A Daughter's Gift

by Maggie Hope

  Jack took her in his arms. ‘Oh, sweetheart, sweetheart, don’t,’ he whispered. ‘Please don’t.’ He held her until the storm of tears was past and she was still in his arms. Then he handed her a large white handkerchief. ‘Come on, blow your nose. Think of Jenny.’

  She watched them solemnly, still holding the biscuit tin. As Jack mentioned her name she looked away, down at the box. ‘Look, I knew it was there! I knew it was money, I did,’ she shouted. Inside the box was a bundle of notes: five pound notes, then pound notes, even twenty pound notes. A fortune. She looked excitedly from Elizabeth to Jack. ‘I knew it!’ she repeated and then her smile wavered. ‘It is mine, isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘I can do what I like with it?’

  ‘Within reason.’ It was Jack who answered, Elizabeth was staring at the money in disbelief.

  ‘I’m going to have the house done up so it doesn’t rain in, put new paint and paper on the walls …’ She noticed the strange way Elizabeth was looking at her.

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘You knew it was there, all the time? Even when we were desperate for money to get away?’

  Jenny hung her head. ‘I was frightened you’d go and leave me,’ she confessed after a pause. ‘You might have gone away and not come back.’

  ‘But I would never have done that, Jenny. Never, never.’

  Jenny said nothing. Carefully she put the lid back on the box. All the excitement drained from her and suddenly Elizabeth forgot her own feelings. Swiftly she went to her little sister and took her in her arms. ‘I would never, ever leave you. You are my sister and I love you,’ she said. ‘Howay now, we’re going home. It’s been a long day.’

  She picked up her bundle of letters, two of which she saw now, were in Jack’s writing. She would save them to read later, in bed, on her own when there was time to savour each and every word.

  The key to the door was on the mantelshelf so this time Jack locked the door as they went out, Elizabeth clutching her letters, Jenny her biscuit tin. Snuff had been watching the door anxiously. When they came out he began to bark joyously and in the car he licked all three faces, one by one.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  ELIZABETH TRAVELLED OVER to Morton Main on the following Tuesday. It was a good day to leave the shop, Monday being market day in Darlington and the day women came in from all the outlying districts to meet up, get in the weekly shopping and, if there was time, browse through the clothes shops. Consequently Tuesdays were fairly quiet.

  ‘I’ll call for you, go with you to the village,’ Jack had suggested, but Elizabeth wanted to go on her own.

  ‘We can see the Minister later,’ she said. They had decided to be wed in the Wesleyan Chapel in Morton Main. ‘But if you don’t mind, Jack, I’d like to go myself first, see my aunt and uncle and Kit, tell them. I’m meet up with you later, if you like.’

  She travelled through on the bus which had recently started up, serving the rural villages and mining communities. Elizabeth smiled to herself as she gazed out of the window, seeing little, for her thoughts were totally on Jack and the amazing knowledge that he loved her after all, that they were going to be together for the rest of their lives. Even now she could hardly believe it, felt a slight anxiety that it might all be an illusion and she would wake up soon. The wedding was four weeks away and she couldn’t wait, yet she had so much to do first, so much to settle.

  She thought of the letters from Jack which had been in the box under Peart’s bed. If only – no, it was no good thinking of that. The past was done, it couldn’t be changed. But Jimmy’s letters … oh, it was such a bitter regret not to have received them. To know he had not blamed her for what had happened, to have been able to tell him how proud she’d been of him. Wherever you are, Jimmy, she thought, I hope you know that.

  ‘Morton Main!’ called the conductor and she picked up her bag and moved to the exit. The familiar smell of coal dust hung in the air. On the opposite side of the road from the rows two children of about four years old sat on the farmer’s fence, balancing themselves on the top rail with their booted feet on the second, watching as she descended to the pavement. They watched her curiously. It wasn’t often anyone who didn’t live here got off the bus. One of them, a boy, jumped down and ran across to her as soon as the bus had gone.

  ‘Who’re you wanting, missus? I can show you for a penny.’

  Elizabeth smiled. ‘I know where it is, thanks,’ she said, and his eager grin faded.

  ‘I just thought,’ he mumbled.

