Sometimes we rode down to the sea and galloped along the shore. I discovered that if I suggested a race and let her beat me, she was overcome with a sort of secret joy.
I believed this was because she had had a very unhappy childhood and that she was vaguely envious of mine, which had been so comfortable and secure that I had never thought about it until now.
Carl had taken a fancy to her. He used to come in sometimes and share a lesson, which was strange, for when he went to the rectory, he had always reminded me of the schoolboy creeping like the snail unwillingly to school. He asked what her favourite tune was and tried to play it—with distressing results to all within earshot.
She did not seem to want to talk about herself at first, but I set myself to lure her into confidences, and once she started to tell me she seemed as though she wanted to talk. It was rather like opening the floodgates.
Soon she had made me see that loveless household: the rectory which was always cold and damp, with the graveyard close by so that on looking out of her windows she could see tombstones, and when she was a child had been told by the washerwoman that at night the dead came out of their tombs and danced, and if anyone saw them, they themselves would be dead before the year was out.
“I used to lie in bed shivering,” she said, “while I was overcome by the temptation to get out of bed and go to the window to see if they were dancing. I remember the cold boards and the wind that used to rattle the windows. I would stand there at the window terrified, freezing, yet unable to go back to bed.”
“I should have done the same,” I told her.
“You have no idea what my childhood was like. They thought they were so good, and they thought that to be good one had to be miserable. They thought there was some virtue in suffering.”
“We have someone here like that. There is old Jasper, the gardener. He’s a Puritan, you know. He was here during the war when my father was pretending to be a supporter of Cromwell.”
“Tell me,” she cried, and I told her all I knew. She sat listening, entranced, with her mouth curved and rather beautiful then—so different from when she had talked of that cold humourless rectory.
Sometimes I thought she hated her father and mother.
I said once: “I believe you are glad you have left home.”
Her lips tightened. “It was never like a home … as this is. How lucky you are, Priscilla, to have been born here … to your mother.”
I thought that was a strange thing to say, but she did say strange things sometimes.
I liked very much hearing about the rectory and the things they did there. How the rabbit stew was watered down to make it last longer until it tasted of nothing at all; how they had to thank God for it; how their underclothes were patched and darned until there was little of the original left; how they had to kneel for what seemed like hours in the cold drawing room for morning prayers which went on interminably; how she had to stitch garments for the poor who, she was sure, were better off than she was. Then there were the lessons in the drawing room—so cold in winter, so hot in summer. How she used to study all the time because it was the only way in which she could thank God for being so good to her.
How her mouth betrayed her bitterness! Poor, poor Christabel! I recognized at once that what was wrong with that rectory was not so much the poor quality of food or the scarcity of it, nor the knees sore from too much kneeling in prayer, nor the long hours of study—no, it was none of these things. It was the lovelessness of the home. That was what came over to me. Poor Christabel, she wanted so much to be loved.
I could understand well, because in a way I had felt the same about my father. My mother had lavished care on me and I did not forget that. And then there was Aunt Harriet. I was a special favourite of hers and she made no secret of it. I could not say I was not loved. Even my father was not unkind; he was just indifferent, shrugging me aside because I had failed to be the boy men of his kind always cared so much to have. I had developed an obsession about him. I yearned to win his approval, to attract his attention.
Human beings were very much alike, so I could understand Christabel’s feelings.
Her mood changed when she talked of the Westerings. She made me see that Sussex village—after all there were such places all over England and our own community was very similar. There was the church with its draughty, cheerless rectory and graveyard of tottering tombstones imbued with an uncanny atmosphere through the folklore and legends attached to it; the small cottages, the big house dominating the village—the home of Sir Edward Westering and Lady Letty, a lady in her own right, being the daughter of an earl. Lady Letty cropped up rather frequently in Christabel’s conversation. She was what Harriet would have called a character. I could picture her sailing into church at the head of the Westering family—Sir Edward walking a pace or two behind, followed by the Westering boys, who before they went away to be educated had taken lessons at the rectory with Christabel. I could imagine Christabel, in a blue serge dress shiny at the elbows, and her patched underwear, watching with those dark-rimmed eyes which betrayed nothing and that mouth which would be quirking with mixed emotions. I guessed she would be wishing with all her heart that she was a Westering and could walk into church with that important family and take her place in that special pew.
Now and then Lady Letty would glance her way. Christabel would drop a curtsy to denote appreciation of the notice of such an exalted being. Lady Letty would say: “Ah, the rector’s girl. Christabel, is it?” For she would not be expected to remember the name of such an underling; and informed that it was, would give her a sharp look and a nod or even a smile, and pass on.
It was Lady Letty who had said that the rector’s girl should be taught to ride and then she could exercise a horse from the Westering stables. “Good exercise for the horses,” she had added. “In case,” said Christabel, “I might think it was for my benefit.”
The Westerings were the universal benefactors of the village. Blankets and geese for Christmas were distributed from the rectory by Mrs. Connalt with the help of Christabel. Lady Letty intimated that the rectory might also have its blanket and goose, but taken unostentatiously, of course. “We picked out the biggest goose,” said Christabel with her wry smile, “and the largest of the blankets.”
At Easter and Harvest Festival she would go to the Westering estate to select flowers and produce from the kitchen gardens, which the gardeners would then bring over to the church. Lady Letty would often be there and would talk to her and ask her about her education. It was rather embarrassing, and she wondered why Lady Letty now and then asked her to the house, for when she was there, her ladyship’s one thought seemed to be to get rid of her as quickly as possible.
I gathered that Lady Letty was something of an enigma. It appeared strange that she should interest herself in the life of the village because she was more often than not at Court. Sometimes there was entertaining at Westering Manor when the fashionable arrived from London. Once the King himself had come. That had been a very grand occasion.
I certainly enjoyed hearing about her life.
“It seemed as though it would go on and on and never change,” she said. “I saw myself growing older and becoming exactly like Mrs. Connalt … dried up, shrivelled like a walking corpse who is really finished with life and somehow continues to make the motions of living. Joyless, seeing sin in pleasure…”
I thought how strange it was that she should refer to her mother as Mrs. Connalt—as though she rejected the close relationship between them.