“I told you, there’s a case of—”
But Charley was gone, running back through the rolling smoke, throwing himself on his stomach beside the hole.
“Aster! Can you hear me? I’m dropping a rope. Try to get it round you. I’ll pull you out. But quick!” His voice was all but lost in the animal roar of the fire.
There was no reply. Blistering heat lifted, singeing Charley’s skin and eyebrows.
“Aster!”
A gust of wind swirled. The smoke sucked, eddied, cleared for a fraction of a second. Below him Jake Aster stood, leaning on a wooden crate, his figure drawn in fire, his face the most terrible thing that Charley Benton had ever seen. And the last. For in that moment a detonation lifted the other hatch, blasted fire upwards, rocked the Carlotta at her moorings.
Charley was flung backwards like a rag doll tossed aside by a child’s hand.
Jack was left clinging to the rail, totally untouched by the explosion, screaming his brother’s name.
* * *
The news of the fire and explosion on the Carlotta ran through dockland and beyond like fire itself; and it lost nothing in the telling. By the time Molly, riding home in a packed omnibus after working rather later than usual, heard the story, the casualties were running into dozens.
“Sabotage,” said one man, squashed beside her, “bound to be. Them ruddy Boers, shouldn’t wonder.”
“Or the Irish,” said another, gloomily.
“Accident, I heard.” A man perched on the edge of the seat opposite Molly was chewing something noisily and talking around it. “Me brother’s in the docks. Trucker. ’E was there when it ’appened. Explosives ’e said. An accident.”
The pavements were crowded with home-going workers, the pubs were doing a roaring trade. Her fellow passengers had now embarked upon a lively discussion of the war in South Africa. Molly reflected wryly that on a normal evening no one would say a word to his neighbour, scarcely an apology if he stepped on his foot; but given a disaster to break the ice people who would not usually greet one another would talk like old friends. The bus creaked laboriously on, swaying and jolting.
Molly tried to subdue the faint unease that the news of the explosion had awakened in her. It was ridiculous to worry. There were thousands of men working in the docks. The odds against Jack and Charley being involved in this explosion, or whatever it was, must be enormous— But when she turned the corner of Park Boad, foreboding struck hard. A group of women stood talking by one of the gates, obviously having come straight from their kitchens. All still had on their aprons, one of them brandished a wooden spoon as she talked. Two men stood with them. As Molly’s sharp footsteps approached they turned, looked, nudged each other. As she came closer they fell silent, and one of them called, “Have you heard anything, love?”
“Heard anything?” Molly felt sick. “What about?”
“Oh, dearie me, don’t you know? The Benton boys. They was caught in the explosion in the docks.”
Molly heard no more; she was running, skirts gathered to her knees, flying to the gate, up the path.
Nancy had seen her coming, was standing at the open door. She was very pale, but composed. She had heard the news an hour since and had had some time to recover a little.
“Nancy? Nancy, what happened?”
“We aren’t sure. Come in, Moll. Get your breath. There’s some tea in the pot—”
Molly shook her head. “No. Thank you. Tell me—”
“Jack and Charley are both hurt,” Nancy said quietly, “that’s all I know.”
“You don’t know how badly?”
“No. They aren’t dead. Or they weren’t an hour ago. That’s all the man could tell us. He came to fetch Mam and Annie. They went off to the hospital.” Her lip quivered, she took a breath, holding hard to her composure. “I’ve heard nothing since. I stayed to take care of the baby and to wait for you and for our kid. He’s gone from school to supper with a friend. I hope to God no one tells him before he gets home.” Her voice shook despite her efforts. “It may not be as bad as it sounds,” she added, with no great conviction.
“What happened?”
“They don’t know exactly. But—” The expression on her face almost warned the other girl what to expect.
“What, Nancy? What is it?”
“A man was killed in the explosion on the Carlotta.” She paused, then said, flatly, “Jake Aster.”
“What!”
“Jack was working the ship. Charley wasn’t. No one knows how he came to be there—”
“Jake Aster. Oh, Nancy.”
