‘Oh, well…’ It was Miss Ann still speaking, her lips pursed, her refined voice picking her words. ‘We…we thought that she might go to Mr Rosier—Mr Rosier Senior—and…and explain the situation, and he would talk to his…’
‘No! No! Never. I won’t.’ Katie was standing very straight, her face grim. Her voice, harsh and loud, sounded very unladylike and it startled her visitors. ‘No matter what happens I won’t see him. Get that into your heads right away. I won’t…’ Andrée’s hand on her arm checked her, and she drew in a long, shuddering breath as she listened to him saying, ‘You have heard what my wife has said.’
‘But…but this must be stopped.’ Miss Rose was looking up at Andrée, speaking pointedly to him. ‘You do understand that they’re half-brother and sister, and it cannot go on? It’s an offence against God.’
‘Half-brother and sister,’ said Andrée now, as if explaining something to himself. He said it slowly again, then halted his glance towards Katie and gave his attention to Miss Rose, asking quietly, ‘She is seeing the son of this man Rosier?’
‘Yes, yes. Of course that is the dreadful fact, and we fear it may have been going on unknown to us. We always have kept watch over her, a strict watch, but there were times when she went away to stay with the Spencers, friends of ours, and young Mr Rosier was a visitor to their house, and we didn’t know this, not for some time. She said nothing at all about meeting him until a few months ago.’
‘Have you spoken to her about her relationship to this young man?’ Andrée asked.
‘No! No.’ The sisters both spoke together. Then Miss Ann said, ‘We do not want to shock her. But even before we learnt of the relationship we did not favour her associating with this young man; the Rosiers are not a family we…we admire.’
‘Have you thought of approaching the young man yourselves?’
Now both of the ladies looked somewhat shamefaced for a moment; then Miss Ann said. ‘Well, I must confess we…we called on Mr Rosier yesterday, but we did not see him, only his father. It…it was a most distressing encounter.’
‘Oh.’ Andrée nodded his head slowly, and the ladies looked away from his gaze, and Miss Ann’s voice was merely a whisper as she said, ‘He will do nothing to stop their association. He is a dreadful man—a dreadful, dreadful man.’
Andrée now looked at Katie. Her lids were so lowered she could have been standing with her eyes closed. He pressed her arm gently as he said to the ladies, ‘And you want my wife to go and see this man, this dreadful man?’
There was a long pause before Miss Rose said, her voice stiff again, ‘We feel it is only right that she should do so. It is her duty.’
‘Oh, you think it is her duty?’ Andrée now nodded sharply from one to the other and his beard seemed to bristle. ‘You have her daughter for how many years?’ He slanted his eyes towards the ceiling before saying, ‘Eighteen years. And now you think that my wife owes her, and you, a duty?’
‘The circumstances are not usual, Mr Fraenkel,’ said Miss Ann.
‘Captain Fraenkel.’
‘Captain Fraenkel.’
‘I agree with you, ladies. The circumstances are not usual.’
‘I would die if anything should happen to her.’ Miss Rose’s voice dropped to a trembling whisper as she added, ‘I mean, if she had an association with this young man…’
‘Well, you just might have to die, ma’am.’
The two ladies stiffened visibly as they stared at this big, bearded man, who spoke so callously.
‘There are different ways of dying, ladies. My wife here has died many many times over the years through the loss of her daughter. If you want my opinion of the transaction in which you took charge of her child I will give it to you. I think you used more than persuasion, I think you used pressure on a girl who was poor, in trouble, and handicapped by a sick mother and a demented sister.’
‘Sir!’ Again both the ladies spoke together; and to this Andrée said ‘Yes?’ as if in enquiry.
‘We…we have brought her up as a lady. She has had everything her heart desired.’
‘Except a mother.’
The Misses Chapman actually glared at Andrée. Then Miss Ann, turning and addressing Katie pointedly, said, ‘You can’t just do nothing.’
‘What can I do?’ Katie spoke dully now. ‘If you won’t allow me to tell my daughter, what would you have me do…other than what you have already asked, and I can’t do that.’
‘You could see the young man,’ put in Miss Rose. Katie looked down on the pretty, faded-looking little woman and asked, still in a quiet voice, ‘Why can’t you see him?’
