The Restless Sea

Book 27: Morland Dynasty

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

England in 1912 still bears itself with Edwardian confidence, but strikes, protests and public violence reveal the fault lines as society evolves under the spur of new ideas and technology. Among the many branches of the Morland family, Jessie and Violet, childhood friends, learn to cope with the surprises of marriage and motherhood and their different strata of society. Jack, disappointed in love, loses himself in designing aircraft and training airmen for the newly formed flying corps. And Anne exhausted by the Suffragette struggle, seeks comfort in her friendship with an unconventional young woman.

The Titanic tragedy shakes the confidence of a people used to conquering nature with engineering; and all the while, the troubled nations of Europe edge closer to a war no-one wants, but which seems inevitable.

Release date: August 25, 2011

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 512

Sample

March 1912

On the evening on which Mr and Mrs Edward Morland of Maystone Villa, Clifton, were to give the first dinner party of their
married lives, Ned arrived home late. It had been raining all day – that thin, prickling rain, hardly more than mist, that
soaks surprisingly quickly – but as Purvis, the chauffeur, opened the door of the motor for him he found that it had stopped
at last. He stepped out into a world of damp, with the steady sound of drips coming through the darkness from the invisible
trees all about. The air smelt green and fresh, with a hint of woodsmoke. He thought how nice the house looked, square and
solid and welcoming, with its lights glowing through the darkness, and felt a deep, wordless satisfaction at being home.


‘Thank you, Purvis. I shan’t need you again tonight.’

‘Very good, sir.’

The front door opened and his man, Daltry, appeared. He was carrying an umbrella, but seeing no rain descending through the
light cast from the door, he put it aside. ‘Good evening, sir,’ he said, as he helped the master off with his coat.


‘I’m a little late,’ Ned acknowledged. ‘All serene?’

‘Yes, sir, except that the drawing-room fire is smoking. The logs were rather damp.’

Close up, Ned saw that Daltry was somewhat smoky about the face. Evidently he had been struggling with it. As the only male
servant in the house he was called on in divers ways. Ned knew how lucky he was that Daltry did not object to acting as butler and footman too. Many gentlemen’s gentlemen sought other positions when their master married. ‘Why are
we having a log fire?’ he asked. ‘What happened to the coal?’


Daltry’s face took on a rigid quality, which warned his master off. ‘I could not undertake to say, sir.’

‘Oh. Where’s Mrs Morland?’

‘I believe she is dressing, sir.’

‘All right. Give me five minutes and then come up and help me dress.’ A faint smile touched his lips. ‘Better have a wash
first.’


Now that he looked around, Ned could not only smell but see woodsmoke, drifting down the hall with the draught from the open
door. In the drawing-room, the fire was burning sulkily, but a veil of smoke still hung about the ceiling. A maid was on her
knees in front of it – praying apparently, since she didn’t seem to be doing anything else to help it along.


‘Get a sheet of newspaper to hold up in front of it,’ Ned said. ‘Don’t you know how to do that?’

The maid started and turned. ‘No, sir,’ she said faintly, and looked as though she would cry. She was very young – she seemed
about ten – but more to his surprise she was a stranger.


‘Who are you?’

‘Susie Grice, sir,’ she said, in a petrified whisper. ‘I’m new.’

There was no time now for explanations. ‘Newspaper. Get one of the others to show you how,’ he said, and headed upstairs.
A man returning home from his place of work expects order and harmony. Short of moving the furniture around, a wife could
hardly serve him worse than by confronting him with unexpected new servants.


Jessie was in their bedroom, standing facing the door, hands on hips, with a preoccupied look on her face. She was not waiting
to confront him, however: the thoughtful frown was caused by her corset, and the fact that Tomlinson was behind her, carefully
pulling together the two stiff but fragile edges of her gown to do up the fastenings.


Jessie’s big dog, Brach, who had been lying under the dressing-table, got to her feet, stretched lavishly in front, and came
over to greet him with a slowly swinging tail. Brach had belonged to Jessie’s late father, but she had pined so much when
Jessie married that in pity she had brought her from Morland Place to Maystone. She was a Morland Hound, a breed not really
suited to a villa, but Jessie led a vigorous outdoor life, so she had plenty of exercise.


