Katie stared towards the door. Perhaps he’d go straight upstairs and she’d get to her room and to bed; but it was a vain thought, and she knew this.
‘Where’s everybody?’
‘Madam’s in the drawing room, Captain. The master’s gone out.’
She was sitting on the couch reading when Nils entered the room, and as she turned her head slowly in his direction she saw immediately that he had been drinking.
‘Hello, there.’ He dropped heavily into the armchair to the side of the couch.
‘Hello, Nils.’
‘Where’s Father gone?’
‘To the reunion dinner.’
‘Ah-ha! Reunion dinner. And you’re all on your own.’
She ignored this and said, ‘I didn’t know you were due in. Have you just docked?’
‘No. We docked before noon.’
She was surprised and it must have shown in her face, for he said in a mocking tone, ‘Before noon and it’s now eight o’clock. Where have you been, Nils?’
She looked away from him, closed her book, laid it to the side of her, then said, ‘Would you like something to eat?’
‘No. No, thank you, Katie. At the moment I am full—replete. Yes, that is the English word, replete. My belly is full of food…and drink, and my head is full of knowledge…You’ll never guess who I’ve spent the afternoon with, Katie. An old friend of yours.’
She was sitting bolt upright staring at him, her eyes wide.
‘At least his father was a friend of yours.’
Her mind flew to Bernard Rosier, then off at a tangent to his son…and his wife, Sarah! Were they in England?
‘Henry Collard. You remember Henry Collard?’
‘Collard?’ She experienced a sudden feeling of deflation. ‘I know of no-one of that name.’
‘Oh, come on, Katie. Throw your mind back to the old days. Henry Collard, who was a customer of yours.’
Her body was like a ramrod now. The blood draining from her face. Not only his words but his tone and whole manner as he leaned towards her carried insult.
‘Young Collard, his son. But not so young either, ’bout my age. Told me of the night his father went with Rosier—now don’t say you don’t know Rosier. Well, they went to your house and there was a shindy and you hit old Rosier on the head with a candlestick…Now you remember?’
Her nails were digging into the palms of her hands and her breath hissed through her teeth as she said, ‘I am not likely to forget that night.’
He seemed taken aback for a moment, then said, ‘Well, we’re honest anyway. I didn’t expect you to own up to it so quickly.’
‘What do you mean? I have nothing to own up to. Those men forced themselves into my…’
‘Oh, stop it. Stop it. You’re spoiling it now. One of your whores brought them back with her, to be serviced.’
‘How dare you!’ Her eyes blazed at him.
‘Oh, I dare, Katie…Now, don’t get up.’ He pushed her back on to the couch none too gently with the flat of his hand, and added in a tone from which all banter had gone, ‘I dare because I’m mad at myself for being such a bloody fool. You’ve hoodwinked me all these years, playing the aloof lady, the faithful wife—you, the whore mistress…! And he, my dear papa, he gave me a most romantic description of your first meeting; a young girl starving rather than sell her virtue—except, of course, to him. He told me he bought you your first house. That’s very funny when you come to think about it. You didn’t need him to buy you a house, did you, Katie…? Madam Katie…Tell me, how many men have you had altogether? There was Rosier—and Bunting. He married you. Then dear father—and oh, Mr Hewitt. Oh yes, old Hewitt, and God knows how many half-sovereigns worth on the side.’
‘When your…your father comes in…’ The words were blocking her throat.
‘When my father comes in what will you do? Go on, tell me.’ He clamped his hand on to her knee, and at his touch an anger boiled in her, swamping her fear for the moment, and she struck at his arm, crying, ‘Take your hands off me!’ and with a jerk of her body she was on her feet. But so was he. And now he bothered with words no more, for, clutching her to him, he pinned her arms to her sides and, forcing her head back with his own, he bit on her neck.
Her body writhing, she kicked at his shins, and when his mouth came on hers, enveloping it, and his teeth dragged at her upper lip, she arched her back so much that she lost her balance and together they fell sidewards on to the couch.
It was at this precise moment that the door opened, and there followed a silence, and in it she dragged her dishevelled body on to the floor, then upwards, to see Jessie standing gaping at them across the room.
‘The…the scuttle, mam. I…I came for the scuttle.’
‘Get out! It doesn’t matter. But…but, Jessie…’ She had one hand hard on her heart to try to ease its racing, and she held the other waveringly out to the girl, saying, ‘I…I must explain to you, in…in the morning.’
‘Yes, mam.’ The girl looked from Katie to Nils, where he was now going towards the fire adjusting his waistcoat, and again she said, ‘Yes, mam,’ but without the slightest deference.
When the door closed on Jessie, Katie turned stiffly and glared at Nils’ back, and there came to her mind the picture of Theresa as she must have appeared when she fired the gun into Rosier’s face, and she longed for such a weapon to her hand. The voice that came through her sore and swelling lips was hardly recognisable to her. There was no quiver in it, no fear, as it said, ‘I won’t tell Andrée, for I want his days to end peacefully, but I swear before God that if you lay hands on me again I will kill you and take the consequences. One more thing. What you were told today was lies. Lies. Do you hear? An incident was misconstrued. The truth was laughed at, as the truth of tonight’s incident will be laughed at when that girl takes her tale outside this house.’ She was standing with her arm flung outwards in the direction of the door, her body leaning sideways as if she were about to fall.
