times they were almost unbearable for the two women who knew that their lives were on the point of being changed, almost certainly for good. They were both to be supplanted, their place in the house taken by a stranger; a woman they liked but hardly knew. Not only a stranger but a foreigner: a woman from Holland with Continental ways.

  Neither of them knew of the conversation between Guy and his uncle’s friend Willem Heering which had taken place some eighteen months before in London.

  It had been a very serious conversation, by way of being a commercial transaction, and Guy emerged as a partner in his uncle’s business, and a man who had promised to become engaged to be married. When the announcement was made public a swarm of workmen descended on Pelham’s Oak and began to restore and refurbish it inside and out in a way that had not been done since Charles Woodville had a small country house of the Stuart period turned into a great mansion worthy of a man of title and wealth.

  Among them had been Ryder Yetman, acting as his father’s foreman in charge of the work force.

  Eliza had not been encouraged to hang around the workmen who gutted the house, nor had she wanted to. But Ryder had noticed her, and she could not help noticing him. He was a tall, strapping fellow who towered over most of his powerful workmen. He had not worn work clothes but a suit and tie, and he had always ridden to work on horseback. They scarcely ever exchanged a word in the long period of time it had taken to restore the house for Guy’s wedding; but Eliza had promised herself that, when it was all over, maybe at the wedding, she would snatch the chance to talk to him, even if only to annoy her mother.

  Maybe, she thought, that’s why she had been in such a bad mood all day. Maybe the absence of Ryder, the fact that he hadn’t even wanted to be there to see her, was the true reason for her ill temper.

  Eliza got out of bed and wandered restlessly to the window, throwing it open so that the cool night breeze could fan her face. The soft tender buds on the trees emerging into leaf seemed to make an intricate lattice pattern against the sky and, at a distance, lit by the full moon, she could see the silhouette of Wenham standing on the hill above the River Wen.

  She wondered why Ryder hadn’t come, and if he lived with his family in the house in the middle of the town. He was quite a lot older than she was, fair with a rugged, weather-beaten face, his hair bleached by the sun and constant exposure to the air. She, on the other hand, was very dark. Her skin was almost olive-hued because the Martyns had Portuguese blood in their veins. Eliza’s straight black hair curved over her ears and flowed down her back when she loosened it. She knew that, with her dark colouring, her straight black brows and tawny eyes, she was striking, and for some years now, both in London and in the country, she had been aware of the glances that men gave her. Today at the wedding she knew that more eyes were on her than on the bride. But she was not interested except, just perhaps, in one.

  And he had not been there.

  2

  John Yetman’s grandfather had been an agricultural worker on one of the farms belonging to the Woodville estate. He had married a scullery maid from Pelham’s Oak, and the eldest of their nine children had been Thomas, who rebelled against his family’s poverty-stricken life. He forsook the land and went as an apprentice to a builder. In time he persuaded his brother Roger to join him, but the remainder of his siblings faded into insignificance, content merely to continue with menial work and swell the numbers of the population in which they lived.

  Thomas had been born in 1800, the dawn of a thrusting new century which was to bring his native country great prosperity but also, among the less privileged classes, appalling poverty and degradation as well. The nineteenth century was an age of contrasts, but the young Thomas, born with the century, knew on which side of the divide he was going to be.

  In 1821, a fully fledged master builder, he set up business in Blandford with his brother Roger, although Thomas was to continue as the stronger partner.

  Five years later Thomas married the daughter of the man who had taught him his craft, who gave the young couple as a wedding present a house near the banks of the Wen half way up the hill that led from the river to the town at the top.

  Riversmead was a fine house built of warm Marnhull stone and, as his business prospered, Thomas extended the house and made outbuildings for his carriage and horses. He had three sons: John, George and Christopher. George died of tuberculosis when he was still a boy, and Christopher tried a number of trades but became master of none, preferring to drift around the country and travel abroad. Occasionally he turned up at Wenham asking his brother for a bed for a few nights and, inevitably, a handout, which the generous, forgiving John, who took after his hard-working father, always gave him. But Christopher never settled and soon he was off until, like the proverbial bad penny, he turned up again weeks, months or even years later.