Caressing the dog, Ned regarded his wife. The gown was one they had bought in Paris while they were on honeymoon. It was a
dusky shade of pink, a high-waisted, narrow gown of silk with a knee-length Valenciennes lace over-tunic. The tunic hem, the
edges of the short sleeves and the bodice were thickly sewn with beads and tiny spars, the weight of which the lace was hardly
able to bear, hence its fragility. It was a beautiful gown and Clifton had not seen it yet. She would cause a small sensation
at the party tonight, and his annoyance left him at the sight of her. ‘You look beautiful,’ he said.


Jessie smiled, unable to speak at this critical juncture.

‘Right you are, madam,’ Tomlinson said, an instant later, and Jessie cautiously let out her breath and felt her body settle
into its rigid cage. By day she lived mostly in riding habit, but she was feminine enough to enjoy the sensation of being
tightly laced and gorgeously clad.


‘I’ll never be able to bend,’ she said. ‘I shall have to be very ladylike if I drop something, and wait for a gentleman to
pick it up.’ She looked at her husband, who was still fondling Brach’s upthrust head. ‘You’re shockingly late. You’d better
go and dress right away. I’m done, all but my hair.’


‘Is that all the welcome I get?’ he complained. ‘After a long day at work …’

Tomlinson was quick to react. ‘I’ll come back in five minutes, madam,’ she said, her cheeks red. She slipped out past Ned
with her eyes cast down, closing the door behind her.


‘It’s wicked of you to embarrass the servants,’ Jessie said, stepping into his embrace. His skin was cold from outdoors but his lips were warm against hers and, together with the male smell of him and the hardness of his shoulders under her hands,
gave her a fluttery feeling. They had only been married three months, and it was still a novelty to her.


‘Tomlinson had better get used to it,’ Ned said, against her mouth. ‘If a man can’t kiss his own wife in his own bedroom …’

There was a satisfactory silence. When they broke for breath she reached up and touched his fair hair. ‘It’s stopped raining?’

‘Mm.’

‘Good. I want everything to be perfect tonight.’

‘Why shouldn’t it be?’ he said, nuzzling her neck. ‘We’ve both been to enough dinner parties to know how they go on.’

‘We’ve both been to dinner parties,’ she said, breaking away from him, ‘but we don’t know how they work under the bonnet.’


He was charmed by her metaphor. She could drive a motorcar as well as any man, but you’d never guess it to look at her now,
in her Paris gown. He wanted to kiss her again, but she put her hands flat against his lapels to stop him.


‘It’s all very well,’ she said, ‘but Daltry will be waiting for you.’

It reminded him. ‘No, he won’t, he’s washing the soot off his face and hands. Why are we having a log fire in the drawing-room?’

‘We have to save the coal for the kitchen range,’ Jessie said.

‘I know there’s a coal strike on,’ said Ned, ‘but my father sent enough across from Morland Place for the fires for tonight.’
Jessie’s uncle Teddy, master of Morland Place, was his adopted father. ‘What happened to it?’


Jessie looked slightly uncomfortable. ‘I gave it away,’ she said.

‘You gave it away?’ Ned grew indignant. ‘Don’t you know what coal costs these days?’


Jessie said defensively, ‘I told you I was going to do some of my mother’s poor-visiting. Well, as I was coming back along Moor Lane I passed Quaker Row, so I called in on the Grices. You know what those cottages are like. You need to keep
a fire going in them all the time, and they haven’t had one for a week. The water was running down the walls. Poor old Grice was in bed upstairs, blue in the face with his emphysema. The air was so cold and damp he
could hardly breathe. What was I to do?’ she pleaded. ‘Mrs Grice has little ones out collecting sticks from the wood, but
everyone’s doing the same, and what little they bring barely heats a kettle of water. So this morning I told Purvis to take
Uncle’s sack of coal over to them.’


Ned’s annoyance faded, but he looked rather careworn. He couldn’t condemn her charitable instinct, though giving away coal
at the present time was rather like giving away jewellery. ‘You did the right thing, I suppose. But need it have been the
whole sack?’


‘There was no point in sending just enough for one day. Grice isn’t going to be well in that time.’

