A Fallen Woman
Nancy Carson
An unforgettable saga, full of romance, shocking secrets and page-turning scandal . . .In the Black Country a scandal is set to hit the town … but can Aurelia Sampson survive?All seems well in the Black Country, Aurelia having sacrificed her own happiness for her newly found half-sister’s future after returning from a separation to her husband’s bleak and unhappy house. That is until Benjamin discovers that Aurelia had an affair, and serves her with divorce, demanding custody of his son.Aurelia, once a woman with the world at her feet, suddenly finds herself a fallen woman. As the rumours of her disgrace are discussed in shops and street corners, Aurelia finds herself destitute. But despite her circumstances Aurelia knows she must survive and she’ll do anything it takes to get her son back…Concluding the gripping story begun in A Country Girl, don’t miss this unforgettable new saga.
A Fallen Woman
Nancy Carson
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Published by AVON
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2018
Copyright © Nancy Carson 2018
Cover design © Debbie Clement Design 2018
Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com)
Nancy Carson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9780008134884
Version: 2017-01-09
‘There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments – there are only consequences.’
Robert Green Ingersoll
1833–1899
Table of Contents
Cover (#u8a862de3-0003-5978-b999-e0761c6398a0)
Title Page (#u5e9a6db1-ef9d-5fc0-a5ac-704442a6aadd)
Copyright (#ua0858bba-97b1-57ef-b270-5821423415f3)
Epigraph (#ucdb5a843-f94c-55c3-830d-37b061b8cc8b)
Dedication (#uf0b5838b-7d85-569a-a4ee-ac7a57f9ae5d)
Chapter 1 (#u05c66821-ea3f-5473-a5c7-a0abc2485524)
Chapter 2 (#u1d332fde-8542-5dc6-9036-568f77081540)
Chapter 3 (#u6de16e63-9474-5069-a64a-bf608a58d48a)
Chapter 4 (#u03fda400-72f3-5351-8c41-8d66db046ff0)
Chapter 5 (#u9581305f-675b-581b-9f7d-bbd9ff89ce0d)
Chapter 6 (#u37fd00d9-1844-58d5-bb44-eafd2d4fdf50)
Chapter 7 (#u14dfb8e2-8135-5dfa-a8c0-1146a6e81333)
Chapter 8 (#uc4667c6d-f3b8-5c4c-8172-507c8c636684)
Chapter 9 (#u0df32928-52c4-5bb5-b7ce-2f60f8733830)
Chapter 10 (#u6dc4adc4-2a81-5020-b2c6-4ef5898f602b)
Chapter 11 (#u3cc13304-23a5-5f7f-a2a4-66da985c3c47)
Chapter 12 (#uf7849bd3-680e-50b9-839f-05bebed540e7)
Chapter 13 (#u91a69d1f-4ee7-5fb8-9dfc-5088d8ea2179)
Chapter 14 (#u6239cab9-e131-5015-ba15-e7f6120d8885)
Chapter 15 (#u3699dd33-c557-5d0d-aeaf-a233335c593d)
Chapter 16 (#u6c0b8004-003d-5a1b-8ef2-c9ab63b0c842)
Chapter 17 (#ue2168419-6ccd-562d-b97b-ea00291be4a8)
Chapter 18 (#ub324bc71-634d-5248-a156-dc02dbfa5797)
Chapter 19 (#ue1809096-85f2-51ba-959f-9bed5f3ff80f)
Chapter 20 (#u979387cb-1b30-5e62-bbf8-71f2e8e980d7)
Chapter 21 (#u82de8d6a-1475-59e0-b398-048aaed878de)
Chapter 22 (#u70ceba3c-4d96-5362-9603-a4fa9fbd88da)
Chapter 23 (#ubc6e11ca-507f-5626-a135-36a3ab66fcd9)
Chapter 24 (#u7e433503-922a-5980-b308-7c562d46133a)
Chapter 25 (#u12409437-540a-5872-9538-06c823d02bef)
Chapter 26 (#u562e554c-d9b7-54cb-bc40-04f780e52f05)
Chapter 27 (#u1eeef1a5-ecf6-5c51-937d-9f2113045dd8)
Chapter 28 (#u30577f52-717d-58e5-95af-b4e7553784b9)
Chapter 29 (#u089cbd7c-7c00-5044-b596-a0c999e75d33)
Chapter 30 (#u223c016a-1d66-5b34-ab67-4cdd30bf1ca0)
Chapter 31 (#u148fb659-f8a6-551e-a8e9-5e7bf7a65690)
Chapter 32 (#ubba35791-e298-52c2-a8f5-473b3ebf5839)
Chapter 33 (#ua12b13f5-ce32-5d25-be59-f2f05f2ece3a)
Chapter 34 (#u47d85a19-38cc-52ed-9716-973c066da8a4)
Chapter 35 (#u62ce4639-0eaa-57ca-89d6-d6bde02dcdca)
Chapter 36 (#uec34863a-c050-5c4e-ad8f-e3f380647024)
Chapter 37 (#ua3194f00-3ec4-51f4-b951-0906892d421c)
Chapter 38 (#u57033cab-f8ea-5e4b-ac3f-329a7f83c82d)
Chapter 39 (#u47405fb0-0f84-5925-9d63-9035bba05e09)
About the Author (#u4ff24a66-e10b-5a6e-9f72-94d255491b81)
By the Same Author: (#u698de5fe-c6d4-5dbc-b693-5051597dfc4d)
Keep Reading… (#ub52a1e33-9749-5091-a9cc-d32cbda1b006)
About the Publisher (#u11339bcd-8c7f-540a-b5a6-d0aa6bccecd2)
For the people of the Black Country, past and
present, who have always inspired me with their
warmth, their humour, their can-do positivity, and
their collective achievements.
Chapter 1 (#u2d0cfbca-c6b2-5d2d-876a-e33d29f7eaba)
1892
Aurelia Sampson awoke early. The dream she reluctantly left behind had been delicious, yet disturbing. It had been about him. She had met him clandestinely, as she had in wakefulness. Adulterously, she had shared a strange bed with him that over time would become familiar – in a room lit only by a flickering coal fire, in a second-rate hotel – exactly as she had in wakefulness. The astonishing realism of the dream provided a sense of contentment and she had not wanted it to end, but when she awoke, the cruelty of truth brutally shattered that transient happiness.
With her slender fingers she rubbed tears that welled unbidden in her eyes, allowing herself both the luxury and the heartbreak of thinking about him for a few more precious moments. She stretched languidly before slipping out of bed. As she stood up and eased her feet into her dainty slippers, she shook out her long dark hair, running her fingers through its sleep-entangled strands. She moved to one of the windows, parted the curtains and opened the sash. The warm summer breeze seemed to whisper secrets through the elm trees, which cast crisp, slanting shadows across the lawn and the curving gravel drive.
Aurelia turned, and in the cheval glass that faced her from the opposite side of the room she caught a full-length glimpse of herself. The sunlight streaming in from behind outlined her slenderness through her nightgown of thin white cotton, and rimmed her hair like a halo; yet no saintliness did she see in that reflection. Her face was in shadow, so she moved forward and studied her features more intently. Her eyes were intensely blue, but still wet with her tears. Her lips were full and, according to him, delightfully kissable. But he was not there to kiss her. Those lips had not enjoyed the intimacy of loving caresses for many long months, and she sorely missed the intimacy.
