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Wuthering Eyre
by various hands
 A collaborative effort, in the style of a 19th century novel (very loosely in some sections...) from the topic of
Dark clouds scudded across the gibbous moon, and the bare branches of the elms lining the long drive to Aldridge Manor bent and whipped in the bitter wind.
The Manor was dark. Only a feeble candle flickered in the library window where Lady Jennifer sat awaiting the return of her husband. Her hands stitched incessantly at a fine linen night shirt, exquisitely embroidered with the Aldridge crest of rampant love rats astride a broken promise.
"Hush, my children" she said, brushing Adam's golden curls where he lay asleep on the sofa, sucking his thumb. And to his sister Deborah, poring over the pages of an agricultural journal, "it is nearly nine o'clock."
Deborah harrumphed.
"Mama" she said, crossly "I am reading the most fascinating account of Mr Townsend and his rotational methods. And you know you said I could await Sir Brian. He promised me a surprise!"
Lady Jennifer sighed. "I fear you will indeed have a surprise", she muttered to herself.
At that moment, there came the rattling of carriage wheels on the gravel drive. Lady Jennifer put aside her sewing, with a sigh, and woke the sleeping child.
"Come, my precious", she whispered
As they descended the staircase, the great front door was flung back. A tall, masterful figure stood in the opening, silhouetted against the lightning that split the sky. Lady Jennifer paused, her two children half hidden behind her skirts.
"My Lord?" she ventured.
"Jenny!" he replied "I am home from the Indies. And look what I have brought."
They now saw that he bore a bundle swathed in fair linen
"A brother for you" he said, turning to where Deborah stood, wide eyed, and Adam sucked on his thumb.
"My Son!"
Brian looked icily around the room (it was minus 8) and thought it was a bit odd that... (now what was his name... Adrian, Arnold? well never mind) was still sucking his thumb at age 17- he won't amount to much... probably bat for Darrington in that new game of cricket that's been invented I shouldn't wonder
"Lady Jenny, Darling, I have come back from the Indies via Hungary on account of leaves on the water round the Med. This little chap, who I call Myson, just sort of attached himself to me.
He could play with the others, couldn't he? I've also cut him into my will. Obviously you get zip but I called in on Mesdames Scrivener, Gupta, Fees, Costs, Fees to draw up the papers. What do you think...?"
"But of course, my Lord" replied Lady Jennifer.
"And I've been thinking" said Sir Brian, absentmindedly crushing Will the Gamekeeper, who had been attempting to lick his boot, under foot. "You and Adam and Debbie can move into the cold attic rooms, can't you? Little Rory is going to need some space to set out the toy farm set I've bought him. And I've... plans for our bedchamber."
Jenifer sighed. A log cracked in the grate. Will grundied in pain. Somewhere, an owl hooted.
"So that's settled, then" said Brian. No rush? Say in an hour's time?"
***
For an hour Lady Jennifer toiled. She bandaged the ground Grundy face (a great improvement) leaving only suitable apertures for the necessary tongue and forelock.
Chivvying the children to help, she ferried clothes, books and bedclothes up the attic stairs. She arranged for a sumptuous dinner to be served to Sir Brian and Myson, while carrying broth and gruel upstairs for the delectation of the children and herself.
"Mummy", said the children, at last tucked up on their twanging bedsprings and horsehair pallets, "Why do we have to sleep up here now?"
"Well, my darlings," she answered sweetly, though the hour was late and the sweat lay cold upon her brow, "Did you see that sweet little boy Daddy brought with him? Well he is Myson and it is the law of the blood-line that all must give way before him. D'you see? Well that's all right then."
"But that's not fair" whined Adam, breaking off a tractor wheel and throwing it at his sister. "And anyway where do babies come from? When I secretly spied that nice Samuel Batton, late of this parish, who was, uhum, playing games with Lady Ruth, he told me afterwards he was practising for babies. He also gave me a thick ear and told me not to tell on him. I haven't seen you playing with Daddy, so where mummy, where do babies come from?"
"Stop whining," twittered Lady Jenny, thickening his other ear, "it's like this with babies..."
"Jenny," said Sir Brian from the door, "I find that I have need of the attic space after all. Little Ruairi has expressed the desire for a model of one of those new fangled railway things, and they take so much space... Mr Fry is coming in tomorrow to build a miniature landscape. A strange fancy for a boy who is to be a farmer, but you know how it is. I have arranged for your things to be sent to the poorhouse at Felpersham. You and the children will be most comfortable there. I visited it only last month and saw that they laid down fresh straw! No, my dear, do not cry, you need not fret. Ruairi and I will be perfectly comfortable here, we have all we want."
Lady Jennifer sighed. "It must be as your Lordship wishes" she replied. "Come, children. A life of poverty and hardship is to be our lot, it seems, but we must be brave."
Picking up the howling Adam and slapping Debbie, who had begun to stamp her foot, she led them from the house (down the back staircase).
