The Weeping Sands
John Wheatley
Hulme Hall Books
www.hulmehallbooks.com
Copyright © John Wheatley 2011
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`The Weeping Sands` is a work of historical fiction. Some names and incidents are taken from fact; the characterisation, however, is fictional.
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THE WEEPING SANDS
Part 1
Chapter 1
17th September, 1831
The Lavan Sands disappeared before us in a swirling sea-mist. The opposite shore, at Beaumaris, our destination, clearly visible at the start of the journey from Conway, was now obscure. The prospect before us was dismal, and yet Mr Hughes, our coachman from Chester, having spoken to the guide at Penmaenmawr, insisted that this was our best means of crossing to the Anglesey shore before daylight faded. The alternative, he pointed out, entailed a further drive of six miles to the new toll bridge at Bangor, and then a four mile return from Porthaethwy to Beaumaris.
My sister Isobel was indisposed this morning, after a sleepless night, and that was the reason for the delay of our departure from Conway.
Venturing onto the sands, we found them firm and even, and made good progress, coming opposite the ferry on the Anglesey shore after little more than half an hour. Our luggage transferred to the ferryboat, we bade farewell to Mr Hughes, who appeared to be in no small haste to be on his way, and began our crossing of the channel, which was half a mile wide at the state of the tide when we came to it. The ferryman told us that the licence for the crossing has been in his family for six generations, but his business has been greatly diminished by the new Menai Bridge, and he foresees a time soon when the ferry will be used only by those whose trade is with the shellfish with which the surrounding sandbanks and shelves are plentifully supplied.
Our journey to Baron Hill was completed by a short drive through the village, and we are grateful to Sir Richard Bulkeley, who had made arrangements from London, for his household to be in readiness for our arrival. My sister, who had grown agitated during the latter stages of our crossing of the Lavan Sands, retired to bed soon after our arrival, and I, too, tired after four days of travel, having spent this last hour bringing my diary up to date, am now ready for rest.
18th September, 1831
Our host, Sir Richard, the tenth Baronet, is presently in London, and we are unlikely to see him for several weeks as his business keeps him there through most of the autumn. Our connections with the Bulkeley family are tenuous, going back several generations on our mother`s side to a relative who was married to someone of the Bulkeley line, but hearing of my sister`s recent difficulties, Sir Richard was gracious enough to offer Baron Hill, remote as it is from the distractions and tribulations of the capital, as a place suitable for convalescence and recuperation.
I should explain.
During the spring of this year my sister formed a most unfortunate liaison. The man concerned, James Pennington, an artist, was engaged to paint her portrait, and it seems that during the sittings arranged for that purpose, an attachment was formed in which my sister`s affections were cruelly exploited. So far advanced were the clandestine plans agreed upon between them – for no proper relationship could be sanctioned between parties of such disparate social standing, and this they knew – that my sister had been discovered missing from Evesham Place for more than twelve hours before the couple were apprehended at Dartford, apparently en route for the Kentish coast and elopement in France.
It was, of course, quite natural that the family should hold James Pennington accountable for the deterioration in my sister`s health which followed these events, but Doctor Fairhurst, though by no means excusing that young man`s behaviour, was firmly of the opinion that the decisions taken by my sister – to follow a course of action that would alienate her forever from her family and those of her own class, to link herself to an impecunious artist, to chain herself to an uncertain life of poverty and degradation, amidst the known immorality of many of those with whom she must mix, already denoted a mental condition that was seriously out of balance with nature.
Her condition is one which renders her prone to extreme changes of mood, sometimes to profound melancholy, and sleeplessness, sometimes to excitability; sometimes to imaginings in which the stuff of dreams and nightmares seems to become a waking reality.
However, I am in great hope that the tranquillity and beauty of this place will provide the tonic needed to restore her spirits. No description of mine can match the splendour of Baron Hill. Set above the town, it commands an open view of changing panorama of the Welsh mountains beyond.
My mother was unfortunate in both her marriages. My father, a nephew of the Earl of Duxbury, contracted a fever in the American colonies, and died there even before I was born. Her second husband, Isobel`s father, was killed in the fighting at Salamanca, and the Hall at Flixbury Manor, where we lived, passed by inheritance to his younger brother who was kind enough to let us remain in residence there until my mother`s death eight years later, when I was twelve and Isobel ten. After that, we became wards of Mr Harcourt, my mother`s cousin, by the terms of her will, and our domestic and financial arrangements fell to his charge.
Though born each of a different father, we were brought up entirely as sisters, both taking the surname, Harcourt, my mother`s maiden name, and the fact that I had never known my father, and that Isobel had no clear memory of hers, meant that no invidious comparisons were ever drawn, nor did any rivalries exist between us as is sometimes the case with siblings of different parentage.
Thankfully, I have a small annuity which was left to me in trust by my father, and when she reaches her age of maturity, Isobel will inherit a portion of her own father`s legacy, which includes twenty acres of land near Flixbury, and an income of £2,000 per annum, so that we may both hope to live in reasonable independence, though, as my guardian, Mr Harcourt, explained, Isobel`s prospective wealth might well make her a target for men of questionable motives, and, in this respect, it was even more important to protect her from the attentions of Mr Pennington.
The house here, we are informed, dates back to the time of the first King James, though it was greatly modified in the last century and adapted in the Palladian style by Samuel Wyatt. It was at this time also that the formal gardens were laid out.
The town of Beaumaris was defended during the civil war. The town was strongly for the king, but the forces were defeated not far from here by the Parliamentary army led by General Thomas Mytton whose men were billeted in the town. It is said that one of the Beaumaris men, a Thomas Cheadle secretly had conference with the Parliament men to gain advantage for himself.