  ‘But I’ll give you a ha’penny if you carry my bag for me,’ she suggested. ‘You’ll have to share it with your marra, though.’ After all, enterprise should be encouraged, she told herself, and the bag was pretty light.

  They set off for Auntie Betty’s house in one of the middle rows, the children holding the bag between them carefully so that the bottom didn’t scrape on the dusty ground. At the gate Elizabeth solemnly handed them a halfpenny.

  ‘Eeh, thanks, missus,’ they chorused and ran off to Meggie’s, the shop at the end of the rows. Elizabeth was still smiling as she knocked on the Hoddles’ door.’

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Ben, as he opened it. He stood, still holding onto the handle. He was unshaven, braces hanging down the sides of his trousers, shirt collarless, feet bare. He blinked bleary eyes at her then turned his head and shouted behind him, ‘Betty! It’s Madam, come to have a word with her subjects.’

  Elizabeth pushed past him, ignoring the sarcasm. Her aunt was coming out of the pantry, wiping her hands on a tea towel.

  ‘Mind,’ she said, ‘I didn’t expect to see you here. According to Mrs Wearmouth, you’re a shop manageress now, ready to take over Darlington, like.’

  ‘Well,’ said Elizabeth, sighing inwardly. ‘I came to tell you I’m getting married, to Jack Benson, and I’d like you to come to my wedding. Christopher too. I want my sisters and my brother at my own wedding.’

  ‘Do you, now?’ said Ben, who had followed her in and stood before the fire in his bare feet, rocking backwards and forwards on his toes. ‘And what if we don’t want to come? Nor let the kid come either?’

  ‘Ben,’ Betty said weakly, and attempted to divert the conversation from where it was heading. ‘Jack Benson, eh? You mean, the gaffer?’

  ‘Kit’s my brother and he’s coming to my wedding,’ Elizabeth said, ignoring Betty for the minute. She was staring at Ben, unable to keep the contempt from her expression. She shuddered as she remembered the feel of his hands on her.

  ‘Don’t you look at me like that, you little slut!’ said Ben, his own expression becoming ugly. ‘That’s all you are for all your fancy ways – a slut. Just like your mother.’

  ‘Ben!’ said Betty, more strongly now. ‘Watch your mouth, will you?’

  ‘My mother wasn’t a slut,’ said Elizabeth, fury rising in her so that she was unable to keep quiet, even though common sense told her she should.

  Ben smirked and cast a glance full of meaning at Betty, who blushed furiously. ‘How do you know? You were just a bairn when she died,’ he said. ‘Or mebbe I should tell—’

  ‘Shut your mouth! Shut your dirty, filthy mouth!’ Elizabeth shouted suddenly. She couldn’t bear to hear another word from him. She clenched her hands to her sides. It was all she could do not to attack him with her fists, scratch his smirking face with her nails.

  He laughed, a sniggering, hateful laugh, and her arms flew up almost of their own volition. She clawed at his face and the laughter was cut off abruptly. He grabbed at her arms and thrust her back against the square wooden table, so violently that she bent over backwards, catching her shoulder a glancing blow on the aspidistra pot in the centre of the chenille table cloth. She hardly felt it, she was so furious.

  ‘You swine,’ she said, gulping for breath as she straightened up. ‘You couldn’t keep your hands off me when I was young. You unspeakable, perverted maniac! You should be crawling on your belly like the worm you are, you … you …’

  But be
fore she could think of the word she wanted, her aunt was between them, slapping her across the face and screaming at her. It was a while before Elizabeth could work out what it was that her aunt was screaming, her face was so contorted, words running into each other from her slavering mouth.

  ‘Don’t you touch my Ben!’ Betty cried. ‘Don’t you dare. I’ll swing for you, I swear I will. I’ll cut your pretty little face so that man of yours, that stuck-up gaffer, won’t look at you. I’ll …’

  Elizabeth was silenced, bewildered by the onslaught. For Betty was saying more, she was saying unbelievable things. They weren’t true – oh no, they weren’t true. Not about her mother.

  ‘It’s a lie,’ she faltered.

  ‘Indeed it’s bloody well not!’ Betty yelled, beside herself with rage. ‘Why do you think that father of yours left, eh? Why, tell me that? Because of your mother, your own bloody mother, and her carryings on, that’s why. Not content with her own man, she had to go for mine. And that’s another thing. Why do you think I wanted Christopher? Because he’s mine, that’s why. He was Ben’s, and Ben belonged to me. Christopher should have been mine, I tell you.’

