The Housekeeper's Daughter

by Rose Meddon

  Very slowly, Mabel Bratton sat back down, her hands coming to rest in her lap. ‘Edith… what did you do?’

  ‘She’s making it up, Ma, she’s… desperate. She’s desperate to distract us from her own wrong-doings.’

  ‘Or is it the other way around?’ Kate said, struggling anew to contain her rage. ‘Is it that having made advances to some man and had them spurned – laughed at, most likely – she set out to ruin first him and then, in a fit of jealousy, me and my chances of happiness with Ned. That’s more like it.’

  ‘If you did but know it,’ Edith said quietly, reaching to the door handle for support, ‘I didn’t ruin anything, I saved you—’

  ‘Saved me? Saved me from what? A better life? Happiness? Love? All the things you’ll never have?’

  On the other side of the desk, Mabel Bratton gave a strange little cry. ‘Edith,’ she said, her face drained of all colour, ‘I’ll ask you again, what did you do?’

  When Kate turned back to her sister, it was to see that she was shaking.

  ‘I did… what had to be done. What only you or I could.’

  ‘Oh, Edith, we talked about this. You swore to me you would leave well alone. We were keeping good watch over her.’

  ‘I had no choice—’

  ‘Then we must tell her. With the ways things have turned out, we have to. She should know.’

  With a very different sense of unease now, Kate looked back and forth between their two faces. She should know what? What was all this? ‘Ma… what—’

  ‘Edie, love, you know it’s the right thing to do. There’s no way round it now.’ At her mother’s entreaty, Kate saw Edith hang her head. ‘Why don’t you pull up the other chair,’ Mabel Bratton went on, moving around her desk to take hold of Edith’s hand. ‘Come on. Let’s you and I lay the thing to rest, once and for all.’

  ‘Lay what to rest?’ Kate asked, her insides knotting hard.

  ‘Luke, lad, go out and fetch yourself another chair. And when you come back in, turn the key behind you. What you’re about to hear is nobody’s business but our own.’

  When, with a rather uncertain nod, Luke left the room, Kate simply sat where she was, trying to make sense of what was happening. Edith really did have a secret? She really did know something with which to blackmail someone? How was that possible? She pulled herself more upright on the hard-wooden chair and, with a loud sniff, reached again for her handkerchief. Well, whatever it was, seemingly, she was about to find out.

  Moments later, Luke returned. Carrying a chair from the staff parlour, he set it down next to her own. When he then went back to turn the key in the lock of the door, she wrapped her fingers around the edge of her own seat and drew a long breath, exhaling it from her body in a series of uneven judders. How had she lived so close to Edith without knowing that she had been hiding something?

  ‘You tell it, Ma,’ Edith said, her face turned aside and her words barely audible. ‘I don’t think I can even see where to start with it.’

  ‘Very well,’ Mabel Bratton agreed. ‘If you’re certain.’

  ‘I am. It’s what I want.’

  ‘Well, two-and-twenty summers back,’ Mabel Bratton announced without further ado, ‘as was their habit at that time, the Latimers came to take their holiday. Some weeks into their stay, their grandsons came a-visiting. They’d been up at university and had brought with them a couple of friends – nice lads, clean and well-mannered for the most part, if not a touch… spirited. One of them was a lad the others called by the name of Bertie.’

  At the mention of that name, Kate stiffened. ‘So… when I heard—’

  ‘Kate, please child, let me tell it the only way I can think how.’

  Checking her impatience, Kate nodded. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Anyway, this Bertie had an eye for a pretty face and a smooth tongue in his head. And your sister, well, like most any girl of her young years, she was… well, let’s just say she was easily impressed.’

  Glancing to her right, Kate frowned. Then she drew her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, good Lord,’ she said, the embarrassment enough to make her wriggle on her seat.

  ‘Anyway, not far short of Christmas that same year,’ Mabel Bratton resumed her tale, ‘Edith went down with what I thought to be a bout of winter sickness. But, as time went on, the nature of it came to give me cause for concern. And, soon after, putting two and two together, I fathomed it was more properly down to her being with child—’ As one, Luke and Kate drew sharp breaths. ‘—leaving me an’ my Thomas to pry out of her what had gone on.’