Nils turned slowly and looked at her with both hate and desire in his eyes, but he said nothing; he just watched her walk unsteadily to the door, and when it had closed behind her he began to swear aloud in his own tongue.
Chapter Four
It was eight days before Christmas and Andrée wasn’t well. He hadn’t been himself for some weeks now and Katie was worried about him. At odd times she would find him staring at her in a strange way. Sometimes she wondered if he knew about Nils, but then she rejected the idea, for if he suspected his son of having attempted to make love to her he would demand to know why, if she didn’t welcome his attention, she hadn’t told him about this before. Would he believe it was his happiness she had been thinking of? Perhaps it would be difficult to convince him of this when he looked at his son and saw himself as he had been thirty years ago.
The day following the incident in the drawing room she had explained to Jessie that Captain Nils had been the worse for drink the previous evening, and had forgotten himself, and the girl had said, ‘Yes, mam. I understand, mam.’ But her eyes had been bold as they looked back into Katie’s.
She felt sick to her very soul when she thought of what the girl might say, and after talking the matter over with Betty she thought it wiser to keep Jessie on.
And there was something else troubling Katie. Catherine had been at college a fortnight before a letter had arrived from her, and then it was a disappointing letter. And not once during the term had she taken the opportunity to come home for a weekend. And now the term had ended two days ago and she had not yet come to see her.
When the children came down last week, as they did now every Saturday, en masse, to collect the pound, Mick had said his ma was goin’ to knock bloody hell out of their Catherine when she came home ’cos it was weeks since she’d had a scribe of a pen from her. Mick’s flowery language always caused Andrée great amusement, but Katie could never laugh at the boy.
Yesterday Andrée had said, ‘Wait till tomorrow morning when the c
hildren come and you’ll know everything then.’
But now it was Saturday morning and for once the children hadn’t come, and she was definitely worried.
‘Why don’t you take a walk up to the house?’ said Andrée.
‘No, Andy; I couldn’t do that. I’ve never been asked there; I don’t think Lucy would want me to see her place.’
‘But you can’t go on in this state of uncertainty. There must be something amiss or else that girl would have been down here like a shot.’
‘You know, Andy’—Katie leaned forward and held out her hands to the blaze from the fire—‘I’m wondering if going to college could have changed her? I’ve…I’ve put it to myself time and again and said it’s ridiculous…’
‘And it is ridiculous. College change Catherine? Nonsense! College would change Catherine as much as it would have changed you, in the way you are inferring. Catherine has character. Look, I think your wisest plan is to take a dander into Jarrow and see Lucy, and tell her you were worried about Catherine and just looked in.’
‘It’s difficult. There’s the money question. She’ll think because I’m giving her the money each week I’m pressing some claim. It’s been a delicate situation for years, as you know.’
‘Well, I would give her until this afternoon; and if she’s not here by then, you take my advice and go up to the house.’
And Katie did go up to the house, and not because of Andrée’s advice but because of Tom Mulholland.
They had finished their lunch and Andrée was settled in the smoke room with his pipe. Soon, she knew, he would drop off to sleep, and he would sleep until around half-past three, when she would take him in a cup of tea.
She herself had just entered her bedroom with the intention of putting her feet up, when she heard the front doorbell ring, and a few minutes later Betty came into the room and, closing the door behind her, said softly, ‘It’s…it’s the young fellow to see you, Katie, the one that used to wait for Catherine. Tom Mulholland.’
Tom Mulholland. She moved slowly towards Betty. ‘Something’s happened to Catherine?’
‘I don’t know, lass, but…but I think you should prepare yourself. The lad looks in an awful mess; he’s been knocked about from the looks of him, an’ he’s got a look on his face like God delivering judgment.’
Katie pushed past Betty and went swiftly on to the landing, then turned to her and asked softly, ‘Where did you put him?’
‘I took him into the morning room.’
She now ran down the stairs and across the hall and entered the room, and then she came to a dead stop as she looked at the tall young man standing stiffly waiting for her. She had never seen him close to before, and if she had she wouldn’t have recognised him from the face she was looking at now. One eye was almost closed, and the whole cheek and the brow was a dark bluish hue. His upper lip was protruding and had been split at the side. The face looked as if it had been battered unmercifully. She clasped her hands as she moved slowly towards him, and when she stood a yard from him she shook her head and muttered, ‘Dear God, who’s done this to you?’
She watched his misshapen lips move, and when they parted she saw a gap in the side of his mouth where his teeth were missing. ‘Catherine’s father.’ The words dripped bitterness.
He had not said, ‘Me Uncle Pat’ but ‘Catherine’s father.’
Again she shook her head, and now she put her fingers to her cheek and asked softly, ‘But why?’
She watched the whole distorted face tremble. She watched the lips move a number of times before he groaned out, ‘Because Catherine’s going to have a baby and he’s blaming me.’
Katie now pressed her clenched fists into her jaws, and it seemed as if she was squeezing the words out through her stiff lips when she cried, ‘No! Oh no!’
