Convenient Women Collection

by Delphine Woods

  They did not kiss but stood before one another in a moment of silence. Jean took Gilroy’s free hand and squeezed it and grinned so widely her cheeks pressed up into her eyes.

  ‘Shall we?’ Gilroy stepped aside and motioned at the first-class carriage. Jean lifted his case for him and continued to hold his hand as Gilroy leaned on his cane. Once seated in their private booth, Gilroy pressed a handkerchief to his flushed cheeks and steadied his breathing – he still held the scars of his childhood ordeal.

  It had taken him months to recover after they had left him at the mercy of the doctor that night, so long ago now that it seemed impossible it could ever have been anything more than a dream. Several times, they were told by the doctor that Gilroy would not survive, that he was too weak, that his lungs were too full, but Clementine had been right – Gilroy did have an unnatural talent for survival.

  Yet, he was not completely immune. The fluid had never quite left his lungs, and Beatrice knew that his fine clothes hid a thin, weak body. Often, over the years, he had been struck down with the influenza, and several times he had come close to death, only to fight on.

  ‘How are your studies?’ Beatrice asked once he had regained his composure.

  ‘Going well, thank you, Mrs Brown.’

  ‘And have you good friends down there?’

  ‘Oh yes, some splendid chaps.’ He nodded, then looked out of the window.

  Jean’s smile faltered as she glanced at Beatrice, but Beatrice shook her head. Jean always worried too much about the boy. Mr Pugh, who had been elected as Gilroy’s guardian shortly after the ordeal, had sent him to boarding school in Shrewsbury, and Jean had fretted that Gilroy would be bullied there for his peculiar accent and his frailty – children can be cruel to those different to themselves. Now that he was at Oxford, she worried he would be an outcast again.

  But Gilroy didn’t need friends. No, perhaps that was not it, but there was something about him which prevented him from forming such friendships. An aloofness. Beatrice knew all about that. Though he smiled and spoke well, there was something about him which caused him to remain guarded with most people. She only saw the true side of him when he was with Jean. She was the only one he trusted. Perhaps he would always be like that, and though it pained Beatrice to think such a thing, she could not blame him. She felt the same.

  They spent that night in a hotel in Glasgow’s west end, their elegant rooms paid for by Gilroy. The next morning, Gilroy left them at the breakfast table to attend his appointment with Mr Barland, and before the sun had fully risen over the docks, they were all in a carriage heading north. None of them could force light conversation as the carriage jolted over the mountains that were already blanketed with snow.

  Beatrice set her gaze on the view, thinking of the last time she had made this journey. Eleven years. How had time passed so quickly? She could still vividly recall the scratched leather seats of that rented carriage, the smoke-scented curtains which had shut out the world she had been so frightened of, the way Dougal had sat opposite her, never once comforting her. She closed her eyes and saw him in the darkness, saw his angry, clenched face, and realised for the first time that Dougal had been just as terrified as her that night. If only she had said something. If only she had reached out for him. If only she had not been paralysed with fear herself …

  But it did no one any good wishing the past were different. And indeed, if she had changed their fate that night, what would have become of Gilroy?

  She opened her eyes and saw him looking out of the other window, chewing the skin of his lower lip. Such a frail boy. She wished she could scoop him in her arms now, as she had done that night when they had run over the ice, and save him from the horrors of Dhuloch. But Gilroy was not a little boy anymore. And it was his choice to make this journey.

  Simeon fidgeted in her arms. She stroked his head and rocked him a little, but still he wriggled. She felt his tail begin to beat against the seat.

  ‘We’re here,’ Gilroy said.

  She saw it then, looming black in the distance. A rush of fear struck her chest, and she gripped Simeon tighter as the carriage turned left and onto the track. Quickly, she shut the curtain so she did not have to see the oak tree to her right.

  The atmosphere inside the carriage stiffened. Everyone held their breath as the horse stopped, and all fell silent.

  Gilroy glared down at his knees, which he was gripping so tightly that his leather gloves looked as if they might rip apart. Slowly, Jean placed her hand on his arm, and when he raised his head, she nodded once.

  ‘Yes,’ Gilroy whispered, as if answering some unspoken question. He inhaled, the air sticking a little in his throat, then he sighed it out sharply. ‘Right.’

  He swung the carriage door open and dropped down onto the ground, stumbling a little and having to use his cane to steady himself. He turned to help Jean down, then Jean helped Beatrice dismount.