Although she was lonely, she appreciated the sensation of sleeping alone in this, her bedroom. There was a time when she would never have expected to leave the marital bed, but events had ultimately dictated it. It was now her private domain, her own fortress. Within its confines she could shut out the rest of this cold and cheerless house, which she shared with her cold and cheerless husband. She no longer felt any part of it, nor of him. Within this fortress she savoured her privacy; it protected her. It protected her especially from any unwelcome invasions from her husband. It safeguarded her things; those on the washstand, her potions, lotions and brushes on the dressing table, her chemise draped over a chair, other flimsy essentials lying on the ottoman.
This fortress was spacious, but dauntingly, hideously furnished. It occupied a corner of the first storey and in each outward-facing wall was a window, curtained with ancient pink and blue draperies that had faded long ago. One window overlooked the front garden and the gravel drive twisting through it, which led to the main road connecting Brierley Hill with Dudley. Despite being set well back from the highway you could still hear the clatter and huffing of steam trams, and the rattle of carts’ wheels as they trundled by.
Aurelia’s late father-in-law had built Holly Hall House, that mausoleum in which she lived so unhappily and so alone, except for the quiet and loving companionship of her young children. Through her husband’s lack of will to render it more modern it remained defiantly a shrine to the old man, a mix of the fussy ornateness of French Empire and the sombre bulkiness of 1860s English. Rich swags and wall coverings with swirling arabesques vied for irrelevance with oil paintings of noble stags set amid backdrops of Scottish hills and lochs. These dubious, incompatible niceties, these manifestations of questionable taste, these affectations of wealth, were not Aurelia’s cup of tea, but her attempts at moderating and modernising such long-established extravagances had hitherto proved fruitless.
Aurelia was twenty-four years old and, from the moment of her marriage at nineteen, her destiny was fixed; the pattern of her life was irreversible and fated to be miserable. Never had she felt that she belonged in this house. Always she felt she was just a trophy, destined before long to become a superfluous, unheeded trophy at that, a mere visitor who had no sway and no influence. For this house and everything in it belonged to her husband Benjamin by right of inheritance. It would never change, never be allowed to change, not because everything in it was sacrosanct but because Benjamin had no interest in changing it. They had discussed her ideas and he had dismissed them; why change what was not necessary to change?
Nevertheless, while the house, its material contents and even Aurelia, belonged to Benjamin, Aurelia’s heart did not.
It had long been her intention to generally brighten up the ambience of her private fortress, to change the décor, the wallpaper, the curtains, the eiderdown – when circumstances might permit. Within its four walls a small bookshelf spanned a writing bureau. A book, with a bookmark peeping out, lay on a bedside table alongside a photograph of her late mother. Poor mother, she thought fleetingly as she glimpsed it. Significantly, no photograph of her father was in evidence.
Her wardrobe door was ajar. She reached inside for her dressing gown, duly wrapped it around her and tied the cord at her waist. Another day to face, she thought, one more day destined to be as dismal as any other, with more miserable, empty hours, save for the time she would spend with her children.
She opened her bedroom door and stepped silently onto the landing. With a stealth acquired only by a fervent desire not to waken her husband Benjamin, she stole past his bedroom, supremely careful not to make a sound and thus have to face his long-faced indifference earlier than need be.
Noiselessly she pushed open the door to another bedroom across the landing. In that room her small son Benjie (she preferred to call him Benjie and not Benjamin, so as to differentiate him from her husband) was sleeping the exquisite soft sleep of childhood. She peered lovingly at his dishevelled head, and was moved almost to weeping again, but this time by the look of absolute innocence in the demeanour of his repose. The child’s blissful ignorance of the traumas of living she would preserve for as long as possible – especially the bewildering lives of her and her husband. She pondered how he would turn out when he grew up. Would he be wayward, irresponsible, at times charming, often detached, ruthless in marriage, inept in business, like Benjamin? Well, not if she could help it.
It was early, and little Benjie was sure to be asleep in his bed for some time yet. So she crept along the landing to where Christina, seven months old, lay in her cot, in a room which adjoined Joyce’s, the nanny. The baby roused when Aurelia entered, as if instinctively sensing her mother’s presence. Aurelia gently let down the side of the cot and picked up Christina, who was rubbing her eyes now. She gently clasped the child against her breast, cooing soft sounds of comfort, hoping not to rouse Joyce, for the connecting door was ajar.
‘Let’s go down and see if Jane has lit the fires and put some water to boil,’ she whispered, ‘and we can change your napkin.’ She carried the baby onto the landing and down the sweeping staircase of that large and soulless house.
Jane was the middle-aged maid, devoid of youthfulness and prettiness, round of face and belly, and flat of foot. Life had rendered her utterly certain of a few things, but she remained content in her ignorance of everything else. However, in the short time that she had been employed at Holly Hall House, she had become an expert on the souls of its inhabitants. She was proving to be a conscientious and reliable servant and Aurelia respected her for it. Pretty girls were no longer considered for domestic service; experience had taught Aurelia that pretty girls, who could open doors with smiles and beguiling glances, were far too dangerous and fair game for your husband.
‘Mornin’, ma’am,’ Jane greeted when she saw Aurelia. ‘I’m just brewing some tea. It’ll be ready in a trice.’
‘Thank you, Jane. I’ll be in the morning room with Christina.’
‘Very good, ma’am. Oh, and the post’s arrived already. It’s on the bureau in the hallway.’
Aurelia smiled her thanks at receipt of this trivial information and casually strolled to the hallway, still holding the child. To the ticking of the grandfather clock that had witnessed so many of her domestic and emotional crises, she sorted through half a dozen envelopes. All were addressed to either Benjamin Sampson, Esq., or his company, the Sampson Fender and Bedstead Works.
* * *
Not so two days earlier. Two days earlier, a card within an envelope arrived, addressed to Mr and Mrs B Sampson. Since her own name was upon it, Aurelia felt justified in opening it. It was an invitation to a wedding, and read: ‘Mr and Mrs Eli Meese request the pleasure of the company of Mr and Mrs Benjamin Sampson at the wedding of their daughter Harriet to Mr Clarence Froggatt, on Sunday 4th September at 2.00 p.m. at St Michael’s Church, Brierley Hill, and afterwards at the Bell Hotel assembly rooms.’
Her immediate reaction was surprise, even though she was aware that Clarence and Harriet were stepping out. ‘So, he’s marrying her,’ she uttered to herself, but not without feeling an acute pang of envy for Harriet Meese.
* * *
Chapter 2 (#u2d0cfbca-c6b2-5d2d-876a-e33d29f7eaba)
One afternoon in the sweltering heat of August, Benjamin Sampson lay drained after a round of enthusiastic lovemaking. But for a sheen of perspiration and a pearl necklace, Maude Atkins lay naked beside him. He ran his fingers over her belly, thankful she had regained her figure so perfectly after giving birth to his child ten months ago. Not only did he still lust for Maude, but he always felt more at ease with her than with his wife Aurelia. She stimulated his sexual appetite in a way Aurelia had failed to do since the novelty had worn off after the first few weeks of their marriage. Maude was an extramarital treat, compliant and spirited. In the bedroom she was a whole heap of fun and enthusiasm (enthusiasm that boosted his ego, for it convinced him that his sexual prowess must be unsurpassed). She was less complicated too, blessed with a forthrightness, as well as a perception of life’s realities, which often troubled him. But he always knew where he stood with Maude, and relied on her judgement more than he realised.
