Author: Jacqueline Winspear
Category: Mystery
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“What’s this bit?” he asked, cutting into his pie again.
“Oh, a few sprigs of rosemary laid under the crust. Gives it a more piquant flavor.”
“Piquant, eh? Well, it’s very nice, but it gets a bit stuck in my teeth.”
Kezia frowned. “Hmmm, I should probably have cut the leaves off the sprig. Never mind, I’ll do it next time.”
Tom commented on the gravy, the potatoes—fried, not mashed—and in general was well pleased with his meal. He added that he thought it would be fit for one of those restaurants—not that he would ever set foot in one, after all, you don’t know what you’re eating when it comes from a kitchen you can’t see into.
Kezia, resting her arms on the table, looked poised to counter this opinion, but instead shared news gleaned from the village that morning. “It’s getting very tense, you know, this talk of war. I’m rather nervous about it. I mean, what will we do, if it comes to it? Mrs. Coombes said her husband went up to London last week and came back with all sorts of stories about what people are saying up there. He said it was like another planet down here, when all we think about is the hop picking, or the barley.”
Tom reached across, took her by the arm, and pulled her to him, seating her on his lap. He wiped his mouth with a napkin; now they had table napkins, boiled white so that they might continue to match the wedding-gift linen cloth that covered the old table. Mrs. Marchant’s housekeeper told Kezia about boiling for whiteness, and adding a blue bag to the water.
“I don’t pay much mind to it all, Kezzie. I’ve too much to do all day with the farm. Don’t worry, love, it won’t come to us.”
“Tom, you have four men on this farm, two apprentices, and pieceworkers besides. What if they all go to war? What if you have to go to war?”
“I’d like to see Bert try to go to war—he’s my right-hand man, and he’s too long in the tooth; they’d send him packing. Danny wouldn’t get into the army, on account of his leg, and Bill Hicks and Mattie Wright, we were nippers together—they’ve worked here all their lives, and their fathers too. As for the young lads—they’re still so wet behind the ears, it’s all they can do to lift a shovel, never mind a rifle. War’s a young man’s game.”
“But you’re young, Tom.”
“Come on, Kezzie, I’d better get back to work—if I linger too long, we’ll be up those stairs, won’t we?” He kissed her on the mouth. “Don’t worry about me, I’m a farmer born and bred, and if there’s anything that’ll be needed if it comes to war, it’s what I’ve got—food to put on the table.”
As Kezia began to clear the plates, Ada came into the kitchen, a pail in her hand. Kezia blushed.
“Anyway, this’ll never get the cows moved, will it? See you later, love.” Tom walked towards the back door, rolling up his sleeves. “Did you put something in the gravy, by the way?”
“A little sherry, actually.”
“Sherry? Mother only kept that for Easter and Christmas.” Tom winked at his wife. “Nice in gravy, I must say.”
Kezia had become more worried about this business of war. She’d bought a newspaper in the village and read every word reported on the subject. No one she met seemed to be paying much attention. Perhaps Mr. Coombes was right; perhaps they were cocooned in their round of work on the land, in the home or a wealthy someone else’s home. The Brissendens were considered somewhere in the middle of the village social order, better off than most, with Tom becoming more of a gentleman farmer than his father before him. In fact, most people didn’t quite know where to place Tom, especially following his marriage to Kezia. But they liked him—he was one of their own—and they couldn’t help but take to Kezia, whom many considered very ladylike, though not perhaps lady enough to have someone else to do her shopping. She drew attention when she rode the mare into the village on days when she wanted only a few bits and pieces, putting them in her knapsack before riding back to the farm. It was clear she was something of a novice in the saddle, though she was trying to learn. Sometimes she brought the gig, but it was generally considered that if the mare, Mrs. Joe, hadn’t known her job, Kezia Brissenden would have been in a good deal of trouble.
