Mistress of Green Tree Mill

by Mistress of Green Tree Mill (retail) (epub)

  Everyone in the house was beside themselves with delight but Maggy persuaded Charlie to wait at home while his mother went along to greet his returning father.

  Only her best clothes were good enough for Lizzie on that bright morning and with Maggy’s help she was laced into her tightest corset. Her waist, after her week of starving was sylph-like, a bare eighteen inches. She’d chosen a high-necked dress with leg of mutton sleeves, and a huge hat with sweeping plumes that cascaded proudly down one side of her face. She glowed, she gleamed, she sparkled in delight as she put on her high buttoned boots of finest leather and stepped into the cab that was to take her to Sam.

  A crowd of eager, chattering people waited on the dockside for the Pegasus to tie up. Lizzie stood silent and apart, her eyes fixed on the deck of the approaching ship, seeking out her husband’s tall figure. At last she saw him, standing in the bow, one arm raised above his head for he had seen her too. Tears poured down her cheeks and her heart was racing with the overpowering force of her emotions.

  As usual Sam was one of the first ashore but this time he walked slowly down the gangway, as if afraid to move too fast. She ran up to him and held out her arms, folding him close. In the desperation of their embrace, her fine hat was knocked from her head but she did not even notice.

  Sam’s face was drawn and she drew back from him to ask, ‘Oh my dearest, what’s wrong? You’re safe, you’re home. I prayed for you to come back to me.’

  He shook his head and pulled her close to him again. He did not reply. They were standing like carved figures on a monument when Captain Jacobs came hurrying over.

  ‘Now you do what I told you,’ said the captain in a concerned voice, laying a hand on Sam’s back. ‘Take a rest and go to a doctor if that chest of yours doesn’t get better.’

  To Lizzie he said, ‘Look after him, my dear. You’ve got a brave man there. Three more of the Diana’s crew would have died but for him. He needs a rest. We’ll do the unloading without him. Take him home.’

  There was not a lot of unloading to do. Like most of the returned ships of 1902 the Pegasus was ‘clean’, with not a single whale in the hold. The crew’s reward for six months of bitter cold and privation was the huddled carcases of fifty seals.

  Lizzie and Sam sat close together in the cab to Lochee. One arm was around his wife’s shoulders and the other hand gripped hers tightly.

  ‘There were times on this trip when I thought I’d never see you again,’ he told her, squeezing her closer to him.

  ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ she asked.

  He shook his dark head. ‘Not now. Later. I want to see the bairn first.’

  * * *

  Captain Jacobs sat in the buttoned chair at Lizzie’s brightly burnished fireside and looked anxious.

  ‘I’m sorry it’s such a small pay-out, Sammy, but the seals didn’t make much. How’re you fixed for the winter?’ he asked.

  On the table lay a small heap of notes and coins – sixty pounds exactly.

  ‘Don’t worry. It couldn’t be helped. I’ll find something to do,’ said Sam.

  Lizzie intervened. ‘You won’t need to do anything. We’ve money in the bank. What’s the use of saving if you can’t use it when you need it?’

  The captain regarded her with respect. ‘That’s right,’ he agreed. ‘Let him take a rest.’ He turned to Sam and said, ‘Anyway, you’ll get another hundred-pound reward for saving those men. I’ve applied for it for you. You deserve it.’

  Lizzie beamed, pride shining out of her. Her husband was a hero. There had been a bit in the newspaper saying how he’d saved the lives of three survivors of the Diana. The lookout of the Pegasus had sighted them stranded on an ice floe. They’d been trying to trek for help when their ship was trapped in the ice. In spite of icebergs, Sam and another man put out in a small boat and brought them back to the Pegasus. It took courage and huge exertion, because for much of the time they had to hack a channel through drift ice. The left hand of Sam’s companion was so badly frostbitten that it had to be amputated by the ship’s surgeon. Sam had suffered a strain to the chest. His muscles had been so badly wrenched that he was in pain for the whole of the trip home.

  Captain Jacobs remembered Sam’s sufferings and he asked, ‘How d’you feel today? Is the pain gone?’