The fortification here, though seemingly less imposing and warlike than others to be found in Wales is much praised for its formal beauty and symmetry. There is another castle, some two miles distant, we have been informed, and to which, it is proposed, we take an outing in suitable weather, which is greatly dilapidated and overgrown, with only the rampart and a broken tower to identify it. It is known to some of the local people as Lady Cheadle`s fort
But poor Sir Richard! His own life has not been without tragedy. Having succeeded to the estate in the summer of 1827, his happiness seemed complete when he was married the following year to Charlotte Hughes, dear Charlotte whom we met twice at Bath before she was married, and who was truly the sweetest of creatures. And then, before another year was out, poor Sir Richard was in mourning for his new bride. Such is the terrible uncertainty of life.
Chapter 2
Jenna Shaw, children`s TV presenter of the 1990s and member, more recently, of the BBC`s Country Retreats team, received a telephone call, one Friday morning, from her agent, Rebecca Weissman.
“I`ve had a call from Simon Black`s P.A. They want you to consider being on What`s my Lineage.”
“What, the ancestors thingy?”
“Yes.”
“Not certain about that, Bex, don`t really like, you know, things that are too personal.”
“You`ll be on National TV for an hour, just you, yourself and no-one else but you. Think of the exposure!”
Jenna had finished the latest series of Country Retreats, and another was due to start in the spring, but you could never be certain. It was all too easy for a TV presenter to slip down the ladder into obscurity.
“At least it`s not Celebrity Big Brother.”
“God, you`re right!”
She telephoned Simon Black, the producer.
“How does it work?”
“Have you ever seen it?”
“Yes, I saw the Miles Brinstock one a couple of months ago.”
Miles Brinstock, the ever-so-well-bred drama critic had discovered that his great grandmother probably worked the streets of Liverpool in the early years of the last century.
“Ah, yes, the Miles Brinstock one! Well, you`ve got some idea of the format. Of course, we do a lot of preliminary work first, just to see, you know, if it`ll work as a show.”
Jenna was sufficiently aware of the media world to know that there was no such thing as reality, only what could be converted into a show with its own narrative.
“You do some research, I suppose.”
“First off, yes. Then a mutual decision, go ahead or kill it. If it`s a yes, we hand it onto you and a camera crew. We set up all the contacts, of course.”
“And then you edit it.”
“Then we edit it.”
“Do I have to have skeletons in the closet?”
“Not necessarily, though it does help. Have you, by the way?”
“Got any skeletons? I don`t think so.”
“Well, never mind, darling. You can`t have everything.”
“But I suppose it could be completely dull.”
“Well it could be. But unlikely. Unless people stayed in the same village for generation after generation. But a lot of people moved at some point, and the reasons for movement usually throw up something interesting.”
“Right.”
“Anyway, Jenna, look, why don`t you come in and have a chat.”
“OK.”
“I`ll get Maisie to set it up. Maisie`s the PA by the way.”
“OK.”
Chapter 3
1644
It was common knowledge, at least amongst those who faced the truth, that the king would lose Chester. A series of assaults and sieges, led by Sir William Brereton, commander of the Parliamentary men in Cheshire, had weakened the defences and demoralised both troops and people. The efforts of Sir Nicholas Byron, the promises of intervention from Prince Rupert, and Prince Maurice, even the King himself, had only served to delay the inevitable. As Thomas Cheadle passed through the town, accompanied by his son, Richard, on their way from Stockport to Beaumaris on the island of Anglesey, the evidence of war`s depredation was everywhere to be seen, not only in the breached fortifications and the burnt out ruins of houses struck by flaming mortars, but in the faces of the people, accustomed to peace and prosperity, now shocked into familiarity with hunger, deprivation and disease.
“When Chester goes,” said Thomas Cheadle, as they passed through the Handbridge Gate, “the north of Wales will go next.”
“Is that why Chester is important?” said Richard, who despite the turbulent world he was seeing, was enjoying his first journey away from his grandfather`s home.
“To us, yes, maybe.”
“Grandfather said that the whole of Anglesey`s for the king.”
“The whole of Wales. But Chester`s the route to Ireland, too, and to the North. The king needs Chester.”
“What will they do? On Anglesey, I mean?”
“That,” said Thomas Cheadle, “we shall have to see.”
The young man did not understand the causes of the war. There were some who spoke of the misdemeanours of the king and his abuse of privilege, some who spoke of the wickedness of the Catholic church and the Laudian bishops, the need for freedom of worship and freedom of conscience, but most of the people he knew leaned neither one way nor the other, or simply went along with a family loyalty or gave their support to some tradition of the neighbourhood. All feared the power of war to spill blood and destroy livelihoods; few seemed to believe that life would be better when the war was over.
During the battle of Castle Hill, in Stockport, he had supported Prince Rupert, partly because he had seen him ride by on horseback and he seemed such a dashing figure, and partly because his grandfather said Prince Rupert and his father stood for the same cause, but he had been thrilled also by tales of the exploits of the `Manchester Men`, which seemed a brave title to have achieved, and they were definitely for Parliament.
“Practise your swordsmanship,” his grandfather had advised him, “then whoever stands against you will know he has met his match!”
It was advice he had tried to follow, and now, at nineteen, though slight of build, rather more like his mother than his father, they said, he carried his sword proudly at his hilt and felt he could give a good account of himself in any skirmish that might occur.
To the south of Chester the road took them towards Mold and Shotton. Even in the smaller towns and villages, the discord of war was evident. Rapacious local officials seeking profit from the power their authority gave them; the people surly, hostile, suspicious; soldiers, given free quarter instead of pay, a dangerous rabble, intent on plunder, their cause, if they ever had any true sense of it, lost in the scramble for survival.
They stayed that night at an inn in St Asaph. At the entrance to the town, a parcel of ruffians, probably deserters, eyed them menacingly, but seeing they carried weapons, grinned cynically and stood off, letting them pass; Thomas Cheadle had the look of a man who would not readily be interfered with.
