Chapter Nine 1892 #4
‘Men have built far bigger things than this, just to have a nice view.’
‘I suppose you’re right.’
Lily followed him to the centre of the bridge, where they leaned on the parapet and gazed up at the cathedral.
‘One of the girls in my class is very upper, daughter of Lord Someone-or-other, and her grandfather moved their entire house, stone by stone, fifty feet to one side, to improve the view of the lake from the drawing room.’ She smiled at his incredulous expression. ‘Or so the story goes.’
‘It would have been easier to move the lake, surely?’
‘Well, money never could buy good sense.’
After a while they moved to the other side of the bridge and waved to the Womersleys, who were looking for them back along the path.
Lily peered down at the lazy river, flat and green.
The sun caught in the fine hairs at the nape of her neck.
A single stray wisp moved in the breeze, tickling her, and she tucked it in at once.
‘“Still glides the stream, slow drops the boat”,’ she said softly. ‘Perhaps, one day, you’ll tell me more of your stories.’
‘Who’s that? Dryden?’
‘Matthew Arnold.’
‘I didn’t know you liked poetry.’
‘Oh, heavens, I don’t. So desperately dramatic, most of it. Or else so sweet it rots the teeth.’
She rolled her eyes comically, and a thought occurred to Toby, out of the blue.
A thought loaded with pleasure and guilt: how nice it might be to belong to a family like the Womersleys.
Unscathed. A family he could look in the eye, without shame.
Lily’s throwaway remark at lunch had hit home – asking what he would do after his degree.
He had no idea. But, perhaps here was an answer.
Perhaps it would not be so very bad to be married to a girl like Lily Womersley.
On his return from Spain, Crudge picked Theo up for an outing in a hired trap.
With stones rattling beneath the wheels and a wake of pale dust behind them, her spirits rose.
The hedges were decked with dog rose and pink hawthorn, and teams of men and women were out in the fields, pulling the wild oats from the wheat.
‘Everyone dresses so darkly these days,’ Crudge said. ‘Cheap woollen cloth, made in large manufactories. When I was a lad, farmers wore linen smocks and canvas hats. A harvest was a sea of billowing white.’
‘How old are you, Uncle?’
He gave a bark of laughter. ‘Ha! I suppose to you I just look ancient?’
‘Fairly.’
‘Well, there you are then. I’m ancient-and-three.’ He looked at her fondly. ‘Your eighteen years have gone by in the blink of an eye to me, my dear. That’s what happens as you get older. One day you’ll look back and be astonished at how time has flown. It’s so very important not to squander it.’
In the pause, Theo felt his question coming. She wasn’t ready to answer it.
‘And Mr LeRoy?’ she said. ‘Is he well?’
‘Ah, now,’ Crudge said.
Theo glanced across, and saw a deep sadness in his eyes.
‘Arnaud has left me, I fear.’
‘Left you?’
Theo registered his pain without fully understanding it. But then, he and Arnaud had been constant companions for over three years.
‘Whyever has he left you?’
‘He was offered a position at a university in Cairo. Though, I rather suspect he’d simply grown tired of me.’
‘But how could he tire of you? And if he has then he’s an ingrate, and a fool. Nobody could have taught him more about history, and digging, than you!’
‘Thank you, my dear,’ he said heavily. ‘But . . . he is a young man and I am an old one. It stands to reason that he would want to make his own way in the world.’
Theo put her hand over his, and his smile was careworn.
‘There it is,’ he said. ‘Now, forgive me, Theo, but I simply must know if you are engaged?’
Theo turned to stare out over the pony’s ears. ‘Not exactly. Not altogether.’
She described the conversation in the orchard. How it had been everything a proposal should be, apart from the lack of conviction on her part.
‘Isn’t that rather an important ingredient?’ he said.
‘My mother doesn’t think so. She thinks the best thing would be for me to move away and begin a family.’
‘Well, in this instance, I have to say I agree with her.’
‘Sometimes I do, too,’ Theo murmured. ‘But she married my father for position and security, not for love – she told me so. And look how that turned out.’
‘But some do grow into love. And their union produced two beautiful daughters, one of whom is a particular favourite of mine. So, it wasn’t all bad.’
‘I want to leave. I do. Everything at home reminds me of . . . what happened. But is getting married truly the only way? What if it doesn’t work? What if I always feel . . .’ Her head felt hot. ‘I don’t know what to do, Uncle. I just . . . I miss them so horribly.’
‘Oh, Theo, of course you do! You loved them, and they are gone. There’s no cure for that. But it mustn’t direct the rest of your life. It mustn’t.’