‘All the same—’ He frowned, remembering something else. ‘Who was that girl downstairs? She said her name was Grice.’

‘She’s the new housemaid,’ Jessie said.

‘New since this morning? Don’t tell me what’s-her-name has left already, the one with the flat face who looks like a fish?’

‘Martha.’

‘That’s right. I thought you liked her.’

‘No, Martha hasn’t left. Susie’s – extra.’

‘Extra?’

‘She’s Grice’s eldest girl,’ Jessie explained. ‘You see, they’ve spent their savings and Grice is ill and Mrs Grice has to
look after the little ones so she can’t work. So when Mrs Grice said Susie was old enough now and asked if I knew of a place, I said I’d take her on. I know
she looks young but she’s twelve and Mrs Grice says she’s very handy. I’m sure she’ll do well because she’s so grateful for
the job.’


‘I’m sure she is,’ Ned said. ‘Tell me, what else did you do for them? You didn’t invite them all to dinner tonight, by any
chance?’


Jessie was hurt. ‘You don’t begrudge my helping them?’


‘What would my life have been if it weren’t for the kindness of people in our position?’ he said, trying to find the right
words about tempering charity with common sense. ‘It’s not a matter of begrudging, but—’


‘If you say “but” you must be objecting.’

‘Grice isn’t even one of our people. Where did he work? The soap factory, wasn’t it? They should be looking after him and
his family.’


‘Well, they aren’t. And Mrs Grice used to be a housemaid up at Morland Place before she married. That’s why Mother keeps an eye on her.’


‘She’s not our responsibility.’


‘If you expect me to pass by on the other side—’

‘What I expect is for you to ask me before taking on extra staff.’

‘I thought the domestic staff was my domain.’


‘Of course it is, but—’

‘And I thought I heard you say when we first got married that if I wanted more servants I could have them.’


‘I did say that,’ Ned said, firmly enough to stop her interrupting again, ‘but you don’t seem to understand that things are
bad at the moment. The miners’ strike is having a terrible effect on business. We need to retrench, not go throwing sacks
of coal around and taking on extra staff.’


‘One sack of coal. And one extra girl.’ Jessie had acted on impulse, but since then had begun to have second thoughts about the wisdom of her actions.
Everything Ned had said had already occurred to her. The Grices had to be helped, but the help did not have to come from her.
She ought to have alerted Morland Place and left it to them to take coal and offer employment.


But it annoyed her to be questioned about anything she did by Ned. He was her cousin, and she was used to his being the supplicant
for her favour, not her critic. She went into the attack with sarcasm. ‘Susie’s so little, I’m sure she won’t eat much.’


‘She’ll eat the same as the other servants. And then there’s her wages to find. And I suppose you’ll buy her her uniform, since I can’t imagine she can pay for it herself.’


‘Well, if you’re going to be so mean—’

‘It’s not meanness!’ Ned cried in exasperation. ‘Can’t I get it into your head that business is down at the moment, and the
price of everything is going up because of the coal shortage? We have to be careful.’


‘If things are bad Uncle Teddy will give you something,’ Jessie said.

‘He won’t because I won’t ask him,’ Ned said sharply. ‘He’s given me enough already. I shall make my own way from now on,
and if I can’t afford something we will do without. I won’t go begging to him at every setback.’


‘You let him give you the coal,’ Jessie said.

Ned flushed. ‘I bought the coal from him,’ he said. ‘He would have given it to me but I wouldn’t let him, and he understood why. Besides, it would
be a very different matter to ask him for money. I’m surprised you suggested it.’


Now Jessie was wrong-footed; but anger made her retaliate. ‘You seem to forget I have a business of my own. If you can’t afford
a sack of coal and a new housemaid, I’ll pay for them myself out of the profits from the stables.’


‘You can’t have looked at the accounts lately. There is no profit in the stables. The price of fodder is soaring along with everything else, and the bad weather means the grass
will be late, so you’ll have to keep feeding for longer.’ Worry and a feeling of being misunderstood and undervalued fuelled
his annoyance, and he went on, ‘The stock are eating their heads off and you haven’t sold a horse since Christmas. It’s not
a business, it’s a lady’s hobby. You might as well keep canaries or do poker-work.’