By the end of July, and wed all of twenty-seven days, it seemed to Kezia as if the roots of her marriage were beginning to break through into the earth, ready to grow deeper with each year. For Tom, she knew, it was as he expected. You sow a seed and it either flourishes or it withers, and it never crossed his mind that his marriage to Kezia would ever be anything other than a good one. He saw his future clearly. The farm would be strong, and there would be no setback that he could not counter with hard work. He had never looked at the land through rose-tinted glasses, and he knew how it could break a man, how it could wound body and soul. He had a responsibility that came with providing a living for men who worked on the farm and their families—men he had known his entire life. That the farm was his at all had been down to sheer luck—and he knew better than tempt fate. In time there would be children, and their children after. Tom trusted—though he had never thought about it consciously—that he would die on this land and be buried in the churchyard, and that his son and his son after him would work the fields that generations of Brissenden men had farmed.
But there was something beginning to scratch at the smooth veneer of Kezia’s new married life. It was not a constant annoyance, like the branch that scrapes against the windowpane night after night, but more like a small fragment of grit in the shoe, something that is felt now and again. Though Tom would have argued otherwise, had she confided in him, Kezia wondered if she was on the cusp of losing an element of herself. She had claimed two half-days alone, walking, reading, and writing in her journal, but she considered Thea’s life—and, indeed, her own before marriage—and wondered if in time she would feel that she was missing something, and whether she had bartered her character for contentment. Indeed it was in the village hall, which also served as a library of sorts, and where Kezia had stopped to read a women’s monthly or two—she was still undecided upon the question of placing a subscription with the newsagent in Brooksmarsh—that she came upon a comment that caused her to sit down and read further. Women’s books in the village library were always out of date; however, from a copy of Woman At Home, dated January 1913, she copied down a paragraph on the back of her shopping list:
The modern girl prefers to live independently, and earns two hundred pounds a year, rather than marry a man with an income scarcely more than her own.
The writer asked if it was surprising, then, that the latest statistics on the matter revealed that 1912 reported the lowest marriage rate ever? Kezia wondered if she was a statistic, perhaps a dying breed—the married woman.
She had given up a reasonable income to be married, but more so had given up a job she loved. Would her new life sustain her? And of greater importance, would she have enough about her to hold the love of her husband? A line in another book taken from the same pile declared, “The twentieth century is discovering the woman.” Kezia was appalled. Weren’t these questions she asked of herself simply indicative of her self-interest, and at a time when her husband was working his fingers to the bone to build a life for them? She cast the book back onto the pile, but not before making a note that Hoe’s Sauce provided an excellent flavoring for soups, stews, and other dishes.
These thoughts continued to trouble her. The grit became a stone in short order. Over Sunday tea, Kezia suggested to Tom that it might be a good idea for her to go up to London to see dear Thea, from whom they had received only one letter since the wedding—athough Kezia had sent her two long communiqués, the second with a note from Tom added at the end. Kezia informed her husband that she would go up to Charing Cross the following day—even though it was a bank holiday. She had checked, and there were some nineteen trains timetabled on the up line from Tonbridge, and she had the times noted down. She told him she had prepared plenty of food for him, which Ada had only to heat in the oven, and there was a goodly supply of ex
tras in the larder to tide him over for a couple of days. She planned to be back on Wednesday afternoon. She was sure Ada could manage the men’s breakfast for two mornings.
Tom offered no counter to the plans. Given that he too was worried about Thea—“dotty Dorrit,” as he referred to her, with affection, on many an occasion—he was glad that Kezia was looking out for his family. It warmed him.