With a singular lack of feminine guile, Maude had persuaded him to provide a house for her and her illegitimate child. It was to her ultimate benefit, of course, but he was not slow to realise there was some benefit for him as well in the arrangement; it served not only as a home for this second, unofficial family, but also as a secret and readily available love nest where he could slake his sexual thirst. The better side of his nature – his conscience – was also in some measure eased, because convention ruled that he could only ever be a part-time companion for her, stuck as he was in an unsatisfactory marriage with Aurelia.
Maude’s vision went way beyond this, however; she had more far-reaching aspirations, and her aim was to persuade him to get rid of Aurelia, for she fostered the ambition of being the next Mrs Benjamin Sampson.
‘I’d better go.’ He murmured, and stroked her thigh, savouring its warm, sensual smoothness, before he stretched lethargically.
‘Why don’t you wait till your daughter wakes?’ Maude whispered peevishly. ‘You don’t see enough of her as it is.’
‘How soon before she’s likely to wake?’
She shrugged. ‘Half an hour maybe. She sleeps till about four, as a rule.’
‘No, I’ve got to go. Something cropped up at the works earlier. I’d better see if they’ve sorted it out. I’ll see Louise next time. You know how it is – time and tide…’
With little enthusiasm for leaving, Benjamin swung his legs out of bed and stood up. He grabbed his long johns from the bedrail and pulled them on, then his vest, then his shirt, which he buttoned up and tucked into the long johns.
‘Shall you pop back later?’ Maude asked, fingering the pearl necklace – a recent gift from Benjamin.
‘Course, if I get the chance. Failing that, tomorrow.’
She nodded her understanding, reminded that she was just a kept mistress, and that circumstances, maybe even of the marital kind, might prevent his presence.
‘Has your beautiful wife decided what she’s going to wear for that wedding you’re going to?’ There was grudge in her tone. The wedding, which was to Maude irrelevant, was to occupy him and frustratingly keep him from visiting her. If only the day would quickly arrive when she herself was openly regarded as Benjamin’s official companion, instead of his closet mistress.
‘How should I know?’ he answered with a shrug. ‘I imagine she and her dressmaker will have concocted something between them.’
It was in his interests to appear indifferent to his wife’s couture so as not to arouse Maude’s jealousy too much; Maude could be a handful, and might even withhold her favours for a day or two. A mistress was for pleasure and a little tenderness, to spice up one’s otherwise dull life and add a bit of comfort to it, not to be cold, indifferent and a source of irritation or enforced celibacy. He suffered enough celibacy at home.
‘She must cost you a tidy penny in silks,’ Maude remarked pointedly.
He made no reply as he pulled on his trousers and buttoned up the fly.
‘I don’t know how she’s got the nerve,’ she added for good measure, her scorn as edged as a shard of glass.
Benjamin shrugged again and, without meeting her eyes, decided it might behove him to act a little stupid. ‘How do you mean? For going to the dressmaker, or for presenting me with the bill?’ He pulled his braces onto his shoulders.
‘She’s got you for a nincompoop.’
‘Oh, I’m no nincompoop, Maude,’ he declared, irked at her indictment. ‘I’m just biding my time.’ He began attaching his collar.
‘Biding your time, my foot.’ Maude sat up, striving but failing to conceal her own agitation. She turned to adjust the pillows behind her while Benjamin’s eyes lingered on her breasts, full and round, bouncing with tantalising pliability as she twisted her naked torso. ‘Why ever you had her back after she left you I’ll never know.’
‘She was expecting a child.’
‘Yes, her second…But whose child? Not yours.’
‘Oh? Who else’s could it have been?’ He reached for his necktie, also hanging on the bedrail.
Haughtily, Maude shook her mane of mousy hair. Here was the perfect opportunity to really make him see. ‘Benjamin,’ she began, leaning forward and pronouncing his name with charged emotion, ‘in the first place, your beautiful wife left you for another man, and she came back when that man spurned her just as soon as he knew she was carrying his child. Either he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, have anything more to do with her. So she came back to you. It’s the easiest thing in the world for a woman to dupe her husband into believing the child she’s carrying is his. She did that to you, and you fell for it good and proper.’
‘You don’t know it for a fact, Maude,’ he replied defensively. The notion that somebody might have made a cuckold of him he dismissed, for he considered himself too smart to be duped by a mere woman, however much she might be admired and desired by other men. So he tried to convince himself that Aurelia could not have been unfaithful, that it was not in her nature to be unfaithful. Yet he tried to recall the times he might have coupled with her, rare as they were, during the time when she must have conceived.
‘You don’t have to be Sir Isaac Newton to work it out, Benjamin,’ Maude went on. ‘I know what women are capable of, even if you don’t. Whenever you went away on business, she’d be off as well, flying her kite somewhere with somebody else. Some nights she didn’t even come back home.’
‘Hearsay, Maude. That’s only what Mary, that damned unreliable slut of a maid we used to have, told you. She was a mischievous little bitch with an axe to grind, and the biggest liar in Christendom to boot…’
‘I lived in that house as well, Benjamin, remember. I was nanny to your son, almost from the moment he was born. I knew what was going on.’
He paused, pondering again the strength of the allegations, and the conviction with which Maude delivered them. ‘If Aurelia had been unfaithful I’d have known,’ he said with dwindling certainty. ‘She’s a fine-looking young woman, so it ain’t surprising men fancy her, but who on earth could she have been carrying on with?’
‘I would have thought that obvious.’
‘Well, it ain’t obvious to me. Pray, enlighten me.’
‘Clarence Froggatt, who else? That nincompoop whose wedding you’re going to…She was engaged to him once, you told me so yourself…’
‘You think she was seeing Clarence Froggatt behind my back?’
‘Yes, for ages.’
‘Never.’
‘Oh, I’m sure of it.’
Benjamin pondered the suggestion a second or two more. ‘But it doesn’t add up,’ he said eventually. ‘He would hardly be marrying that girl Harriet Meese. I mean to say, compared to Aurelia she’s a gargoyle. God must’ve given her the plainest face he could find, and then hit it with a shovel. So why would he settle for a plain Jane if he could have a pretty one? It ain’t in a man’s nature. Aurelia is a good-looking young woman, even you have to admit that.’
‘But maybe he realised he could never have Aurelia – she being already married to you…Anyway, as far as her looks are concerned, beauty is only skin deep,’ Maude added with another outpouring of scorn, for she could never admit that Aurelia was beautiful.
‘But your beauty goes deeper, eh, Maude?’ He winked at her and grinned, in an effort to remove the intensity, which was becoming rampant in the discussion.
‘Oh, go on with you.’ Maude allowed herself a smile; there really was no doubt whom he preferred bedding, and the knowledge induced a renewed warm glow. She was reassured that at least she had this hold over him, this delectable sexual allure. He kept coming back for more. He loved it, and so did she. ‘So I might see you later, then?’
He picked up his jacket, went over to her and kissed her. ‘I reckon,’ he grinned, and tiptoed down the narrow, twisting staircase.
