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workhouse just once in the early days of their marriage, when he had insisted that she acquaint herself with the ‘duties’ expected of her as his wife. From the moment they had passed through the high, forbidding gates into a big yard surrounded by brick walls, she had felt the terror of the building. The principle that those who sought relief in the workhouse should be divided into groups was a flawed one, in Harriet’s opinion. Men were separated from women, thus breaking up families; and both groups were again divided into the able-bodied, the aged and children. However, no proper provision was made for the sick and the mentally ill, and vagrants were totally ignored. The austere uniform, the workhouse diet – the staples of which were coarse bread, cheese, gruel and potatoes – the rigid discipline and harsh punishments had left her shocked and sickened.
    She had asked Theobald why the hair of both the little boys and girls was severely cropped, and why the adult inmates had their hair cut in a standard rough-and-ready manner, to which he had replied shortly, ‘Hygiene.’ He had also given this as the reason for the severe workhouse clothing, although she had suspected (and rightly) that it was more for reasons of economy, and as a badge of pauperism.
    When she had objected to the biblical text over the door of the dining hall – ‘If any would not work, neither should he eat’ – saying that the workhouse had taken St Paul’s words out of context, Theobald had been furious with her, and they had had their first disagreement on the way home in the carriage. ‘Poverty is a necessary and indispensable ingredient in society,’ he had growled at her. ‘Without it there would be no labour, and without labour no riches, no refinement and no benefit to those possessed of wealth. There is a section of the poor who have always been poor, and will always remain so; everyone has the ability to work and take themselves out of the mire, but some choose to remain there. It is indigence, and not poverty, that is the evil; the poor should always be reminded of this, and thus motivated to work for their living. It was work that took my father from mediocrity to great wealth in his lifetime.’
    That and Lady Fortune smiling on him
, Harriet thought, saying out loud, ‘And when the poor sink so deep into poverty, despite all their efforts, and are unable to support themselves, what then? There are many who try and fail.’
    ‘Then there is the workhouse for those who have not worked hard enough, and they should be damned glad of it, because it’s more than they deserve.’
    She had known then that she couldn’t reason with him, and also, with terrifying clarity, that she had made the biggest mistake of her life in marrying Theobald Wynford. She’d confided this to her mother when they had next been in London and had received short shrift from that aristocratic matron, who had not hidden her relief when a man had been found who was prepared to take her plain, nondescript daughter off her hands.
    ‘You married Mr Wynford of your own free will, Harriet,’ her mother had said grimly. ‘You will not bring disgrace on the family name by being anything less than an obedient and dutiful wife. I do not wish to speak of this again.’ And that had been that.
    Now Harriet gazed at the cold, barren world outside the coach. Her life with Theobald had been like that, but no longer. She had a child; at long last she had a child. The future was bright.
    The journey upcountry to the north-east was a long and tiring one, and not for the first time Harriet wished Theobald would put aside his aversion to automobiles. His farm manager and several of their friends and acquaintances had tried to persuade him that motorized vehicles were the way of the future, but her husband was stubborn to the hilt and refused to have anything to do with what he called ‘mechanical monsters’. Bernice had her own car – the latest model of the Austin