Louis de Bernieres - Notwithstanding - Stories from an English Village

‘This is a very small condition, Bessie.’

She shrugged and smiled. ‘I have always wanted to be addressed as madam.’

‘Then madam you shall be. Of course, under similar circumstances I shall expect you to call me sir.’

She suddenly became deeply grave, and looked at him directly, as if searching his eyes for honesty. ‘Do you swear that we shall be married?’

He tried to field the question lightly. ‘I swear by these trees, and the yellow kingcups, and the bluebells, and by my right hand, and even by His Majesty the King’s best gilded chamber pot.’

‘Don’t make me laugh, now. I am serious. Do you swear that we shall be married? Do you swear it on the Holy Bible?’

‘I do. I swear it on the Holy Bible, and may the Devil have my soul if I don’t.’

‘You swear that the Devil may have your soul if you don’t?’

‘I do, Bessie, I do.’

‘Put your hand on your heart and say, “I Piers de Mandeville do solemnly swear that if I do not marry Bessie Maunderfield, then the Devil may have my soul.”’

The squire’s son sighed, and lifted his eyebrows in humorous resignation. Nonetheless he put his right hand over his heart and swore the oath. ‘There,’ he added, ‘the deed is done. I am yours, or Beelzebub’s.’

‘Now you may kiss me, sir, if you please,’ said Bessie. Piers de Mandeville discovered that she kissed very sweetly indeed, and soon they were lying side by side on the cape, kissing with ever greater degrees of oblivion. De Mandeville’s mare watched them indifferently as she waited to go home to her stable.

Their recklessness and ardour increased by the day, especially after a small room on the top floor of the house fell vacant owing to the departure of another servant. The housekeeper, wishing to spare Bessie her long trudges back and forth through the Hurst, allowed her the room, which was at the back of the house next to the top of a narrow flight of stairs. It was perfectly placed for a furtive liaison. They made love with his hand over her mouth as she bucked beneath him. Sometimes there was a full moon hanging in the window, filling the room with delirious silver light, and Piers de Mandeville and Bessie Maunderfield would lie crammed together on the narrow bed, confounded to find themselves in paradise, incredulous with happiness.

Their liaison had been established for about six months, when four things happened in quick succession. Firstly the Rector died of an apoplexy brought on by becoming infuriated about politics when drunk on claret, leaving behind him no son to inherit the living. Secondly the new Rector arrived with three accomplished and charming daughters who were looking for husbands to match their station. Thirdly the Rector’s wife quickly discovered that there was an unmarried son in the manor house, and the fourth thing was that Bessie Maunderfield came to the inescapable conclusion that she was pregnant.

Bessie said nothing for a month, frightened to tell her love, and believing that he would be angry with her. At St Mary’s Church on Sunday, beneath the stern gaze of Earl Winterton and his family in their own private gallery, she even begged God for a miscarriage. During that time she became ever more alarmed at the frequency of the visits from the Rector’s wife and her three marriageable daughters. They seemed to have an inexhaustible appetite for cakes, scones, tea and lively chatter, and it was quite plain to all that the eldest daughter was making specific efforts to be charming to Piers de Mandeville. She tossed her golden ringlets very fetchingly, praised his playing inordinately and listened wide-eyed to his opinions. When she passed by him, she brushed just a little closer than one ordinarily would, and he often caught the scent of lavender from her clothes. Emily Sutton went to the lengths of learning the fortepiano accompaniments to certain violin pieces that he had always wanted to play. Everyone who observed them also observed that they seemed a very well-matched pair. This thought was not lost on Piers de Mandeville, who now began to waver in his determination to marry Bessie Maunderfield.

Not least among his worries had been that he had proved himself too cowardly to confess his intentions to his parents. Terrified of their rage, and equally terrified as to what would become of him, once disowned, he procrastinated daily, despite many bold resolutions to grasp the nettle.

Bessie Maunderfield, entering and leaving the withdrawing room invisibly and discreetly as a servant must, could not help but notice what was happening, and she quickly became desperate. She foresaw fatal chasms opening up beneath her feet, a storm of recrimination and disgrace about her head. She was forced to tell her lover about the child.

‘Are you sure?’ he asked her repeatedly, as if there might be the slightest possibility that the swelling was an attack of colic.

‘You will marry me, won’t you?’ she asked him repeatedly, sick with anxiety and dread. ‘You will marry me before the little one comes?’

‘I will, I will,’ he promised, and she reminded him solemnly that he had vouched his soul to the Devil if he did not.

He fell into such a state of agitation that he thought his heart would give way. It seemed to flutter in his chest like a panicked bird, and his concentration left him. He would pick up his violin, and then immediately lay it back in its case. He went out and walked at furious speed, taking the sandy paths on Busses Common as far as Sweetwater Lake, or tramping along Vann Lane all the way to Pockford Road, or down Malthouse Lane all the way to Brook, where he could take to his cups in the Dog and Pheasant, believing that no one there would know who he was. Ultimately, because of the difficulty of walking home inebriated in the dark, Piers de Mandeville began to ride there on his mare, knowing that she would find the way home without any instruction or intervention from him.

Naturally, everyone knew within days that the squire’s second son was drinking and falling into bad company at the Dog and Pheasant. Bessie heard it from her cousin, the groom, and then she heard it again from her own sister who had heard it from the blacksmith’s wife in Sittinghurst.

It became impossible for Bessie to dissemble her pregnancy any longer. Her mother noticed first. She had in fact suspected for some considerable time, because she had not seen Bessie washing her clouts. Fury was followed by hand-wringing, followed by accusations of bringing disgrace upon the family, followed by the decision that Father would have to be told. Then the same sequence of rage and recrimination had to be endured all over again. Lastly came the sensible consideration of practicalities.

Bessie endured these terrible scenes with tearful resignation, at first refusing to name the father, but assuring her family over and over again that the culprit had promised to marry her before the child was due. ‘He said that if he didn’t then the Devil may have his soul. He swore it on the Holy Book,’ she told them.

‘Now that’s a fearful oath,’ said her father, ‘a fearful oath indeed.’

Another month went by, and Bessie lost her situation at the manor. At a stroke it became almost impossible to meet up with her beloved, and it even seemed to him that perhaps this was for the best. ‘Out of sight, out of mind,’ she thought bitterly, when she had not seen him for a full week.

Finally, so desperate that she could hardly think, she confided who the father was, and her mother and father immediately felt better about the entire situation. How very advantageous it might be if only Bessie were to marry the son of a manor house. ‘I’ve got a plan, Da,’ said Bessie, and when she had explained it, her father leaned back in his chair, his eyes twinkling. ‘Well, Bessie my dear, I think that might be well worth a try. I’d enjoy doing that.’