The following day they came to the ferry at Conway in the mid-afternoon, and continued, despite the onset of bitter weather, towards the rugged bulk of Penmaenmawr. The outline of Anglesey was just visible in a smudge of rain, three miles off across the waters of the estuary. The castle of Beaumaris, set low against the hillside was not distinguishable from this distance. Empty and abandoned for two hundred years, an ivy clad ruin, it was Cheadle himself who, as Deputy Constable under Lord Dorset, had refurbished the fortification, and raised a garrison of eighty men to defend it for the king when the need arose, though even then his motives had been doubted and questioned.
But that was of no account now. The times were changing. Chester would fall, and then the test would come, and men would have to change with the times, or fall, too.
He narrowed his eyes against the sharp salt wind.
The tide was turning, the darkness falling. They would need to hurry to catch the ferry before the channel grew too wide.
What would be, would be. Cheadle himself was ready to look at any possibility.
He was a man who had lived with unpopularity and cared about it not at all.
A man who had loved another man`s wife.
A man who had stood trial for murder.
He did not intend to fall now.
The sound of the horses` hooves thundered on the sand as they galloped, into the teeth of the wind, across the Lavan Sands towards the ferry at Llanfaes.
Chapter 4
The offices of Sunrise Productions was in Lavender Street, a short walk from Pelham Circus tube station. It was a converted warehouse, which was also the storage depot of a separate company dealing in furniture and props for film and television.
The building was dingy, with peeling paint and dirty windows, and with a general air of grubby confusion. It reminded Jenna of her first experience of television – not in some glorious citadel with beautiful people, but in back rooms looking out on brick walls, buildings with absolutely no character at all, industrial estates, dingy bars – it was one thing about media people that they seemed to like the dingiest, dirtiest and dodgiest of places to meet for social purposes.
“Don`t expect it to be glamorous,” Angus Robbs, her first producer had said to her. “Ninety per cent of what you see on TV is pure illusion; the other ten percent is downright lies!”
“Hi, Jenna Shaw.”
“Yes,” said the girl at the desk, with the tone of recognition to which Jenna had grown familiar. Most people had seen her on Country Retreats, some even remembered her from the rather frivolous kids` programme with which she`d started her career, Switch Swivel and Swatch. The girl at the desk had dark bobbed hair, a pale blue satin blouse, pink lip-gloss and nails, and an air of neatness which seemed completely at odds with the apparent disorganisation of the office around her.
“Lovely to meet you. I`m Maisie. Maisie Flood.”
“Hi Maisie.”
“So, anyway, take a seat. Shall I organise some coffee or are you…?
She trailed off, puckering her nose, as if she was aware that there might be a category of people who objected to being offered coffee.
“No,” said Jenna. “No thanks. Later perhaps, depending on… how long do you think we`ll be…?”
“An hour maybe, I just need to… is that OK?” she said, giggling slightly, as if not knowing how much of the obvious she needed to state.
“Fine.”
“Right, then. Well, you`ve had a quick word with Simon, I guess he gave you the basics.”
“Well, yes, basically, I suppose.”
“Right, well what we do now, and I`ll just get a pad and make a couple of notes if that`s OK, is just get some background, so that we can plan the script.”
“Script, is it as formal as that?”
Maisie laughed and pouted. “It`s not really very formal.”
It was at that moment that the coin dropped. She`s gay, said Jenna to herself.
During the four years of Switch and Swatch Jenna had been seriously advised to keep her own sexual orientation under wraps. We want the teenage boys to have a bit of a crush on you, that`s part of the formula, don`t want them getting confused. She had, at that stage, not come out, not officially, anyway, and so she played along. It was her first job in television. She didn`t want to antagonise anybody.
“So, tell me a bit about your family.”
“Right, well, my dad was an American.”
“Was, is he...?”
“Dead, yes.”
“Sorry.”
“It was a car crash when I was seventeen. My first year at university.”
“How sad. What did he do?”
“He was in advertising.”
“But your mum`s…?”
“Alive, yes.”
“I was going to say English!” said Maisie with the little tinkle of self-deprecatory laughter that Jenna was beginning to find distinctly and a little disconcertingly attractive.
“Yes. Yes. Very English and very alive.”
“Right,” said Maisie, half an hour later, “what we do now is, we get our little eager beavers from research on the case, and they do their digging about, and basically we see what we can come up with based on what you`ve told me. Then I`ll call you in about four weeks. In the meantime if you can sort of let your mum know, and we`ll get someone to call round to see her, to look at family albums, that sort of thing, does that sound OK?”
“Yes.”
“I was an avid Switch and Swatcher,” said Maisie at the door.
“You poor thing,” said Jenna, her characteristic response to such admissions. She tried to picture Maisie, as a thirteen or fourteen year old, listening to that ridiculous and irritating jingle.
Don`t forget, don`t forget, don`t forget to watch,
Switch and Swatch.
“Will I be seeing you? As part of the programme, I mean?”
“Oh, yes,” said Maisie, briskly, and a little more professionally than Jenna had hoped for.
Chapter 5
September 22nd, 1831
Our accommodation here is very comfortable. The great staircase leads from the hall to the state apartments – the house has frequently received guests of the highest rank – and a second stairway leads off from this to a group of rooms at the rear of the house, which at one time, we are told, was a nursery adjacent to the master and mistress` suite, though the house underwent significant changes in the last century, and the rooms are now used for lesser guests such as ourselves, though they are spacious and very pleasant.
Behind us, and to each side of the house – by contrast to the splendour of the great open panorama which forms the view from the front – we are surrounded by dense woodland. How far this forest extends I do not know, but in my own imagination it goes on as far as the unknown may be thought to go, and I imagine it full of wild creatures, which is dreadful to think of, especially at night.
