The House Of Lanyon. Valerie Anand

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СКАЧАТЬ the next one to be pruned, thought their daughter Liza, is going to be me.

      From the moment her parents arrived home from George Lanyon’s funeral, she had sensed that something was in the air, though at first it wasn’t clear what the something was. The return of Nicholas and Margaret chanced to coincide with a busy time. New orders for cloth had come in, and there had been a problem at the Cleeve Abbey fulling mill, which the Dunster weavers used as well as the monks, to get their cloth cleaned with water and fuller’s earth before dyeing. A thunderstorm on the moors had sent quantities of peat down the Avill River and polluted the water supply. “It’s always happening. Nature wants us to dye all our cloth dark brown,” Nicholas grumbled. “We’ll have to send it somewhere else till the river clears. Can’t go delaying orders from new customers. That’s bad business.”

      But concerned though the family had been with these matters, there had been something else on their minds. Twice Liza had walked into a room to find her parents talking to other family members, and the conversation had stopped short the moment she appeared. And she had noticed her parents glancing at her, pleasantly enough, but thoughtfully, too, as though they were wondering…

      Wondering what? Liza could guess the answer to that. Indeed, she had been through all this before and was fairly sure that she recognised the symptoms. They had a marriage in mind for her and were asking themselves whether she would be pleased with it or not.

      She had been expecting something like this. After all, she was the eldest daughter. She was twenty-three now and should have been wedded long ago. Three of her younger sisters were married and the little one, Jane, the infant of the family, was single only because she was as yet only seven years old. Liza had stayed unmarried so far because first one thing and then another had interfered with her parents’ plans. They had arranged a very good match for her when she was sixteen, but the young man inconsiderately died of a fever before the wedding day. Another proposal came in quite soon, but the prospective bridegroom, though well-off and good-natured enough, was nearly fifty. Liza objected and neither Nicholas nor Margaret were easy about the matter, either. The argument—put forward by Aunt Cecy, one of the older family members—that she would probably become a wealthy widow before long and could then please herself, failed to convince either Liza or her parents and the negotiations died away.

      There had been others, too—a suitor who changed his mind and another whose parents changed it for him because they had found a better prospect. Time had gone on.

      “And now,” said Margaret indignantly when at last the business problems had been overcome and the family had gathered together—without Liza—for a full-scale discussion of the proposal which she and Nicholas had brought back from Allerbrook, “and now there’s gossip. Folk have such vile minds.”

      She broke off to cough, because during the summer they did not light the fire in the big main room and now, when autumn had set in and they needed warmth, the chimney was smoking. She had pulled her spinning wheel out of the way of possible smuts, but was still using it, important though this gathering was. The steady whirr formed a background to the business in hand.

      “Liza’s a good wench,” she said when the coughing fit was over. “And we’ve said naught to her about these hints we’ve heard, that she’s been meetin’ a man in secret, because hints is all it is, and we reckon they come from jealous old women with clatterin’ tongues and naught better to do than make up nasty stories about young girls who still have pretty faces and all their teeth! But it’s time we got her settled—that’s true enough. She’s got a right to depend on us for that.”

      

      I knew it. Flat on the planks of the floor overhead, with one ear pressed to a chink between two boards, Liza felt her stomach clench in fright. Earlier that day she had heard her name mentioned in a conversation among her elders and had without hesitation done some deliberate eavesdropping. She had guessed right, it seemed. Her marriage was being planned and it seemed that her future was to be discussed this morning, in her absence. Slipping away from duties in the kitchen, she had gone to her chamber just above the main living room, and then, having taken the precaution of bolting herself in, flattened herself to the floor to eavesdrop for the second time that day.

      It wasn’t the sort of behaviour her parents would have approved of in any of their daughters; in fact, they would have been appalled. But then, they would be even more appalled if they knew about Christopher, Liza thought, and by the sound of it, they had heard something. She could guess the source of the rumour, as well. That wretched woman who had the cottage down by the packhorse bridge. She had seen Liza and Christopher together and must, after all, have recognised them.

      Lying flat, her left cheekbone in danger of being grazed by the floor, Liza felt tears pricking behind her eyes. She tried to blink them away. She had known this was coming. She had known that, sooner or later, arrangements would be made for her and all her dreams would be destroyed. She had thought she was prepared. But now…

      Oh, dear God. Oh, Christopher, my dear love. I can’t bear it.

      

      A few feet away, below Liza, Aunt Cecy was staring coldly at Margaret, who stared back in an equally chilly manner. They all addressed Cecy as Aunt, but she was actually the wife of Nicholas’s oldest cousin, Dick Weaver, who was the son of Great-Uncle Will, the most ancient member of the tribe. Her virtue was as rigid as her backbone, and her backbone resembled a broom handle. Her mouth and body were overthin, and alone among the women of the family she had had trouble giving birth. Her two daughters had been born, with great difficulty, eight years apart, with several disasters intervening. They had both been married off at the age of fourteen and had seemed glad to leave home.

      “If that girl b’ain’t wed soon,” Aunt Cecy said now, “her pretty face’ll get lines and her teeth’ll start going. Margaret, do you have to keep on with that everlasting spinning when we’re talkin’ over summat as solemn as this, and what in heaven’s name is wrong with that there chimney?”

      “I think birds must have nested in it since the spring-cleaning. We’ll have to clear it. The men’d better lop a branch off that birch tree in the garden to push down it. As for spinnin’, I like keepin’ my hands busy,” said Margaret. “I can spin and talk, and listen.”

      Aunt Cecy snorted. Laurence, who had come across the cobbled road with Elena and others of his family, threading their way past the permanent market stalls which occupied the middle of the street, said reasonably, “Never mind the tales. Nicholas here says he’s had an offer. If it’s a good one, where’s the problem?” He was very like Nicholas, with the same hearty voice and the same robust outlook on life. “Even if she has had…let’s be charitable and say a friend—in secret—what of it? Who didn’t, when they were young? All that’ll be over. Who is it you’ve got in mind?”

      “Peter Lanyon,” said Nicholas. “Grandson of George, whose burial Margaret and I have just been to.”

      “Liza’s older than Peter, isn’t she?” Elena said. “Does it matter, do you think?”

      “Er…” said their daughter-in-law, and her husband, Laurie, a younger version of Laurence, grinned. Laurence burst out laughing and so did several of Nicholas’s cousins.

      “Our Katy here’s two years older than young Laurie and who cares? Didn’t stop them having twin sons inside of a year!” Laurence said.

      “Liza ought to be married,” Nicholas said. “And I’ve called you all in here to discuss this proposal from the Lanyons. Peter’ll do as far as I’m concerned. He’s good-looking and good-natured, and Richard’s offered me a deal. СКАЧАТЬ