Hope - Lesley Pearse [55]
She and Ruth did talk a lot about Rufus, but only in the fond way anyone would speak about a child. They took pride in that he was clever, they repeated funny things he said, and because of this Hope felt she knew him just as well now as she did when they used to play together.
‘Where does he go then?’ Hope asked.
‘Out riding, visiting friends. Mama doesn’t like it when he doesn’t come home at night.’
Hope sniggered. She thought he meant that his father got so drunk he fell down somewhere and slept it off. Her father had done that a few times and woken up in a field all wet with dew. ‘I don’t suppose he likes how he feels the next morning,’ she said.
Rufus looked puzzled and asked what she meant. Hope explained.
‘I don’t think my papa ends up in a field,’ Rufus said, looking shocked that Hope could even suggest that. ‘I think he goes to Bath. I once heard Mama ask if he’d been in a whorehouse! Do you know what that is?’
Hope did know what a whore was, she’d heard Albert say the word a couple of times, and asked Nell what it meant. Nell had said the real meaning was a woman who let a man have his way with her, for money. But she had quickly added that Albert used it for any woman who in his opinion was too lively or flirtatious.
‘It’s a house of happy women,’ Hope said, thinking she’d better not give him Nell’s definition.
‘Well, I don’t blame Papa for going to one then,’ Rufus pouted, ‘because Mama is always unhappy.’
‘How can she be unhappy?’ Hope asked. To her Lady Harvey had the best life it was possible to have.
‘She is,’ he said with a touch of indignation that she didn’t believe him. ‘She cries a lot about Papa because he doesn’t seem to care about her.’
Hope found that difficult to believe as everyone had always told her Lady Harvey and Sir William were a love match. But then people had thought Albert and Nell were too, and she knew first-hand how untrue that was, and what misery it could be finding herself between the pair of them.
‘My mother used to say that all married couples have tiffs sometimes,’ she said, trying to offer him some comfort because it clearly troubled him. ‘So don’t you fret about them. You’ll be going away to school soon anyway.’
‘I don’t want to go away,’ he said glumly. ‘I know I’m going to hate it. Would you meet me here again? I like being with you.’
Hope thought maybe the fear of going away to school was at the bottom of all his worries, and perhaps he was lonely too. ‘I could only meet you on Wednesdays,’ she said with a smile. ‘But you’d better not tell anyone.’
Albert went down to the ale house in Chelwood as soon as Hope got home, not even stopping to tell her off for being late because he’d eaten up at the big house. He did that quite often now as Martha, the new cook, always made a fuss of him.
Nell often laughingly said that Albert was sweet on Martha, even though the cook was well over forty and fat, with rotten teeth. Yet ridiculous as that was, Albert did seem to enjoy Martha’s endless admiration for his work in the garden, and the way she kowtowed to him, as well as her cooking.
As Nell wouldn’t be back for some time, Hope sat on the backdoor step to eat some bread and cheese. It was a beautiful evening, still warm with just the softest of breezes, and the air full of the smell of newly cut hay. It was her favourite spot, for Lord’s Wood was on her right, on the left there were acres of fields, and straight ahead was the big house at the end of the tree-lined drive.
The sun was going down, and the house had turned the colour of ripe apricots. She was too far away to see the roses, but Nell had said this morning that the climbing ones were right up by Lady Harvey’s bedroom window, and they filled the rooms with their scent.
The things Rufus had said about his parents were playing on her mind and made her think back to when she used to play with him. She hadn’t been aware of the huge divide