Nancy turned away, leaned her crossed arms upon the mantelpiece above the empty grate. After a moment she said, shakily, “Would you go to the hospital for me, Moll? Find out what’s going on? God knows when Mam or Annie will be back, and I’ll go mad if I don’t hear soon.”
“Of course. If you’re certain you wouldn’t rather go yourself? I could stay and—”
Nancy shook her head. “No. I can’t let anyone else tell our kid. Not even you. You know how he feels about Jack and Charley. He’ll likely need looking after. He’s mine,” she added – the first time that Molly had ever heard her say it so – “even if he doesn’t know it Besides,” she said, attempting a small, strained smile, “that great lummock of a brother of mine would rather see you than me any day, daft pair that you both are. Give them my love if—” she paused painfully “—if you’re allowed to see them.”
Molly kissed her swiftly on her smooth, cold cheek. “I will, I promise,” she whispered, and was gone.
* * *
The hospital smelled as only hospitals can; of disinfectant and urine, of an indefinable sickly odour that had no counterpart in the outside world. Molly’s boots clipped sharply on the floor of the long cream-and-green tiled corridor down which she had been directed. Her mind, as it had been for the whole of the journey, was blank of all but a fierce, talisman determination to believe that all would be well.
Ahead, heavy swing doors swept shut, creaking, behind a hurrying, uniformed nurse. Before they had stopped their movement Molly had reached them and was peering through the thick glass. In the corridor beyond was a row of straight-backed chairs set against the wall. One lonely figure sat, head and shoulders bowed, fingers twisting in her lap, her statuesque figure slumped to dumpiness.
Sarah.
She did not look up as yet another pair of hurrying feet tapped through the swing doors and approached her. Only when the feet stopped directly in front of her did she lift her head tiredly.
Molly’s heart stopped. She dropped to her knees beside the older woman, took the cold, nerve-wracked hands in her own. At the look in Sarah’s eyes she had almost relinquished the hope that she had stubbornly held to ever since she had heard the news. One, or both of them must be dead. Still holding Sarah’s hand she seated herself on the hard chair beside her.
“Jack?” The voice sounded like someone else’s.
Sarah shook her head. “No. He’s all right At least he will be, so the doctor says. Broken ribs, he’s got, and he’s been badly beaten.” Absently Sarah touched the side of her own face in the place where her eldest son would bear a scar for the rest of his life.
Molly closed her eyes, floated for a second on a golden flood of relief. Then, remembering, her fingers tightened on the hand she held.
“What about Charley?”
Sarah’s head shook again; but differently this time, slowly from side to side, tears running silently down a face already marked by earlier weeping.
“He’s dead?” Molly whispered.
“No.”
“What then? For God’s sake, Sarah, what?”
“He’s blind. My Charley’s blind.”
“Blind?” Molly repeated the word stupidly, as if she had never heard it before.
“Mrs Benton?” Neither of them had heard the rustling approach of a nursing sister in a uniform so stiff that it looked as if it could stand alone.
Molly stood up
. The sister, a middle-aged woman with a severe mouth, looked her up and down in repressive enquiry.
“I’ve come to see Jack Benton,” Molly said bluntly, ready to roll up her sleeves and fight for the right.
The woman shook her head briskly, neither a hair of her head nor any corner of her starched white headdress stirring as she did so. “Impossible, I’m afraid.”
Molly stepped forward; her head did not reach the sister’s officious shoulder. “I—”
“Sister Marlow?” A big, genial-faced man had come into the corridor from a nearby door. He fixed bright, intelligent eyes on the group, read at an experienced glance what lay behind Molly’s belligerent stance, the hopeless droop of Sarah’s shoulders.
“Yes, doctor?”
“A moment.” He looked kindly down at Sarah. “Your son Jack is fairly comfortable now, Mrs Benton. You may see him again for a few minutes, later. Your daughter-in-law is with your other son in a room just along the passage there. A remarkable girl, if I might say so. She’ll be a great strength to him I’m sure. If you feel up to it I’m certain they’d be glad to – they’d like you to join them. Your son is awake; it is remarkable that apart from his eyes he is unscathed. Both your boys have the constitution of horses, Mrs Benton. They’ll get well, I assure you. Now, Sister Marlow will take you to Charley.”