‘Yes! Oh yes!’ His words too were forced out, and he bent towards her, muttering brokenly below his breath, ‘I know nothing about it, nothing. Do you hear! But he didn’t give me a chance, he didn’t give me a chance to speak. He came to our house and pulled me out of bed and before I knew where I was he was using his fists and boots on me. He would have kicked me to death if it hadn’t been for the men next door. I…I didn’t know why he’d done it, what it was about. When me da came in he said he’d kill him. He went round, but when he came back he would have done for me an’ all, except that I was almost unconscious…They all believe it.’
Katie was now sitting on the edge of a chair and made a gesture to him to take a seat, but he said roughly, ‘No, no, I haven’t come here to sit and have light conversation with you. I’ve come here to tell you who did this thing to Catherine.’
‘Tell me?’ She looked as perplexed as she sounded, and he nodded his head sharply at her, then put his hand up to his neck as if a pain had shot through it. ‘The night afore she was to go away she was here.’ He dug his finger downwards. ‘And I was late in finishing, but I thought I’d take a chance on seeing her and I came down, and just as I was passing the fountain I saw her. I saw her getting on a tram with a man in uniform, the fellow she calls Uncle Nils. Now’—his finger was stabbing towards her—‘take it from there. Two days later I saw me Uncle Pat and he tells me that the night before Catherine went to college she had come in in a state and said she had been chased by a man. He said she had come across the salt grass and some fellow had made a grab at her. She cried half the night.’ Again his finger stabbed towards her. ‘You’re with me, I hope…? You realise she wasn’t chased by any man? That bloke, your son, or stepson or whatever he is, saw her home, at least up to the salt grass. It’s pretty dark on the salt grass and there’s hollows and places, and nobody’s going to take much notice of a lass shouting out there because there’s courting going on, and people mind their own business. But that’s when it happened. And it was him…It’s him I’ve come to see.’
He straightened up as he finished speaking and Katie closed her eyes and eased herself farther on to the chair and leaned against the back of it. Dear God! Oh, dear God! Poor, poor Catherine. Bernard Rosier and the night of the ball; the salt grass and the hollows where the courting couples lay. She would kill him; she would take a knife and she would drive it into him. The dirty, dirty swine! ‘I can hurt you, Katie. There are many ways I can hurt you without laying a hand on you.’ That’s what he had said the morning after the incident in the drawing room, and he had seen Catherine to the tram that night; he had said it was on his way to the docks. He had done this deliberately. Oh, the filthy, filthy swine! And Andy. What would happen when Andy knew? And he would have to know. She looked dazedly at the boy and said, ‘What does Catherine say?’
‘She’s told them it isn’t me, but they won’t believe her because she won’t name anybody else. And she won’t name anybody else because of you. She doesn’t want to upset you, and that’s what I’m here for. I want you to come back with me and tell them.’
Katie got slowly to her feet and, her hands still clasped tightly together, she looked at him and said, ‘I’ll come back with you and see Catherine, but I can’t tell them anything. I can’t say who has done this. Neither you nor I can say that because we don’t really know. It is Catherine who must say who the man is.’ But as she spoke she saw the old pattern repeated, for Catherine, like herself, wouldn’t name the man for fear of causing trouble to those she loved.
‘Where is he?’
‘I don’t know at the moment.’
‘You wouldn’t tell me when he’s coming in if you did know, would you?’
‘Yes, I would.’
He blinked painfully and the water dripped out of the corner of his bruised eye.
She said bitterly, ‘I’d like you to give him what Catherine’s father gave you.’ Her eyes moved round his bruised features for a moment; then she added, ‘But…but you’d never be able to accomplish that, he’s a big strong man. But leave this to me.’
She heard the sound of his teeth grinding before he said, ‘He might be big, but I’ve so much hate
in me this minute that if he was here now I’d have the strength to beat him to a pulp…What you don’t know is that I love Catherine, always have done and always will, and I’ll tell you something else when I’m on, and you can do what you like about it—she loves me.’
She looked levelly at him, pity and understanding in her gaze, before she said quietly, ‘I’m glad of that, Tom, and I’m on your side.’
He seemed taken aback for a moment by her attitude; but still aggressively he said, ‘You wanted someone fancy for her. Oh, I know. I know…’
‘Be quiet,’ she said sharply, ‘and listen…If Catherine wants you, then I want you. But we’ll talk about that later. Now wait here until I get my things and I’ll come with you.’
She went out of the room and into the smoke-room and gently shook Andrée’s shoulder, and when he grunted and answered, ‘Yes, Kaa-tee? Yes?’ she said, ‘Wake up, Andy. There’s something I must tell you.’
Blowing the air out through his beard, he pulled himself upwards and smiled at her, saying, ‘Yes, Kaa-tee?’ Then, taking in the look on her face, he asked, ‘What is it?’
‘The boy, Catherine’s cousin, he’s come to tell me why Catherine hasn’t been down.’ She caught hold of his hand now and paused a while before she said, ‘She’s going to have a baby, Andy.’
‘Catherine?’ He moved his head in slow, wide sweeps.
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