  ‘It’s not true, it’s a lie!’ Elizabeth repeated. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Ben Hoddle standing to one side, grinning, enjoying himself hugely. He lit a cigarette, smirking. He folded his arms across his protruding stomach and leaned back against the wall, grinning.

  ‘It’s no bloody lie,’ cried Betty. ‘Jane wouldn’t leave my Ben alone. He told me how it was – chasing after him all the time. And then she had the brazen face to lie about it, say he forced her. My Ben? He wouldn’t force anybody, I know he wouldn’t!’

  ‘He had a go at me,’ Elizabeth shouted back. ‘If I hadn’t got away—’

  ‘You’re a bare-faced liar an’ all! You’re just like your mother, just like her. She always had the men buzzing round her like bees round a honeypot when we were young. She always took any lad I wanted, by heck she did! I told her, and I told that man of hers an’ all, I said he should keep her under lock and key …’

  Elizabeth was speechless. She stared at her aunt, stunned. It was all coming out now. It had been Betty who had driven Da away, leaving Mam and her bairns to God and Providence.

  ‘Who put the baby in there anyroad?’

  Clear as a bell the question rang in her head, the one posed by Mrs Wearmouth that day so long ago when Elizabeth was nine and they’d had to go to the workhouse. ‘Who put the babby in there anyroad?’

  ‘What? What did you say?’ Betty was screaming with rage. She wiped the spittle from her mouth and chin with the back of her hand. Elizabeth realised she must have spoken aloud.

  ‘Who do you think? She chased after Ben again, he told me all about it. She said he caught her out on the lane up by the bunny banks and raped her just like that first time when she fell wrong with Christopher, but you couldn’t believe a word she said. She was always panting for it, the mucky filthy trollop that she was …’

  ‘Shut your mouth, Betty Hoddle, or I’ll shut it for you as sure as eggs is eggs,’ said Elizabeth, not shouting now, her voice low and dangerous so that Ben stopped smirking and stood up straight, scowling at her.

  ‘You’ll do nowt of t’sort, I promise you that,’ he growled.

  ‘Don’t even speak to me,’ snapped Elizabeth. Contemptuously, she turned her back on him and spoke to her aunt.

  ‘You’re blind as a bat when it comes to him. You let him take down your own sister. You let him. I don’t believe you took his word, a man like him. It’s because of you two that my father went, my mother died and we were sent to the workhouse. Betty Hoddle, I hope you rot in hell for that!’

  ‘I didn’t, I didn’t! It was all our Jane’s fault – I told you what she was like.’ Betty looked suddenly uncertain in the face of Elizabeth’s fury, all the more terrible because everything she’d said was in a quiet, almost unemotional tone but telling in its intensity.

  ‘And if you think I’ll leave my little brother to be brought up any longer by a rotten pair like you, you’re sadly mistaken. I’ll go to the law about you and expose him–’ here Elizabeth jerked a thumb in the direction of Ben ‘–for what he is. A dirty rapist of little girls and defenceless women. I will, I promise you.’

  ‘You’ll not get the bairn! No, you won’t. I told you, he’s mine – mine. He was always mine!’

  ‘Will I not, then? When I tell Jack what happened here, when I tell how that man of yours tried to rape me in that pantry,’ Elizabeth pointed to the door, ‘do you think they’ll let you keep the lad?’

  ‘I’ll tell them you’re lying, I’ll tell them—’

  ‘Save your breath, Betty. The slut has the high and mighty gaffer behind her now, she can do what she wants with the likes of us. She’ll be in the money when she marries him, like, won’t she?’ Ben leaned forward until his face was barely six inches away from Elizabeth’s and involuntarily she shrank back from his fetid breath, his air of menace.

  ‘Mind, you money-grabbing little strumpet, we all know why you’re marrying him, don’t we? A cripple like Jack Benson? Nobody would marry him if he was a poor sod from the rows like me, would they? Not half a man with no feet.’

  Hardly knowing what she was doing, Elizabeth swung her hand and slapped him so hard his head went back.