  Sam shrugged. ‘It’s still there, but not nearly so bad. Lizzie’s taking good care of me.’ He grinned at his hovering wife as he spoke.

  She was happy as she heaped the captain’s plate with buttered scones. She urged him to try another piece of seed cake, filled and refilled his tea cup, proud of her pretty house and the decorum of her tea arrangements. A silver spirit kettle was hissing away on the side table; Maggy, thank heavens, had polished the teaspoons so that they sparkled in the late afternoon sun; the china was eggshell thin and painted with bouquets of roses. Captain Jacobs would not have been more stylishly entertained in a jute-lord’s mansion.

  Before the captain left he returned to the subject of Sam’s injury. ‘If that pain doesn’t go away, get a doctor to have a look at you,’ he said, and as Lizzie was seeing him out, he whispered, ‘I don’t want to worry you, but that pain was bad. Don’t let him tell you it wasn’t. I’ve never seen Sammy not able to work before. He could hardly draw his breath after it hit him.’

  A chill descended on her, driving away the pleasure of the afternoon and the benison of the scarlet setting sun that could be seen through the open front door. ‘If it comes back I’ll get Dr McLaren to take a look at him,’ she promised.

  * * *

  Chrissy’s pregnancy was so far trouble free. This time it looked as if she was going to hold on to the baby, for three months had passed without incident. David was excited at the prospect of becoming a father again and asked Dr McLaren’s son, who had taken over the old man’s practice, to look in on the expectant mother every now and again to make sure things were proceeding well. That was why the doctor was at the Castle Bar when Lizzie and her husband paid an unexpected visit on the Mudies.

  Lizzie was worried about Sam. When he thought she was not watching him, she saw him press his clenched fist against his chest and screw up his face in pain. He was breathless when they went out walking and his usual abundant energy was easily depleted.

  ‘Oh, Doctor, I’m glad to see you. Perhaps you could take a look at my Sam,’ she asked young McLaren when she found him in Chrissie’s parlour.

  Sam made a disapproving noise. ‘I don’t need a doctor, Lizzie. Don’t waste his time.’

  ‘I make my money out of people wasting my time,’ laughed the doctor. ‘What’s the trouble?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Sam quickly.

  Lizzie hushed him and said, ‘He’s a pain in his chest that won’t go away. He’s had it since he saved those men in the Arctic. You heard about that, didn’t you, Dr McLaren?’

  ‘Indeed I did. It was very brave. But what sort of a pain, Sam?’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘Tell the doctor about not being able to sleep. Tell him how tired you are all the time. Tell him about being sick – he’s vomited three times since he came home, Doctor, and it’s not like him. Sam’s never sick.’ Lizzie was pouring out his symptoms much to her husband’s embarrassment.

  ‘I’m in a hurry now so it would be best if Sam came to my rooms tonight at half past five,’ said the doctor, tactfully preparing to leave.

  Though Lizzie was worried, Sam’s pain did not haunt her dreams like her fear of him drowning or being crushed to death in pack ice. When he went out to consult the doctor that night, she stayed at home, playing with Charlie and laying the dinner table for his return. It was to be his favourite meal – roast beef with abundant vegetables, potatoes and thick gravy followed by a paper-thin-crusted apple pie. The smells that wafted up from the basement kitchen were mouthwatering.

  He sniffed them appreciatively when he came slowly up the ten stairs from the street and as he opened the door he shouted cheerfully, ‘I’m back. I’m hu
ngry.’

  She came to the parlour door. Her neat little figure was fattening up again and he loved the sight of her as she stood silhouetted against the light with a long white apron covering her blue dress.

  ‘What did Dr McLaren say?’ she asked.

  ‘He said I’d wrenched a muscle in my chest and it might take a little while to get better. I’m not to bend down quickly or do any heavy work and I’ve to have a nip of whisky every night! A good prescription, isn’t it?’ He laughed and squeezed her round the waist affectionately. She squeezed him back and laughed as well. Their troubles seemed to be over.

  Next morning, Lizzie was surprised when a message boy arrived with a note from her father asking her to look in on Chrissy that afternoon.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said to Sam, ‘I hope she’s not going to lose this bairn after all. She wants it so much.’