* * *
Benjamin Augustus Sampson, twenty-seven years old by this time, was the sole issue of the late Benjamin Prentiss Sampson, and thus the sole beneficiary to the old man’s estate. Part of that inheritance was the once thriving Sampson Fender and Bedstead Works, which the son Benjamin had contrived to expand, albeit unprofitably, into the new and challenging world of bicycle manufacture. For young Benjamin Augustus lacked the acumen, commitment, integrity and foresight of his father, who, from excruciatingly humble beginnings, had become a self-made man.
Young Benjamin, however, was not particularly interested in the manufacture of anything. The factory existed merely as a tap to provide a continuous but diminishing supply of money; money that he took for granted and spent unwisely. He failed to understand the mysteries and mechanics of how it was generated, or indeed why it should dwindle. It was a tap that dripped uncontrolled, always lowering the level of the reservoir that had been its working capital.
As an only child Benjamin had wanted for nothing, and in adulthood expected everything. He understood little about, and appreciated less, what his father had achieved, or how he had achieved it. Nor had he ever come close to appreciating the astonishing setbacks his father had overcome to be so successful.
For the record, the old man had been one of three illegitimate children, born in 1831 and raised in the area aptly known as Lye Waste, east of Stourbridge. He knew of nothing other than the absolute squalor he was born into, but from the age of three he had learned from his unmarried parents how to make nails. When his mother and father died of consumption, he and his two sisters ended up in the care of the workhouse. While they were being unceremoniously carted thence, he looked about him and noticed the way other people lived; he saw fine houses, neatly tended gardens, and other children at play. This indelible memory of a superior world was the stimulus the intelligent Benjamin Prentiss Sampson needed to better himself.
His two sisters died of consumption in the tender care of the workhouse, but Benjamin contrived to escape it, and he thrived. He saved what money he earned and, in 1856, had enough to start his own small business making fenders and hearth ware. In 1862, having shed the shackles of poverty and gained the respect of the business classes, he met and married a respectable girl and found time to father a son, Benjamin Augustus.
Old Benjamin gladly paid for the lad’s schooling, another privilege that money could buy, and nurtured high hopes for him. Education ensured that the lad spoke more correctly than the father, distancing him from the likes of the workhouse inmates and his employed workers. Ultimately, there was something about the son that the father admired and even envied; his demeanour, his confidence, the undeniable charm of which he was capable. If expensive schooling had taught him little else, it taught him the benefits of fine manners – when, how and whom to beguile; social tools which make it easier to get what you want.
When he left school he joined the prosperous Sampson firm to learn the business. Young Benjamin, however, could muster enthusiasm for little except cricket, his first love. If he could have spent his life playing cricket he would have happily done so.
It was cricket that eventually brought Aurelia Osborne to his attention. She was the older of two daughters of Murdoch Osborne, a well-known local butcher, womaniser, and a key member of the local Amateur Dramatics. For all his dubious reputation, Murdoch had nobly insisted his daughters received a proper education. It had endowed Aurelia with confidence, cordiality, grace, and an eloquence that surpassed Benjamin’s; so the charmer was also charmed.
Because of her innate politeness when they first met, she seemed amenable to his attentions, even flattered, willing to talk about him. He was encouraged. Eventually, after several weeks of insistent love notes, posies of flowers and packages of delicious chocolates swathed in ribbons, she agreed to meet him – alone. A few more short weeks saw the departure of Clarence Froggatt from her life. Soon after, Aurelia’s mother passed away, having lived a life of abject disillusionment and unhappiness, due to the reckless and feckless extramarital dalliances of her husband, Murdoch, which included an affair with her mother’s own sister.
Hence, Aurelia despised her father.
The word ‘marriage’ soon entered Benjamin and Aurelia’s vocabularies. He was desperate to get Aurelia into his bed, and she was desperate to quit her father’s dominion. So they swiftly arranged a wedding. Every day and every night thereafter would be a honeymoon – or so they both envisaged.
Within a few months it was obvious the marriage was not working. Aurelia fell pregnant, however. Her expanding belly, subsequent lack of interest in the normal bedtime activities of young couples and confinement disadvantaged him for too long. The introduction of a pert young nanny into the household was a tempting distraction. She was not as striking as Aurelia, but was pretty, petite and alluring; in all, a dangerous attraction. And the more dangerous the attraction the more reckless the chase, and, ultimately, the more exhilarating the consummation.
The nanny was a living, breathing young woman who tantalised him with her youthful figure and cheeky smile. He would brush past her, catch the scent of her perfume as it drifted to him, and she would turn her head and smile provocatively with her large expressive eyes, at exactly the same time that he turned to look at her. She recognised his interest and played on it. They schemed to be together and he would engineer any opportunity to visit her bedroom.
Thus, their marital problems had begun, so that by this time in August 1892 – two children later –Benjamin and Aurelia both had cause to regret their marital haste.
* * *
Chapter 3 (#u2d0cfbca-c6b2-5d2d-876a-e33d29f7eaba)
Brierley Hill’s High Street was a stretched-out thoroughfare, the busy main highway that carried the horse-drawn traffic and steam tramcars between the larger towns of Dudley and Stourbridge. The road was lined on either side with black, cast iron gas street lamps, public houses and terraces of shops with doors invitingly open. The spaces over shop windows were bedecked with painted wooden boards and sometimes enamelled metal panels, painted in black or green, with fancy white lettering, informing the passer-by of treats that lay within, or which upright citizen owned the emporium.
One such panel announced the Drapery, Mourning and Mantles Establishment of Eli Meese, Esq. It resembled every other store on High Street, except for the long entry at the side with a floor of criss-crossed blue bricks and a door let into one wall, which was the entrance to the living accommodation. These quarters occupied three further storeys, part of a drab, soot-besmirched, red-brick terrace with flaking green paintwork to the window frames and doors. Within these walls Eli resided with his wife, seven daughters and two servants.
The shop at street level was the target for two disturbingly lovely young women who bore a perceptible resemblance to one another. As they made their way along High Street in the warm sunshine wearing dazzling white summer dresses, not only men, but women too turned to look.
They were half-sisters, sharing the same father, but until fate intervened some year or so earlier, they had not been aware of each other’s existence. Now they were as close as sisters could be, often discussing their secrets and innermost feelings about their respective husbands and the state of their marriages. So it was that Marigold Stokes knew and understood that Aurelia was so desperately unhappy, while she herself was perfectly content with her own lot.
As they opened the door of the shop, a bell tinkled, signalling their entrance, as did the sound of their dainty heels on the dry, unvarnished floorboards. The musty smell of cotton prevailed, and the two young women caught each other’s eye and wrinkled their noses simultaneously. Countless bolts of cloth, the finest that Manchester could produce, and in the very latest colours, patterns and textures, lined the walls and every appropriate flat surface.
Harriet Meese, Eli’s second daughter, unattractive of face but more alluring of figure – and unreservedly pleasant of personality – was on solitary duty behind the counter.
‘Aurelia! Marigold! How nice of you to call.’ She put down the needlework that generally occupied her during quiet moments and got up eagerly from her stool, wearing a smile of pleasure at seeing the two visitors. ‘Is this a social call?’