  Simeon barked once he was outside and struggled against Beatrice’s hold. She set him on the ground and immediately he ran – hobbled, rather – up the stone steps towards the front door where he sat looking up at the doorknob, his tail wagging.

  The rest of them stayed where they were. Somehow, the place looked smaller than Beatrice remembered it. Threads of ivy now trailed over the stonework, and one of the windows had been boarded with a plank of wood. Rather than appearing imposing, Dhuloch now seemed more … sad? It was like a face which had wrinkled with age, lost its vibrancy, softened out of its hardness.

  ‘Do you want to go in?’

  ‘I am going to sell it,’ Gilroy said quickly, peering up at Dhuloch’s high walls.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I wasn’t until we got here. I have been thinking about it for some time now. That’s why I knew I needed to see it again. To see what I felt about it. And I feel’ – his lips wriggled as he tried to find the words – ‘nothing. Not really. It’s not the home I remembered with Papa. It’s not the prison it used to be. It’s just … foreign to me.’

  Gilroy was right. The place was a shell. Inside, they would find only ghosts whirling through the hallways.

  ‘Simeon, come.’ The dog looked back at his mistress and cocked his head to one side. ‘Come along now; we’re going.’

  There was just one place she wanted to visit before they returned to Glasgow. Jean scowled at her for the suggestion, and Gilroy didn’t seem too pleased either; nevertheless, he ordered the driver to take the old road around the loch.

  She watched the water as they travelled, saw the trunks of the trees on the island in the middle of the loch. She recalled how Jean had dragged her away from the lakeside all those years ago whilst Beatrice yelled and wept and grew hysterical. They had trudged over the ice all the way to the village, the child dangling between them, Beatrice unable to see straight for her tears. At the doctor’s house, they had banged on the door until the maid opened it in her nightgown and stockings, blinking the dreams out of her eyes so she could stare at the half-dead child in panic. The doctor had sauntered down the stairs at her call, still as miserable and obstinate as he had been earlier that day (Beatrice could not believe she had only seen the man less than twelve hours earlier – how the world had changed in such a scrap of time!). He then, too, saw the failing child slumped on his doorstep.

  They had found Clementine’s body weeks later once the ice had melted. Beatrice had been sent a letter about it – she had already returned to Shropshire with Jean by then. She was glad she had not been witness to the discovery, but still, in her nightmares she saw Clementine’s rotted, waterlogged body, her eyes eaten out by fishes, her dress nothing but ribbons bandaging her skeleton. Perhaps it would have been better to have seen the body rather than let her imagination fill in the blanks.

  They had never found Alfred. And now, as she gazed out at the still, silver water, a shiver trickled over her body to think that the man who had tried to kill all of them in this carriage, the man who had hung her own husband, could be lu
rking somewhere close by.

  Half an hour later, the carriage stopped. They had reached the churchyard. Jean pressed back against the seat and folded her arms across her chest, as stubborn as a child, but Beatrice had grown to love her for it.

  ‘Would you like some company?’ Gilroy asked.

  ‘Only if you would like to come.’

  Gilroy’s hand twisted the silver eagle on his cane. Simeon barked, impatient with Gilroy’s uncertainty.

  ‘All right.’

  He helped Beatrice dismount, and once outside, Beatrice set Simeon on the ground where he hobbled about, sniffing everywhere, and urinating on the stone walls of the lychgate. Gilroy offered Beatrice his arm, and together they made their way slowly over the slick cobblestones towards the tomb on the right-hand side of the path. She did not look at the grave; instead, she checked Gilroy. His lips were tight, but his expression was mostly unreadable – like his father’s – as he studied the two eulogies on the stone.

  ‘She shouldn’t be with him,’ he whispered fiercely.

  Beatrice did not reply. She was not so stupid as to defend Clementine to the boy who had almost died by her hand, but Beatrice couldn’t side against her. Neither Beatrice nor Gilroy would ever know the kind of pain Clementine had endured. But she supposed he was right – Clementine and Hamish would not have wanted to have been buried together. It was a kind of punishment in a way, for both of their sins.

  ‘Would you like some time alone?’ she asked, and Gilroy nodded reluctantly.

  She patted her skirts so Simeon would follow and made her way to the back of the church. The dense trees towered above her, their bare branches skewering the pale blue sky just as they had done eleven years ago, but the churchyard was now more populated with gravestones. She meandered between them, noticing the odd Scottish names and the tragic ends of some within the ground beneath her, until she reached the far corner of the church’s boundary.

