A Daughter's Gift

by Maggie Hope

  ‘Oh. Yes, of course. If you would be so good?’ He took a diary and fountain pen from his inside pocket and waited expectantly.

  She shook her head, smiling a little at his obvious desire to be off immediately. ‘What’s your hurry, lad?’ she asked. ‘It’s a bit late to go tonight, why don’t you wait for the morn?’

  Jack smiled wryly. She was right, of course. ‘I’ll go tomorrow,’ he agreed. He wrote down the address to her dictation and, putting the book and pen away, held out his hand. ‘Thank you very much, Mrs Wearmouth,’ he repeated.

  She watched him speculatively as he went down the yard. He looked for all the world like a lover in pursuit of his lass, she thought. Pity he hadn’t been as keen before Elizabeth went up to that blooming place up the dale. Still, better late than never. Mrs Wearmouth was an avid reader of Woman’s Weekly, she loved the little romantic stories in it, couldn’t wait to get her hands on it every week.

  As it happened, Jack couldn’t set out for Darlington until Sunday after lunch. There were problems at the mine and at the farm which it seemed only he could resolve. But at last he was free to go. Eventually he found the boarding house in Albert Hill. He knocked on the door, his heart beating fast, so that he had to smile at himself. Acting like a young lad in calf love, he told himself. Get a hold of yourself.

  ‘Yes? What do you want? The missus is out, gone to York she has, her and the little lass.’ It was a girl wrapped in an all-enveloping overall two sizes too big for her who opened the door. Mona was harassed. She had been left with all the washing up after the big Sunday lunch and already she had been interrupted by three calls at the door. Two people wanting rooms and now this chap. She eyed him. Well-dressed he was but probably only wanting to sell summat. And she had the teas to see to soon.

  ‘I’m looking for Elizabeth Nelson,’ said Jack. ‘I understand she lives here?’

  ‘Aye. Well, she does,’ said Mona, and Jack’s heart leaped. He took a step forward but the girl held on to the door, barring his way.

  ‘May I see her?’

  ‘No, you can’t,’ said Mona.

  ‘Why not?’

  This was maddening. He felt like taking hold of the girl and shaking her but kept his voice quiet and polite.

  ‘She’s not here, that’s why.’ Jack waited and after a moment Mona went on, ‘Gone out she has an’ all. Leaving me with everything to do. I don’t know how I’ll manage by meself. An’ people at the door all the time …’

  Jack felt in his pocket and found a sixpence. ‘I understand,’ he said and dropped the coin into the front pocket of the apron. She looked down at it and started to grin.

  ‘Eeh, thanks, Mister.’

  ‘Can you tell me where Elizabeth went to?’

  ‘No, not exactly.’ Seeing his disappointment she asked, ‘You don’t want your money back, do you, Mister?’

  ‘No, no, you keep it.’ He stepped back from the door.

  ‘It’s somewhere up the Dales she’s gone,’ Mona said, ‘Weardale, I think,’ and closed the door firmly before he could change his mind.

  Weardale? That could only mean Bollihope Common, Jack thought, and hurried out to his car. If he set off now he had plenty of time to reach Stand Alone Farm before dark. He only hoped Elizabeth hadn’t decided to go back to her husband.

  Two hours later, Jack was climbing up the fell from Stanhope and looking out for the track which led off to Stand Alone Farm. His mind was full of Elizabeth, memories flooding back of how she had felt in his arms, how beautiful she was with her black hair and dark violet eyes, her white skin, the way her lips curved slightly into a half-smile. He imagined kissing her again after all this time. Oh, he would save her from that man, whatever it was that had driven her to go back to him. The picture of her he carried in his thoughts was so vivid that when he actually saw her, scrambling on the stony, rutted, unmade road, he thought he was hallucinating. But suddenly she stood stock still and looked straight at him, her mouth opening in a perfect oval of surprise.

  *

  Afterwards, looking back on it, it would seem like a miracle that Jack should appear like that, just when she needed him so much. But at the time, late on Sunday afternoon, after the horror she had left at Stand Alone Farm, it was more than that: it was like a burst of unbelievable happiness so bright she couldn’t help being lit up by it. Elizabeth stood for a moment, stunned, and gazed at him and he climbed out of his car, gazing back at her, and then, slowly at first, then faster, they ran to each other and Jack took her in his arms and held her as though he would never let go again.