‘Oh, definitely a social call,’ Aurelia answered with an engaging smile, ‘but with added profit for you, I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m so glad it’s you to serve us, Harriet. We’ve called to choose some stuff for new dresses for a certain very lucky person’s wedding.’ She turned to Marigold for confirmation.
Marigold duly nodded and smiled; she was the less self-assured of the two girls, lacking formal education, and generally took her lead from Aurelia in matters of commerce and couture. Marigold had just celebrated her twenty-first birthday.
‘I hope you mean for my wedding,’ Harriet suggested with a twinkle in her eye.
‘Why? Is there some other we don’t yet know about?’
‘I’m not aware of any.’ She gave a self-conscious laugh. ‘At least, not among my circle of friends.’
‘So what lovely materials do you have in stock?’ Aurelia bubbled; she was out of that house which depressed her so much, and had shed temporarily its burden of oppression for the brief time she was away from it. ‘Time’s running short and we have to get new dresses run up at Mrs Palethorpe’s. We reckoned that if we could decide on some stuff today we could take it directly to her and save time.’
‘I happen to know that Mrs Palethorpe is rather busy, though, Aurelia,’ Harriet remarked apologetically. ‘I’m sure you can guess she’s making mine and all the bridesmaids’ dresses too. They should all be finished by Friday, though. She’s the best dressmaker for miles, so it’s no wonder she’s so busy.’
‘That’s why we want her to make our dresses, Harriet – because she’s the best.’
Harriet smiled her innocently crooked smile. ‘Indeed. So what colours do you fancy?’
‘I thought blue,’ Aurelia answered. ‘Silk or satin. Blue for Marigold too, I think.’ She looked at Marigold for confirmation, for they had tentatively discussed the options earlier.
‘A different blue to Aurelia’s, though,’ Marigold answered in a small, almost apologetic voice. ‘I’d hate folk to think I was copying her.’
‘Blue is a good colour for both of you. It will contrast the lovely dark hair you both have, and bring out the colour of your eyes.’
After Harriet had shown them materials in an abundance of blues, but with the girls prevaricating, she had a flash of inspiration. As a slave to exclusivity, she had been withholding a bolt of material for her own use first, but she did not want to lose the custom of these girls just for the vain fancy of being the first woman to be seen in this beautiful new fabric. Therefore, she decided to offer it.
‘I’ve just remembered…we have a lovely iris-coloured silk, new in…’ Harriet swept out of the door at the rear and into the storeroom, returning with a rustle of skirts and the said bolt of silk, which she dropped on the counter. At sight of it, Aurelia’s eyes lit up.
‘Oh, I say, I do like that.’ She ran her fingers sensually over its smooth surface. ‘What do you think, Marigold?’
‘It’d suit you down to the ground and no two ways, Aurelia.’
Aurelia mused over this latest offering but said, ‘Maybe you should have this stuff, Marigold.’
‘No, you must have it if you like it,’ Marigold responded unselfishly. ‘I think I fancy something paler anyway.’
‘Then how about that pastel blue satin?’ Harriet suggested, pointing towards a particular roll of cloth they had both considered suitable. ‘It’s very good quality, and I’m sure Algie would admire you greatly in that.’
Marigold smiled to herself at the prospect as Harriet dutifully extracted the bolt from the pile. She tried to picture it made up into a suitable dress to wear at a late summer wedding. ‘Yes, I reckon it’ll do nicely,’ she agreed, not wishing to prolong the exercise of choosing.
‘How is Clarence?’ Aurelia enquired, looking up and butting in conversationally. ‘Is he getting nervous as the big day approaches?’
‘A little more than I am, I do believe,’ Harriet replied, unravelling the roll further so as to lay and measure a length of the pastel blue satin across the well-worn counter. ‘Mind you, he’s had lots to take his mind off it, getting our house ready.’
‘So you’re not going to live with his father and mother?’
‘Perish the thought,’ the bride-to-be answered, rolling her eyes. ‘At that surgery? Among all those poor sick folks that continually turn up for evil-smelling potions?’
The two customers were laughing at Harriet’s derision when they heard a commotion of tin buckets clanging together from the yard at the rear of the shop; the maid was evidently on a mission of sorts from the living quarters upstairs. Eventually, the rear door of the shop opened and Priss, Harriet’s older sister, appeared.
‘Oh, I thought I’d seen you two heading this way when I looked out of our front room window upstairs,’ she said, making no reference to the noise outside for fear of drawing unnecessary attention to the minor calamity in the household’s censored sanitation arrangements. ‘How are you both?’
‘We’re well, thank you,’ Aurelia said pertly. ‘We’re after stuff for dresses for the wedding. We were just talking about the bridegroom.’
‘Clarence? Oh, I suspect poor Clarence is a little daunted by it all, Aurelia,’ Priss suggested. ‘I feel quite sorry for him. After all, not only will he come out of it with a mother-in-law, but six sisters-in-law as well. I think the awful truth is just dawning on him.’
‘I rather think you’re wasting your sympathy there, dear sister,’ Harriet pronounced.
‘Me? I doubt it. The poor chap won’t stand a chance.’
‘As long as he takes notice only of me, and not the aforementioned mother-in-law and six sisters-in-law, he’ll pass muster.’
‘Naturally,’ Priss said in a confiding manner, addressing the two pretty customers, ‘she’ll order the poor chap about something scandalous, and expect him to obey all her bidding.’
‘Which will only be to his benefit,’ Harriet replied. ‘Anyway, I shall be subtle about it, and do it in such a way as he always thinks everything is his idea.’
‘Which makes you too clever by half.’
‘Well, at least I’ve been clever enough to bag myself a husband.’
‘You make it sound as if he’s a pheasant that you’ve shot down.’
‘Oh, but that’s exactly what I have done, our Priss – with Cupid’s arrows.’
Aurelia and Marigold chuckled at their good-natured banter, and even Priss allowed herself one of her lop-sided smiles.
‘Ain’t you a-courting yet, Priss,’ Marigold enquired.
Priss opened her mouth to speak, but Harriet beat her to it. ‘Oh, she’s had her eye on the curate for too long now to give up hope of ever bagging him. She’s getting rather set in her ways as well. It’s either the curate or eternal spinsterdom, but I fancy it’ll be the latter, eh, Priss?’
‘Either way it could amount to the same thing in effect,’ Priss admitted with a sigh. ‘I have personal qualms that a curate might entertain notions of celibacy.’
‘Celibacy?’ Marigold queried with a mystified look at Aurelia for an explanation of the word’s meaning.
‘No hanky-panky in bed.’
Marigold rolled her eyes in disbelief. Such a notion was alien to her. ‘What, and miss out on all the fun?’ said she earnestly. ‘You don’t want none of that celibacy, Priss.’
‘Thank you, Marigold,’ Harriet remarked with a twinkle in her eye, ‘for confirming that sort of thing is fun.’
‘Well, it is and no two ways,’ she affirmed, then turned to Priss. ‘Ain’t there nobody else you fancy, Priss, who might be less inclined to this celibacy nonsense?’
‘She once had a crush on the apothecary, Mr Tapper, didn’t you, dear?’ Harriet answered for her with a shrug. ‘But nothing came of that either.’
‘There’ll be somebody waiting just around the corner, you’ll see,’ Marigold suggested with evident sympathy.