Sarah rose heavily to her feet. “Thank you, doctor.”
Molly turned to this new adversary. “I’ve come to see Jack Benton,” she said grimly.
“You’re a relative?” His gentle voice made her own belligerence gauche.
“No,” she said more quietly, “a friend. My name is Molly—” she hesitated “—Alden.”
“Ah, Molly…” He smiled, understanding in his eyes. “If I’m not very much mistaken, Mr Benton has been asking for you. Unless, that is, he has more than one – friend – by the name of Molly?”
“Then I can see him?’’
“Of course. But only for a very few moments. And I must ask you not to tell him of his brother’s blindness. He isn’t strong enough yet. His brother, it seems, almost certainly saved his life; it will do him no good to learn of the cost before he is well enough to bear it.”
* * *
Jack’s marked, bloodless face was of a colour with the bandages that swathed his head and with the bleached sheet upon which his big hands lay motionless. His eyes lit when he saw Molly.
Very gently she laid a small finger on his lips in a perfectly natural gesture. “Quiet now, my love. No need to talk. I’m here.” She felt the movement of his lips beneath her finger, saw his small smile of happiness as she settled beside him, his hand in hers, the blue eyes – so very much like Harry’s – fixed upon her face as if he could not bear to look away. She sat so until he slept, and was there still when he woke. In the weeks that followed she spent every spare moment by his side.
They were married in September, just seven weeks after the explosion on the Carlotta. Seven months later two-year-old Danny Benton, to everyone’s delight and to his own slightly aggrieved astonishment, was presented with twin sisters. The birth was premature, and very difficult, but within days Molly was up and about again. Within a few weeks, with Sarah’s grandmotherly aid, she was back at work as if the devil were behind her. Marriage or no marriage the world still waited to be conquered.
Part III
Autumn 1906
Chapter Twenty-Four
Molly rubbed eyes strained by the failing light, pressed her fingers hard into them to ease their ache. In the book laid before her on the table long columns of figures danced and blurred. Through the open scullery door – not for the first time that afternoon – came the sound of the children’s voices raised in one of those monotonous wrangles that tempt any adult within earshot to put a stop to them with a slap.
‘They were!”
‘They weren’t!”
‘They were!”
‘They couldn’t have been.”
“Big as your head.”
“I don’t believe you. And Kitty doesn’t, either, do you, Kit?”
“Well, I—”
“Oh, of course you don’t. He’s telling lies again.” This in Meghan’s clear, flat little voice brought about a short and ominous silence. Molly drew a breath, debating the possibility of putting her fingers in her ears and ignoring her contentious offspring. Meghan was an impossible child; at four and a half years old she looked like a fairy, had a will of steel and a mind as sharp as a new-honed razor.
“I am not!” Without being able to see him Molly knew exactly the look on her son’s face at that moment: the thin, fair skin brick-red with temper, the cherub’s mouth pouted and furious.
“You are!”
“I’m not, I tell you.”
“Yes you are.”
Danny knew that in a battle of sheer persistence with his sister he could only come off second best. He tried a new tack.
“You’re just jealous. ’Cause I went hop picking with Aunt Annie and Uncle Charley and you didn’t. I was having the best time anyone ever had and you were stuck here. Serves you right. Who’d want you? They took me because I’m grown up. And – you’re – a – baby.” These last words a slow, calculated insult, said in the tone of a man very sure of his ground.
“I’m not!” Meg’s voice rose to a shriek.
“You are!”
“I’m not!”
“Oh, yes you are. Baby, Baby Bunting – Baby, Baby Benton—”
Molly, thunder in her face, straightened her aching back and threw down her pen. The chanting in the scullery broke off in a scuffle and a sharp yell.
Kitty’s small, distressed voice – “Danny! Oh, Meg—” was almost entirely lost in the sounds of battle.