  ‘Go down on your own. I’ll take our bairn for a walk,’ said Sam. Chrissy’s gynaecological problems embarrassed him.

  Dr McLaren was sitting with David in the parlour when Lizzie arrived. ‘Where’s Chrissy? Is she all right?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘She’s lying down, but she’s fine,’ her father reassured her. ‘Sit down, Lizzie. It’s you the doctor wants to see. I’ll leave you with him.’ His face was grim as he went out and Lizzie turned to the young doctor.

  ‘What’s wrong? Is it Chrissy?’

  Dr McLaren shook his head. ‘How old are you, Mrs Kinge?’ he asked.

  She glared at him as if she doubted his sanity. ‘I’m twenty-nine. Why?’

  ‘And you’ve one bairn. You’re not pregnant, are you?’

  ‘No, I’m not as far as I know. What’s this about?’

  ‘I want you to be brave. Your father tells me you’re a sensible woman and that I can trust you to understand what I’m going to say. When I examined your husband last night I found out that he’s very ill. I’m sorry. I thought I ought to warn you.’

  She reeled. A thought ran through her head that all her worries about the Arctic had been pointless. A very different danger threatened Sam.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ Her face was rigid and expressionless.

  ‘It’s his heart. He’s torn the heart muscle.’

  ‘It can get better,’ said Lizzie flatly.

  Dr McLaren shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think it will.’

  ‘What are you trying to tell me?’

  ‘I’m telling you that you’il be a widow before three months are out.’

  Her cold calm was deceptive. ‘Did you tell him?’

  The doctor shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t. Do you want him to know?’

  ‘Certainly not. Does anyone else know?’

  ‘Only your father.’

  She rose and walked to the door, swinging it open. ‘Father!’ she called. David, who had been waiting in the next room, came in, his face working with emotion. He tried to take her hand but she pulled away and spoke in stony calm. ‘You must keep this to yourself,’ she warned. ‘Don’t tell anyone – not anyone, not even Chrissy. Not a word of it must get back to Sam. I don’t believe it’s going to happen anyway.’

  She lived in a nightmare, hiding her terror, watching her husband constantly, afraid to allow him out of her sight. At night she lay at his side, scared to sleep in case his breathing stopped. When he reached out for her in the darkness as a preliminary to making love, she was reluctant and unadventurous, not her normal passionate self. She was terrified to arouse him in case lovemaking killed him.

  ‘We’re growing into an old, settled married couple,’ he sighed after they made uneventful love. She knew he was disappointed and held him in her arms, gathering him tight to her as if her own strength would be enough to keep away the enemy that the doctor said was stalking him.

  It’s not true. It can’t be true. It’s all a mistake, she told herself, and dredged her memory for tales of people who had lived for years, confounding doctors’ diagnoses.

  It was a terrible strain trying to act normally, pretending to be happy and carefree when they went on their outings.

  If he saw her with an anxious frown between her brows, he would put out a hand and pat her fondly. ‘Don’t look so worried, Lizzie. We’ll manage. If the money runs out, I’ll get a job. There’s plenty of things I can do. I’m feeling much better.’

  ‘I’m not worried about money. We’ve enough in the bank,’ she told him. She would spend their last penny rather than let him work. She did not give a thought to what was to happen to Charlie and herself if Sam died. Life would not be worth living without him anyway, so why bother?

  They kept to their old routine and every Saturday took the same box in the Palace Theatre. She always draped the white silk scarf round his neck before they set out and stood back, admiring him. Oh, he was a lovely man. Nothing, nothing was going to take him away from her.

  One Saturday, on a day when the three months were nearly up, they were in their box watching a variety show that proved to be a disappointment. The acts were poor and the comedian was a leering old man wearing a stained dress suit and a battered top hat.

  His crude jokes were poured out with leering eye-rolling that made the rougher element of the audience howl in glee. A crowd of mill women in the top gallery screeched like imprisoned parrots at the old man’s sallies. Lizzie looked up at the noise they made and saw Rosie among them.