The household, during Sir Richard`s absence, is not extensive. Sir Richard`s valet, Leyton, and his butler, Mr Roberts attend him at Cavendish Square, St Marylebone, as does his housekeeper, Mrs Prine. George Thomas, who has lived on the estate all his life – he is now somewhere near fifty – is the husbandman and gardener, and his wife Jane acts as the housekeeper and mistress over the other female servants in Mrs Prine`s absence. Their daughter, another Jane, and Margaret Jones, both girls of about fifteen, and Thomas Coates, a young man of twenty five [somewhat moody and taciturn] makes up the retinue. Others from the village, up to a hundred men we are told, are hired on the land of the estate when the season requires it, and when Sir Richard is in residence, a host of additional servants is taken on, laundry-maids, footmen, pantry-boys, kitchen-maids, grooms, chambermaids. In a town of this size, it is easy to see how important a role such a house as Baron Hill plays in local matters.
25th September, 1831
At breakfast this morning, Isobel looked pale and drawn, almost haggard. Her face had a pallid lustre, scarcely more alive than alabaster, and her eyes were deeply shadowed; all this, together with her dishevelled hair was a sight which I would well have wished not to be on display for the benefit of the servants.
“We are guests, here,” I said to her. “We must strive to avoid creating an unfavourable impression.”
“I`m sorry,” she said, vaguely. “I didn`t sleep well.”
“Isobel, that is no excuse for neglecting your…”
“I heard noises,” she said, cutting across my warning, “in the middle of the night.”
“What sort of noises?”
“At first I didn`t know if I was asleep or awake, but then…”
“What sort of noises?” I insisted.
“It was in the room,” she said now looking at me directly for the first time.
“Isobel, what noise did you imagine you heard?”
“It sounded like someone in distress.”
“Distress!” I said, now thoroughly alarmed.
“But I didn`t imagine it, Emily. It was real.”
I immediately summoned the parlour maid and instructed her to request Mrs Thomas, the housekeeper, to attend us at our rooms. In fact, it was Thomas Coates who knocked on the door of Isobel`s chamber, some ten minutes later.
“Mrs Thomas is in the village,” he said. “What`s the trouble?”
“My sister heard sounds in the night. It disturbed her sleep.”
He nodded his head slightly, the nearest he might come to an acknowledgment.
“Is it possible that any of the servants could have been in this part of the house, during the night?” I continued.
“The servants` quarters are on the other side of the house,” he said. “What did you hear?”
“It sounded like someone in distress,” I said, repeating Isobel`s description.”
He looked from me to Isobel.
“That`s what you said, isn`t it?”
“Yes,” said Isobel, now seeming uncertain of herself. “I think… it seemed like distress.”
“It was a voice you heard, then?”
“Yes, a woman`s voice.”
Two chamber maids who were at their work in the room, catching each other`s eyes, could not prevent themselves from a snort of laughter at this point, though when they saw my look of admonition, they quickly desisted.
“Where did it come from?” he asked, a little impatiently.
“It seemed to be inside the room?” said Isobel, before I could stop her.
“Inside the room? Perhaps we have ghosts in the house, then!”
“I insist you take this seriously!” I said, in defence of Isobel, though I rather feared we were both now drawing the same conclusion, that Isobel`s overwrought imagination had invented the entire episode. “Are there any other rooms, adjacent to these?”
He opened the other doors on the corridor, but each in turn proved to be merely a linen cupboard or store of some other sort.
“What is on the other side of that wall? Over there.”
“Over there? That`s an outside wall, miss. There`s nothing on the other side of that besides fresh air.”
“And there is no other access to this part of the house other than the second staircase?”
He shook his head. “It seems likely to me,” he said, at last, “that what you heard, miss, was a cat. You`ll often see them sitting on the ledges outside, and they make strange noises, sometimes, almost human.”
Isobel furrowed her brow and seemed unconvinced, but I decided that this was a suitable note on which to end the conversation.
“Thank you, Mr Coates. That will be all.”
Isobel sat for some time, in a distant and abstracted mood, but a short walk around the garden, later in the morning, however, brought some colour back to her cheeks, and she seemed in a more settled frame of mind.
“How beautiful it is here!” she said, as if noting it for the first time. We were standing on the terrace with the full view of the mountains before us, and the surrounding trees were in their full autumn splendour. “I think I will do some sketching here. Do you think Thomas will set up our easels here this afternoon?”
She did not wait for a reply but walked on so quickly that I had to hurry to catch up with her on the flight of stone steps which led down to the lower terrace and the formal gardens.
Chapter 6
1623
A rare spring morning, the air as sweet as clover to the taste.
In the ivy-clad ramparts of Beaumaris Castle, nesting swallows make a busy fuss. Across the Menai Strait, mirror still, the mountains rise imperiously, slate grey in the clear morning light.
Thomas Cheadle, standing on the shore at Fryars, watches the approach of the ferry which is to carry Sir Richard, and his son, across the narrow channel to the Lavan Sands. The oars dip noiselessly into the water, and just a watery ripple is heard as the boat`s prow noses forward. The horses, now a little impatient, and nervous of the crossing, which they remember, play with the points of their hoofs in the pebbles and sand of the shore.
Sir Richard is travelling to London, as he does twice a year, for though, unlike his father, he has chosen not to play a direct part in the affairs of Parliament, he likes to make it his business to mix with those who do, and to live the while in town. The son, aged twelve, is going to Thavies, a school linked to the Inns of Court. The family has property in Marylebone, and part of the household has been sent on before to prepare. Sometimes, Lady Anne and the children accompany Sir Richard to London, but as their father has been saying, on the way to the ferry, the girls are at an age when they become quickly restless in town, and their mother dislikes the city`s noise and bustle.