  Edith? Pregnant? Unwed and pregnant? ‘So was—’

  ‘Please, Kate, let me tell it through to the end.’

  ‘Yes. Sorry.’ But to Kate, the story even thus far defied belief: if what her mother had just said was true, then while nothing more than a girl, her prudish old-maid of a sister had been with a man? For so very many reasons, it was impossible to credit. For a start, Edith didn’t have a passionate bone in her body, nor had she ever exhibited so much as an ounce of tenderness. It couldn’t possibly be less likely.

  Regardless of Kate’s disbelief, Mabel Bratton picked up her tale where she had left off.

  ‘As you might imagine, me an’ my Thomas were beside ourselves with worry. With a baby well on the way, and with the remedy of a hasty marriage denied us, we were lost to know what to do. Edith was never going to find a husband, not around these parts and not with her that far gone. And we could hardly complain to the Latimers. It was only by their grace that we each of us had work and a home, something we could nary afford to risk. Even had we gathered all our courage and gone to them and explained, as sure as eggs is eggs, this Bertie fellow would have denied it. It would have been Edie’s word against his. And, in the meantime, Edie’s reputation – and no doubt ours, too – would have been dragged through the mud. We could see well enough how that would work out. So, what were we to do?’

  Unable to take it all in, Kate tried to get her tongue to ask the only question that seemed to matter. ‘So… what did you do?’

  ‘The only thing we could think of, we came up with a plan to try an’ cover it up.’

  ‘Cover it up? A baby?’

  ‘It was our only remedy. With the house all but shut up for the winter, I took Edith and went to my mother’s in Torrington. Thomas stayed behind to keep things up together and told anyone who thought to ask that I’d gone to look after my mother. It wasn’t that far from the truth – by then, she was proper ailing.’

  Desperate to unravel events from there on, Kate couldn’t wait any longer. ‘And the baby – you gave it up? For adoption? You gave the baby up for adoption?’

  ‘No. No, love,’ Mabel Bratton said calmly. ‘We didn’t give it up for adoption. We thought of it, of course we did, but we couldn’t none of us bring ourselves to go through with it. No, we… we brought her home with us and I… well, we… passed her off as mine.’

  ‘Yours?’

  To Kate’s surprise, she felt Luke grasp her hand. His fingers felt hot and big and familiar and, engrossed by this most unlikely of stories, she didn’t pull away from him.

  ‘A late surprise, that’s what we told everyone.’

  ‘No one ever thought it odd?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Odd? Why should anyone think it odd? A fair few women get caught with late babies.’

  Of all the things in this tale that were hard to believe, the one Kate found most incredible was that no one had been suspicious. ‘But surely, it would seem so unlikely.’

  ‘Well, it didn’t. Perhaps, in a way, it helped that my Thomas didn’t have to live long with the deceit, what with him being taken scarcely ten months on. And old Mr Latimer didn’t last long, either, God rest his soul. Course, with his only son having gone before him, there was a tremendous to-do over the passing of the estate – you know, to his grandson, Mr Sidney. Dragged on for years, that business did. And, by the time it was all sorted out, Mr Sidney had wed and it was several more years before he – or
any of the family, for that matter – came here again. So no, no-one challenged the story. Before long, there was no one even left to care.’

  Kate stole a look at her sister. By rights, she ought to look different – at the very least, she ought to look sullied. But she didn’t. She was sitting, her hands in her lap, her eyes directed straight ahead and her mouth pressed into a flat line. She’d taken no part in the telling of the tale – indeed, seemed to have cut herself off, dissociated herself from what, all of those years ago, she and their mother had done. As a result, Kate didn’t know whether to despise her or to pity her; neither seemed wholly appropriate, both felt beyond her. Dumbfounded. Betrayed. Angry. Those were the things she felt. All the while criticizing her treatment of Luke, her sister had been hiding a shameful secret of her own. Well, after this, Edith Bratton had lost all right to criticize anyone. People in greenhouses did not get to throw stones.