‘Oh, tell me which corner and I’ll skip over there at once.’
They all laughed.
‘Anyway…this pastel blue satin,’ Marigold remarked, reverting to the task in hand. ‘How much d’you reckon I’ll need, Harriet?’
Harriet looked Marigold up and down. ‘Not that much, you’re so outrageously slender. Shall you want new underskirts as well?’
‘Oh yes,’ Aurelia urged with a nudge. ‘Taffeta. I’m sure Algie can afford it.’
‘Taffeta?’
‘Dear me, yes. The whispering sound it makes when you walk has such an effect on men.’
All the girls giggled conspiratorially.
‘As long as it has the same effect on Algie,’ Marigold remarked.
‘Perhaps you should wear taffeta underskirts to encourage the curate, our Priss,’ remarked Harriet.
‘I suppose it’s worth a try,’ Priss agreed.
Harriet unrolled more of the material across the counter. She measured the length she was to cut off against the brass yard-measure fastened along its edge, and began to wield her scissors.
‘So, Aurelia, how is Benjamin? I haven’t seen him since that cricket match he and Clarence played in, in July.’
‘Oh, please don’t bring Benjamin up in conversation,’ Aurelia remarked, with genuine indifference. ‘I’ve come out of the house to forget him, and I’d really rather not be reminded of him while I’m out.’
The girls, glancing from one to the other, smiled sympathetically, Harriet and Priss half aware of the truth of it.
‘D’you see what you have to look forward to, our Harriet?’ Priss remarked. ‘I suppose you’ll end up completely apathetic towards your husband as well.’
‘At least I shall have a husband to be apathetic towards.’
Priss turned to the other two and rolled her eyes. ‘Isn’t our Harriet a goose? I shall be so glad when the school holidays are over – I get less backchat from my pupils than I do from her.’
‘Oh, no, let the school holidays go on forever,’ Aurelia proclaimed. ‘You two are a regular double act, and we find you most entertaining, don’t we, Marigold?’
‘Better than a Punch and Judy show any day of the week.’
* * *
The bell of the shop doorway pinged pleasantly again as Marigold and Aurelia stepped outside into the warm sunshine. Carrying their respective parcels of silk, satin and taffeta, they made their way along Brierley Hill’s main street, towards the home of Mrs Palethorpe.
‘I feel so blessed, you know,’ Marigold confided. ‘When I was on the narrowboats my father could never have afforded to buy me a satin dress and have it made up by my own seamstress.’
‘I suppose it makes you appreciate it all the more,’ Aurelia acknowledged.
‘No two ways. I still can’t believe me luck. When I think back to when I had our Rose and I still didn’t know what had happened to Algie, and then I look at what I’ve got now – married to him and going to the dressmaker’s to be measured for a lovely new dress…Yet it’s something I s’pose you’ve always been used to, Aurelia?’
A brewery dray delivering barrels of ale paused at the cobbled entrance of the Turk’s Head public house which also served as tramcar waiting rooms. Marigold and Aurelia tarried to let it pass, and its iron-tyred wheels clattered over the cobbles as the driver tipped his cap in acknowledgement.
‘Whether I’m used to it or not, Marigold, you have no idea how much I envy you,’ Aurelia said earnestly. ‘You’re happily wedded to Algie, and you’d be happy even if he was a pauper. That louse I’m married to has had money all his life, and I confess, he’s never begrudged me new dresses and such. But I’m far from happy – far from happy. He’s not happy either – with me, I mean. So you see, Marigold, money alone doesn’t make you happy. We exist in a loveless marriage, Benjamin and me, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.’
‘Oh, Aurelia, I do wish there was something I could do to help,’ Marigold stated fervently. ‘But at least you’ve got your children.’
‘And I dote on them. They’re the world to me. But my husband can’t hold a candle to yours. Cherish Algie, Marigold, because he’s worth it.’
‘Oh, Aurelia, I do wish there was something I could do for you,’ she repeated. ‘I hate to think of you being so unhappy. Ain’t there no chance of you ever again rekindling the love you had for one another before?’
‘Spare me the revolting thought. I couldn’t bear him to touch me, and that’ll never change. That’s why we sleep in separate rooms.’
‘I know, Aurelia, and I’m that sorry.’
‘We’ve not slept together since well before Christina was born. Nor would I allow him to touch me once I knew I was carrying her.’
‘Oh, Aurelia. I don’t think I could live like that; not sleeping with my husband, no hanky-panky in bed. I love the hanky-panky.’
‘Lucky you. Algie’s a different kettle of fish, though, isn’t he? He strikes me as being loving, attentive, hard-working…He doesn’t have a mistress, either, does he, like Benjamin does?’
‘I’d kill him…and her…’
Aurelia smiled affectionately. ‘I imagine it’s something you’ll never have to worry about, Marigold. Anyway, Maude Atkins is welcome to Benjamin. As long as she keeps him away from my bed.’
A tramcar thundered along beside them, the clatter and hiss of its steam engine making conversation momentarily impossible. They crossed the cobbled street, lifting their skirts to prevent the hems skimming the dust and dried slurry, and then turned into a descending hill lined on either side with terraced houses. One was the home of Mrs Palethorpe, the dressmaker.
‘You know, Aurelia,’ Marigold said, as a thought suddenly struck her. ‘Are you unhappy for the same reason as Benjamin?’
‘I’m not sure what you mean.’
‘What I mean is…maybe he’s unhappy because he’s in love with another woman – this Maude Atkins – so are you unhappy because you are in love with another man, and can’t have him? You’ve never said as much.’
Aurelia felt herself blushing. However, she had no intention of confiding such information to Marigold, close as they were. Marigold had accurately assessed the situation, as she so often did; she might have had little or no education, but astute perception and common sense abounded.
Alerted by the lack of a response, Marigold looked at her half-sister. ‘You’ve gone red, our Aurelia…So there is somebody, eh?…Are you going to tell me who it is?’
‘Enough, Marigold,’ she chided good-naturedly and smiled as she knocked, still red-faced, on Mrs Palethorpe’s door. ‘Mrs Palethorpe will turn us away if she hears such talk.’
* * *
By the time Aurelia arrived home it was nearly five o’clock. Her first task was to check with Joyce Till, the nanny, that little Benjie and Christina were content. Benjie came running to her in the hallway and she scooped him up in her arms and hugged him.
‘I hope you’ve been a good boy for nanny while I’ve been out,’ she whispered fondly.
The child nodded his solemn avowal.
‘He’s been very good, ma’am,’ Joyce answered for the child.
‘Where’s Christina?’ Aurelia enquired.
‘Asleep, ma’am. I thought she seemed rather tired today, so I was inclined to let her sleep a while longer before she has her tea.’
Aurelia nodded. ‘So long as she sleeps tonight. Is she ailing, d’you think?’
‘Oh, not ailing, ma’am. Just tired, I believe.’
‘I’ll go upstairs and change. Then I’ll wake her.’