“But you must come with me, Thomas, perhaps when I next go, in the autumn. The life of London is interesting to a young man. You will find much to amuse and entertain you.”
“Yes, Sir Richard, Gladly.”
“Listen, Thomas. You`ve been here now, what, four months? Your father served mine for many years, there wasn`t a man he trusted more, and I think you`re just the fellow to pick up the mantle…”
The ferryman, now ready, called before he could complete making his point.
“Look I`ll be brief. What I mean is that I`d like you to consider becoming my secretary. The estate is growing, I need someone to manage things. Consider it. I`ll provide you with an office at the hall, and accommodation. Or you can keep up the house in the town if you wish, bring your family here, whatever suits you.”
“Ferry away!”
“I`ll have to go. Or we`ll get stuck in the quicksand, but consider it, Thomas.”
“I will.”
“Give it your best thought.”
“Yes, Sir Richard.”
He watched as Sir Richard and his valet, Jenkin, boarded, and helped to urge the horses into the water behind; twenty minutes later, on the sandbank opposite, the horses were shaking the water from their coats. Then they were brought to stand, saddled and girthed, and held steady as Sir Richard and Jenkin mounted. Soon they were tiny figures, lessening into the distance until at last they were lost to sight in the shadow of Penmaenmawr.
Thomas Cheadle remounted his own horse and turned him from the shore. The hoofs clattered on the stones, as the horse, now eager, tried to run on, but Cheadle quickly reined him back to a walk.
Rather than return to the town, or the estate at Baron Hill – for in Sir Richard`s absence, there was no pressing business to pursue - he continued along the coast track, towards Penmon and Priestsholme.
On his first visit to Anglesey, the previous autumn, he had driven a herd of pigs from Cheshire, bringing them safely across the Menai Strait at Porthaethwy and thence to the Bulkeley estate. It was no mean feat, for pigs are wilful nimble creatures, not slow and biddable like cattle, and you had to keep your eye on them all the time, night and day. Grateful for this, Sir Richard had given him other work on the estate, errands of responsibility, and had rewarded him amply. He had taken the lease of a small house in the town and had a manservant and housekeeper. Quick-witted, he had picked up the language quite easily, and already spoke better Welsh than Sir Richard, who always said, in his affable and languid way, that he had never really had very much use for it.
There was, in himself, he acknowledged, an energy and restlessness of ambition. Amongst those he spoke with at home, in Stockport, there was talk of young men going abroad, to the new colonies of America, where fortunes were to be made, it was said, on cotton and tobacco plantations. Now there was Sir Richard`s offer of a more formal position, one which would make it possible for him to establish himself. It had to be considered.
He rode on for three miles along the coastal track, until it turned sharply to the right to follow the course of a babbling stream running through a sandy meadow towards the sea. On the opposite side of the stream, a steep bank rose, densely wooded, its branches a thick tangle just beginning to show the purple of new buds. Beyond the trees, set on the hillside, was the ancient earth rampart of Aberlleiniog, and it was to this that Thomas Cheadle now directed his horse.
He continued to the hamlet of Lleiniog and then took the track leading up the hill to the earthwork. Overgrown with grass and bramble, there was s strong smell of wood fungus and wild garlic. He walked the horse to the highest part of the rampart, and looked out, over the water to Great Orme`s Head and the estuary of the River Conwy. The fortress reached back into a time of which he knew nothing, a past as misty and impenetrable as the sea fog which sometimes drifted into the Menai Strait, and across the island, and it fascinated him. The local people had stories, mostly of the gruesome sort, about the place, but there were no records, and all one could tell was that it must have been prepared for use in some now long forgotten struggle.
It would be possible, Cheadle speculated, looking down from the rampart, to have the site cleared, and build a house there, a fortified house possibly, guarding the eastern flank of the island. Would that satisfy his ambition? It fired his imagination, though perhaps the thought was frivolous.
He rode on, now following the track uphill to the village of Llangoed, and then made his way to Llanfaes and Baron Hill.
The Great House at Baron Hill had been built by Sir Richard`s father, to provide hospitality for Prince Henry when he became Lord Protector of Ireland. But the Prince died, and it was his younger brother, Charles, who was now heir to the throne of England. There were half a dozen families of wealth and influence on the island, each with its own seat, but Baron Hill was pre-eminent.
In the meadow, at the front of the house, Lady Anne, with her two small daughters, Ann and Mary, was gathering flowers.
“Look, it`s Thomas,” cried Ann, running towards him, expecting to be picked up and thrown into the air. The girl was open in her affections, full of spirit and laughter.
“Richard has gone to London to become a great lawyer. And father`s gone with him. We shall miss them, shan`t we mother?”
“We shall.”
“Will you come and help us be merry, Thomas?”
“We`ve been picking flowers,” said Mary, more formally. “It`s meadow-sweet. We`re going to dry it then use it to strew the floor.”
“The scent is exquisite,” said Lady Anne. She held the flowers forward, and Thomas Cheadle bowed his head. The flowers were creamy white, tightly clustered. The scent was heavily sweet, charged with honey and musk. When he looked up and exchanged glances, the faint curl of a smile, the look in her eyes, seemed to penetrate the depths of his being.
He rode away with chaos in his soul.
Chapter 7
The following day, Thomas Cheadle returned to his family home in Cheshire. His wife, Sarah, five months with child, was a goodly size, but easily tired and prone to sickness.
“You must come with me,” he said to her. “I have it in mind to build a home there.”
“When the child is born.”
“What home?” interjected his father.
“At Aberlleiniog.”
“Aberlleiniog? Why, it`s a ruin. Not even a ruin. It`s an overgrown ditch!”
“It`s a foundation. It takes imagination to see it as a fine house, I agree, but it can be done.”