‘It is not a hobby!’ Jessie cried, stung. ‘I haven’t sold a horse since Christmas because I sold so many before. And I’ve got Mrs Stinchcombe’s mare almost ready, and Mr Hamlyn’s polo ponies—’


‘If they don’t cancel. I happen to know that Stinchcombe’s business is in a bad way; and Hamlyn has given up his club membership,
so he must be feeling the pinch. The horses are a liability at the moment, and one which I have to shoulder along with everything else. I don’t expect you to be grateful, but it’s rather hard to be abused for trying to keep
us out of the workhouse!’


Jessie was loaded and ready to fire straight back; but something made her pause and hold off, and in the silence she realised
with a sinking feeling that they were quarrelling, really quarrelling now. Because they had grown up together they had always
had lively arguments, and there had never been any likelihood that she would submit meekly as Aunt Alice did to Uncle Teddy
– or even that she would always accept his word as final after discussion, as Mother had with Dad.


But this was different. He had hurt her by calling her stables a hobby, and she had been searching about for a way to hurt
him back. She noticed all at once that he looked very tired about the eyes, as though he had been worrying as well as working
twelve hours a day at his paper mill. And then she remembered something her mother had said to her on the eve of her marriage.


‘Never quarrel,’ Henrietta had said. ‘Discuss, argue if you like, but never use words to wound. And if ever you should quarrel,
always be the first to say you’re sorry. It’s much harder for a man; and if you were in the right, he’ll know it, and make it up to you.’


So she swallowed hard and tried to find words of conciliation. But before she could speak he said in a tired, quiet voice,
‘Don’t let’s quarrel, Jess. We’ve guests coming very soon, and I want our party to go well. It’s very important for my business.
You understand that, don’t you?’


‘Are things so very bad?’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady.

‘Oh, it’s a temporary dip,’ he said, trying to smile. ‘But it’s been one thing after another lately. The expense of setting
up house was greater than I expected, and it came at a bad time, with the strike and so on. We shall pull through, but we
need to be careful for a while.’


‘Do you want me to send Susie away?’ she asked stiffly.

‘No,’ he said wearily. ‘It wouldn’t be fair on her not to give her a trial. But don’t take on any more waifs and strays, will
you? Not without asking me.’


The door opened and Tomlinson came in, so timely that Ned wondered if she had been listening outside for a lull in the storm.


‘Shall I do your hair, madam? And, sir, Daltry’s in the dressing-room ready for you.’

‘Yes, I’m going now,’ Ned said, and turned away.

But as his hand reached the doorknob Jessie took an impulsive step after him and touched his arm. ‘I’m sorry I spoke crossly
and said unkind things. Forgive me?’


It was worth having said it for the smile it produced. There were things he could not say in front of a servant – things he
could not do, either – so he put them all into a glowing look of promise, then lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it before
leaving her to her maid.


Jessie had been brought up at Morland Place, where her mother Henrietta still lived and was effectively mistress – Aunt Alice
did not care to run things. Henrietta had been managing the household at Morland Place for the past fifteen years, and it
was a tribute to her skill that Jessie had not realised there was any skill in it. She had thought a house more or less ran
itself. It was a revelation to her how much work was involved in giving a dinner party for sixteen.


It was unfortunate that her mother was away at present. Henrietta had gone to London for several weeks to stay with Jessie’s
half-sister Lizzie. But Jessie had had long talks with her before she left, and they had pored over recipe books together
to choose a menu. Jessie’s method would have been to choose all her favourite dishes without regard to what was in season,
and without knowledge of the work involved in preparing them. Comments like ‘You must have some things that can be prepared
the day before,’ and ‘You can’t have all those things in the oven at the same time, dear,’ opened her eyes to a new world
of expertise.


The menu chosen, Henrietta had given her advice about where and when to order the ingredients, drawn up a seating plan from
the guest list, and written out an order of precedence, which Jessie had made herself learn off by heart since the subtleties
of it were beyond her.


‘You and I don’t care about that sort of thing, darling,’ Henrietta had said, ‘but you must remember that a lot of people
do, and they are the sort of people who make life unpleasant if you get it wrong. Remember, Ned’s business depends to a great
extent on how you and he stand in society.’