  Neither of them was thinking of anything, no questions were being asked, no explanations sought. It was enough that they were in each other’s arms. For Elizabeth the feelings of safety and love and coming home were overwhelming. She let them wash over her, lap around her, aware of nothing else. Gradually other things did impinge; the remembered smell of him, his own individual scent, combined with a faint clean tang of soap and something else that was indefinable.

  His face was buried in her neck and hers in his. When she at last lifted her head to gaze into his face, his hazel eyes and her own were wet and luminous with tears.

  ‘Elizabeth,’ he said huskily. ‘Oh, Elizabeth.’

  She clung to him. Her arms slid round his neck and she lifted her lips to his. Their kiss was wild and sweet and satisfying after what felt a lifetime of being denied it. How long they stood there neither of them was aware, it would have been longer but for the sudden blaring of a hooter.

  ‘Howay, man, the pair of you! What do you think you’re up to, standing in the middle of the road, holding up the traffic? Get out of the way, will you?’

  Jack lifted his head, they both did. Elizabeth’s eyes were dreamily dazed. She was unable to stop smiling all over her face. It was the bus from Middleton-in-Teesdale they had halted, the driver leaning forward to gesticulate and blow his horn, the conductor clinging to a rail as he leaned out of the door, shouting.

  ‘Should be locked up, you two, no shame you haven’t. Don’t you know it’s broad daylight? Get out of the road, will you? Save your carryings on for somewhere private!’

  Jack’s arms tightened around Elizabeth. Deliberately he bent his head and kissed her again and from inside the bus, where four or five young lads lounged, there came the sound of wolf whistles. He grinned, then, taking his time, drew Elizabeth to the side of the road and gestured with his free hand for the bus to pass. The conductor went back inside, the bus went on and so did the whistling until the bus was round the bend and out of sight, going down the bank towards Stanhope.

  ‘Oh, Jack,’ said Elizabeth, rather inadequately, ‘I’m so glad to see you. So glad.’

  He smiled tenderly. ‘I rather gathered that,’ he murmured. ‘Oh, Elizabeth – Lizzie – why did you go away like that? Why didn’t you come to me? You know I wouldn’t have believed that oaf Wilson rather than you, you must do!’

  Elizabeth stared at him, remembering the scene with his mother, how she had said Jack wanted nothing more to do with Elizabeth. ‘But your mother—’ No, she couldn’t tell him what his mother had said that day, couldn’t blacken his own mother to him. Instead she simply gazed at him. She seemed unable to take her eyes off him.

  ‘I thought you were happy here with that man,’ he said. ‘And then, when Mrs Wearmouth said you’d left him … and later, when I thought you were going back to him, I nearly went mad.’

  ‘Oh!’

  Meeting Jack had driven all that she had seen at Stand Alone Farm out of her mind. She couldn’t believe she had forgotten such a dreadful thing, felt stricken.

  ‘Oh, Jack!’ She faltered. ‘But … Oh, I should have told the people on the bus. Oh, God, Jack, I forgot—’

  ‘What? What is it? Told them what? Come and sit down in the car, sweetheart, you’ve gone as white as a sheet and you’re trembling. What is it?’

  ‘How could I just forget? Oh, Jack, the most awful thing has happened … I’ll have to go to Stanhop
e, or maybe just to the farm along the road. I have to get help.’ She was beginning to babble now, she knew she was. She turned this way and that. Meeting Jack had done more than make her forget, she couldn’t even decide the best thing to do.

  ‘Calm down, pet, calm down. It’s all right, come on now, I’ll see to whatever it is. If you want me to face him, I will. Just you wait in the car, I’ll see to it.’

  ‘No. No, Jack, it isn’t that.’

  Elizabeth leaned her head against his chest. Oh, indeed, indeed the temptation to leave everything to him was overwhelming. Then she told him what she had found when she came to the farm earlier that day.