  John had sometimes feared that his own eldest son, Ryder, would take after his Uncle Christopher, the family black sheep, the ne’er do well. The men were similar to look at: broad and muscular, tall and handsome, attractive to women.

  However, Ryder’s trouble seemed that he had too much ambition rather than too little. He wanted to achieve too many things. He ran away to sea at fifteen and mastered the mysteries of sail, even obtaining a mate’s ticket. But he abandoned that in order to follow in his father’s footsteps when both his brothers, who had shown academic prowess at school (which Ryder had not), decided on professional careers. Hesketh took up articles with a firm of solicitors in Bournemouth, and brother Robert, who was good at figures, went into a bank before starting up in business on his own.

  Ryder, clever with his hands, showed great aptitude as a builder and quickly mastered all the aspects of the trade: bricklaying, roofing, thatching, plumbing, plastering and painting.

  Then, out of the blue, he announced that he wished to travel again, to become a soldier, and he spent three years in the army in South Africa before being invalided out after fighting in the Zulu war.

  At twenty-eight, he had packed a great deal into a short life. Since his return he had been working for his father again, but, somehow, it was apparent that his heart was not in it. He was restless, and it seemed that once more he might be off on his travels, when suddenly, to his family’s relief, he announced his engagement to the miller’s daughter, who was a schoolmistress in Yeovil. The family sighed with relief.

  Ryder obviously wanted to settle down. Months before he met Maude he had rented a cottage on the Woodville estate from Sir Guy and was renovating it in his spare time.

  John Yetman was a proud man – proud of his wife, his children, his capacity for hard work; proud above all of himself. He had extended the house by the river as his family had grown, six children in all, of whom two had died in infancy.

  Now he stood by the window in his drawing room, his brow furrowed, his eyes brooding over the waters of the river which flowed past the bottom of the garden, about a hundred yards away. In his hands there was a letter which announced that his shiftless brother was once more going to pay the family a visit.

  At that moment the maid appeared to announce that dinner would soon be served, and John put the letter in his pocket and turned away from the window as the maid stood back to show in Ryder with his fiancée, Maude, whom he had gone to fetch from the mill.

  ‘Maude, my dear,’ John said with pleasure, going up to plant a chaste kiss on her brow. ‘How nice to see you. You look charming as usual. You have arrived just in time to dissipate my bad temper. Now let’s have a glass of sherry before we go in to dinner. Ryder, would you see where your mother is?’

  ‘Mother’s downstairs in the hall, Father.’ Ryder went to the great mahogany sideboard and removed the stopper from the sherry decanter. ‘Some poor person from the parish wants a bed for the night.’

  ‘And no doubt she’ll find him one,’ his father sighed. ‘She can never turn anyo
ne away.’

  ‘It’s a woman, Father, a vagrant.’

  ‘Ah!’ John Yetman raised his eyes piously to the ceiling. ‘It will have to be the workhouse at Blandford. How I wish those poor creatures ... Well.’ John turned as his wife came bustling in. She was a small woman who had been remarkably pretty and dainty in her youth. She was still comely, but she had grown rotund with the years. ‘And what have you done with the poor creature, my dear?’

  ‘Given her a straw bed in the stables, as usual,’ Catherine said briskly. ‘And tomorrow Robin will take her to Blandford.’

  ‘How does she come to be here, Mother?’ Ryder passed his father a glass of sherry. The other he kept for himself as neither of the women would accept a drink, though his mother enjoyed a glass of port after her meal on Sundays.

  ‘Some tale. I didn’t understand it. It is usually the same – a cruel father or husband, or maybe no husband at all and a baby.’ She smiled kindly at Maude. ‘This is the sort of thing you will have to do, my dear, in time. Human nature is of infinite variety.’

  ‘How do you mean, Mrs Yetman?’ Maude enquired with a pleasant smile, taking her seat beside her father-in-law-to-be.