‘It’s all such nonsense,’ Jessie had complained. ‘If he produces the right goods at the right price, what else matters? I
know he doesn’t care about such things. How could he, when Uncle Teddy doesn’t?’


Henrietta sighed and wondered how to explain the realities of the world to her daughter. ‘Uncle Teddy’s position is very different,
and he can afford to please himself. He’s the master of Morland Place and wealthy besides.’


Ned, on the other hand, had been born the illegitimate son of Henrietta and Teddy’s elder brother George. Despite Teddy’s
having adopted him, and given him the mill so that he could support himself respectably, there would always be people to remember
his origins and hold them against him if he once put a foot wrong.


Henrietta went on, ‘Ned still has his way to make, and he has to stand well with people who could make or mar his business.
And, darling, it’s just as easy to get things right as to get them wrong, if you only take a little trouble beforehand. You
want to help your husband, don’t you?’


‘I suppose so,’ Jessie had said, and then, seeing her mother’s raised eyebrow, amended it to ‘Of course I do.’ Though really
she felt that doing silly things for a good reason did not make them any less silly, and that rather than ‘making up’ to silly
people one should ignore them.


The work she had done with her mother over the menu had seemed excessive at the time, but afterwards she was glad that she
understood the reasons behind it, for when she showed it to the cook she was able to meet her objections from a position of
strength.


Mrs Peck was Jessie’s second cook already, and they had only been in Maystone Villa two months, since coming back from their
honeymoon. The first cook had turned out to be dishonest and Jessie had turned her off. She hoped her new cook was up to the task. Mrs Peck certainly grumbled about having to do a seven-course dinner for sixteen ‘so soon’, though
Jessie did not see how it would have been any more or less arduous at any other time. She supposed it was just in a cook’s
nature to grumble – the first one certainly had, bitterly and constantly.


‘A lot of the things can be done beforehand,’ Jessie said. ‘And we’ll hire waiters to serve at table so the girls will be
free to help you in the kitchen.’


Mrs Peck said, ‘Extra staff just means more people for me to feed, and more people getting under my feet.’ But she was slightly
mollified, and as the day drew nearer seemed to pull herself together and become interested in the affair. The maids, Peggy
and Martha, were excited about it from the beginning. Though they wouldn’t be waiting at table, they would help take the coats,
and Jessie overheard them talking about doing their hair differently for the occasion. Even the kitchenmaid Katy, a pathetic,
undersized Irish girl with a chronic sniff, was stirred into animation, though the hardest of the extra work would land on
her scrawny shoulders.


Dinner was to consist of soup, fish, entrée, roast, entremets, pudding and dessert – the sort of dinner Morland Place might
have given, except that there would not be so many choices in each course. Thanks to Henrietta, Jessie had the campaign of
action all mapped out in her mind. The cold consommé could be made the day before. The fish was salmon poached in Chablis
– top of the stove – served with lettuce. The oyster puffs for the entrée could be made ahead and just needed a minute in
a hot oven to ‘perk them up’ before serving. That left the ovens for the roasts – chicken with tarragons, and leg of lamb
stuck with capers. Of the entremets – broccoli, stewed mushrooms and glazed parsnips – the parsnips went into the oven above
the roasts while the others were cooked on the stove top along with the sauces. Once the roasts came out the puddings went
in – Nassau tart and baked Chaumontel pears – while the rhubarb flummery was cold and made the day before. Dessert was cheese,
apples and dried figs: March was a poor month for fruit.


The last thing Jessie had done before she went up to dress was to check the dining-table. Daltry had overseen the laying:
having been a footman at a big house before he became a valet, he knew how it should be done. And she gave the flowers in
the hall and drawing-room a final tweak. March was a poorish time for flowers, too, but Aunt Alice was very good at flower-arranging
and had given her hints. Anyway, she thought the daffodils and hyacinths looked cheerful and nice.