***
As they passed through the darkened village, with the only light her small lantern, the Lady Jennifer was sore oppressed. Seeing the dark bulk of the church before her she thought to say a prayer to restore her to a right frame of mind.
Leading the children inside she knelt in the foremost pew, throwing a vilely embroidered kneeler to one side and catching Adam a purler on the ear. In vain she sought for solace but was at last brought to study the church registers, to comfort herself with the entry of her marriage to Sir Brian.
The horror of what she saw there rendered her first speechless and then hysterical. Could she believe her eyes (admittedly she hadn't been to Specs'r'us lately) but was there really no entry in the register? In frantic haste she flapped, slapped, rapped, tapped and otherwise mishandled the pages to no avail. The page with the proud lines:-
To Sir Brian was married this day the Lady Jennifer yada yada yada ...
was missing!
Little by little the children began to sense that something was amiss and clustered close to try to calm the shrieking, drooling wretch - all that was left of the mother they knew.
At last Adam took his thumb out of his mouth.
"Ouch!" he said, "That kneeler was really hard".
So saying, he and Debbie took one hand each of the poor, distressed Lady Jennifer and taking the lantern in his other hand Adam led the way from Ambridge, through the night to the grim doorway of the Felpersham poorhouse.
***
At the first signs of dawn, though they would have wished it longer, the gates of the Poorhouse opened. Such a sight met their eyes; if all the great philanthropists in that great country of theirs could have seen it they would have asked where their money was being spent. Rows of creatures were lined up in the dank courtyard, as though they had sprung from the very damp, like mushrooms. These scarecrows were hung with the soiled and tattered remnants of uniforms.
The breeches and coat of the man opening the door were green and of excellent cut, but sundry gapes around the buttons revealed his weakness for veal or coq au vin. The very sneer on his face was a badge of his vocation, perfected over many years. He advanced towards them and the sneer seemed to slither before him and cover them with grime.
"Well!", he demanded "What d'you want?"
Adam swallowed hard and half his hand disappeared before he pulled his thumb out again.
"If you please Sir," he quavered, "Sir Brian has sent us to the Poorhouse because Myson is here now."
"Right!" the green man shouted "I am Mr Rawfull, the Beadle, and you answer to me from now on, is that understood?"
It was a blessing that Lady Jennifer was still mazed as, all unknowing, they took her beloved Adam away, never to be seen again. She and Debbie were whisked off like so much chaff to the laundry, though whose clothes were washed there was a mystery. It was here that Debbie bcame known, as she always was thereafter, as Little Dobbit. She alone of the three did not surrender to the tyranny of the gloom and the dirt, the long days and short commons and was often heard shouting, "Dobbit! Dobbit! [the constant steam resulting in a perpetually running nose] as somebody or other beat her soundly.
Little Dobbit did her best to look after Lady Jennifer, who could not eat the rancid broth and hard bread they were given and she very soon suffered her final fit of the vapours, leaving poor Dobbit with only one last lingering look and the loving phrase, "Find out who took my marriage lines from the Church register!"
***
A few months later a tall figure mysteriously swathed in the enveloping folds of a cloak, and with a dashing hat pulled firmly over his face (the whole ensemble finished with mud spattered riding boots on which could be discerned fine gold chains) knocked at the door of a small run-down apothecary's shop in a back street somewhere in the middle of England.
"Ah, Mr erm 'Archer'?" quizzed the grizzled and bent form of the apothecary, " I've been expecting you. Enter."
Diagnosis was swift.
"But how can this be," roared Mr 'Archer', "I've never even slept with a French woman."
"You misunderstood me Sir, " replied the apothecary, "'Tis not the French pox that ails you. No, 'tis the Irish pox, for which the only prognosis is a lingering and painful decline, racked with despair and regret, bereft of friends and kin. With your only comfort the knowledge that any child you have fathered will be safe from the disease - unless of course it has the misfortune to bear the red hair inherited from its sluttish mother, in which case its descent into degredation and madness will be inexorable."
"And there is no cure?"
The Apothecary held the lantern high so that for the first time Sir Brian could discern his features. Sir Brian started; there was something familiar about the eyes that glittered in the ravaged face before him.
"No, Sir Brian Aldridge," hissed Apothecary Hathaway, "No cure. But death."
***
And they lie in the peaceful churchyard of St Stephen's; Lady Jennifer (no headstone, buried in the paupers' plot), Sir Brian, with a large marble tomb, beginning to be stained by bird droppings and surrounded by iron railings, already rusty.
Of the boy Adam, history does not speak. The girl Deborah was eventually transported to a far country and heard no more. Sir Ruairi inherited the estate (after long years of lawsuit, which consumed most of its value) and sits gibbering in the decayed pile, holding on his lap a strange, knitted doll to which he sometimes speaks...
Our thanks to duzzents, SirGB-the greatest, Vicarshusband and Vicky S.
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