  The earth was flat here, the grass thick and reaching up to her calves as she stood in the seemingly empty corner of land. Simeon slumped against her legs, his fur now sodden from the undergrowth. He began to lick his paws as Beatrice struggled to find the words.

  ‘I forgive you.’

  She waited as if expecting an answer, but the world around her remained still and silent. She set her gaze on the sheep in the field over the stone wall so she did not have to look at the empty ground before her.

  ‘But there are others whom I cannot speak for. Perhaps you’ve met with them already if there is a merciful God up there.’ She hoped there was. She hoped so badly that her chest ached with it.

  ‘You have a son. Gilroy. I think, out of all of this, he is the miracle. The one good thing. “The light shineth in darkness” – isn’t that right?’

  She had placed Dougal’s bible in the drawer in her bedside table, thinking perhaps one day she might read it, but she never had. Every so often she would take it out and sniff the pages to remind herself of him – whenever she was too happy or whenever her mother started talking about a nice man Beatrice should meet.

  ‘Goodbye,’ she said as if she was talking to a stranger, for that really was all Dougal had ever been to her. She swept over the grass, clicking to the dog so he would hurry, and did not look back at her husband’s resting place once. She would never see it again, and she was fine with that.

  In the distance, Gilroy was just mounting the carriage. She saw the flash of Jean’s irritated face and felt a wash of guilt, but it did not stop her.

  ‘Hello, Clementine,’ she whispered.

  Hamish and Clementine’s tomb was furred with moss, the engravings crusted with dirt so that some of the letters were indistinguishable. Simeon sniffed around the base of the stone, tail down, eyes searching.

  ‘Will passed in the summer. It was a good death – in his sleep. He wasn’t in pain. Dante and John died a few years ago. Simeon’s all we have left now.’ He was the last link to Clementine, and to see him wobbling on his feet, his fur flecked all over with grey, made her chin tremble. She did not want to lose him too – she did not want the final door to Clementine to close.

  ‘You were wrong about Gilroy. He’s not like his father at all. He’s kind, and he’s generous, and he’s a man of science – he wants to be a doctor, you know. He wants to help people. I think you would have liked him. I think he is like his mother.’

  Her gaze drifted to the next gravestone. ‘Hello, Isla.’

  Beatrice knelt down and scratched the moss off Isla’s stone until it was as clean as it could be. Then she did the same with Clementine’s tomb. By the end, several of her nails had broken, and her fingertips were bleeding. She wiped her hands against her skirt, but still her skin remained stained with dirt.

  ‘I hope you’re together now.’

  She placed her fingers to her lips, kissed them, then laid them gently on Clementine’s name.

  ‘Goodbye, my love.’

  She turned away quickly and snatched the tear from her cheek before Jean had time to notice. She strode towards the gate, towards the carriage, towards the people whom she loved and who loved her – the only ones who really mattered now.

  ‘Come on, Simeon.’ She scooped him up and planted a kiss on top of his head. ‘Let’s go home.’

  THE END

  The Free Delphine Woods Starter Library

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  Afterword

  Thank you for taking the time to read the Convenient Women Collection. I hope you will consider leaving a review online as it truly helps authors to get their work into the hands of those who will love it. You can write a review by clicking on the link below:

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  About the Author

  Delphine Woods graduated with a First from The Open University in 2016, where she studied for an Open Degree, specialising in Creative Writing.

  After a busy couple of years writing this collection of Victorian mystery-thrillers, she released her debut novella, The Butcher’s Wife, in July 2019.

  She lives with her husband in Shropshire where she writes in her spare room, her dog by her feet to keep her warm. You can keep up to date with her news and get in touch with her via her website, newsletter, and social media platforms:

  Acknowledgments

  Once again, thank you for reading!

  I would also like to thank my family for being so supportive and encouraging me to follow my dreams. Thank you to my mother for always being there with constructive criticism and for being the first to read my work. Thank you to my father for all his technical support. Thank you to my husband for believing in me completely.

  A huge thank you to everyone who has read first drafts and given such wonderful feedback – you know who you are!

  Thank you to the editors at The History Quill for polishing my manuscripts.

  Finally, a big thanks to the online Indie community, who share their knowledge and expertise and continue to fill our world with wonderful new books.

  Also by Delphine Woods

  The Butcher’s Wife