“Why don`t you stay, try to make your way here?” his father said, later, when they were alone.
“The same reason you didn`t. Two brothers and six cousins who would do the same on the same land.”
“Well, that`s true.”
“Besides, you did well enough on Anglesey, didn`t you?”
“Well enough. If I had my time again, though, I`d go to Virginia, or Massachusetts.”
“And so might I, yet. And then you`ll see little enough of your new grandson.”
The old man grew silent.
“She has a hard time of it, Sarah,” he said at last.
“Yes.”
“So your mother says and she knows about these things, but she`s young and strong.”
“Yes.”
The conversation faltered into silence. They were men; they knew no more.
“He`s asked me to be his secretary,” said Thomas, throwing a log into the fire.
His father nodded, considerately, and then laughed. “Well, it`s better than driving pigs here, there and everywhere for him.”
“What do you think I should do?”
“The old man was someone to be reckoned with, you know,” said his father, answering the question by way of indulging his own nostalgia. “Figure in the court, you know, in the thick of things. The old Queen had a soft spot for him. Took me with him to London; by God, he was tyrant, too, you wouldn`t cross him. Sorry when he died though, but I`d had enough by then, just wanted to get back here.”
He paused and spat into the fire.
“Don`t know about the son. Lacklustre, I thought, in comparison. Had it too easy. Married a pretty girl though, daughter of Tom Wilford, big family in Kent. Spirited, skittish, I`d say. You see, she thought she`d be entertaining the king, holding her own court in Wales, that`s what she imagined, before he died, Prince Henry that is. That took the wind out of her sails. Then, of course, she started to breed, and that`s enough to take the wind out of any woman`s sails.”
“I`ll give it a trial,” said Thomas, comparing his own picture of the domestic situation at Baron Hill with that of his father`s account. “At least until after Sarah`s brought to bed. Then I`ll take stock.”
“If you`re thinking of Aberlleiniog,” said his father, at last, after they had both stared into the fire for some time, “take the farm down at Lleiniog, that would make a decent house, big enough for a family. By the coast. You could run ships from there. And then you can have the castle as your plaything!”
“I`ll give it some thought,” said Thomas, with a laugh, acknowledging, even in his father`s satire, some sound common sense.
In the bedchamber, Sarah was restless, and there could be no warmth between them. Eventually, as the morning approached, she found some sleep, but Thomas Cheadle found none. As the first birds began to sing, his thoughts turned, in a misty veil of wakefulness, to Lady Anne Bulkeley, of Baron Hill.
Chapter 8
Jenna Shaw was not at all, now, like the zany girl with outrageously spiky blond hair, decorator`s bib and braces and rainbow striped scarf, who had strutted her stuff across the studio set of Switch for four years during the nineties.
She had lived, for two years, in a small terraced house not far from the station in Blackheath. For a long time before that, she had resisted the temptation of property ownership, though people told her that it was the best form of investment, especially with the property boom. Then she had toyed with the idea of taking on a project. She had even had a conversation with Sarah Beeney in a coffee lounge at the BBC when she had promised her a spot on the Property Ladder, then one of the hottest formats on TV, if she went ahead with something that needed doing up, but it was just at that stage that she had got Country Retreats, and so the project was dropped, and instead, with a regular salary again, she had taken out a mortgage on the neat little town house that was now her pride and joy.
She loved the village of Blackheath, with its trendy bistros and boutiques, and she loved the walk across the heath itself to Greenwich Park, especially on windy Sundays when the kite fliers were out, and, of course, the station was very convenient for town. Occasionally she went to the Blackheath Halls for a concert, or to a restaurant if a friend stayed, but her main recreation now was collecting furniture, and rugs, and lamps and pictures for the house.
Like a lot of television people she didn`t watch much television, preferring to listen to Radio 4 and Radio 3, sometimes Classic FM, though the long commercial breaks irritated her. The music which had accompanied her own rites of passage had been, aged ten, Madonna and Michael Jackson, aged seventeen, Nirvana and Alice in Chains, aged twenty, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Nanci Griffith, and occasionally, when friends were round, she put on the old CDs, but that was with the nostalgia of being in her thirties, and her real love was classical music. She adored Mahler, worshipped Bach, and was becoming a committed aficionado of Italian opera.
Her mum, still living in the family home in Reading, had more or less accepted that she was gay, that it wasn`t just a phase or a protest, or a quest for individuality. Her brother, on the other hand, still tended to regard it as an affront. It was something he had to confess to his fiancée, as if it was a genetic defect in the family. He was now living in France with Gaynor and his two boys, working from home through the wonders of computer networking, and so awkward social encounters were less frequent.
Her mother now confined herself to a handful of predictable questions: what about children, dear, don`t you want to have children? Though there was the old favourite: have you met anyone, yet? - slipped in as if there was still a racing chance that she might meet someone sufficiently charming and rich to turn her head for long enough to get married and have kids.
“Look mum I just can`t do something that`s not in my nature.”
“Couldn`t you just put up with it? Lots of women do. If it`s just sex.”
“It isn`t just sex.”
“Your father and I hardly ever had sex at all after Stephen was born.”
“Mother!” [She called her mother when reprimanding her.] “I don`t want to know this!”
“Well, I don`t know what the fuss is. You don`t miss it when you get used to it. It`s a blessed relief. As far as I was concerned it had served its purpose.”
“And did dad agree with that?”
“He never complained.”
Jenna sometimes wondered if her father had had a secret life of promiscuity when he was off globetrotting for the company. Her father remained a mysterious figure – a topic for endless speculation. It`s only when someone dies suddenly that you realise how little you knew them; at the point when the door has been slammed shut, and you realise you can know no more, only then do you understand how much you have taken for granted.
