His father is becoming a stranger to him. In the last few months they have exchanged cursory messages about land matters, church dues, administration, crops and tenancies, but not a word between them about family life, no ordinary pleasantries. He has never asked after Henry’s new wife’s health, and never refers to her by name, in fact Henry is not sure he has ever mentioned her at all. He has many feelings about all of this, most of which he pushes to one side and declines to think on. But when he receives word to expect his father on Tuesday next he has no choice but to recognize the state of things between his father and himself.
It has to be said, he is not sure of his motives for coming. John Lyte’s health is not good and the ride over from Sherborne may not be comfortable for him, but according to the short letter he has sent, he insists on coming to discuss the proposed sale of various cows while prices are strong. Henry knows that he wants to check on the estate, make sure that Lytes Cary is not suffering in his son’s hands. In turn, Henry is looking forward to imparting good news about the ditches, which have been cleared already, and have him savour last season’s cider, which is exceptional. Henry always strives to please his father: this time it seems vital, and as a small chink of light falls onto that ignored, closed corner of his life which his father occupies, he begins to wonder. He wishes … oh, it is no matter what he wishes. No doubt it will all die down or be smoothed over and forgotten before long. The childish dependent part of him hopes the visit is a reconciliatory one, in which his father plans to apologize for not attending the wedding.
At the same time he resents the way this makes him feel. He wants it all to go away and leave him to get on with the real project in his mind; his garden, his pride. He wants to talk of it with his father but something prevents him, and he thinks they will not walk around to that side of the house to show off the new walls and ironwork and open beds. Though every other ounce of him cries out to try to impress his father, he would prefer to wait until the garden has found its balance, until its own presence has become distinct. He does not want his father’s disapproval spoiling his enthusiasm, and most of all he does not want Joan Young prying into the cost and workings of it all, criticizing his choice of rose, his taste, his usefulness, his ambitions.
Indeed he is hoping that Joan will stay behind, because her presence in the house makes the servants behave erratically in front of his father, which makes it seem as if he cannot properly restrain his household. At least that is what occurred on the last occasion that she came, over a year ago. It had been unfortunate, for example, that a large, black fly the size and furriness of a bumble bee had drowned itself in her glass and bobbed unnoticed all the way from the kitchen to her place at table.
In his reply to his father’s letter he had not extended a courteous wish to see his stepmother. For several nights he lies in bed at night agonizing over whether he might be making a mistake by not inviting her, and then again, is he making one if he does?
All this browbeating proves to be a waste of time, because even as he spies the newfangled, painted carriage that she insisted that his father purchase lurching up the drive, he can see from the dark, malevolent shape wrapped beside him that they will not be left alone together, that she has come. It is St Vincent’s day; the patron saint of drunkards, he thinks wryly, and as they approach he steels himself for the abomination of her company, summons the cheerful greeting he has rehearsed.
‘Father!’ he calls up, but he can see the discomfort all over his face already. His hand raises stiffly in the air, more like a warding-off than a greeting.
When he descends they embrace briefly, but then his gaze looks everywhere but at Henry. Blackie runs round the horses, barking, providing distraction.
‘Madam,’ he bows to his stepmother.
Their distaste for each other is entirely mutual. When she smiles her ghastly wooden teeth at him, it is more as if she was grinding them together. A very fast, small woman, she clambers unaided from the carriage and beetles straight across the porch threshold and disappears into the passage towards the kitchens, her sleeves trailing. No one has worn sleeves like that for twenty years. Dressed in cloth of that inky purple hue, and with her nose turned blue at the tip from the breeze on the ride, she has always looked to him like death on legs; cadaverously alive. He had detested her manner from the moment she entered their lives when he was younger; she would coil herself around his father like she owned him, in an offensive way his mother would never have wished or dared to do. In his blackest, most resentful moments, he has thought of her like rootless Devil’s Thread, wrapping its strands about the crop plants in the fields, strangling all hospitable life from them. Now though he knows to call her parasite would be disrespectful to his father. She is kin.
‘Henry?’ He can hear her shrieking for him. ‘Henry! Is this beef we are having today?’
‘I hardly know, madam, I—’ Henry stands awkwardly at the kitchen doorway, trying to avoid the glower of Old Hannah, standing by the fire with her basting spoon in hand. ‘It is not my business to poke about in there.’
‘It won’t be done on time, you know we’re hungry after the ride. Look at that fire.’
‘You are very early. Perhaps—’
‘Where’s that wife of yours?’
‘She is … upstairs, madam, and will be with us shortly.’ Henry knows that Frances will be in her chamber, staving off that minute when she must glide down the staircase like the lady of the house she is, and greet her mother-in-law with gracious if entirely feigned obeisance.
He goes to the foot of the stairs and looks up but does not call. He is not sure but thinks he hears a door being slammed at the end of the corridor. He hopes there might be a kind of unspoken solidarity between them both now that Joan Young is in the house – perhaps the only feeling that they share, but some men would have less to boast of. He takes a deep breath and goes back to the hall, to seat his father according to the rules of honour. He feels stifled with anxiety, his throat so tight he can hardly get simple niceties and phrases out. His girls appear one by one and curtsey properly before they take their places, which is a relief, and even though the guests have arrived so appallingly early Old Hannah manages almost immediately to produce a first course of roast fowls and salad, but after this it is unfortunate that the beef takes a long time to appear, and so does Frances.
‘Where is that wife? Does she exist? Of course she does, I can smell there’s a woman about the house,’ Joan says, pushing her plate about impatiently.
‘I do dislike a hiatus in a meal,’ she hisses to Edith, sitting next to her at table. ‘A gap can feel so dissatisfactory. It is fortunate that nobody important dines with us today.’ She casts her eye glassily round the hall, though as Henry Lyte knows she is short of sight, she will not have focussed much on anyone.
After all that fuss, she doesn’t eat much, helping herself to meat but draining the juice away with the edge of her spoon against the bowl as though the dish is too watery, turning the loaf suspiciously to check the underside for mould, rifling through a salad of winter cresses to find the choicest pieces of bottled artichoke, only to fling them back with a bitter little sigh and eat nothing. Though she does like bones, sucking the last little fibres of meat from them, snapping them to get at any traces of marrow concealed inside.
When Henry enquires after the journey, she runs through a tedious itinerary of the way they had taken, and how poor the roads in this part of the country, how hopeless the route chosen and how slow the horse.
His father, who until this point has not uttered a word,