In two angry steps, Molly was at the door. The two children were rolling under the scrubbed pine table – the scullery was so tiny that there was no other floor space clear enough for such activity. Katherine, known to them all as Kitty, twin to Meghan in birth, yet astonishingly opposite in looks, temperament and manner, stood saucer-eyed. When Molly appeared, Nemesis personified in the doorway, Kitty shrank back for all the world as if she had been personally responsible for the fracas under the table.
“Meghan! Danny! What in heaven’s name – stop it, at once! At once, do you hear me?” Molly reached under the table and none too gently hauled the two children out and onto their feet. “What an exhibition! What on earth is it all about?”
“He was telling lies,” said Meghan with an uncompromising stubbornness that Molly could only recognize and regret. “He said that when they were hop picking they had apples as big as my head. And then he called me a baby.”
“So you decided to show him what a perfect little lady you were by rolling under the table punching and kicking like a guttersnipe?” asked her mother tartly. “I’m not stupid. Nor deaf. You’re as bad as he is. Worse. Now then, you—” she caught tall Danny by the ear and marched him to the chair at one end of the table, “sit there. And you—” she picked up Meghan, feather-light, and swung her onto the opposite chair, “there. And don’t move. Either of you. Until the clock chimes quarter past. That’s ten minutes. If I hear one sound –one sound – before that, it’s straight to bed with no supper and no waiting up for Daddy. Do you understand?”
Meghan, scowling down at her still-pudgy baby hands, nodded. Danny sat rigid and glared at his sister. Kitty, in the absence of specific orders, climbed upon a chair halfway between them both, her gaze fixed upon her mother’s face. For a moment Molly’s hand rested upon the fine, mousy hair and she came closer to smiling than she had all afternoon. Meghan bestowed one disgusted look upon her twin then looked back at her hands.
Molly, her concentration shredded, went back to her books. She added the same column three times, unsurprised to discover that she achieved a different answer each time, before with an exasperated sigh she laid down her pen again. The strained silence in the scullery had given way to small, scuffling sounds, smothered explosions of la
ughter. Molly visualized the wildly swinging feet and ferociously pulled faces. At least it was quieter than the earlier roughhouse. She rested her chin on her hands and looked gloomily around her. In such poky surroundings who could blame lively, strong-willed children for getting on each other’s nerves? She understood only too well how they felt – she was sometimes tempted to a good scream herself. The little room in which she sat, the only one downstairs apart from the scullery, was cluttered with furniture, badly lit, too hot with the fire burning and too cold without it A rabbit hutch, she thought bad-temperedly. She and Jack had lived in this house since the day they had married. At that time it had not seemed so bad; it had been convenient and cheap at a moment when their resources had not been great. It was just around the corner from Sarah, and not far from the small grocer’s shop that Annie and Charley had taken with the money subscribed for Charley by his workmates in the docks after the explosion on board the Carlotta. But it had never crossed Molly’s mind, either then or later, to regard it as their permanent home. Yet here they still were. It was impossible. More, it was ridiculous. Although work lately was not easily come by Jack was rarely idle, and anyway with the money she was earning from the agency they could easily afford to move somewhere more spacious. Somewhere like The Larches. She would have to speak to Jack soon. John Marsden was waiting for her answer. Why had she left it so long? She took a deep breath and dropped her face into her cupped hands, screwing up her tired eyes. Because logic and sense were useless weapons against a man’s pride, she answered herself. But tonight she would try.
In the kitchen the clock struck the quarter hour. Seconds later she felt a touch on her skirt and opened her eyes to find Kitty standing beside her, her quiet, brown-flecked eyes fixed upon her, her hand resting lightly on her knee. In the doorway stood the other two – handsome, difficult, self-willed – yet in both their faces a vulnerability and trust that would have melted a heart stonier than Molly’s. With one arm she encircled Kitty, the other she lifted in invitation to Meghan. The little girl flew to her, nestled to her side. Over the two heads Molly smiled quietly at her son, who came and leaned on her chair beside her.
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