How, she sometimes wondered, would he have reacted to her coming out? Or, more to the point, perhaps, would his presence and influence have put pressure on her to stay in the closet? You wouldn`t have decided to be a lesbian if your father was still alive – she could hear her mother thinking it even though she had never said it.
And what on earth would her father, who read the Daily Telegraph, and who still thought of television as a diluter of culture, have thought of Switch?
Of course, now, at the age of thirty one, she was not at all like the zany girl with outrageously spiky blond hair, decorator`s overalls and rainbow striped scarf, who had strutted her stuff across the set of Switch.
But then, she never really had been.
Chapter 9
September 29th, 1831
This morning Isobel and I sketched and painted for two hours, the view from the terrace which looks across the lawns towards the Menai Strait with the Welsh mountains behind. It was a warm September morning, very still, and quite pleasant enough to be comfortable sitting outside. For me, the main pleasure was seeing Isobel quite herself again, so tranquil and so concentrated for so long a period. The strangest thing, however, was when I looked at the composition of her sketch.
In my own, I had attempted to capture the contours and shadows of the mountains, deeply etched and as clear as crystal. In the foreground I had done little more than a wash of green, and the towers of the castle, hastily sketched in with light pencil lines. Isobel, on the other hand, had concentrated almost entirely on the immediate view, but instead of the close cut lawns, she had depicted a rough meadow of clover and wild grass, and strangest of all, a woman and two girls who had gathered armfuls of wild flowers.
“You`ve painted from imagination,” I ventured to say.
I saw from the puzzled look on her face that she had misheard or misunderstood.
“The woman and the girls,” I explained.
She furrowed her brow.
“Did you imagine them or was it from memory?”
“But they were there,” she said. “You saw them, surely!”
I think she could tell, from my look, my misgivings.
“But they walked by, an hour ago,” she said. “You must have been so intent on your mountains that you missed them.”
“What about the meadow?” I asked.
“What about it?”
“Grass and flowers, don`t you see the difference?”
“Oh yes,” she said, matter-of-factly, as we packed away our easels.
Later, seeking reassurance, I asked Mrs Thomas if she recognised any such people from her knowledge of the local folk.
“A woman and two little girls,” I explained, and showed her Isobel`s sketch.
“Bless you, miss,” she said, “I don`t think I`d recognise anyone in those clothes.”
It was an aspect of Isobel`s composition which, in my anxiety, I had failed to notice, or which I had simply taken to be a fashion peculiar to the area. The details of the costume were only lightly sketched in, but both the woman and the girls were wearing reticella lace winged collars and starched white caps entirely different in style to anything that might be seen in our modern fashion.
I worried myself for some time, wondering whether or not I should question Isobel further over this, and in the end decided against it. It could do no good. Possibly the opposite. As long as she remains tranquil I am inclined to indulge her other eccentricities.
September 30th, 1831
We were told a tale, last evening, of an incident which occurred close by here during August of this year, just a few weeks before our own arrival. It has become common, apparently, in the summer months, for pleasure craft to travel to Beaumaris from various places along the coast to the north. One such vessel, the Rothsay Castle, set out from the port of Liverpool on the 17th August on a voyage destined to end in tragedy. The ship itself, if rumour is to be believed, was hardly seaworthy to begin with, and met with high winds and stormy seas off Point of Ayr and the Flintshire coast, a situation not helped by her crew being an ill-sorted body of inept recruits, and her master, by the critical stages of the journey, much the worse in his judgement through the effects of liquor.
Arriving in the waters just off the coast near here in darkness, much later than planned, and still in storm conditions, there was great distress on board, with a company of ninety men women and children now in peril of their lives. By this stage the ship was so disabled as to be incapable of steering a course and she drifted towards a sandbank called the Dutchman`s bank which emerges, at low tide, between Beaumaris and Puffin Island. Improvidently prepared as she was, there was no means of attracting attention from the shore, by which means her plight might have been helped. She was driven onto the bank again and again and with each impact poor souls were hurtled overboard to their death. This went on until dawn, when, with the first light, the alarm was raised and a rescue attempt began. Only twenty three of the crew and company survived, and the bodies of the dead were washed up on the island and on the mainland during the ensuing days. Sir Richard, who was then in residence, deeply moved by the sad occurrence, made money available for the burial of the dead, and sent workers from the estate about the macabre business of discovering bodies washed up.
All this just a few weeks before our arrival! Had we known it at the time, how much more unsettling would have been our own journey across the Lavan Sands, where we must have passed within half a mile of where that doomed ship foundered!
Chapter 10
1623
Spring became summer, and the trees which formed a wide arc around the house on Baron Hill thickened with luxuriant greenery. In June, Thomas Cheadle took up his duties as Sir Richard`s secretary, and agent of the Baron Hill Estates.
“You`ll need to speak to my agent,” said Sir Richard – pleased with this style of address, which he had thought of himself – as he spoke to the Master of Customs, with regard to certain matters of shipping from the port.
“Be sure to acquaint my agent with the details,” he said to the Land Registrar, in respect of some farms in Caernarvon which he had recently purchased.
Thomas Cheadle, driven by his own determination, became a figure to be reckoned with by those who were in the business of land and commerce about the island, and he was known to have a shrewd head for legal and financial detail. Titles, deeds, squabbles over land and rent, all manner of lawsuits – he knew how to form alliances with those who had influence in the courts, how to put people in his debt, so that favours might be later called in. His office was established in the library at Baron Hill, and he had accommodation in a private wing of the house, as well as the house in the town, which he kept on.
Towards his employer, Sir Richard Bulkeley, he found himself developing something of an ambivalent attitude. With his air of refinement and breeding, his casual patrician assumptions, he was, in many respects, an impressive figure. He had an easy manner and a natural confidence that disarmed people, but Cheadle sometimes wondered if it were the title and the trappings people deferred to rather than the man. When you looked beneath the façade, there was nothing so special about him; nothing that made him a finer man or a more able man, other than that he had been bred in affluence and took it be his natural condition.
