Page 129 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle

‘But it’s not reasonable!’ Bobby proclaimed, frustrated. ‘Riding side-saddle is unnatural and dangerous. The only impact you can make that way is impact with the ground when you come a cropper and break your back.’

‘Oh, don’t,’ Nina protested.

‘Julia Caldwell, November 1899,’ Bobby said relentlessly. ‘Her horse came down jumping a bullfinch on Langdon Hill and she was trapped underneath. She never walked again. She died of pneumonia a few months later. Pimmy Galloway, February 1901—’

‘Enough, Bobby,’ said Clemmie. ‘You don’t need to convince us.’

‘I know I don’t. But we all need to keep working to convince the men. Riding side-saddle is all part of the same thing, the denial of equality, like denying us the vote. How much longer are we going to wait for simple justice? Did you know people have been arguing for women’s suffrage for forty years, ever since John Stuart Mill got into Parliament? Forty years is a lifetime! And I don’t want to wait for another forty – I’d be too old to enjoy it. At that rate I might not even live to see it.’

‘Perhaps we should join the NUWSS,’ Clemmie said, and translated for Nina. ‘The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. Millicent Fawcett founded it, to draw together all the scattered societies to make one more effective force. My father knew her mother’s father in London. She’s a wonderfully strong woman and she has very good connections.’

‘What do they do?’ Nina asked.

‘Oh, hold meetings and get up petitions to try to get MPs to support the idea. We could even start up our own branch here,’ Clemmie said, in her mild, unemphatic voice.

‘Meetings! Petitions!’ Bobby exclaimed scornfully. ‘How can you change men’s minds that way?’

‘What would you do?’ Nina asked, amused. ‘Throw stones at them?’

‘It’s the best we can do,’ Clemmie said. ‘Great changes always take time. You’re too impatient, Bobby.’

Nina grew bored with the subject and said, ‘Shall we canter along here?’ She heard a shrill bark and looked back. ‘Oh, bother, there’s Trump. I asked them to keep him in the kitchen, but he must have got out somehow and followed me.’

‘If we canter on, he won’t be able to keep up and he’ll go home.’

‘Oh, poor thing! He’ll think I don’t love him.’

‘Dogs don’t think like that,’ Bobby said. ‘He’ll be all right. Let’s see how fast Jewel is. I’ll race you to the Five Beeches.’ And she gave up politics for the moment, in favour of equitation.

Mr Blomfield wrote back to say he deeply regretted that he was so completely engaged in a project he would not be able to come and look at Ashmore until the following spring, but if Lady Stainton would indulge him with her patience he would be delighted to wait upon her then. Alternatively, his trusted assistant could come immediately and do the initial survey, make notes of her requirements and report back to him.

Kitty was young enough not to want any delay, so she wrote to say an immediate visit by the assistant would oblige her.

He came on a fine day in November, when they were enjoying a goose summer: soft, settled days with gentle warmth at the zenith and mists at either end. Kitty was surprised to see such a young man: at first glance he looked no older than her, though when she saw him close up she realised that he had one of those boyish, young-looking faces and in fact was probably in his early thirties. Still, she had thought of all gardeners as being wise and weathered grey-beards, so he was refreshing. He was tall, with a face that seemed always on the brink of smiling, thick wavy brown hair and very blue eyes. ‘Henry Fenchurch, your ladyship,’ he introduced himself. ‘Mr Blomfield is sorry not to be able to come himself, but I am well acquainted with his ideas and methods. I have assisted him on half a dozen great gardens. I assure you—’

Kitty was quick to put him at ease. ‘Please don’t apologise. I’m very pleased you have come. Will you take some refreshment?’

He smiled, showing excellent teeth. ‘If you will excuse me, I would rather walk round while it’s fine. I’ve learned by hard experience not to take English weather for granted. You have a gardener to show me the ground?’

‘Oh, but I was expecting to show you round myself, so that I can tell you what I want.’

‘So it is really your garden? Your plan entirely?’ He seemed pleased by the idea.

‘No-one else is much interested,’ she confessed. ‘My head gardener loves vegetables and fruits, and my husband is the same – he doesn’t see the point in growing things you can’t eat. But he knows I’ve always wanted gardens here, and he’s happy for me to have them created the way I want them.’

‘Well, then, let’s go and look, and you can tell me your vision,’ Fenchurch said.

‘I don’t know how practical my vision is,’ she said, leading the way out.

‘But that is what I’m here for,’ he said. ‘To understand what your imagination sees, and find a way to create it.’

‘You don’t mind, then?’ she said shyly. ‘I thought great gardeners expected to have a free hand. To make the garden –’

‘– in their own image?’ he anticipated. ‘Well, that is often the case – perhaps usually the case. To paint on an empty canvas is satisfaction in one way. But to interpret someone else’s dream, to pluck it from the empty air and make it real – what a privilege!’

She laughed, feeling strangely at ease with him. ‘I believe you would agree with me whatever I said.’

He smiled back. ‘We’ll see. You may be sending me away with a flea in my ear in half an hour’s time.’