Page 34 of The Housekeeper's Secret

Catching her meaning, Mrs Gatley’s chins wobbled in sympathy. ‘Oh, well, in that case maybe you’re best off staying put. Get your feet up. Make the most of the peace and quiet—it’s rare enough.’ She clattered dishes down on the slate shelf. ‘I made a cheese and onion flan for Mr Goddard’s tea when he gets back—I shouldn’t think he’ll want to stay once he’s done his tree planting—but there’s enough for you to have for your dinner too. I’d have brought you down a slice of my lemon cake, if I’d known. I always needed a bit of something sweet at the time of the month. That’s all well and truly in the past now, the Lord be thanked…’

Kate went out to the stable yard to see them off; Gatley, Mrs Gatley, and Mr Goddard in one wagon with Johnny Farrow at the reins, and Stanley Twigg driving the smaller cart, in which Jem had joined the grooms and the garden lads. She didn’t look at him, though somehow she still managed to be aware that the bruising on his face was much less noticeable, and he was wearing the soft-striped collarless shirt he had worn on the day he arrived. His hair was lighter than it had been then, where the sun had painted gold into it.

Johnny Farrow raised one heavy eyebrow at her. ‘Shall I wait?’

Kate shook her head. ‘Someone should stay here. In case of intruders… We shouldn’t leave the place empty.’

It was an excuse, but as the horses’ hooves echoed under the archway, she looked around uneasily.

Wrapping her arms around herself, she went back into the silent house.

The Union Jack flags along the dusty main street in Howden Bridge were motionless in the heavy air. The garland of flowers around the door to the village school, where teas were being served, wilted and dropped their petals in the heat.

Jem watched Mr Goddard perform his ceremonial tree-planting duty on the playing field behind the school. The school itself had been built with the money and patronage of the third Baronet Bradfield (who, Jem guessed, was keen to repair some of the damage his predecessor had done to the family name); and tradition apparently dictated that significant occasions were marked with the planting of a tree by someone from the Big House. Sir Randolph had been only too glad to defer the duty to Mr Goddard, who shakily shovelled soil over the roots of a spindly beech tree a stone’s throw from the fledgling ash planted by his late master nine years previously.

It was strange, seeing him outside of his kingdom at Coldwell. Alongside the sturdy villagers and farm folk he seemed older and frailer, his stature diminished amongst people over whom he had no authority, his skin like yellowed parchment alongside their outdoor ruddiness. He made a short speech, but his rusty voice didn’t carry as far as Jem, standing at the back of the small, inattentive crowd.

Jem’s gaze moved over the assembled villagers, picking out the few he recognised: one of the laundrywomen who came up to Coldwell on Mondays (impossible to miss, with her sleeves rolled back over her mighty forearms and a solid infant wedged on her hip), the wizened old man who kept the village store, and several children who’d had prominent roles in the parade that had opened the celebrations that morning and who were now impatient for the jam tarts and ices and sports that were scheduled to follow tea.

A ripple of very half-hearted applause signalled the end of Mr Goddard’s speech. Turning away, Jem saw Davy Wells from the gate lodge, looking smart but uncomfortable in a suit that appeared to have been made for someone considerably smaller. He was with a stout, harried-looking woman in a hat that looked like some ungainly bird had roosted on her head. His mother, Jem presumed, picking his way through a skirmish of children towards them.

‘Hello, Davy.’

Davy flinched away from the greeting, turning his head as forcefully as if Jem had slapped him.

Mrs Wells tutted. ‘That’s not very nice, Davy.’ She gave Jem an apologetic smile. ‘I don’t know what’s got into him today. The heat I expect.’ Sweat beaded her hairline beneath the hat, and she fanned herself with her gloves. ‘Wasn’t the parade lovely? I do like to see the little ones in their costumes. You were in it last time, weren’t you, Davy? Pride of place, at the front.’

Davy looked down, scuffing at the dust with the toe of his boot. On the triangle of grass between the White Hart and the school, the brass band launched into a jaunty tune, at odds with the lassitude of the day.

‘Did you dress up?’ Jem asked. He knew not to expect a reply from Davy himself but didn’t want to talk about him as if he wasn’t there.

‘He did,’ Mrs Wells said proudly. ‘You were the Grand Old Duke of York, weren’t you, Davy? I dug out his father’s old coachman’s livery and trimmed it up with a bit of braid and he led the parade right out of the church door, smiling all over his face. Twelve, he was—always tall for his age. Oh, it was a smashing day, that was!’ The memory lit up her lined face. ‘You weren’t so shy then, were you, Davy? He was a regular little chatterbox back in those days.’

Jem was surprised; he’d assumed Davy had always been mute. Davy’s head was bent, but Jem could make out the scowl on his face. He wanted to ask Mrs Wells what had happened to silence that smiling, chattering boy, but she was hitching her basket up her arm and looking past him. ‘Oh—there’s Mrs Crawford. I must go and have a word… Come along, Davy; say goodbye to—’

‘Jem.’

She nodded, already pulling Davy away with her. He turned to look at Jem with dark, mistrustful eyes.

The band was playing a military march now. Jem began to walk, following the general direction everyone else was taking. In the schoolyard, the children were being marshalled into lines by a short-tempered schoolmaster, while a photographer assembled his equipment and the vicar took coronation mugs out of a tea chest full of packing straw. A table had been set up by the door, with cups and saucers laid out in rows. Without meaning to, Jem found himself in the queue for refreshments, and only realised how thirsty he was when the purposeful woman serving asked what he wanted. She reached beneath the table and pulled a bottle of lemonade from a bucket of water and handed it to him.

‘You’re another one not from round here, aren’t you?’

She was hatless, with faded red hair piled up on top of her head, coming loose a little at the sides. Her eyes, pale green like the marble stopper on the lemonade bottle, moved over him with quick curiosity. ‘We were just saying—there’s a lot of new faces around today. City folk, here for the celebrations. Are you Manchester or Sheffield?’

‘Neither.’ He pushed the marble into the bottle. ‘I work at the hall.’

‘Coldwell?’ Her expression changed and she gave a short, harsh laugh. ‘Hear that, Mrs Mullins? Definitely not from round here, then.’

He took a mouthful of lemonade. ‘What makes you say that?’

Her green glass eyes were almost scornful. ‘Think about it. No one local works there, do they?’

She looked past him, greeting the man behind by name, asking what she could get for him, leaving Jem little choice but to move aside. He looked at the other woman behind the table, but she was pouring tea from a vast, dented metal pot, listening to the woman for whom it was intended telling her about her husband’s toothache.

He walked away, taking another long draught of lemonade. The heat made a pulse beat in his neck: heat and anger. With every step he thought about going back, demanding to know what she meant.

Because she was right, he realised. Apart from the laundrywomen and the girls who provided extra help in the kitchen occasionally, no one from the neighbouring villages worked at the house. Johnny Farrow’s thick Geordie accent marked him out as being a long way from home, and he’d heard the Twigg lads speak about their sprawling family in Warwickshire, and their Gypsy roots. Jem had grown up on an estate where families could trace their service back for generations; garden lads marrying housemaids, dairymaids settling in tied cottages with herdsmen from the home farm, each union tightening the warp and weft of the community, providing the estate’s future labour.

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