“Listen Thomas,” he said, one day, “there`s a matter I`d like you to deal with for me. A little awkward really. Well, let me explain, judge for yourself. You see, there`s a woman, of my acquaintance, as you might say, in Twickenham, recently brought to bed of a son, and damn me if she isn`t claiming that the child is mine. Well, of course I have no way of knowing for sure whether I`m the child`s father or not, though I have to admit to my shame that I couldn`t deny it outright, if you understand me, but anyway, I`d like to do the decent thing, as far as I can, and that`s where I require your good offices. Straightforward business, really, set up some arrangement, the mother will be happy enough so long as she`s provided for, and I wouldn`t want the child brought up a beggar. Set up something for me, will you? I`ll let you have the information you need. Then everyone`s happy.”
“I take it her Ladyship doesn`t know of this.”
“No. Not a word, mind you. Not a word. Keep things simple, Thomas, always best. Keep things simple.”
He visited a solicitor in Chester and set up a trust for the mother and child in Twickenham, to be administered from London. It was the first, but not the only time his master employed him in this office.
At about the same time, an investment which he had recommended to Sir Richard, and one in which he had invested money of his own - a shipping venture to New England - proved successful, and this not only consolidated his position, but also helped to establish the foundation of his own fortune.
Before the autumn, when Sir Richard once more left for London, there was hardly an aspect of the estate`s business with which the capable Thomas Cheadle could not be trusted.
In August, he had word from Cheadle that his wife, Sarah, had died giving birth to a son.
Chapter 11
It was then that he should have gone to the colonies.
“Deepest commiserations, Thomas.”
“Thank you, Sir Richard.”
“All things must come to pass. The will of God. We`re in his hands.”
“Yes.”
“Anyway, time heals. Time heals. What will you do?”
“I haven`t decided yet.”
“No, well, early days. Of course, if you think this is the right time to go and look for new opportunities…”
“I haven`t really had time to think… I once thought to have taken myself to the New World.”
“The New World. Well, no-one would blame you. Let me know what you decide.”
“What of the child?” said Lady Anne.
“A boy.”
“In health?”
“Yes, in health.”
“Then, his mother`s suffering was not in vain.”
“No.”
“What will you do with him?”
“He will be brought up in Cheshire. Under my father`s roof. His education will be at my father`s hand. After that, I know not yet.”
“And his name”
“Richard.”
She put her hand over his.
“You will stay here, won`t you?”
“Madam?”
“My husband says he fears you will leave for the Americas.”
“I have considered it.”
“Don`t go away, Thomas,” she said, her hand still resting lightly on his, her voice as soft as muslin close to his ear. “Stay, for my sake.”
Thomas Cheadle made no reply. But his veins hatched red with desire.
Chapter 12
Switch! How had it all come about?
Her last year at university. Finals approaching. It was all coming to an end. The real world beckoning with an uncompromising finger.
She listed all the serious careers: civil servant, teacher, accountant, journalist, something in publishing, or local government?
Nothing, at that stage, really did it.
“I`d just like to do something a bit mad first,” she said to her friends.
Backpack around the world? Do voluntary service?
White-water rapids in Venezuela?
She went to an audition at a hotel in Earls Court for a new children`s TV show [no name at that stage] for Silver Lining, a small independent production company.
There were seventy girls auditioning for the single female role, most of them just out of – or still in – stage school, and because she regarded her chances as being absolutely zero, she had felt no nerves or inhibitions at all, doing little improvisational things they asked for that she hadn`t the slightest idea she could do.
They called her back two weeks later, on her own– though she fully supposed other girls had made it to this stage too – and now there was a camera to perform to. This time she didn`t think it went particularly well, and was desperately disappointed, but a further call-back, the following week was organised in a group of three – herself and two boys, and this seemed to go well – there was a good chemistry between them the producer said [didn`t they say that to everyone?]
What she didn`t realise [what none of them realised it turned out later] was that this was the first meeting of the Switch team.
It was intended for a younger audience at first, but for some reason, according to audience research, the pilots were ticking more boxes with teenagers, and so the format was tweaked slightly, the content was made a bit more sparky, and it went out on in a three hour slot on Saturday morning.
There were regular features, team contests, silly games, lots and lots of coloured paints. Then, guests from the pop world – Lads To Go, Boy Frenz, Wanda Rockheart, live performances, phone-ins, the whole merry-go-round of studio fun and action.
In those pre-digital days of four terrestrial channels when the use of the internet for kids` leisure was in its infancy, the show quickly developed a loyal fan base.
There were three of them: Switch, Swivel and Swatch. She was Swatch.
Switch – Dave Ryder – was, everyone agreed, the promising one, the most popular, the charismatic one – the one for whom a bright future was promised. When the show was over, he tried, unsuccessfully for a pop career, and then disappeared. Now, according to Jenny Lester, who had been his girlfriend at one point, he was working as a social worker in Peckham.
Ian Rawles – Swivel – was the geeky one, dozy, bespectacled, inept. He went on to play small parts in a season in Stratford, notably Flute in A Midsummer Night`s Dream, then landed a role in an American backed film with an American leading lady, Lucy Pettifer playing an English socialite, and was now in Hollywood, on call to play certain recognisable English character types, and making, so it was said, an absolute packet.
Jenna went a year without work after Switch, then got some TV commercial voice-over work, which paid the bills, and then, out of the blue, along came Country Retreats. Quentin Sykes, the main presenter during the twelve years the programme had been airing, was retiring and they had decided on a shake-up, keeping the name – a by-word for solid broadcasting values and also something very English – but revamping the format and bringing in new presenters.