  ‘When you are mistress of this house ...’

  ‘Not for a long time, I hope, Mrs Yetman ...’

  ‘Or any house.’ Cathrine corrected herself.

  ‘Yes, Ryder, now that you are soon to be married you must start finding a proper house for yourself.’ His father suddenly seemed struck by the thought.

  ‘But I have time, Father.’ Ryder sat down next to his fiancée and crossed his legs casually.

  Catherine, glancing from one to the other, looked troubled.

  ‘If you mean the cottage, dearest, I’m afraid I am not going to live in it,’ Maude said firmly. ‘I have told you that, but you insist on continuing to repair it. What will you do? Live there by yourself?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Ryder gave her a detached, almost indifferent smile.

  ‘Dinner is on the table, sir, ma’am.’ The maid came in again and made the announcement with a bob.

  John drained his glass and looked at his watch.

  ‘Is there any news of our Agnes, Maisie?’

  ‘The carriage is not back, sir. Robin took her to Sherborne.’

  Then we must begin without her.’ John tapped his watch and popped it back in his waistcoat pocket. ‘Come.’ He pointed towards the door, and his wife rose and preceded him, Maude, her shoulders very stiff and erect, following. John put a hand on Ryder’s shoulder and, as the ladies went through the hall, held him back.

  ‘What is the matter with you, Ryder?’ he hissed in his ear.

  ‘The matter, Father? I don’t understand you.’ Ryder looked surprised.

  ‘Of course Maude doesn’t want to live in a farm labourer’s cottage! You seem to be doing your best to discourage her.’

  ‘She liked it when she first saw it, Father.’ Ryder looked solemnly at his father from under thick, fair brows. ‘But that was before I asked her to marry me. She only changed her mind afterwards.’

  ‘I don’t blame her.’

  ‘It would seem that she set out to catch me, and when she thought the hook was firmly in my mouth she started to dictate her own terms in order to decide whether I should be knocked on the head or thrown back into the river.’

  ‘Don’t be so ridiculous,’ his father hissed again. ‘Maude is very suitable, and it is you who would be the fool if you let her go. Besides, you need to settle down.’

  The two men crossed the hall together to find that the women were already seated. Catherine looked enquiringly at them as father and son sat down on their different sides of the table.

  ‘Is anything the matter?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing.’ John Yetman shook his head and the maid moved slowly forward to serve the soup.

  John and Catherine Yetman were people of the town, retaining their Dorset accents and, in many ways, their country manners and upbringing. Though her husband was ambitious they remained a relatively unpretentious couple and, compared to the Woodvilles, their establishment was neither large nor grand; but, for Wenham, it was still considerable. There was no butler or footman, but there were three indoor maids, a cook, and various outdoor staff who lived in the outbuildings: a coachman and his wife, two gardeners, a groom and a general boy.

  ‘Miss Eliza Woodville asked after you at the wedding,’ Catherine said as they began eating their soup.

  ‘Oh yes, how was the wedding?’ Maude cried excitedly before Ryder, who seemed astonished by the remark, could reply. Maude’s demeanour was invariably grave and she smiled little, but the subject of the wedding clearly animated her.

  ‘It was the most wonderful occasion.’ Catherine sat back and sighed. ‘I never saw such splendour, or expect to again. Certainly your wedding ...’

  ‘My father could never afford anything like that,’ Maude said reproachfully.

  ‘Oh, I don’t mean on that scale at all, dear,’ Catherine cried. ‘The Woodvilles are the Woodvilles, and he has married money.’

  ‘A lot of it,’ John agreed. ‘The Martyns were wealthy, but Sir Matthew got through that fortune in no time and almost reduced them to bankruptcy. Let’s hope there is sufficient for this one to satisfy young Sir Guy.’

  ‘Oh, I think he will settle down.’ Catherine nodded sagely, and was about to continue when the door flew open and Agnes, out of breath, hurried in.