Edmund Hawkes watched Tom Brissenden bring the gig to a halt outside the Brooksmarsh branch-line station. The farmer stepped down from the cart, then walked around to attend his wife. With his hands about her waist, he swung her down onto the cobblestones, whereupon he took off his cap and held her to him, kissing her as if he might never see her again. Hawkes turned away as the couple came towards the ticket office, Tom carrying a small leather case. A third-class fare for one was purchased. Tom led Kezia out onto the platform and, after looking back at the clock, kissed his wife once more to mark his departure. He set the case down beside her and left the station. Hawkes could not ascertain their conversation, though he realized that he was frowning as he watched them, scrutinizing their expressions as they bid farewell. There was only one other passenger waiting, an old woman reading a book, a pince-nez held up to her eyes. She paid no attention to Tom and Kezia; indeed, Hawkes thought she might be deaf. Apart from the ticket master, he was the only person who’d seen them at the station, and they had not even noticed him. Edmund Hawkes felt an unfamiliar emotion over this event that had lasted perhaps five minutes. He was envious of Tom Brissenden.
Chapter 3
Women, like men, have the desire to expand their realm of intelligence, to take part in the affairs of the world, which bear upon their lives, and the restraint and force of mere tradition, prejudice, or caste, have become intolerable to them.
—THE WOMAN’S BOOK
Edmund Hawkes was liked in the village; indeed, he was known and well thought of across the county. Not to the extent that he was feted, though his batting average for the local cricket team was talked about every year. He was simply liked. He had an easy way about him. He smiled readily, but not overly. He was gracious to shopkeepers and to the landlord of the Queen’s Head, where he occasionally stopped for a pint of ale, his Labrador dog, Millie, resting her head on his knee, and his hunter, Bella, tethered outside. He was considered a kind man. More than anything, it was generally agreed that he was a sensible Hawkes, not one of those foolish members of the family, like his father and great-grandfather before him. The Hawkes family were not lords of the manor, not aristocracy, though they were well-heeled gentry with business interests overseas and at home. Four large farms belonging to the estate brought in a good income. It had once been five, but due to weakness on the part of his great-grandfather, the most productive of those farms now belonged to the Brissenden family, who had gone from tenants to owners in the time it took to throw a double top in a game of darts.
Hawkes did not grieve for land that had never been his, though he could not escape what appeared to some to be a preordained element of character. It seemed that, throughout the history of the family, an heir of good sense followed an heir who could best be described as a dilettante. It was as if each generation bred a son at odds with his father. His great-grandfather had been a gambler, a man who would sit in the pub—any hostelry would do—and within a short time draw someone into placing a bet, even if that wager were money risked upon which of two raindrops would descend the windowpane first. There was no limit to what stake he might put on the table. His son, Edmund’s grandfather, had subsequently run a very tight estate, with every penny in or out of the accounts marked in a ledger at the end of each day. The restriction was like a noose around the neck of Edmund’s father, who grew to manhood with a liking for drink and a leaning towards profligacy. And so it began again. Edmund grew up knowing how to keep his father at arm’s length—and fortunately, his father had little interest in the activities of his son. A good estate manager kept Hawkendene Manor from complete destitution, and it was this man—Albert Hodges—who took Edmund under his wing, and taught him how to care for the land he had inherited. With his father rendered incapable by senility, Edmund could look back and know that it might have been worse for him. He’d spent most of his childhood in Sussex, at prep school, and then on to Bishopswell Hall, a senior school for boys where he had worked hard enough to secure a place at Oxford. He had studied politics and economics at university, but would rather have read novels all day and written poetry. Now, though, his work was the maintenance of the Hawkes fortunes, ensuring a good foundation should another generation fall foul of the whisky bottle or a passion for cards. If Edmund had a weakness, it was, as the village postmistress put it, He can be a dreamer, that one . . . Knowing this element of himself, he feared his son—a son yet to be born to a women yet to be met—might be a fierce man of purpose who forever moved at a brisk clip, in response to a father who preferred to stroll, and ideally to sit by the lake and work with verse rather than stocks and shares or trusts and investments. So Hawkes tried to balance desire and responsibility, and was generally considered to be a good man.
“Kezzie, what are you doing here?” Thea came downstairs to greet her sister-in-law, having been summoned by the warden.
