‘A little discipline? She was barely conscious for days and her body will bear the marks of your particular rod for the rest of her life in one or two places. There is something in you which is unnatural, woman.’ There, he had said it. He had thought it for years and now he had said it.
Mary’s thin body seemed to swell and he really thought she was going to spring on him, so great was her fury. She stared at him for some moments, her hate a tangible thing, and then walked to the door where she stood and surveyed him again. ‘You are a spineless nothing of a man and I rue the day I ever laid eyes on you, but I say again, what are you going to do about the girl? Let me tell you, if you ignore this like you do everything else you’d rather not face, you will live to regret it. I promise you that.’
For some minutes after Mary had left, Jeremiah continued to stare across the room and then he placed his head in his hands. What was he going to do about Sophy?
Chapter 7
Christmas, never a particularly merry affair at the vicarage, was even more dismal than usual that year. John and his mother were barely on speaking terms, Matthew tried to spend as little time as he could at home and made the office his excuse, saying pressure of work meant he needed to do extra hours, and the atmosphere in the house was so tense generally it was painful. Even David, home from school, was subdued.
Sophy had found Patience to be out of sorts, depressed and miserable at her life within the four walls of the vicarage. On further questioning, Sophy had discovered the old curate had retired in the summer and a new young man had taken his place who had set Patience’s heart a-flutter. Unfortunately, her feelings didn’t seem to be reciprocated. In fact, Patience said, Mr Travis had taken to avoiding her and she wasn’t imagining it. Following this revelation, relations between the two girls became strained when, at the Christmas Day service, Mr Travis made a beeline for Sophy and tried to chat to her for some time, in spite of all her efforts to cut the conversation short. In the end she had had to be somewhat impolite to make her escape.
A couple of days before the New Year, when her aunt was out with Patience one morning calling on friends, Sophy felt an overwhelming urge to escape the vicarage. Apart from attending her uncle’s church service she had barely been out of the house since she had arrived home, the inclement weather making even the shortest journey difficult. It had snowed on and off since her first day back in Southwick, and even today the sky looked heavy and low again. Her aunt had left her a basket full of mending to do; quite different to the variety of fancy needlework Patience and her mother spent their time doing, along with a little painting in fine watercolours and drawing in charcoal.
She was fully aware the basket of mending was a subtle insult by her aunt, a reminder that she was little more than a servant, but she would actually prefer to be doing something useful rather than stitching netting purses, embroidering pen cases or decorating handkerchiefs, things of limited use and value. But today she felt she would go mad if she didn’t go outside for a while, and so she ran upstairs to Patience’s bedroom and put on an extra layer before donning her winter coat, hat and gloves. She was just about to leave the house when David, who wasn’t due to go back to his private school for another week, appeared from the direction of the kitchen munching on a piece of Christmas cake.
Sophy smiled at Patience’s twin. He was tall for his age and gangly with it, and always ravenously hungry. That he was Mrs Hogarth’s favourite was in no doubt, since he was the only one in the family who could scrounge anything from the cook between meals, but that was David all over. He was as sunny-natured as his twin was dour, and at seventeen years of age possessed of a gaiety which was infectious. He was also in the grip of what Charlotte would have called a ‘mash’ on her. Sophy had been aware of this to some extent in the summer, but since she had returned home, the poor boy stammered and blushed and nearly fell over his own feet whenever he saw or spoke to her. For this reason she had tended to avoid him to some extent, for his sake not hers, not wishing to embarrass him. Now though, seeing her dressed for the outdoors, he rushed towards her as eagerly as a puppy, saying, ‘Are you going for a walk? I was just about to do the same. Perhaps we could walk together?’