  ‘The smell, Jack … It smelled like a dead rat.’ Elizabeth began to cry, tears running down her face. The emotions of the day had finally broken through her self-control. ‘But I’ll have to go back. There’s the dog, you see.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ he said calmly. He thought of the smell of death. Oh, a man got well used to that if he was in the trenches during the war. But she should not have had to face it. No, indeed. He started the car. ‘I’m taking you down to the police station in Stanhope. We’ll tell them what happened and you can stay in the hotel there. I’ll come back with the police, bring the dog with me if you insist. He’ll be all right until then, now he has water.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No, Elizabeth, you’ve had enough for one day. So just do as you’re told for once, will you?’

  He drove down the pot-holed and stone-strewn road to where the roadmen had laid the tarmac, appreciating the smoothness under his tyres there. He made conversation, ordinary conversation, commenting on the way the moors were becoming criss-crossed with proper roads now the war was over. All the time he kept a watchful eye on her, seeing how white she was, how tired she looked in spite of the luminosity in her eyes when she gazed at him. A great tenderness filled him. He would look after her now, oh, yes, he would indeed.

  At Stanhope he drove her to the hotel and ordered tea and hot buttered toast, sitting with her while she ate a piece of toast and drank a cup of tea. Elizabeth began to look a little less white, she’d stopped trembling.

  ‘Stay here now and I’ll go to the police station,’ he said.

  Elizabeth nodded. She felt deathly tired. All this was surely a dream? She closed her eyes and opened them again. Jack was still there. ‘Don’t be long,’ she said.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  JACK WENT BACK to Stand Alone Farm with the police. There they found Snuff, able to hold up his head now after the reviving water which Elizabeth had given him. He even managed a small wag of his tail when he saw them coming down the track, a belated bark which sounded more like a cough.

  ‘Poor sod,’ said the police sergeant, gagging at the stink. ‘They say dogs have a stronger sense of smell than us an’ all.’

  ‘Been dead a couple of weeks or more, I’d reckon,’ the police surgeon told Jack, nodding at the body. ‘How did you say he was found?’ He repeated what Elizabeth had told him.

  ‘Lived apart, did she?’ the surgeon asked. They watched as men brought in an aluminium death wagon and gingerly moved the remains of Peart into it, closing the lid. The police sergeant tried to open the window but the sash was obviously long gone, the window stuck fast.

  ‘Just leave the door open,’ advised the surgeon. ‘Now the body’s gone so will the smell.’

  ‘His wife found him, did you say? She’ll have to make a statement,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘Not today. She’s had too much of a shock, Sergeant,’ Jack insisted, and the policeman nodded reluctantly.

  ‘OK.’

  Somehow, the police van and the hearse had forced their way down the overgrown track to the farm. When Jack went outside there were flattened bushes and clumps of bracken.

  ‘I thought it was just a footpath,’ he remarked to the police doctor. The man glanced at him shrewdly. It was the sort of inconsequential remark made by someone after a shock.

  ‘Come on, we’ll get you back to Stanhope and your … er … lady friend.’

  ‘I’ll take the dog,’ Jack offered. A policeman had had the foresight to bring dog food and was feeding it slowly to Snuff. Jack had an idea that Elizabeth and her sister wouldn’t like the idea of the dog being put down or worse, left to roam.

  He had left his car by the hotel entrance and put Snuff in the back seat before going in to Elizabeth.

  ‘You’ll bring her round in the morning, Mrs Peart?’ the police sergeant stated rather than asked, and Jack promised he would. There was a meeting of the Mine Owners’ Association but that would have to go by the board.

  Inside, he found Elizabeth slumped in the residents’ lounge. She looked anxiously up at him as he went in, his stick tapping on the polished wood floor. Jack sat beside her and took her hand.

  ‘It’s all right, sweetheart. They reckon the drink did it. The police took the body away.’

  ‘Snuff? The dog? Is he all right?’

  ‘He’s fine. Been fed and watered. He’s in the back of the car now, perking up grand, he is.’

  Elizabeth sank back in her chair. ‘Poor man, poor Peart.’ Jack had his own opinion on the man but didn’t air it.

  ‘Look, the police want you to give a statement about your husband, how you found him. Tomorrow will do, they said. So I thought—’

  ‘He wasn’t my husband.’ Elizabeth blushed scarlet. ‘Not really. I mean, we weren’t actually married.’