Ned joined her in the drawing-room in a rush just as the first of the guests reached the front door. Peggy and Martha dashed
up from the kitchen to help Tomlinson with the coats and Daltry transformed himself into a butler to show the arrivals into
the drawing-room. Jessie felt her smile rather stiff and nervous. Beside her, Ned cleared his throat and she realised that
he was nervous too. Glancing sideways she saw him insert a finger inside his collar as though it was choking him. How handsome
he looked in his evening clothes! Suddenly her nerves disappeared and she was only excited about this evening, pleased to
be standing here in her own real home with her own real husband at her side.


With military promptness, the first guests to arrive were Major and Mrs Wycherley, and Jessie was glad because she knew them
from her uncle’s parties. Major Wycherley was the procurement officer at the Fulford barracks, but she knew him as a keen
hunter and polo player. He was a smallish man with beautiful white whiskers, as lavish as the hair on his head was scanty:
he was shining above and bushy below like a rock in a meadow. His wife was taller than him and younger, and surprisingly beautiful.
Jessie had overheard younger officers speculating on ‘how the old boy had caught her’.


‘Your gown!’ Mrs Wycherley exclaimed, as she took her hand. ‘My dear, how glorious! You positively shimmer. Do tell me where
you got it.’


‘Paris,’ Jessie said, pleased with both the question and the answer.

‘Tell that at a glance,’ Wycherley said, kissing her hand. ‘Good to be here, m’dear. Morland – splendid idea to have a dinner party, dispel some of the gloom. Good show.’


The next guests were not quite so welcome to Jessie. Mr Stalybrass was a banker, with no conversation outside his business;
his wife a sharp-eyed, discontented woman. She noticed the gown, too, and looked round for something to criticise. ‘Did you
do the flowers yourself ? Ah, the rustic look, so unusual! Yellow is such a difficult colour. I should never have thought
of putting blue with it.’


Jessie was old enough to know this was meant to hurt, but too young not to show it had succeeded. Mrs Stalybrass was satisfied
and passed on to talk to the Wycherleys in a better humour.


Close behind came Mr Micklethwaite, the principal of Pobgee and Micklethwaite, York’s largest law firm. Mrs Micklethwaite
was comfortable and wealthily dowdy. She kissed Jessie’s cheek and whispered, ‘Pay no heed to her, dear, she’s such a cat,’
then said aloud, ‘You look a treat. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a pretty gown.’


Jessie kissed the round, soft cheek gratefully, glad to have an ally. She had known the Micklethwaites all her life and felt
easy with them. The rest of the company was unknown to her and, along with the army, banking and the law, represented York’s
biggest employers and – more to the point – purchasers of paper: Mrs and Mrs Pickles were railway, the Steads were printing,
the Portwaines were in confectionery, and the last-comers, Sir Philip and Lady Surridge, owned several newspapers. These were
not the kind of guests she was used to from her uncle’s parties at Morland Place, where the company was drawn from landowning,
farming, hunting and shooting, and the ranks of old family friends. It was an odd kind of reason for giving a dinner party,
to her mind, but her mother had seemed to understand it, and had said that the guests would understand it, too. ‘You will
be inspected, and if you pass muster the word will be spread that the Ned Morlands are acceptable.’


So as the guests gathered to converse in the drawing-room, she did her best to fit in. At Morland Place the talk would have been about how the wet weather was affecting the lambing and the spring sowing, last week’s point-to-point and
the letting down of hunters. Here in her drawing-room these comfortable subjects did not immediately arise. The men were talking
about the coal strike, by which they had all been affected.


For the past two years a sea of industrial unrest had rolled over the country. One strike after another had checked trade
and curtailed profit. First the railway workers, then the boilermakers had gone out; then the terrible miners’ strike had
crippled South Wales in November 1910. In 1911 it was the seamen and firemen, and they had set off the dockers. Dock strikes
beginning in London had spread through August, putting Liverpool and Manchester out of action, and then the railway unions
went out as well, paralysing the country and leading to riots: troops had had to be brought in to restore order.


And now the miners had gone out again, and the effects of the lack of coal were being felt all over the country. It was calculated
that two million men were idle because of it. Coal prices had gone sky-high. Transport was crippled. Ships were tied up in
dock, unable to move. And everybody’s business had suffered.


‘The Government should take a harder line,’ said Mr Pickles. ‘Send the army in if necessary – eh, Major?’ Major Wycherley
bowed slightly in response and said nothing, but his expression showed what he, a