  ‘Oh, forgive me, Mother, Father.’ She made a little bob to each of her parents in turn. ‘A wheel of the carriage broke and ...’

  ‘It is quite all right, my dear. Calm yourself.’ Her mother, who was an imperturbable lady, nodded to the maid, who brought Agnes’s soup. ‘We knew Robin had not returned with the carriage and we did not worry. We were just talking about the Woodville wedding.’

  ‘I thought you might be talking about Ryder’s wedding,’ Agnes said archly. ‘When is that to be?’

  ‘I think it should be soon.’ John Yetman sat back and started to crumble his bread nervously. ‘The sooner the better. Ryder is not young.’

  ‘Twenty-eight is not old, Father,’ Ryder protested laughing.

  ‘I had two children by the time I was your age, young man. Tomorrow we will set about finding a decent establishment for you. Oh – I forgot.’ An expression of annoyance crossed his face again, and he drew out a letter from his pocket. ‘My brother Christopher is arriving at Blandford station. I shall have to meet him.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Catherine looked crestfallen. ‘I did so hope ... He was only here a month or two ago.’

  ‘He is my brother, dear.’

  ‘Of course.’ Catherine folded her hands and nodded for the maid to clear, her attitude apparently one of wifely respect and obedience. ‘Only I hope he does not stay long.’

  ‘Poor man, this is his home,’ John protested. ‘The only home he has.’

  ‘Then I wish he would find another. I wish he would find a wife.’

  And this time she did not attempt to conceal the exasperation in her voice.

  After dinner Ryder and Maude went for a walk by the river while he smoked a cigarette. The couple had been encouraged to set out alone. John Yetman had gone, as usual, to his study to examine building plans, and Catherine and Agnes either sewed or read in the drawing room until it was time to go to bed.

  For a long time the young couple strolled in silence, and Ryder wondered, as he so often did, why there was so little desire in his breast for the woman by his side. Maybe she wondered the same thing.

  During his three years’ service in South Africa, the only white women he saw were the wives of the officers. As a ranker Ryder had had no access to women because the only ones available had been the native women who serviced the troops, and Ryder had a natural fastidiousness about this as well as a horror of disease.

  Though older, Maude Brough had been a friend of Agnes, and she was one of the first young, unattached women he saw when he returned home a year ago with a woun
d in his leg which was slow to heal. With her brown hair, parted in the middle, and her fair complexion, she had been reasonably attractive, and he felt he wanted to be married, to settle down, and the combination of emotions made him think, or imagine, he loved her.

  Three months ago he had proposed. Maude agreed immediately, but almost at once they had begun to quarrel. Now there was tension in the air again.

  ‘You’re quite determined about the cottage, aren’t you, Ryder?’ Maude said after a while in an effort to bridge the constraint between them. She wanted Ryder – any woman would – and had boldly set her cap at him as soon as she saw him.

  ‘My dear, you knew about it when we became engaged,’ Ryder replied.

  ‘Naturally I thought you would give it up.’

  ‘But you told me you liked the cottage.’ Ryder’s voice was icily polite.

  ‘I said it was a very pretty cottage, Ryder, in an attractive position ... And yet...’ By the light of the moon he could see the anguished expression on her face, and he felt both deceived and a deceiver.

  Oh, if he could only unsay that proposal spoken in haste three months before!

  ‘And yet I hoped,’ she went on, as he gave her no help, ‘as we were to be married, you would change your mind.’

  ‘You want a bigger house, too.’ His tone was derisive.

  ‘Why, Ryder ... I would have thought ... the cottage is totally unsuitable. It is miles from anywhere. At least in the first year of our marriage –’ her words were heavy with meaning ‘– I would wish to continue teaching. It was my hope that perhaps we could find somewhere between here and Yeovil.’

  ‘Yet all those “hopes” you did not express at the time, Maude. This is the first time I have heard you say you wish to continue teaching.’

  ‘Well –’ fretfully she twined and untwined her fingers ‘– we did not know each other very well.’

  ‘And still don’t, if you ask me.’