  ‘But … he said, when I went up to the farm with Jimmy, he said you were his wife. He wouldn’t let us see you, said you didn’t want to.’ Jack remembered the times he had been up there, leaving letters for Elizabeth. Jimmy too. They had been so desperate to know she was all right, she and Jenny.

  ‘No, we weren’t married. I stayed because of Jenny. Oh, Jack, she had a life no child should have to suffer through and I didn’t have the money to take her away. Anyway, Peart and his legal wife had taken her from the guardians. Miss Rowland said I could do nothing about that.’

  Jack stared at her. ‘But you could have come to me! You could at least have written to Jimmy.’

  ‘I was a fool not to, wasn’t I? But I thought you didn’t want me. Your mother—’

  ‘My mother? What about her? What did she say to you?’

  ‘Nothing. It wasn’t her fault.’ And Elizabeth realised that it hadn’t really been Mrs Benson’s fault, it had been her own feelings of worthlessness and shame which had made her so ready to accept that neither Jack nor Jimmy wanted anything more to do with her. And when neither of them had got in touch … What a fool she had been!

  ‘Oh, Jack, I’ve been an idiot, haven’t I?’

  He squeezed her hand and in his own mind dismissed the months, even years, of longing and unhappiness he had gone through. It was worth it now, he reflected. ‘Forget it now, darling. But look, I’ve been thinking. Shall I book rooms here for the night? Then you won’t have to travel up again tomorrow. I think that’s the best idea.’

  ‘I have to go back to Darlington! There’s Jenny, she’ll be worried. And there’s my work, I work in a dress shop, I have to open up tomorrow.’ Elizabeth’s brow furrowed. She had to work something out for tomorrow, she realised. But Jack, bless his heart, was a resourceful man.

  ‘These are modern times. There’s the telephone, isn’t there?’ Telephones were still fairly rare in Darlington but Mrs Anderson had recently had one installed in the house; her recent illness had made her frightened of being unable to contact others.

  Within an hour they were sitting at a table in the dining room, eating dinner. Mrs Anderson had been alerted by telephone and declared herself well enough to open up the shop. ‘Take as long as you like, Elizabeth,’ she had said. ‘Oh, what a terrible experience!’ It seemed the emergency breathed new life into her, Elizabeth thought as she handed the telephone back to Jack after the call.

  It was more difficult with Jenny as Laura Hicks was not connected to the telephone. But Jack was not deterred. He simpl
y rang ‘Telegrams’ and that was that.

  ‘They’ll think someone has died,’ said Elizabeth doubtfully, and for a moment failed to see the irony of her words. But somehow the death of Peart seemed remote now. No one would mourn him. No one she knew at least.

  ‘I’ll allow for a pre-paid reply,’ said Jack. He was not to be gainsaid now, not when he had his love with him at last. And the reply had come: ‘Don’t worry. Stay. Everything here fine.’ It was signed by both Laura and Jenny.

  ‘But I wonder, though, if Jenny will be sad about Peart,’ Elizabeth said doubtfully. ‘After all, he was the only father she knew.’

  ‘That’s enough, Elizabeth,’ said Jack. ‘We will be back by tomorrow afternoon in any case.’

  The dinner was plain but good: thin slices of succulent local lamb with rosemary and afterwards a game pie. Cotherstone cheese from over in Teesdale, white and crumbly and delicious. And wine, a rich ruby red wine which made Elizabeth ever so slightly light-headed. She had thought she would not be able to eat a bite but somehow or other her plate became empty and was replaced by another which became empty too. She was enjoying herself, floating on a cloud, though at the back of her mind she was aware that she would have to rejoin the real world soon. But not yet.

  Jack watched her expressive face, changing as she smiled and laughed and was surprised by the taste of something, the effect of the wine making her eyes and cheeks glow more than ever. He would never let her go again, he swore to himself. Never, never, never. The dining room, no more than half full the whole evening, emptied until at last the waiters were hovering at the side, watching the lovers, glancing at the grandfather clock by the wall. But Elizabeth’s eyelids were beginning to droop in spite of her desire that the evening go on forever.

  They went upstairs hand in hand to a chorus of: ‘Goodnight, sir, madam.’ They didn’t notice that the lights in the dining room went out before they were halfway up. Jack had booked two adjoining rooms. He stood at her side before her door and kissed her tenderly.

  ‘Goodnight, my darling.’