‘Why on earth not? What’s to be scared of? There’s no way a woman of your girth could fall in there, after all,’ Cat says, still unpacking. But when she looks up, she sees that the housekeeper’s face is pale, almost yellowish white, like the butter she herself is holding. ‘Are you all right?’ she asks, more gently.
‘I lost my Walter in a well. I tend to put it out of my mind, as a person might. Something like that. But now and then, you can’t help but think of it,’ says Sophie Bell, and her voice is different, much smaller than usual; deadened and defeated.
‘Walter? I never heard you mention him before. Who’s Walter?’
‘My little boy, of course! Just five years old he was, when I lost him.’ Sophie Bell presses her lips into a tight purse that puckers her chin.
‘Down a well?’ Cat asks quietly.
‘The bigger boys dared him. Little buggers. They never meant no harm, I know, but at the time, of course, I wanted their hides. They dared him that he’d never climb down the rope far enough to touch the water. Silly boy, he went and did it – he wasn’t to know any better. Nearly made it back up, they said, but then he slipped his grip on the rope and fell back again. Hit his head on the side and that was that.’ In the quiet after Mrs Bell speaks, a robin comes to spy on them. Cat crumbles a tiny corner of the cheese and throws it into the grass for him.
‘That’s terrible, Sophie,’ she says quietly, her throat gone tight with dismay. ‘I’m so sorry to hear it.’
‘Going on twenty years ago, but I still miss him. His birthday would have been next week. He’d not have been much older than you.’
‘Were you married, then?’
‘Of course I was bloody married! We don’t all of us love scandal like you, Cat Morley. And you’ll ask me next what became of my husband. Well, he up and died of a tumour. Not two years after Walter went down the well. No great loss to me nor mankind, but he gave me my Walter, so I had him to thank for that. He was a lovely bairn, he was – so kind, and so sunny.’
‘I had no idea you’d suffered such loss,’ Cat says, softly. She wishes she could put out her hand and take Sophie’s, but the housekeeper’s arms remain tightly folded. ‘It must have been very hard for you, to go on with life after that. No wonder it soured your temper.’
‘Hearing your pert remarks all day long does nothing to ease my sourness, young lady. You’ve a bad habit for speaking whatever comes straight into your head, do you know that?’ Sophie remarks, and Cat smiles slightly.
‘Yes, I’ve been told that before. But you could have married again, and had another child, couldn’t you?’ she asks. Mrs Bell shakes her head sadly.
‘Only a lass who’s never had a babe could think one so easily replaced. It takes the heart out of you, when they go. And besides, willing men were hardly queuing around the corner for the likes of me. It was probably too late to have another by then, anyway; even if I could have found somebody I liked.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. You could have cooked your way into somebody’s good graces.’ Cat smiles.
‘You’re just full of wise suggestions today, aren’t you? Come on, let’s get this done and get on with lunch. The mistress’ll be wandering around with her belly rumbling before long. Not to mention this learned young man, whose work is so very bloody important.’
‘Yes, who would have guessed how important? The vicar treats him like royalty,’ Cat observes.
‘Doesn’t he just? Well, he must know something we don’t, I suppose.’
‘I’m not so sure about that,’ Cat murmurs. Mrs Bell gives her a quizzical look, and Cat shrugs. ‘The vicar should be careful. Apparently, Robin Durrant has no household of his own. It seems to me he’s quite ready to take over this one instead.’
‘In what way, take over?’ The housekeeper frowns. Cat shrugs again.
‘We’ll see,’ she says.
When the dinner plates are scrubbed, dried and put away, the dining table swept, and the napkins either refolded and pressed or put into the hamper to be laundered, Cat slips out through the back door, saunters into the courtyard and puts a cigarette between her lips. George is away on the barge for a few more days yet, taking a load of timber up the canal to Surrey. Square fence posts with sharpened points at one end, the newly hewn wood pale and moist. Cat saw the men loading them when she went into Thatcham to post letters for Hester. George’s barge, and two others that had appeared to join it. The horses led from their ramshackle stables, snatching at the long green weeds as they were harnessed to the tow ropes, tossing their heads and flicking their tails at the crowding flies. The men wore thick canvas gloves, and had their trousers tied off with lengths of string just below the knee, to keep out the panicked rats that fled as the piles of timber were dismantled, reassembled on the barges. George, with his shirt plastered to his back, frowned in the sharp sunlight. She did not call out; felt wrong interrupting him at work. She likes the fact that she saw him, this time, but he did not see her. Like she owns a little bit more of his life than he meant to give. Now she wishes him back already. She could walk alone in the dark but there seems little point, with nowhere to go.