‘So, I should marry a man I do not love?’
‘I never said so. But the young doctor seems a fair prospect, if you ask me. And if there’s a chance the union might, in time, bring you a measure of happiness . . .’
‘But I don’t know. How can I know? He’s a good man – everyone says so. The things he’s able to do . . . the way he saves people. He says he won’t be able to continue as my friend, if I turn him down.’
‘You must surely understand how difficult it would be for him to do so?’
‘But it only makes the decision all the harder! Either I choose him, and hope to fall in love with him, or I turn him down and lose my only friend.’
‘Not your only friend.’
‘No. Not my only friend.’ She smiled sadly at him. ‘And Mama will make me marry someone, that much is clear.’
‘I cannot advise you, my dear. I wish I could, but the decision must be yours alone.’ Crudge paused. ‘Perhaps I will venture to say that marriage to a good friend might be a better point from which to start than many do. And it would mean change. Which might be exactly what you need.’
‘Audrey says the same thing. She says, “It’s better the devil you know, especially if the devil is as comely as that one”.’
‘Young Audrey is wise beyond her years.’
Theo thought back. ‘Dr Anscombe said that if we were to marry, he would be “a man born anew”. What do you suppose he meant by that?’
Crudge looked faintly troubled. ‘That you would be a good influence upon him, I suppose.’
‘Why should he need me to be that?’
‘I simply do not know.’
At length, Theo asked: ‘Do you hear from the Meriwethers at all?’
She tried to sound offhand, but Crudge wasn’t fooled.
‘Toby has still not replied?’
‘He told me he wouldn’t. I know I should stop writing to him, especially if I am to be engaged.’
‘You really must,’ Crudge said gravely. He gave her hand a squeeze. ‘I haven’t heard from him, but Mrs Meriwether writes from time to time. Toby will be sitting his final examination soon, and is in line for first-class honours.’
Theo listened closely, trying to glean every scrap of information from what was said, and what was not.
‘And is he . . . happy?’ she said. ‘Does he enjoy it there?’
‘He has made some firm friends. He rows – they row at Durham, as they do at Oxford and Cambridge. For a while he practised boxing, but he gave it up.’
‘Boxing?’ She pictured his hawkishness, his anger. ‘Will he come back to Hallewell once it’s all done?’
‘What would he do here?’ Crudge said gently. ‘There’s no suitable work for such an educated man.’
‘Is he . . . does he . . . have a sweetheart?’
‘My dear, I do not know. Mrs Meriwether did mention the sister of one of his fellows—’
‘Who?’ Theo was winded. ‘Are they engaged?’
‘I know nothing more, I swear it. You could always call upon Mrs Meriwether yourself. But I would hate to think of you hanging any hopes on Toby, my dear. He has moved away. You do see?’
Theo flinched, because those hopes were the real reason she hadn’t answered Ralph.
Marrying Dr Anscombe – or anyone – meant that she could never marry Toby.
It made no difference that she was as likely to marry Toby as she was to fly to the moon; she still didn’t know if she could bring herself to destroy the possibility altogether.
‘Of course I see!’ she cried.
‘My poor, dear girl,’ Crudge said, but found nothing to add.
Theo stared ahead in silence, no longer seeing the pretty views or the passers-by with their handcarts and bushel baskets.
She remembered Missy stroking her hair when she first heard that Toby was going away to study, and was distraught.
He’ll meet some sister of some new chum of his, and he’ll get married!
What a cruel joke, to have been so completely right.
And then the time Missy had read Theo’s palm, and told her she’d marry a handsome man whom she already knew.
Theo had thought that meant Toby, but now saw that Ralph Anscombe also fitted the bill.
Perhaps it wasn’t too late – perhaps Toby wasn’t firmly engaged.
She could write again, and ask him outright.
As soon as she decided on it, she changed her mind.
He hadn’t answered a single one of her letters, and on the two occasions he’d been back to visit his parents, he hadn’t tried to see her.
She hadn’t even known he was home until after the fact.
For a moment she entertained a wild fantasy of travelling to Durham to confront him, but it was not something that was actually feasible.
Her mind jolted back to the platform at Semley, standing there, willing him to look at her as the train pulled away. Which he hadn’t.
She clenched her hands into fists in her lap, and Crudge left her to her thoughts.
At home, Theo went to the library to be by herself. She paced, surrounded by the rows of books with their faded spines, then bowed her head and sobbed quietly for a while, as a hornet bashed itself wearily against the leaded diamonds of the window.