  With her mind moving from the matter of her sister’s duplicity to the unfortunate child, Kate was struck by something. ‘What happened to the baby then? Eventually, I mean,’ she added when her mother seemed puzzled that she should ask. ‘Did it die?’ In a way, it felt like the kindest outcome. Safely covered up or not, there were no two ways about it: the poor child had been a bastard – the upshot of the sordid seduction of a silly young girl by a man with no care but the satisfaction of his own urges. Although, perhaps, she shouldn’t be so quick to judge: there but for the grace of God and all that.

  ‘No. No, love, she didn’t die.’

  Feeling Luke squeezing her hand so tightly as to almost crush her knuckles, Kate yelped with pain. But, when she tried to wriggle free from his grasp, he simply tightened his grip further still.

  ‘Kate,’ he said, his voice little more than a hoarse whisper, ‘Edith’s baby… I think it’s you.’

  Wrenching more firmly at her hand, she stared back at him. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Why on earth would you say such a thing? Of course it’s not me!’ At the sight of his expression, she turned to look across the desk. Rolling down her mother’s cheeks were tears. In disbelief, she spun to look at Edith. She hadn’t moved. She was simply staring ahead, her hands still at rest in her lap as though merely listening to a long and rather boring Sunday sermon. ‘Ma?’ she said, shaking as she turned back to look at her. Why was no one contradicting Luke? Why weren’t they telling him he was wrong? Slowly, everything around her started to look smudgy and indistinct, as though someone was wiping across her eyes with a dirty dishcloth. With her free hand, she reached to the edge of the desk. ‘Ma?’

  When it eventually came, Mabel Bratton’s answer was little more than a whisper. ‘He’s right, love. He’s right. It’s why I’m telling you all of this. You were the baby. You’re Edith’s little daughter.’

  She sprang to her feet. ‘No!’ she shouted, gulping for air and whirling about so fast that her hand finally came free from Luke’s. ‘No! You’re lying! All of you. I’m not… she’s not…’

  Beside her, Luke also got to his feet. ‘Kate—’

  ‘Did you know?’ She rounded on him. ‘Did you know?’

  He shook his head. ‘‘Course not.’

  ‘What – you just… guessed? Is that what you’re telling me? Is that what you expect me to believe?’

  He nodded slowly. ‘I did guess it, yes. I can’t say for certain why, but, as your Ma… I mean as, well, as Mrs Bratton was telling it, I had a feeling I knew what was coming.’

  ‘Is that true?’ she turned back to demand of the woman she had always called Ma. ‘Did he not know?’

  ‘He knew none of it,’ Mabel assured her. ‘No one did. Until this very moment, no one but me and Edith knew a thing. And they still needn’t, love, truly.’

  ‘Don’t call me love! You’re not my mother!’

  Slowly, Mabel Bratton pushed back her chair and got to her feet. ‘No, I’m not. But I do love you, dear, just as surely as though I was. From the moment you were born, I took to you as if you were my own. I never thought of you as anything but.’

  ‘While I never had the chance to.’ To Kate, Edith’s admission was so soft and so startling that she spun, wide-eyed, towards her. ‘I had a daughter. And yet I didn’t. I could have loved you—’

  ‘We all of us agreed it was for the best—’

  ‘No, Ma,’ Edith said softly. ‘You and Pa did. I was given no say.’

  ‘You were sixteen. You were unwed. Without a husband you were still your father’s responsibility—’

  ‘Stop it!’ Kate shouted, throwing up her arms. ‘Stop it, both of you.’

  For a moment, all that could be heard in the ensuing quiet was the sound of ragged breathing.

  ‘Anyway,’ Mabel Bratton eventually resumed, her tone recovering some of its more usual steadiness. ‘The facts of the matter change nothing. I have loved you since the moment you were born – me and Edith both have. And that need be no different now.’

  Although Kate shook her head, her thoughts weren’t to be stilled. The facts of the matter change nothing? How could anyone in their right mind even think of saying such a thing? Supposedly, Edith wasn’t her sister but her mother. And Ma, well, the woman she had always called Ma, wasn’t her mother at all but her grandmother. And Thomas, the man she couldn’t remember but who she had always thought to be her father, now turned out to have been her grandfather. How could anyone in their right mind say that nothing had changed? Everything had changed.

