Wessex Tales: "The Dorset Ooser Dines" (Story 26) Read online

  Chapter 2

  Imagine the opening act. Large silver punch-bowls wait above spirit burners on a garlanded length of oak table, the scene revealed in pools of light from matching oil lamps hung low on chains, the lamps’ ornate wrought-iron ogees supporting polished reservoirs whence brass reflections add the lustre of copper to the pale milk-glass illumination from the lamp-glass above.

  Gentlemen gather in groups, eyeing strangers and each other’s wives above their punch cups, still solemn in sobriety, formal and stiff in long coats, high collars and notched, narrow lapels. Full beards wag as eyes travel and watch-fobs rise and fall, fronting well-suited prosperity. Eat, drink, be merry and decry the price of corn, for tomorrow we decline.

  Women stand with their men or cluster into multi-coloured groups around the fire-place, like bright anemones in search of summer sun, their tightly-corseted waists of light-lustrous silk enticing male eyes—in pastels, one should add, for it would never do to wear more vibrant colours than the lady of the hall.

  The gathered women display more than a glory of soft, silk-rich parti-colours, for fashion demands that hair be swept back and held up in a comb, revealing napes of necks and throats above a plunging neck-line gathered by a brooch or a small black hand in fashionable Yorkshire jet. The times demand daintiness: apart from tiny waists and naked necks, forearms escape from tight, buttoned, three-quarter length sleeves, each delicate wrist an excuse for the flash of fire-lit jewels.

  Their hostess is everywhere among her guests, elegant, serene, grey hair swirled into a comb at the back of her head and, no less fashionable, the peach silk of her gown complementing the colour of matching floral arrangements and the wreaths of nuts and flowers hemming punch bowls about. The lady plies drink here, offers words of welcome there, and waits attentively on those whose culture-shock is most severe.

  “Ah, Mr. and Mrs. Bosanquet, so nice to see you both again. Do come near the fire. All the way from Fontmell, and so cold! Such a hard winter, Mr. Bosanquet. So early, too!”

  “F - F - Frost, ma’am!”

  “O, quite. But, there, it makes the ploughman’s task so much easier, doesn’t it, come spring?” Their hostess steered the barrel-chested farmer and his wife to the table behind which a footman stood waiting, resplendent in wig, red silk and lace. Before him the silver bowls of punch rested like witches’ cauldrons above their spirit flames.

  “Breaks the c - clods, ma’am.”

  “It does indeed.” Their hostess scrupulously avoided using ‘clodhopper’ in its original sense. One might so easily be misunderstood. “The harder the frost the better the tilth in the spring.” Now to break the ice. The lady turned to Mrs. Bosanquet. “Favour me by sampling the fruit punch, my dear.”

  “Charmed, ma’am, I’m sure.” She looked frail as a bird in water-blue silk, and as perishable.

  “Now for Mr. Bosanquet.” The footman hovered, ladle and cups to hand, knowing already what the mistress would say next. “Do try the Bombay Spice Mix with nutmeg. My own recipe. So oriental, quite marvellous now that the railway brings the Bristol and London docks to our doors. I do hope you’ll like it. Frye …” The footman came armed with more years’ experience than he chose to recall. He knew what was expected of him when it came to priming the socially gauche. The cup was filled and handed over. Bombay Spice Mix killed the taste of a trifle too much gin.

  Bosanquet turned his back to the fire, studied the room and wished he were home. He could cut a deal at the cattle stalls in Stur. or the sheep folds at Blandford market with the confident assertion of a ram covering a ewe or a Baptist unveiling Hell. But in this assembly he felt himself a pike out of water, teeth bared but gasping, dying in air. Not for long, though. Not beneath the heady influence of Bombay Spice Mix punch.

  A young couple at the other end of the hearth seemed neither quite together nor apart. Gregory Map’s creased brow made him appear older than his age, which was not greatly over twenty. A stocky young man of brown curls and a failing moustache, Map’s dark eyes glared embarrassment into the fire. Ashamed of social failure, unable to disclose his love or gaze upon the loved one at his side, he kept his eyes averted, seeing mocking faces in the flames.

  For her part, Alicia Parsons would willingly have taken Gregory by the throat and throttled him. Did she not hint repeatedly with subtle looks and gestures that she might entertain a discreet advance? How often must she brush against his elbow or emphasise a point with the quick touch of her hand on his sleeve? Shy he might be, but why was Gregory Map so obdurate?

