Merryn Allingham - The Buttonmaker’s Daughter

‘Where have you been?’ The beauty of the flowers had done nothing to soothe and his frown was etched deep.

‘Just walking.’ She drew abreast of him but avoided meeting his eyes.

‘You shouldn’t walk alone. You know I am always happy to keep you company. You must ask me. It’s a long time since we walked together.’

‘We’ll walk another day, Papa. And please don’t worry. I took a very small stroll and they are our gardens. How can I come to harm?’

‘They may be our gardens, but still—’

He stopped suddenly. A floating grey skirt had appeared around the corner of the building. Alice had barely reached the top of the terrace steps when he turned on her. ‘Your daughter has been out this last hour. Did you know that? Why are you not with her?’

Alice ignored his outburst. ‘I was with Dr Daniels. If you recall, he is here for William. I came to tell you that the doctor is leaving. You may wish to say goodbye.’

‘Daniels, that old woman,’ he muttered. ‘Both of you fussing over the boy. There’s nothing wrong with him, I tell you. You’re encouraging him to be sick.’

As if to prove him right, William chose that moment to fly out of the side door and down the terrace steps, his brown limbs at full stretch. ‘Sorry,’ he panted, weaving his way between them, but not before Elizabeth had spied a crumpled cloth beneath his arm and what looked suspiciously like half a loaf poking out of it.

‘I have to go. Olly is waiting.’

All three of them looked after the rapidly disappearing figure. It was Alice who broke the silence. ‘I am not saying he is sick, simply that we should continue to be careful.’

‘Rubbish! There’s nothing wrong with him.’

When he appeared about to deliver another lengthy diatribe, Elizabeth seized the chance to slide quietly away and make for the house.

Chapter Nine

Joshua glared at the spot she had been minutes before. William was supplanted by a more urgent consideration. ‘About Elizabeth…’

Alice sighed inwardly. What about Elizabeth? she asked herself. She seemed unable to exercise control over the girl. Her father should be the one to hold her in check, but his fondness kept him from any meaningful restraint.

‘Surely, woman,’ he was saying, ‘it can’t be beyond your wit to keep watch over her. Keep her amused so that she doesn’t feel the need to stray.’

‘It’s not amusement that Elizabeth needs, Joshua. It’s purpose. A finishing school would have helped,’ she couldn’t stop herself adding.

She waited for the next outburst, but instead he seemed deep in thought, prodding so savagely at the lawn with the briar stick he carried that Alice feared the gardeners would be called on to lay new turf.

‘There are times,’ he said heavily, ‘when I wish we had stayed in Birmingham. Elizabeth would have had purpose there. The women were… different. More serious. The wives and daughters of the men I knew – they would have been her friends. They would have kept her busy, interested in the world. Given her something beyond dabbing at canvases in an attic. And they would have found her the right husband.’

This final shot went over Alice’s head. In her mind, she was back in Birmingham and hating it. Fifteen years she’d lived there, and for the entire time she had felt adrift. The friends, the contacts, Joshua spoke of were industrialists, factory owners like himself. They inhabited a world wholly foreign to her and had wives who were just as foreign. Women who gave gossipy and uncomfortable tea parties or, worse, were terrifyingly intellectual. Joshua had taunted her that she was too great a lady, too conscious of her family name and thought herself above their company. It wasn’t so but she could never have told him the truth. She was scared of the women, thoroughly scared. Her meagre education, the narrow vision with which she’d been raised, the privileged life she’d led, were poor preparation for holding her own with females who thought nothing of conducting literary soirées in their homes or debating the latest philosophy. They were wives who joined the Women’s Slavery Society or attended public meetings on women’s suffrage and urged her to accompany them. They made her feel stupid and pointless.

And Joshua had not helped. He’d been incapable of understanding her plight and treated her with a growing abruptness. Even when she’d given birth after years of disappointment, she had been made to feel a failure. A girl rather than the boy that was expected. In time, of course, things had changed. Joshua had grown to adore his daughter and to dismiss the son when he arrived, as hardly worth his attention. His partiality was understandable. She thought Elizabeth too headstrong for her own good, but the girl’s spirit and energy were a true echo of her father’s.

When her husband had finally gained ownership of his Sussex acres, she’d felt blessed. For weeks, she had sailed aloft on a tumultuous wave of relief. Until she’d returned. Then came the realisation that she’d find no more congenial company in the countryside of her birth. Her brother had made sure that neither Joshua nor she would find a place in county society. The great and the good had decided for themselves that Joshua was unbearably vulgar, but her brother had made sure with a whisper here and a nudge there that he was seen as dishonest too. A counterfeit. She had buckled beneath the assault, but Joshua hadn’t. He was a strong man and he’d needed his strength. He’d used it to shrug off the mantle of social pariah and create instead the most magnificent gardens in Sussex. They were his triumphal fanfare, a declaration that he had arrived.

Her thoughts had been wandering badly. Joshua was still complaining and she had heard barely a word. She struggled to look suitably abashed when Ivy saved her the trouble by appearing at her shoulder. ‘Beg pardon, ma’am. But you have a caller.’

‘I know,’ she said shortly. ‘The doctor.’

Why could people not leave her alone? First, Elizabeth, then, Joshua, now, Ivy. Her hand crept to the back of her neck. She had the strangest impulse to tug hard at her hair and bring the whole magnificent edifice tumbling around her shoulders. An attempt to break her bonds? she wondered. If it was, it was far too feeble and very much too late.

‘No ma’am. Dr Daniels left ten minutes ago. He said not to bother you or Mr Summer, but he’d be back to check on Master William next month. It’s Mrs Fitzroy that’s in the drawing room.’

‘Mrs Fitzroy?’ Alice looked blankly at the maidservant.

‘You can go,’ Joshua growled. ‘She’s your sister-in-law, not mine. I’ll have nothing to do with that family. In any case, I need to see Harris. I want to talk to him about plants for the fête. The more exotic, the better. And cut flowers – vases and vases of cut flowers. We must make sure the whole of Sussex will be talking about the event for months.’

He would take a grim satisfaction in greeting the county’s old families and rubbing their noses in his wealth. They might own more land, but that was their only source of treasure, and its value had depreciated hugely over the last twenty or thirty years – ever since the great depression. There was no money to pay taxes, no money to pay the new threepence a week insurance for each of their dwindling band of servants. Joshua had the upper hand.

She supposed it was some kind of poetic justice, though one that left her indifferent. He had ploughed thousands into the estate but had garnered back as much money and more. Under his management, the once failing Home Farm of the Fitzroys was a thriving enterprise, producing all its own livestock and cereals. There was honey, too – she could vouch for its excellence. And wax from the hives and building timber from the coppiced area he’d planted. There was no doubt he’d proved as successful at farming as he had at button-making, and the estate had grown rich as a result. Now his moment of glory had come: Summerhayes would be a showcase of all he stood for.