  ‘Don’t you dare say—’ she began, but the next thing she knew she was lying on the floor of the kitchen, her head on the clippy fireside mat, the kitchen swimming round her. And, magically, there was Jack’s face before her, his arms lifting her up as she descended into a velvet blackness.

  Mrs Wearmouth had been to the Co-op store on the edge of Old Morton and was on her way home with a laden basket. She was happy, for Elizabeth had said she would call in to see her later on in the day. She had some news, apparently, and Mrs Wearmouth had a good idea what it was. These days, Mrs Wearmouth’s life was a bit short of news. It seemed to her, since Jimmy had left, that the days were all the same, grey and uniform. She got up in the mornings and made herself a bit of breakfast and tried to keep herself busy during the long day, every day the same except for Sundays when she went to chapel and Thursdays when she went to the Women’s Fellowship. A visit was an event and she had gone to the shop for treacle and ginger spice. She would make some ginger snaps for tea. Everyone complimented her on her ginger snaps.

  Passing the middle rows, she glanced down and noticed practically every gateway had a woman standing there, looking at each other. Every one but Betty Hoddle’s, that is. From there came the noise of raised voices, Betty’s and Ben’s and, yes, Elizabeth’s, who of course was visiting her Aunt Betty today before she came to Mrs Wearmouth’s.

  ‘A right carry on in there, it’s as good as a play,’ remarked the woman in the end house. ‘I bet they can hear it in the next street.’

  Ben was shouting now, menacing rather, thought Mrs Wearmouth. I hope he’s not going to hit our Elizabeth. ‘Here, hold my basket for me, will you, Alice?’ she asked the woman. ‘I just have to go somewhere.’

  Thrusting the basket into a surprised Alice’s hand, she turned and set off for the colliery offices at a pace she hadn’t reached in years. She had noticed Jack Benson’s motor there when she came past.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  ELIZABETH OPENED HER eyes, she couldn’t think for a moment where she was. There was a strange face looking down on her, a man’s face, keen-eyed though smelling ever so slightly of whisky.

  ‘There now, young woman,’ he said. She recognised him now as the local doctor. ‘You’ve been very lucky. A bump on the head, but nothing that a couple of days’ rest won’t heal.’ He stood back and Jack took his place. He knelt and picked up Elizabeth’s hand, kissing it fervently.

  ‘Oh, Lizzie, Lizzie,’ he whispered. ‘What did you get yourself into?’ She opened her mouth to answer and he went on quickly, ‘No, never mind. Just lie quiet, sweetheart. You’re going to be fine, the doctor says so. Everything will be all right no
w, I’ll see to it all.’

  He kissed her lightly on the lips before rising to his feet with a smile of such relief that her heart flooded with love for him. Vaguely she realised that she was still in Auntie Betty’s kitchen, lying on the settee. Mrs Wearmouth was by the window, hovering anxiously. Elizabeth wondered idly where the Hoddles were then closed her eyes and in spite of the throbbing down one side of her face, drifted off into sleep.

  ‘Well, Doctor?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Just as I told the lassie, Mr Benson,’ Dr Short replied. ‘She’ll have a headache for a day or two and should take it easy, but there’s no lasting damage. There could have been, though. She could have fractured her skull if she’d hit the table leg. A nasty business altogether.’ He stared at the door which led into the other room, his expression hard. ‘Indefensible, I’d say, a man like that hitting a woman not even his wife. Or indeed his wife,’ he amended, seeing Jack’s expression.

  Dr Short was the doctor for the mine and the panel doctor. The miners paid a few pence a week so that he would attend to their families besides themselves. He would never make a fortune, Jack thought, but he had a reputation as a good doctor and a dedicated man.

  ‘I’ll deal with them,’ Jack said grimly. ‘Meanwhile I’ll take my fiancée back to the Manor.’

  The doctor nodded. ‘I’ll look in tomorrow after surgery,’ he promised. ‘But I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.’

  After he had gone, Jack checked on Elizabeth, who was sleeping peacefully. ‘Watch her, Mrs Wearmouth, will you?’ he asked.

  ‘Aye, I will.’

  Jack went into the other room where he found the Hoddles sitting opposite each other before an empty grate. The room had an unused air. He guessed it was only used for visitors or at Christmas time. Both of them stood up when he came in, though the man wore a defiant expression.