In the privacy of her fortress Aurelia closed the door quietly. It did her a world of good to get out of the house whenever she could. It did her good to see the people outside of it with whom she could communicate. She sat down on the stool at her dressing table and looked at herself in the mirror. This time she was not disappointed with what she saw; she knew herself to be a good-looking woman and she valued her looks, for good looks were an asset when used effectively. She was beginning to perceive her good looks as a curse, however, having propelled her into this ill-fated marriage, this tawdry existence. She sighed heavily. Her beauty made her attractive to men; her beauty had first attracted Benjamin, but these days he was more interested in their pretty ex-nanny. Her beauty had tempted Clarence Froggatt, but he was about to marry Harriet Meese, who was patently not outwardly beautiful. So where had this enviable beauty got her? Her beauty had attracted the man she now loved so passionately, but she did not have him either.
* * *
Chapter 4 (#u2d0cfbca-c6b2-5d2d-876a-e33d29f7eaba)
On a warm sunny day that August in 1892, Marigold was pulling weeds from a flowerbed in the front garden of Badger House, the gentleman’s residence in Kingswinford that had only recently become their home. Algie swerved his bicycle expertly through the gate and onto the yielding gravel of the driveway that led to the unused stable at the rear. He dismounted, and Marigold rose up from her knees, wiped her hands on her apron and hurried towards him, all her love in her welcoming smile.
‘I’m glad you’re back early, Algie.’
He leaned the bike against the wall under a window of the house, put his hand to her slim waist, gave her a broad smile and a peck on the cheek. He saw his child’s bassinet standing in the lengthening shade of the laburnum, and took Marigold’s hand. ‘How long’s she been asleep? Is she due to wake soon?’
‘I ought to wake her now, Algie, else she won’t sleep when it’s her bedtime.’
He stood looking at his daughter then bent down and stroked the smooth skin of the baby’s face, disturbing her. She grimaced and opened her blue eyes wide, bewildered for a second. A smile appeared as soon as she saw her father’s benign countenance peering down at her. He lifted her carefully from the bassinet and held her to him. ‘Hello, little poppet,’ he murmured. Rose rubbed her eyes and immediately began sucking her thumb as she appraised the world from over his shoulder.
‘Daddy’s home,’ Marigold said softly, standing before them both. ‘Come to see his little girl.’
‘Where’s Mother?’ he enquired.
‘Cooking your dinner. She would insist, Algie…’ Marigold sounded apologetic.
‘Shall we go inside then, and say hello to Grandma?’ he whispered to Rose, still absorbed with her thumb.
Walking slowly across the lawn towards the front door Algie stopped. He looked at Marigold and nodded towards his bicycle. ‘That’s the new model we’ve been working on. What d’you think?’
‘It don’t look no different to the last,’ she answered with the honesty of a woman totally unversed in the mysteries of bicycle design.
‘Oh, it is different. Different shaped handlebar, different mudguards, frame. And it’s a good four pounds lighter. Benjamin Sampson will have a fit when he sees it, ’specially when he knows we’ll be putting a lamp on the front for free. We can get the Lucas Planet lamp for less than three bob apiece. We’ll build it into the price of the bike, o’ course…Let’s go and say hello to Grandma, eh?’
Grandma was indeed cooking dinner in the vast kitchen with its huge range, and the smell of mutton roasting made Algie feel hungry.
‘You’re back early,’ Clara Osborne, Algie’s mother, declared.
‘Aye, early and hungry,’ he replied. ‘It smells good. But you ought to be outside enjoying the sunshine, not stuck in here cooking.’
‘Well, I thought it would give Marigold a chance to get out into the garden and the sunshine. It’ll do her no harm.’
‘Maybe we should get a couple of servants,’ he suggested. ‘Somebody who can cook. We can afford it now.’
‘I’ll have no truck with servants, our Algie,’ replied Clara predictably. ‘I can cope with a bit of cooking.’
‘Yes, and what about the washing, the ironing, the cleaning, and looking after our Rose here? This is a big house, Mother. You and Marigold need help to run it.’
‘Whether or no, I wouldn’t thank you for servants. I didn’t like the last lot what was here.’
Algie knew what she meant. ‘The last lot’ belonged to another life, another time, for Algie and his mother had lived in this house before, and left it, driven out by the shenanigans of her late second husband. Since then it had become part of his unwanted inheritance. For many months there had been no buyer, so Clara deemed it a fitting place for Algie and his new wife and child to inhabit, so they moved back in. After all, the family was likely to expand. Furthermore, it occupied a fine spot in the old parish of Kingswinford, far enough away from the industrial miasma that putrefied the Black Country…It was also ready furnished. Algie, however, would not hear of moving there unless his widowed mother accompanied them.
Algernon Stokes, known to all as Algie, was twenty-four. His upbringing had been conscientiously accomplished by a strict yet fair father’s influence, endorsed and abetted by his mother. Prior to marriage, his view of the world had become tainted by its pretence and callousness. Life had already doled out its share of disappointments, including the ordeal of his father’s sudden death. Marriage to Marigold had been his saviour, however, and he looked forward to all that it offered. He was now largely content, and he had been enterprising enough to start his own business.
‘I agree with your mother, Algie,’ Marigold chimed in, going over to the range to shift a pan of cabbage that was boiling over and sizzling on the great hob at the side of the fire. ‘We don’t need servants. We can manage well enough, can’t we, Clara? I ain’t no better than a servant anyway.’
‘Marigold,’ Algie pronounced reprovingly. ‘Never put yourself on a par with servants. Put yourself on a par with Aurelia. She’s got servants.’
‘Yes, I know – a maid and a nanny,’ Marigold asserted. ‘But I always feel as if they’m looking down on me, servants. Mind you, Aurelia soon puts them in their place.’
‘Well, that’s the way you have to be with servants when they get above themselves, ain’t that right, Mother?’
‘You have to let ’em know who’s gaffer and no two ways, else they’ll do hell and all to get the better of you. What I particularly don’t like about servants, though, is the way they carry tittle-tattle. Your life’s never your own. Before you know it, the world and his wife know your business.’ She bent down and opened the oven door to a sizzling of fat and a rejuvenated aroma of the roasting mutton. Using a folded rag, she pulled the meat dish out carefully. ‘It’s done now, our Algie. Are you going to carve it?’
‘When I’ve changed out of these working clothes, Mother.’ He carefully handed Rose to Marigold.
‘Shall we take a cup of tea up to Daddy while he changes?’ Marigold suggested to the child.
‘Have we got any beer instead?’ He turned to look at her. ‘I’d rather you bring me a glass of beer.’
* * *
‘Let’s sit in the back garden,’ Algie said that same evening when the meal and the washing-up had been done, and Rose put to bed. ‘It’s a grand evening. Are you coming, Mother?’
‘I want to tidy my bedroom up a bit, our Algie,’ Clara replied. ‘There’s all sorts of clutter about, and I wouldn’t want our Rose to pick up anything as might hurt her. I’ll be back down in a bit.’
Algie nodded. ‘Keep your ear tuned for her then, eh? Just in case she wakes up.’ He turned to Marigold. ‘Come on then, flower.’
From the table, Marigold picked up the mug containing the tea she’d half-finished, and followed Algie through the hallway to the back door. The low summer sun had infused the wisps of high cloud with flushes of gold that toned Marigold’s creamy complexion and reflected in her blue eyes.
Much of the garden, by this time in shade, was still an informal arrangement of unkempt grass, with randomly spaced apple and damson trees fruiting promisingly, planted many years earlier. Marigold had set herself the task of converting this meadow into a more formal affair, but while she had made a valiant start she still had a great deal to do.