  ‘You know what I’m talking about, girls, don’t you? You’re not stuck-up fancy ladies. You’re no shrinking violets… you’re no blushing nuns,’ said the bleary-eyed comedian to the gallery.

  Lizzie sat with a fixed expression, surreptitiously watching Sam who was laughing with the best of them. When the merriment died down, he whispered, ‘Does he shock you? Do you want to go home? You’re not laughing.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I’m not shocked. I’m just a bit worried about Chrissy…’ She could not tell him that every time he laughed, every time he leaned forward and clapped his big fists happily on his knees she was terrified his heart would give up and that he would die sitting there beside her.

  In the early hours of the morning she was beset by her worst fears. During the day she could persuade herself that the doctor’s opinion was wrong but in the lonely hours before dawn, she lay awake with bleakness engulfing her. If Sam died, how could she go on living? She struck a match and lit their candle, holding it up so that she could see his face. It was pale, but not mortally pale. She remembered how Maggy’s mother and Jessie had looked during their last illnesses. The approach of death could be seen on them long before the final moment. There was no such look on Sam.

  He had stopped complaining of the chest pain and on the night they returned from the theatre she allowed herself to hope although she saw him taking a sly nip from the crystal decanter in the parlour. He was not a secret drinker. It must have been pain that did it. She willed life into him. Her invincible Sam, her bulwark against the world, was not going to die. The force of her determination would keep him alive. Dr McLaren had made a mistake.

  Sleep refused to come and, moving quietly so as not to waken him, she crept out of bed and headed for the kitchen where she sat in the semi-darkness sipping tea and staring, eyes wide, into the fire. Gazing into the glowing coals she let her imagination range, seeing in the scarlet depths mysterious valleys, castles on mountains, knights in armour riding into battle, erupting volcanoes, drifting ice floes. She was lost in her wonder world when Maggy came stumbling in from the little bed closet off the scullery.

  ‘I heard you in here. You’re up early.’

  Lizzie raised her eyes with pupils huge and dark from staring at the burning coals. ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she said.

  ‘Was the theatre good?’ asked Maggy, shoving the kettle back into the middle of the coals to make herself tea.

  ‘Theatre?’ Lizzie had to think for a minute before she remembered the drunken old comic and his dirty jokes. ‘Yes, it was all right. Your sister Rosie was in the top gallery with a
lot of her friends.’

  Maggy nodded. ‘She likes a laugh does Rosie.’

  ‘How long have you been with us now, Maggy?’ Lizzie suddenly asked.

  The maid turned to look at her with a startled expression. Counting was not her strong point. ‘Well, I came the year before your mother – before the bridge fell down.’

  ‘That happened in 1879, so you came in 1878. That’s nearly twenty-four years.’

  Maggy shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Here was her chance. She’d been waiting to approach the subject but had not liked to bring it up when Lizzie was so strange and distracted in her manner. Something was wrong. Maggy could feel it in her bones.

  ‘Are you all right, Lizzie?’ she asked first, reaching out a chapped hand and grasping Lizzie’s arm.

  Lizzie looked down at the hand with tears in her eyes but her voice was steady as she replied, ‘I’m perfectly all right.’

  ‘Are you happy?’

  ‘I’m very happy.’ The tone’was bleak.

  ‘Are you worried about Chrissy and that bairn she’s having?’

  ‘Not really. She’s my father’s worry, not mine. The doctor says she’s going to be fine this time. The baby’s moving about normally.’

  ‘Then what’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong, why should there be anything wrong?’

  Maggy got up and poured boiling water into a brown earthenware teapot before she said, ‘It’s just that I’ve had an offer.’

  ‘What sort of an offer? Not another job?’

  ‘No, it’s an offer of marriage. Do you mind that carpenter who came to mend the window frames next door? His name’s Willie Brewster and he wants to marry me.’

  Lizzie could remember the bright little carpenter very well. He was an energetic, cheerful man with a polite manner. She liked him.

  ‘He’s asked you to get married!’ It was impossible to hide her astonishment and Maggy flushed.

  ‘I’m no’ some sort of freak,’ she protested.