Chapter 6 Getting to Know the Rutherfurds
I worked so quickly the following morning that I had finished the holiday cottage article by lunchtime and emailed it to Amaya, who expressed grudging thanks.
After lunch, Dad asked me to collect a prescription from the doctor for some stronger painkillers, then to take it to the chemist. This took less time than I’d feared and what with one thing and another, I was twenty minutes early for my appointment with Kyle.
In case he wouldn’t appreciate being interrupted in his work, I parked the car by the church, opposite the house, and had just finished dealing with a couple of text messages when the church clock chimed the quarter-hour.
I glanced up at the tower, visible through the autumn trees, and, curious, got out to explore.
The wooden gate was stiff and groaned as it opened.
Passing through, I found myself in a peaceful churchyard where birds sang and the long grass between the old gravestones swayed in the breeze.
My feet crunched on the gravel as I followed the path up to the church porch.
When I turned the iron ring in the ancient door, I found to my disappointment that it was locked.
I was about to give up when I heard a scraping noise from within, then the ring turned and the door swung inwards to reveal the stooped figure of a very old lady. ‘There’s a trick to the latch,’ she said in a reedy voice.
I thanked her as I stepped inside and she smiled, her eyes shining like black beads in her wrinkled face.
‘I’m always saying to the vicar that it puts people off, but nothing ever seems to be done about it.
’ She returned to the vase on a stand where she’d been arranging flowers.
‘Was there anything special you wanted, dear, or are you just looking round?’
‘Just looking. I have a few minutes to spare…’
She nodded and resumed her task. I stared round the small church.
It was obviously very old, with wooden pews and lumpy stone walls, studded with memorial plaques, but it was full of light from the high windows.
I set off towards the altar where a plain brass cross gleamed between two unlit candles.
Above was the only source of colour, bright biblical scenes in a window of painted glass.
Noah’s ark was depicted in one corner of the window; I was amused by the lions’ gentle faces.
Gran used to take me to services in her village church, so I knew the old stories and felt comfortable here.
I still loved roaming old churches, feeling a connection to the past, a sense of belonging to something that lay close, yet somehow out of reach.
I pulled myself out of my daydreams and turned my attention to the memorials, half hoping to see evidence of long-dead Rutherfurds.
But amongst the marble scrolls and brass plaques recording lost fathers, mothers and young soldiers there was only one, ‘Captain Stephen George Rutherfurd, aged 35, killed in action at Ypres, 20th August 1917. Beloved by all.’ Kyle’s great-great-grandfather. I felt a pang of sadness to see it.
The old lady was now sweeping up fallen twigs. I went to help her with the dustpan, taking the opportunity to ask, ‘Are there members of the Rutherfurd family buried in the graveyard?’
‘Oh yes, dear. If you turn right out of the door and go along the side of the church, you’ll see a tomb with chains round it to your left. That’s old George Rutherfurd and his wife. There are other graves nearby.’ She looked closely at me. ‘You’re not a Rutherfurd yourself, are you?’
‘No, no,’ I said hastily. ‘Just an acquaintance.’ I tipped the contents of the dustpan into the woman’s rubbish sack, said goodbye and managed to let myself out. The door’s iron ring clunked shut.
Outside, I followed the old lady’s instructions.
The Rutherfurd tomb was impossible to miss among the ranks of moss-covered gravestones.
It was separated from these by rusted chains, marking out the plot.
I traced the inscription carved into one side.
‘George John Rutherfurd, born 1840, died 1915.’ So the old man had not lived long enough to have to grieve for his younger son.
That had been the lot of his widow, Margaret.
She’d died in 1924, the inscription informed me, and was buried here with her husband.
I tiptoed between neighbouring grave plots looking for memorials to other Rutherfurds.
I found John’s grave. No splendid tomb for him, only a humble square stone: ‘1880–1950’.
He’d outlived his younger brother Stephen by thirty-three years.
The name of John’s wife, Ann, had been squeezed in underneath her husband’s.
She’d survived until 1960, but even in death John took precedence.