“Did you not receive my postcard? It should have arrived this morning, second post at the latest. I actually sent it before I told Tom I was coming, dear love that he is.” She set down her leather case. “I’ve come to see you—to stay, if that’s all right. Just for a couple of nights.”
“What—is my brother driving you to leave the farm already?” said Thea, responding to Kezia’s open arms, holding her close. She smelled the freshness of a Kentish morning in Kezia’s hair, and realized she had missed her friend very much. “And you’re forgetting—there was no post today, not on a bank holiday.”
Kezia stood back but held on to Thea’s hands. “Oh, dear. I did forget. We hadn’t heard from you, so I decided to come. Tom agreed with my decision. I came up on the train. We thought you might have been upset when your friends backed out of the excursion you’d planned. Don’t you think they were a bit hasty, in calling a halt to it all?”
“Hasty? Well, I might have risked it, but . . . Kezia, don’t you keep up with what’s happening?” Thea bent down to take Kezia’s leather case, but Kezia shook her head and reached for the handle.
“I can manage. And what do you mean, don’t I keep up? Of course I do, but you know how the farm can be.” She held her case in two hands. “And you should see Charing Cross—it’s packed with Belgians, and people trying to organize them, running round with ledgers, taking names, and doing their best to help out. I think everyone’s just overwhelmed by it all. And when I changed trains at Tonbridge, there were notices warning of delays due to troops being moved to the coast.”
Thea led the way back up the staircase towards her room. She responded as if she had not heard Kezia. “Didn’t you take account of what it’s like on the streets as you came from the station? Everyone’s waiting for news. And you would think it was the Jubilee, what with people drinking and dancing.” She took Kezia’s case and put it in her wardrobe. “If you didn’t notice, you must have walked here with your eyes closed.”
“Of course I noticed, but it seemed so strange to me, that people would celebrate the idea of going to war.” Kezia faltered, and she felt her eyes water. “You don’t think it will actually happen, do you?”
Thea nodded. “I don’t think there’s any going back now. And that puts us in a difficult position. Mrs. Pankhurst is coming out in support of the government by ceasing our battle to finally get voting rights for women. Frankly, I’m not sure where that leaves us. And as far as war is concerned, I’m for the pacifists, you know.”
“The pacifists? You mean, you wouldn’t support your country if it happens, if we go to war?”
“Oh, Kezia, you are a strange one, surely you are!” Thea folded her arms and stood by the window, looking down at the street. “I have friends who
are German. Emily is walking out with a German boy, and he’s even met her parents and they like him very much. Now they’re frantic.” She sighed. “It’s all coming down like a pack of cards. And you know who it will hurt most at the end of the day? You, Tom, and me, people like us—and all those people walking along the street.” She pointed towards the window. “Everyone out there.”
Kezia hated to see Thea so impassioned, so taken; it was as if she were in pain. She had seen it so many times over the years—Thea, always standing for something, whether it was small children who came to school without food in their bellies, or London’s women of the night, many just girls, and most of them with little choice in how they could earn their keep. Kezia wanted to bring Thea out of herself, to stop her fretting about things she couldn’t change in the world. She wanted them to sit down together and share their confidences, as they had years ago. She had imagined Thea being so thrilled to see her, she’d want to go out window-shopping, or take an evening walk through the park. Kezia had brought cash from the tin in the bottom dressing-table drawer; her mother would doubtless agree that now would be a good time to dip into the fund, to give them both a good supper. She had hoped to see something of her best friend of old once more; she missed Dorrit.
“Come on, Thea, let’s go out to a dining room, somewhere we won’t be expected to have a chaperone. We’ll have something lovely to eat. It will be my treat.”
“Delving into your nest egg, Kezzie? Or is the harvest looking to be better than expected?” Thea’s response cut like a blade.
“This is my money,” said Kezia, who had instinctively laid her hand upon her heart as if to protect herself. “Now, I would like to dine, and I would like you to join me. Is that better for you?”