  They were only-children, these two, off-spring of farming families in a parish not so far away. For some years, while Alicia blossomed into womanhood, Gregory passed his nights at school lying awake into the small hours of morning, his mind-scapes casting images of Alicia on his dormitory ceiling as if she were the one and only optogram in a never-ending magic lantern show. Oh for the holidays, when he might emulate his squire father, tipping his hat to the damsel when—as much by design as by chance—their steeds contrived to meet in the strangest narrow places in the lanes. “Good day, Miss Parsons.” “Good morning, Mr. Map.” And that was that. Evidently their horses understood emotional transference better than the humans did, for they nuzzled one another while Alicia studied Flossy’s mane. Then Gregory would tip his hat with his riding-crop and spur ahead grimly, as if he charged artillery concealed in a hedge.

  When would he speak? If never, then she must! But, No! The veneer, if not the fabric of Victorian society would surely crack and tumble down before a well brought up young lady could take the initiative to hint at the merest congruence of two souls.

  Gregory abandoned the fire and scanned the room, briefly clashing eyes with Bosanquet before, equally discomfited, they both detached and looked away.

  Damn Gregory! Alicia thought. He almost stood with his back to her. Shyness she could understand, but to be shunned in this great gathering of neighbours, never!

  “Gregory?” she asked him, flushing embarrassment at her slip. She had never used his Christian name before.

  “Yes, Miss Parsons?” Ouch, an opportunity lost, and more! By failing to take advantage of her slip, unwittingly he rubbed her nose in it.

  Alicia stammered, redder than a rouge-blushed cheek or firelight would warrant, “I…I think they’re going to call us in to dine. Would you escort me, Mr. Map?”

  “Of course.” Resolve took a slight but mighty leap. “I would be honoured, Alicia.”

  Across the room, peering through the comfortable camouflage of fellow guests, two sets of parents stood apart, watching their offspring faulting too many jumps.

  “Damn the boy. What’s wrong with young Map?”

  “He’s shy, Raymond.” Cecilia Parsons coached her husband gently. “There was a time, my dear, when you balked at a fence or two.”

  “Hrmph! Different times, Cecilia. Young people nowadays…”

  “Are just as unsure of themselves.”

  “Yes, well, dash it, the Maps have three hundred acres settled on a ninety-nine year lease. Doesn’t Alicia…?”

  “Alicia knows it all too well, my dear. You’ve reminded her often enough. But Dorset is not Bath or London, Raymond. Young ladies of good breeding don’t behave like characters invented by Mr. Trollope’s pen.”

  “Good Lord, I’m not suggesting she should!”

  The Maps’ ninety-nine year lease had been settled after the Great Exposition and before the railway came through. That was back in the fifties, when dreadful summers and new-fangled steamships threatened the roots of the rural economy by dumping imported grain in English ports. The landowner—their hostess’s late father-in-law—had been more than eager to welcome ninety-nine year tenants back then.

  Raymond Parsons was green with envy. His own family’s tenure had been settled in the final days of George III. The Parsons’ acreage was held of the estate against three lives, and his, infant that he’d been back then, was the third life and the last. The climate of the times
these days was changing. Unthinkable just a generation ago, land tenure was no longer the unassailable ‘gold standard’ of rural economics. What had long been the basis of wealth was becoming a commodity like any other, and one whose value was declining fast in these failing years. Great landowners were contemplating the unthinkable: falling behind the ostentatious prosperity of the nouveau, city-centred mercantile rich, they were selling off land! Raymond Parsons worried for his daughter’s future—and his wife’s if he should predecease her, thereby terminating their family lease.

  Meanwhile, in another part of the room, Emily Map spoke earnestly to her husband. “Jack, I do wish you’d take Gregory aside and teach him to be more forthright with women. Poor Alicia.”

  “Too many years in boarding school. Good guineas gone, if you ask me. Book-learning muddles a man. Look at me, now.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “All those years at Rugby is one thing. Life is quite another.”

  “Yes, Jack.”

  “Anyway, young Alicia’s got her cap set to our boy, I should say.”

  “Alicia Parsons would make a very good match!”

  “I’ll not deny that. Good blood in her, so far as I can tell. Fine-looking filly. Although I’ve heard folk say her father is a Whig!”

  “Ssh!”

  Map hissed, “A Gladstone man. A Liberal!”

  “Jack!”

  At this moment the dynamic of two families froze in time, for the butler addressed four words to milady’s ear. She, in turn, nodded to a footman, bidding him address the dinner gong.