What about their children, Andrew, Diana and Esme, known as Bird?
I found Andrew’s grave easily enough, his name carved beneath his wife Dorothy’s.
She’d died in 1975 and he in 1980. So their only child, Christopher, Kyle’s distant cousin, was Master of Farthington House for over forty years before his death in 2022!
I was just past his pristine new gravestone and found Diana’s older one when, from the tower above me, three o’clock struck.
With no time to explore further, I gathered my handbag from on top of George and Margaret’s tomb and hurried back to the gate.
Farthington House looked a little friendlier today when I walked up the path.
The front garden still lay in shadow, the house looming above, but familiarity had dispelled my fear.
No ogre lived there. Kyle was friendly and kind.
A sense of sadness, though, hung in the air. It spoke of secrets still to be told.
When I pressed the bell, it rang loudly inside the house, but competed with the hum of a vacuum cleaner and it was some time before anyone answered. The plump middle-aged woman who opened the door appeared to be expecting me. ‘He says to go through,’ she said. ‘You’ll find him in his studio.’
Studio was a fancy word for old stables, I thought, as I passed through the kitchen and out into the garden. I knocked on Kyle’s door and hearing a ‘Come in!’, entered.
Looking round, I saw that ‘studio’ was entirely appropriate. Not a trace of the horses or their stalls remained. Instead, skylights in the sloped ceiling illuminated an airy open-plan living space with doors to other rooms set in the far side.
I hovered uncertainly on the mat. Before me was a lounge area with a squashy L-shaped sofa, the sort that you curled up and got lost in, a large glass-topped coffee table and a giant television screen fixed against a partition.
To the right of this, a fridge hummed in a spacious modern kitchen and, to the far left of the room, a huge glass worktop reflected a soft white glow from three low-hanging lights.
Here Kyle was sitting on a swivel chair.
He was speaking to someone on his open laptop screen, but, seeing me, he quickly finished his call.
‘Sorry,’ I mumbled. ‘The cleaner said…’
‘No, no, don’t worry, we’d done our business,’ he grinned. ‘Just chatting about Norwich City’s chances in the league this season.’
I smiled back. ‘My dad’s optimistic!’
As Kyle shuffled scattered papers into a neat pile I wandered over. ‘Nice,’ I said, touching the smoky glass of the worktop. ‘This whole place is.’ I looked up at the dark grey ceiling and saw it wink with tiny stars, like the night sky.
‘Good, isn’t it? Practically bankrupted me, but it’s the first time I’ve had somewhere truly my own.’ A shadow briefly crossed his face. ‘Thanks for coming, by the way. Take a seat.’ He waved towards the sofa. ‘I’ll make us some tea and show you what I’ve found.’
I perched gingerly on the edge of the sofa whilst he prepared steaming mugs and brought them over along with the library book he’d borrowed.
This he opened at a page he’d marked with a torn strip of paper.
‘Margaret Jary,’ he said, ‘was born in a village near Farthington in 1918. It’s quite a story.
She was the eldest of six and the family were very poor.
Her dad was an agricultural labourer but lost an arm in the First World War and couldn’t get regular work.
But interestingly, Margaret’s mum got a job in the kitchen at Farthington House. ’
He passed me the book, pointing to a chapter headed ‘Farthington Brewery’. ‘This page is the important one.’
I took the book from him and sipped my tea as I read. ‘Ann Rutherfurd was a kindly woman,’ Ms Jary had written, ‘and when I was fourteen, pleaded with her husband to find me work at the brewery.’
John Rutherfurd had initially been reluctant, but Margaret was a bright girl and eventually was put to work in the brewery office under the eye of a woman named Betty Hayes.
I almost dropped the book. That was my great-grandmother.
I remembered the photograph in the museum with the older woman and the girl.
The girl must have been Margaret and the older woman Betty!
‘I see what you mean,’ I breathed, then had to explain because Kyle didn’t know about my great-grandparents.
‘That’s very interesting, but it wasn’t that bit I meant,’ he said. ‘Read what comes next.’