Chapter Twelve #2
But she did not actually know Mrs. Croft well, and the room was already full of people seeing to her needs far better than Martha could.
The farm women who had emptied the tub returned, and they took charge of cleaning the room and serving everyone tea.
The boy, a nephew of Mrs. Croft, offered scones before scarfing them down himself.
Caroline took the place of honor, pulling up a stool beside Mrs. Croft and sharing stories about “Uncle Maulvi.”
Knowing Lord Preston as she did now, Martha couldn’t help but find surprising the familiarity between Caroline and Mrs. Croft, the latter of whom spoke with a loose Berkshire accent and likely couldn’t name a member of the peerage outside the Preston family.
Martha had previously assumed that this was a result of Lord Preston’s desire to break down all invisible barriers between men; but she had discovered these past two months that, in fact, he stood on ceremony more often than not.
Such as when he took his leave so awkwardly, backing away from her as if being in proximity to her would stain his reputation.
How, then, had he raised his daughter to call his steward Uncle and to marry below her station? Had Lady Preston been the radical class breaker? Or did it have nothing to do with the parents and everything to do with Caroline as an original?
Retreating to the little kitchen where a batch of bread dough sat rising in a bowl, Martha did her best to make herself useful, tidying up here and there. She hadn’t any right to go back with Lord Preston anyhow. The burial was, as Mrs. Croft had said, the man’s sphere.
Martha had once understood the custom that kept women away from the graveside.
She hadn’t wanted to see her father closed up in a coffin, nor did she think she could bear to watch it lowered into the hole.
In fact, she had nightmares about graves that had no bottom, whose darkness went on and on through layers of dirt and tree roots and rock so that the coffin fell directly into Hell, with no chance of redemption.
If she had those fears without ever seeing a burial, she used to reason, it was a good idea to keep her and all other tender-hearted women from seeing what actually happened.
Then Lucas died. Or destroyed himself, as the inquest described it. Murdered himself, as one of the Bath newspapers reported.
Of all the bodies to avoid, Martha knew it should be his: because he was her son, because he had done something terrible, and because through the act of shooting himself in the head, he had made his body a hellish monster.
Yet, when Kenneth told her what Lucas had done, she had been consumed with a need to hold her son one last time.
Whatever was left of him. She wanted to hug him.
She wanted to bathe him. She wanted to dress him in his final clothes and be the last one to touch him before he descended into the cold grave.
She was his mother. She should have had that right.
Of course, even if anyone would have allowed it, she didn’t get the chance. By the time she and Kenneth got the news, Lucas had already been buried at the crossroads.
Martha had done her best to remain a good rector’s wife, and so she did not beg to attend any burials.
When they moved to Thatcham, however, she discovered she could stand just behind the rectory’s henhouse for a view down onto the parish cemetery.
On burial days, she wrapped herself in her black mourning shawl and stood in her spot, imagining that each coffin was Lucas’s coffin, that each mourner was someone who loved her son offering him forgiveness as he descended to his final resting spot.
It never quite gave her comfort, but it didn’t make her feel worse, either.
When Kenneth died, she had slipped out—despite hosting a dozen women in the parish house that very moment—and imagined him falling through a bottomless grave to find Lucas.
Kenneth was a good man who had done his best; he deserved to go to Heaven, but Martha secretly hoped he had gone to keep their son company until she could join them.
If only she could have accepted Lord Preston’s invitation to attend Mr. Maulvi’s burial.
To stand by a graveside as it happened—to smell the freshly dug dirt and see the sweat on the gravediggers’ brows—Martha yearned to know every detail so that she could pretend she had been at Lucas’s burial.
But if Mrs. Croft didn’t want to go, then Martha certainly wasn’t going to.
She knew death well enough to know that her duty—any woman’s duty—was to the living.
Hearing Mrs. Croft and the others emerge into the common room from the bedroom where Mr. Maulvi had expired, Martha gave herself a stern shake and rejoined the group.
Caroline sat beside Mrs. Croft on the worn sofa while everyone listened to the boy recite the multiplication table.
When he got to “Ten by ten equals one hundred,” Mrs. Croft broke into applause.
“Ah, how proud Mr. Maulvi is—was—of you, Billy!”
Martha didn’t belong to this group of people who knew each other so well. She forced herself to claim the other side of the sofa anyway. It wasn’t as if she had anywhere to go.
“It’s very kind of you to comfort me, Mrs. Bellamy,” said Mrs. Croft, “especially as you are still in the midst of your own mourning.”
“I did not know Mr. Maulvi well, but I was always glad to meet him.”
“And he you, I’m sure. He told me after Lord Preston’s last visit that he was glad you are at Northfield Hall to be a friend to his lordship.” Mrs. Croft said this without any malice, yet even Martha was struck by how strange a sentiment it was for Mr. Maulvi to have shared.
She feared what Lord Preston might have said to him about their friendship.
On the other side of Mrs. Croft, Caroline lifted an eyebrow.
“I am grateful I can be of use to his lordship while I wait for word from my family.” The words scraped a little against her soul as she said them, since in fact she didn’t want to hear from Georgina, but Martha had long since learned how to say the right thing instead of the true thing.
And in this case, the right thing was anything that might quell rumors.
“Mr. Bellamy always said my penmanship was good enough to be a secretary’s, and I am glad to prove him right. ”
“Our lost ones remain with us in those ways,” Mrs. Croft said with a sad little nod.
“I think your idea of a charity ball in Mr. Maulvi’s honor is wonderful. Will you tell me how I can help?”
“Oh, Mrs. Chow here has offered to do most of it.” Mrs. Croft patted Caroline’s hand. “You must let Mrs. Bellamy assist, as well as anyone else who offers. It is their way of sharing their grief.”
Caroline accepted this advice with a placid smile. What she said next, however, sent icy foreboding down Martha’s spine: “I know exactly where to find you, Mrs. Bellamy, so expect that I shall visit my father soon with ideas of how you might help.”