  Staring down at the floor, she continued to shake her head. But then, with her eyes given to contemplating a particularly swirly knot in the floorboards, she was struck by the realization that the tale wasn’t yet complete. There was still a piece missing.

  She looked back up. ‘So, what do you know of this Bertie? What happened to him?’ When she glanced across the table, Mabel Bratton, with her head in her hands, was weeping softly. To her right, Edith was also now crying. ‘Damn it, who was he? I’ve a right to know!’

  As she stood, rigidly, continuing to look between the two sobbing women, the only person to move was Luke. And, even then, as he took her hand and held onto it, it was some time before he seemed able to bring himself to say, ‘Kate, I think the fellow Edith knew as Bertie was more properly called Hubert – the man we now know as Hugh Russell…’

  * * *

  ‘Please, Kate, love, you must eat.’

  To Mabel Bratton’s plea, Kate responded firmly. ‘No,’ she said. ‘There’s no must about it. Whether I eat or whether I don’t, is my own business. I don’t have to take instruction from you ever again.’ And she meant it, too. To her mind, the woman standing before her had, by virtue of her deceit, given up any and all rights to offer advice about what she should or shouldn’t do.

  It was early afternoon that same day – a day that, to Kate’s mind, had started out much like any other, if not a good deal more promising than some. Granted, she should probably have been more suspicious when Ned hadn’t arrived at their meeting in the stables but, with the postman bringing a letter, she had been convinced she was about to learn what sort of work his cousin Elizabeth might have found for her in London. Bit by bit, her plan had slowly been coming together. Yes, it had needed more work and yes, the unfortunate declaration of war had brought even greater urgency to her aim to make Ned fall in love with her. Even so, she’d still had a chance – a good chance – of succeeding. But then, with no warning whatsoever, her plans and dreams had gone the way of the morning’s mist and evaporated into thin air. Worse still, everything she had ever held to be true had turned out to be a lie: her mother wasn’t her mother; her sister wasn’t her sister. And a man she hadn’t heard of until a few days previously had turned out to be her father. She wasn’t even properly Kate Bratton but Kate Russell. But – and here was irony – she hadn’t become Kate Russell by virtue of succeeding with her plan to marry Ned, but because his father and hers were one and the same, the object of her affections emerging from all of this as her half-brother.

  ‘But you didn’t to
uch a mouthful of your dinner.’

  From sheer frustration, Kate shuddered. Dinner? Her world had been upended and all her so-called mother was concerned about was that she hadn’t eaten her dinner? The woman defied belief, she truly did.

  ‘And you wonder why, Ma?’ At this latest slip of her tongue, she growled with exasperation. ‘Huh! I don’t even know what to call you any more. Granma, perhaps? Or Mabel? Or how about Mrs Bratton, ma’am?’

  To her tirade, she saw Mabel Bratton flinch. There was no need for such cruelty, she knew that, but fermenting inside her was a desire to lash out and cause pain of the sort she had been made to feel.

  ‘You can still call me Ma, love. You could think of it as being short for Granma.’

  ‘No, Ma, I can’t do that.’ At her complete inability to cease addressing the woman as mother, Kate curled her hands into fists, furious that the habit should be so ingrained. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake this is mazed, utterly mazed,’ she said. ‘I can’t bear it a moment longer. I need some air. I’m going for a walk.’

  ‘Yes, of course, love. Why not go and see whether Luke will go with you – keep you company?’

  ‘Because I don’t want company. Especially not his. After everything you’ve done to me, I want to be alone!’

  ‘All right, dear. I understand. And when you come back, Edie will make you a nice bite to eat. Happen you’ll have more of an appetite after a walk.’

  Feeling as though she might burst, rage spewing out from her very core, Kate fled along the corridor, her head ducked against what she imagined would be enquiring looks from the kitchen. With Edith having gone to lie down, and with her mother – her grandmother – having spent most of the morning shut away in her office, the place had to be thick with supposition and gossip. Well, they could suppose all they liked. They wouldn’t get a word out of her; this shambolic affair was nobody’s business but her own.

  Once beyond the back door, she opened the gate and stepped out, the sight of Luke pacing backwards and forwards over the same half-dozen or so yards of gravel making her close her eyes in despair.