‘Because I think it would be more…well, more authentic coming from you. And in that way Sara would not be involved. I mean, you…you could ask him to break off his association with her. In fact, if you told him the position he would do so at once, for, after all, he is a gentleman.’
The strange sound like a laugh that Andrée made brought the ladies’ eyes to him, but his face looked stern and forbidding, and, moving away from Katie’s side, he walked slowly past them and, extending his arm towards the door, said, ‘I regret, ladies, having to ask you to leave. Should my wife come to any decision as to her future action on this matter she will, no doubt, inform you.’ The words were formal, the tone precise. Miss Ann made a protesting sound of ‘But, but…’; then, glancing towards Katie, she turned and walked down the room. But not Miss Rose. Miss Rose came and stood in front of Katie and cried, ‘You can’t let this go on. It’s evil, evil. They’re almost brother and sister.’
Katie stared at Miss Rose for a moment before saying, ‘Why don’t you tell her this? It’s a simple way out, quite simple; just tell her.’
‘I can’t, I can’t.’ Katie watched the face crumple and the lips tremble as Miss Rose whimpered, ‘She’s all I’ve got. She thinks she’s ours, our blood. She’s proud of it; I know she is. She’s got a feeling for family; she’s always delving into our history. The knowledge would break her, change her. She would feel she didn’t belong to us. Moreover’—now Miss Rose’s head drooped—‘we cannot bear to lose her. I…I’ve given my life to her. I look back and I cannot see a time when I didn’t have her.’
‘I haven’t had her for eighteen years.’
After Katie’s words a silence fell on them, until Andrée said, quietly, ‘Ma’am’; and Miss Rose, turning away, joined her sister and went out of the room, and Andrée saw them out of the house.
When he returned to the drawing room he walked slowly towards Katie, and when he was opposite to her he took her hands in his and asked, ‘How long have you known this?’
‘Just…just after you left for Norway.’ Her whole face was breaking up.
‘And you would not have told me?’
‘I didn’t want you to know…his name. I’ve always been afraid of you knowing his name.’
He did not ask why, he knew why. He put his arms about her and drew her to the couch and held her shivering body close to his, and after a time, when she asked, ‘What am I to do, Andy?’ he said, ‘Nothing at present. Wait a day or so and things will likely move of their own accord. Things have a way of doing that. Anyway, it is Christmas Eve; there is very little you can do until after the holidays. Don’t worry.’ He brought his face close to hers. ‘Nothing or no-one can harm you ever again. Just remember that. You are no longer Kaa-tee Mulholland. To me you never have been, you have always been Mrs Fraenkel, and this time next week you can claim that name. You will, for all to know, be Mrs Kaa-tee Fraenkel. You have nothing to fear.’
Chapter Five
It was the second week in the New Year and the thaw had set in, otherwise the carriage would never have been able to make the journey from Shields into the country beyond Jarrow. As it was, the horses were often up to their knees in slush, and twice Mr Weir had to get down from his cab and tug at their heads and use his whip on them to get them out of the mire.
Katie was well wrapped up in a brown fur cloak with a hood at
tached, which had been Andrée’s Christmas gift. Underneath she was wearing a cherry-coloured cord suit with the skirt reaching only to the top of her leather boots, which covered her ankles. Yet for all the warmth of her apparel she was shivering like a leaf. Not even the presence of the two men, Andrée sitting close to her side and Mr Hewitt sitting opposite, brought her any feeling of security, for it seemed to her, and had done for days, that everything was conspiring to drive her towards ‘The House’.
It was when Mr Hewitt had paid a social call on Boxing Day that she had told him what had transpired, and it was at his suggestion that they not only write to young Mr Rosier but send the letter by a special messenger. This was done the following day. The letter requested Mr Daniel Rosier to get in touch with Mr Hewitt without delay. The messenger had returned saying that young Mr Rosier was out for the day; the butler had informed him that the young master was lunching and dining with a family called Charlton and would be home later that evening. He had promised to see that the letter was safely delivered. And so they had waited. They waited long enough for Andrée to make a return trip to the Thames; but he hadn’t been in the house more than an hour when the reply had come, and not to Mr Hewitt but to her, asking her to call at the house and Mr Rosier would be pleased to give her his attention.
