He would’ve liked to ask what he could do, but felt the presence of his privilege as uncomfortably as if it had been pockets full of chilly gold, and instead fumbled with words of agreement and censure – certainly something ought to be done about it, questions raised and so on … ‘I’m going to do something about it,’ she said, imperiously; then as if to forestall requests for detail raised her voice, and said: ‘Now, Cora: have you told the Imp about your poor Essex parson, and the serpent?’
Cora (who’d been sitting at Luke’s feet recounting the tale of how she had rescued a lost lamb from the clutches of an Essex ogre) explained how they’d encountered Charles Ambrose, and how they’d learned of the beast in the Blackwater shaken loose by the earthquake. She showed him photos of a plesiosaur uncovered at Lyme Regis, and gestured to its long tail, and its flippers rather like wings. ‘Sea-dragon, Mary Anning called it: you can see why, can’t you? Can’t you see why?’ She snapped the book shut, triumphant, and told him how she planned to go down to the coast, where the Colne and the Blackwater met in their estuary and went out to the sea, and how Charles Ambrose had foisted them on an unsuspecting rural priest and his family. Her friend’s appalled laughter threatened to crack in two the black beams that upheld the roof: mirth doubled him at the waist, and he gestured to her man’s boots, and the earth beneath her fingernails, and the godless little library on the windowsill. The sweet letter of invitation was unfolded and passed from hand to hand and the primrose crumbled: this Stella Ransome was a darling woman (it was agreed) and ought at all costs to be protected from Cora, who would surely terrify her more than any sea-serpent might.
‘I hope the good Reverend’s faith is sincere,’ he said. ‘He’ll be needing it.’ Only Spencer, silently watching from his window-seat, saw in Luke’s hilarity the unease of a man who would’ve liked to keep Cora only for himself, with no other friend or confidant, even one choked with a dog-collar and slow-witted to boot.
A little later, watching from the window as Spencer guided his friend the short distance to the George, Martha said, ‘I like him: I always thought him stupid, but really I think he’s just kind.’
Cora said, ‘The two things are hard to tell apart, sometimes, and sometimes amount to much the same thing – will you take Francis to his room? I will clear the feathers up, or the maids will think we’ve held a black mass, and we will lose our reputation.’
2
Stella Ransome stood at the window buttoning her blue dress. It was the view she liked best, taking in the chequered path with its bluebell border, and beyond that the High Road with its cluster of cottages and shops, the sturdy All Saints tower, and the fresh red-brick walls of the school. Nothing pleased her more than feeling that all around her was the bustle of life, and she loved the beginning of spring, when green buds quickened on Traitor’s Oak, and the village children were set free from heavy clothes and indoor games. Her usually irrepressible cheer had been dampened by a long winter which had not had the glamour of snow, only been a dreary chill period that not even Christmas could make bearable. The cough which had kept her awake at night had receded as the weather grew warmer, and the grey thumbprints beneath her weary eyes had almost gone. This, too, pleased her: she was not vain, only took delight in her appearance in just the same way she took delight in the scarlet camellia blooming in its black flower-bed down on the lawn. Her white fair hair, heart-shaped face and pansy-blue eyes were a pleasant enough sight in the mirror, but one she took for granted. It was true that Will could no longer circle her waist with his outspread hands, but she took to her new stoutness cheerfully: it was evidence of the five children she’d carried, and of the three who remained.
She heard them downstairs ending their early supper, and closing her eyes saw each as plainly as if she’d gone to the kitchen. James bent over as he drew his fantastic machines, all food disregarded as he sketched another cog or flywheel, and Joanna, the eldest, tending sternly to John, the youngest, who was doubtless embarking on his third slice of cake. Delighted at the prospect of the night’s visitors (they adored Charles Ambrose, as all children did, for the depth of his pockets and the colours of his coat), they’d helped set the dining table with every piece of silver and glass in the house, exclaiming over the napkins their mother had sewn with forget-me-nots, and which they were not permitted to use. Only Joanna would be awake to greet the guests, and had promised to gather what gossip she could to entertain the younger children over breakfast. ‘I think the widow will be fat as a carthorse and will cry into her soup,’ she said, ‘and her son will be handsome and rich and stupid, and will ask me to marry him, and I’ll turn him down, and he will blow his brains out.’
Stella felt, as she often did, dazed with the good fortune which she knew to be a gift she had done nothing to earn. Her love for Will – which had arrived as suddenly as a fever when she was seventeen and had been just as dizzying – had not abated or diminished, even briefly, in their fifteen years of marriage. She’d been warned by a mother disappointed in almost every aspect of life that she should keep her expectations of happiness low: the man was likely to demand unpleasantness from her which she should bear bravely for the sake of children; he would tire of her quickly, but by then she would be grateful; he would grow fat; he was headed for a country parish and would never be rich. But Stella, to whom the mere existence of William Ransome, with his grave eyes and his sincerity and his deeply buried humour, was a miracle on a par with the wedding at Cana, could not prevent herself from laughing at her mother, and kissing her on the cheek. She felt then, and felt still, a fond pity for any woman who had not had the sense to marry her Will. Her mother had lived long enough to be disappointed in her daughter’s failure to be disappointed. The girl had taken to every aspect of marriage with indecent delight, and seemed to be expecting a child the moment she had delivered one; they walked the Aldwinter High Road hand in hand; even the loss of two children had not struck a blow to their love, only settled it more deeply on its foundation. Stella admitted, every now and then, that she might have been happier in London or Surrey, where you could barely cross the road without making some new friend; but she was a kind and indefatigable gossip, and found in Aldwinter sufficient intrigue to sustain her interest in her fellow man without ever being heard to speak ill of anyone.
Will, meanwhile, had not emerged from his study since breakfast. It was a habit of his to see no-one on a Saturday until it was evening, when he eked out as long as possible a single glass of good wine. For all the bemusement of friends and family at his willing exile to this little parish (something most predicted would pall on him within a year) he took his Sunday duties as seriously as if he’d taken instruction at the burning bush. His was not the kind of religion lived only in rule and rubric, as if he were a civil servant and God the permanent secretary of a celestial government department. He felt his faith deeply, and above all out of doors, where the vaulted sky was his cathedral nave and the oaks its transept pillars: when faith failed, as it sometimes did, he saw the heavens declare the glory of God and heard the stones cry out.