In the quiet village of Kent many years ago, Eleanor and William had been wed two summers past. Their love ran deep, yet shadows often fell between themstirred by Williams mother, Margaret.
Eleanor, kind-hearted and ever eager to please, longed for warmth from her husbands family. Yet no matter her efforts, Margarets manner remained stiff, her smiles thin as parchment. The older woman never spoke ill outright, but her sharp glances and weighted silences gnawed at Eleanors spirit.
Each return from Margarets cottage left Eleanor heavy with doubt.
“William,” she fretted one evening, “your mother dislikes me. I feel it in my bones.”
Setting aside his ledger, William sighed.
“Nonsense, dear. Mothers simply shy. You know how she struggled raising me alone after Father passed.”
“Then why do I always fancy she scorns me behind closed doors?”
“Your mind plays tricks,” he murmured.
Eleanors voice trembled. “Last Whitsun, when your Aunt Agnes visitedMargaret called me clumsy as a cart-horse and said Id never suit!”
William rubbed his brow. “Perhaps she spoke of another. Enough of thisshall we take the trap to Chichester tomorrow? The fairs in town.”
But Eleanors mind would not rest. Determined to learn the truth, she hatched a plan. On their next visit, she slipped her old lecture recordera clever little devicebeneath Margarets sideboard.
She played the dutiful daughter-in-law, stewing parsnips and scrubbing trenchers, then left with the contraption hidden.
At dawn, she hurried back on pretext of fetching Margarets mending. Hands shaking, she retrieved the device.
That evening, as William hung his coat by the fire, Eleanor pressed him. “Hear this, love.”
The tinny playback began: clattering crockery, then Margarets voice, sour as crab-apples.
“That son of mine mightve wed any lass from good Sussex stock! But nohe picks this milksop who cant tell thyme from tarragon. And her folks? Tinkers, the lotcouldnt boil water if the Thames froze over!”
Eleanor switched it off, eyes glistening. “Now do you see?”
William paled. Shame warred with shocknot only at his mothers venom, but at Eleanors deception.
“Mothers… plain-spoken. Mayhap she spoke in heat,” he offered weakly.
“If plain speech means cruelty, Ill not suffer it. Defend me, William, or we must reckon with this properly.” She swept upstairs without another word.
Long he sat by dying embers. At last, he took the candlestick to the hall telephone.
Margarets shriek pierced the receiver when he explained. “She spied on me? Ill have constables at her door by matins!”
“Mother, listen”
“Never again shall that baggage cross my threshold!” The line went dead.
Boots crunching gravel, William raced to her cottagebut Margaret barred the door, spitting accusations through the knocker. When her schemes to turn him against Eleanor failed, he visited less and less.
By Michaelmas, the gulf between mother and son yawned wide as the Weald. Some rifts, once opened, no mortar of time could mend.