She stopped at one of the trees to inspect the fruit that was ripening, and took a drink of tea, tepid now.
‘It looks like we’ll have plenty damsons, Algie.’
‘All well and good. But what d’you propose to do with ’em?’
‘Make jam,’ she said simply. ‘Or chutney. My mother can have some next time she comes. She’ll be able to pass some of it to the other narrowboat folks. Apples as well. Have you seen how many apples we got? I could make cider. Me and me dad used to make cider.’ She finished off the tea. ‘Oh, look!’ she suddenly exclaimed with a childlike whoop, pointing. ‘There’s a hedgehog over there.’
She handed Algie the empty tea mug and held her long skirt against her legs to stop it rustling as she crept towards the hedge at the bottom of the garden where she’d spotted her quarry. The animal rolled itself into a ball and remained still as it became aware of her approach. Marigold stooped down and stroked it gently.
‘It’ll prickle you.’
‘Course it won’t.’
‘You’ll pick up flees. It’ll be crawling with flees.’
‘Oh, look at the poor little thing, Algie,’ she cooed, ignoring his cautions. ‘Keep your eye on him while I fetch him some bread and milk. I bet the poor thing’s hungry.’
Algie smiled indulgently. ‘I’ll get it,’ he said, and ambled back towards the house. He loved this gentleness, this girlish sentimentality his wife always exhibited towards lesser entities. Such an endearing characteristic, which bemused him and yet delighted him too.
He returned with a saucer of milk and a thick slice of bread he’d hacked off the loaf. Marigold, meanwhile, was still trying to coax the bewildered creature into giving her some attention. Algie stooped down beside her. He placed the saucer of milk near the living ball of spikes and broke the bread into chunks.
‘Let’s leave him be,’ he suggested. ‘Let him find the bread and milk for himself.’
Marigold turned and smiled, and he thought how delightful she looked, her skin caressed and tinted by the low golden sun. He stood up, took her hand and led her away from the hedgehog.
‘Sometimes,’ he said slowly, deliberately, ‘I look at you, and at our Rose…and I see this house…and…’
‘And?’
‘Well…’ He shrugged, hardly able to express himself adequately. ‘I ask myself whatever did I do to deserve it all?’
‘Oh, Algie,’ she softly sighed. ‘You daft thing.’
He squeezed her hand and turned to look at her. ‘I suppose I’ve got Aurelia to thank in the first place. It’s a good job she and I knew each other. I mean, if it hadn’t been for her going to stay at your Aunt Edith’s at the same time as you were there having our Rose, we might never have found each other again, had we?’
‘I know,’ she answered dreamily. ‘I thought I’d lost you forever. It was as if you’d disappeared off the face of the earth. And there I was having your child.’
‘But what a blessing it was to find you…and what a hell of a shock to find out you’d just had my child. It changed my life…’
‘Mine as well,’ she cooed. ‘I’ve never been so happy, Algie.’ Her eyes misted with emotion.
‘Nor me…Yet it’s all been such a change for you, flower. I mean a life on the narrowboats, never knowing where you’re gonna be from one day to the next, is different from living in a house fixed on dry land, eh?’
‘Course it is.’
‘But you’ve adapted. You’ve adapted well.’
‘Well, my mother taught me all there is to know about cleaning and cooking, and they’re the same wherever you are. Some things I miss though – like when I used to run ahead of me dad’s brace of narrowboats to open the locks ready.’ She laughed as she recalled it. ‘But I don’t miss the times when we heaved to at night, and me and me mother used to maid, mangle and peg out the washing on the towpaths, come rain, snow or shine.’
‘Nobody would guess, looking at you now, as you’d spent your life on the narrowboats, though. You can put on a show of elegance and good manners just as well as Aurelia.’
‘Except I’m a bit more shy than what she is. Aurelia’s got lots more confidence than me – she ain’t backward in coming forward – comes from being educated proper, I reckon.’
‘Maybe so, my flower, but one thing you ain’t short of is common sense. And that counts more than having had an expensive education – for a girl at any rate.’
They had reached a bench that was in desperate need of a lick of paint. Beyond it, over the hedge, was a field edged with a row of tall elms.
‘It’s funny the way things turn out, ain’t it?’ Marigold went on, smoothing the creases out of her skirt as she sat down. ‘I mean…I know we was lucky to have this house as well, and that bit of money your mother inherited—’
‘Which we put into the business,’ he interrupted.
‘Yes, but you work hard, Algie. And you’re careful with money.’
‘I don’t take chances. But in business you can’t afford to stand still either. Things are changing all the time. Especially in the bike business.’
‘I suppose sometimes you make your own luck, eh, Algie?’
He put his arm around her and she snuggled up to him. ‘Maybe I hit on the right thing at the right time with the bikes,’ he said. ‘It was just a feeling I had that building bikes was the right thing to do. Anyway, we’re doing all right. We’re getting more orders all the time. In fact, I’m setting on two more men next week – old workmates from Sampson’s.’
Marigold regarded him with sudden anxiety. ‘Oh, Algie, do you think that’s a good idea?’
‘What? Employing old workmates?’
‘Pinching Benjamin Sampson’s workers.’
‘Sod Benjamin Sampson. Anyway, Sampson’s ain’t doing too well, by all accounts.’
‘All the same…it could cause more trouble between you and him.’
‘I don’t see why. Folk can choose where they want to work so long as there’s work enough. Anyway, Benjamin Sampson wouldn’t think twice about sacking them if things got that bad. So why should they be loyal to him? Their only loyalty is to themselves and their families. Besides, I’ll be paying them more money.’
‘As long as it don’t make things awkward between me and Aurelia.’
‘Why should it?’
‘I think the world of her. She is my sister.’
‘Half-sister,’ he corrected with a smile. ‘And I know you think the world of her. But this is business, Marigold. Nothing to do with Aurelia. So why should it make things awkward between you two?’
‘P’raps it won’t. But she has enough to contend with, what with Benjamin and all. The things she tells me…’ Marigold rolled her eyes.
‘Oh? What sort of things?’ He wondered what poor, lovely Aurelia might have to contend with that he wasn’t already aware of.
‘Well, they don’t sleep together no more, for one thing. Not since before Christina was born.’
‘Fancy…’ He pondered Aurelia and her troubled marriage for a moment. Such a waste of a worthy woman; Benjamin Sampson was an utter fool. ‘Let’s go and see how your mate the hedgehog is getting on,’ he said in an effort to divert himself and Marigold from the subject of Aurelia and her troubled marriage. He stood up and together they ambled in silence to the spot where they had encountered the prickly creature.
‘Oh, Algie!’ she exclaimed, with obvious delight. ‘I swear some of that bread has gone. I wonder if he had a drink of milk as well.’ She stooped down to inspect the area for clues. ‘I bet he has, Algie.’ She stood up again. ‘I’m going to put more bread and milk out for him tomorrow night. D’you think I should?’
‘He might fancy a change,’ Algie replied, tongue-in-cheek. ‘Try him with a pork chop with some gravy and cabbage.’
‘Oh, hark at you! Why can’t you be serious? D’you think hedgehogs like cheese?’
‘Ask him. A lump of my favourite cheddar would cheer him up no end, I bet.’
* * *
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