Andrée had gone with her when she took the letter to Mr Hewitt, and Mr Hewitt had been puzzled by it, and after some discussion concerning it he said, ‘If you decide to go, Mrs Fraenkel, I will come with you…’ He had paused, then added, ‘With you both. And we will stipulate that our visit is to young Mr Rosier and no-one else.’
For the hundredth time she now heard Andrée telling her not to be afraid. ‘Just remember,’ he was saying, ‘you are entering this house not as Katie Mulholland but as Mrs Fraenkel.’ It was as if he imagined his name, which he had given her by special licence last week, had some magic power to protect her. But it hadn’t, no more than Bunting’s, and she had taken that by special licence too.
Mr Hewitt was nodding assent to Andrée’s statement, then quickly he put out his hand to steady himself as the coach gave another lurch, and half smiling he said, ‘We couldn’t have picked a worse day for the journey.’
Katie gazed out of the window on to familiar landmarks; it was twenty years since she had travelled this road, and the scene hadn’t altered. Jarrow had expanded from its outsize village into a town; it had clawed its way into the surrounding country, but it was still far away from this lonely fell land. When the carriage gave another lurch she knew they were turning the corner round which she had disappeared from her granda’s view on Sunday afternoons.
As the journey progressed she thought that some part of her should be proud that she was coming back to this house in a carriage that well might be her own, for she had enough money to buy, and maintain, three carriages if she wanted them. But there was no pride in her, only fear; she was inwardly, as she had been all those years ago, Katie Mulholland, something so low in the hierarchy of the household that only those who worked with her knew she existed.
The carriage was on the drive now, and here she did notice a change. The hedges were no longer trimmed, the yew trees were no longer clipped; their fantastic shapes were now grotesque, birds’ tails were sprouting bush, heads were lost in a contortion of branches. She felt Andrée’s hand groping for hers and she gripped it, and turning to him she said, ‘Don’t come in with me, Andy, please. Wait outside…Please.’ When she felt him stiffen she glanced across at Mr Hewitt, and he nodded and said, ‘I think it would be wise, Captain.’
Katie watched the beard on Andrée’s cheek quiver, which indicated the grinding of his jaws, and again she pleaded with one word, ‘Andy.’ And in answer he lowered his head a little. And then the carriage stopped.
Before the coachman had time to open the door Andy had alighted and assisted her out, and he looked hard into her face for a moment, then he stood watching her as she mounted the steps to the front door with Mr Hewitt at her side.
As the bell jangled from Mr Hewitt’s pull Katie’s heart began to beat so rapidly she thought she would collapse. Then the door was opened and there stood Mr Kennard. Twenty years had wrought a great change in him; she was looking not at the spruce, imposing individual she remembered, but at a white-haired, stooped old man.
Kennard looked at the visitor keenly. He recognised her. This was Katie Mulholland; she hadn’t changed all that much. He had heard a lot about Katie Mulholland over the years, and not only from the kitchen gossip, for this was the woman who had left her mark on his master, who had obsessed him, who bedevilled him in his drink and made a fiend of him in his sober moments. His master had a consuming hate for this woman, a hate almost as big as the hate he himself had for his master. As he looked at Katie Mulholland, the woman, he thought that her infamous life hadn’t left much trace on her face; though at present she looked as white as a sheet, she was beautiful. Of a sudden he felt sorry for her. He wondered what the outcome of her visit would be, for that devil in there had been cooking something up for days. He knew the signs…‘This way, madam,’ he said now, while not a muscle of his face moved to show any recognition of her. ‘This way, sir.’
For the first time Katie stepped into the house by way of the vestibule. She kept her eyes straight ahead, yet nothing escaped her. The change inside the house was as great as, if not greater than, outside. Everything looked dull, dusty and dingy. When had the floor of the hall last been polished? The hall that had been the pride of Mrs Davis and the heartbreak of both the parlourmaid and the chambermaids who shared the task of making it like a mirror.
They were going towards the library when Mr Hewitt said, ‘Mr Daniel Rosier is expecting us?’ It was a question and Kennard answered it with a slight movement of his head. His face was averted from them, and he kept it so as he opened the drawing-room door. Katie walked slowly past him, then Mr Hewitt, but he announced only one of them. In a low voice he said, ‘Miss Mulholland, sir.’
Quickly now Katie turned to him. Her voice quiet and strangely without a tremor, she said, ‘I am Mrs Fraenkel.’ Kennard now looked at her; then, lowering his head, he turned away and closed the door.
Katie walked slowly forward into the great book-lined room, which on this winter afternoon was so dim she couldn’t see to the far end of it. She was turning to Mr Hewitt when they both started as a thick voice from behind and to the right of them said, ‘Mrs Fraenkel?’
Katie could not prevent her hand going to her mouth as she looked at the man standing in the far corner of the room where the bookcases met. He was leaning back as if resting in a cleft, his arms stretched out along the shelves. There was nothing about him that she remembered, yet had she met him in hell she would have recognised him.
The man who had peered down at her from behind the curtain on the balcony window had been a young handsome man; the man who had wagged his finger at her demanding her silence in the candlelit room had been a dark, threatening but still handsome man; the man who had stared silently at her when she had stood in her nightgown with the candlestick in her hand had still been presentable. The man she looked at now had an ugly red flabby face with eyes like chips of black lead, their light coming to her over the distance from between his narrowed lids. She swung round from their gleam and to Mr Hewitt, whispering between gasping breaths, ‘Let us go. Let us go.’
Mr Hewitt, with his hand on her arm, was about to lead her forward when the figure moved swiftly from the corner of the room and stood with his back to the door, and the solicitor, drawing himself up with dignity and in a voice that matched his posture, said, ‘Sir, will you kindly allow us to leave? We came to see your son…’
‘You didn’t come to see my son, Hewitt, you came to see me. I sent for you and you’ve come…to see me. I’ve had your letters, Hewitt. They were very interesting. Very in-ter-esting.’ His head, which was leaning against the back of the door, rocked from side to side, and Mr Hewitt said, ‘Sir, you are drunk. This lady wishes to leave. W
ill you kindly allow her to do so?’
‘Lady? Oh, my God!’ Again the head was moving widely. Then stiffening suddenly, Bernard Rosier, still with his back against the door, brought his shoulders hunching forward as he muttered thickly, ‘Don’t you come that bloody talk with me, Mr Solicitor; I know all about you. You’ve been raking off from her brothels for years. It pays you to call her lady, doesn’t it? Oh, you can tell me nothing about your little game, or hers.’
As Katie closed her eyes and tried to steady her shaking limbs she prayed for only one thing at this precise moment, that he wouldn’t raise his voice any louder in case Andy should hear him. The doors and walls were thick, but the library windows faced the front drive. As she felt Mr Hewitt move away from her she turned to him almost wildly, then saw he was going to the bell rope that hung by the mantelpiece, and as he tugged on it twice Bernard Rosier cried, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing! Where do you think you are?’
It was as if Kennard had been waiting for just such a summons, for as Mr Hewitt took his place by Katie’s side again there came a tap on the door, and Bernard Rosier answered it. Without turning round he cried, ‘I didn’t ring for you. Bugger off! Do you hear?’
‘Sir! Your language.’
‘Language. Don’t be funny. That’s like Sunday-school pap to what she’s used to.’ He now started to move forward…and as he did so Katie backed towards the window, and the light fell on her and he saw her as he had imagined her over the years, as he had last seen her standing in her shift illuminated by the light of a candle. His fingers now went up to his brow, where he carried the mark of her aim yet. Once, when she was a stinking scullery maid, he had taken her; why hadn’t he guessed then that she would turn into this? He could have had her, all his life he could have had her on the side. He had had her, but as a curse. This was the creature who had dogged him with ill luck; this was the creature who had inspired his crazy sister to expound her moral standards until they had brought his life, his future, his very existence toppling round him. Through this creature his wife had made herself almost penniless to spite him, and ruined his chances once and for all of ever getting a footing in Palmer’s. Moreover, she had made him the laughing stock of the county. Through this creature he was now living no better than a tradesman; three servants in the house where once there had been twenty; two men outside where once there had been ten; one horse in the stables.
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