A Daughter's Gift
Page 29
‘She started it,’ said Betty. ‘It wasn’t my Ben’s fault.’
Jack cast a steely glance at her then turned to her husband. ‘I want you out of Morton Main within the week.’
‘What? You mean … you can’t do that!’ cried Ben.
‘On the contrary, I can.’
Betty sat down suddenly, her face showing her shock and dismay. ‘Eeh, what are we going to do?’ she wailed.
‘We could have you prosecuted for assault,’ he went on as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘I will wait to hear what my fiancée has to say about that. Meanwhile,’ he looked directly at Ben, ‘you can collect any wages due to you from the office.’
‘You have to give proper notice. I’ll go to the Union …’
Jack smiled thinly. ‘Do so. I think you’ll find they will do nothing. Now, I’m taking Elizabeth out of here. Please remain in this room until we have gone. I do not wish her to have to see you again.’
‘But I’m her aunt,’ said Betty. ‘We have her brother. This has nothing to do with you, really, it’s a family matter.’
‘Anything to do with Elizabeth is my business now,’ said Jack, and turned on his heel and walked back into the kitchen. Bending over the settee, he whispered in Elizabeth’s ear soothingly and she stirred and smiled. He almost lifted her there and then but cursed to himself when he remembered his feet. He couldn’t chance falling with her and couldn’t use his stick and carry her at the same time.
Mrs Wearmouth was ahead of him in thinking of it. ‘I’ll get a couple of lads who are off shift to help, will I?’ she asked and Jack reluctantly agreed. He had never felt his disability so keenly. But there was no shortage of volunteers; the fore shift men were home and bathed for the most part and not yet in bed themselves. Elizabeth was soon installed in the capacious back seat of the car.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked, the fresh air bringing her wider awake.
‘The Manor, sweetheart.’
‘Oh, no!’ Her eyes opened wide. She couldn’t cope with Mrs Benson, not just now. ‘Mrs Wearmouth—’
‘Take her to my place,’ that lady, who had followed them out to the car, said. ‘It’s not as though I haven’t got the room for her. And I’ll be glad to have her.’
Half an hour later, Elizabeth was installed in the front bedroom in West Row with Mrs Wearmouth’s best Durham quilt, the patchwork depicting an elaborate pattern of roses and trailing ivy, tucked around her.
‘What about Jenny?’ she asked as she settled her aching head on the pillow.
‘Don’t worry, love, I’ll fetch her from school,’ said Jack.
By, it was lovely just lying back and leaving everything to your own man, she thought. For the first time in her life too. Tomorrow she would think about things but just at the minute she could be a helpless little woman and it was grand.
Three weeks later, on a crisp autumnal Saturday morning, Elizabeth gazed at herself in the portable mirror which stood on top of the chest of drawers in the same front bedroom in West Row. Her thick black hair was piled high on top of her head; her eyes, gazing back at her, were almost indigo in contrast to her white skin. Behind her, Jenny and Alice hovered in identical dresses of pale lavender, the new length too, just below the knee and trimmed with self-coloured lace. Elizabeth would have liked to have made the dresses herself but there had been no time.
‘I want to marry you now,’ Jack had said. ‘I know it’s daft but I feel if we wait, you might disappear or something.’
‘I won’t! Oh, indeed I won’t,’ Elizabeth had assured him.
Now she waited as Jenny lifted the coronet of lilies-of-the-valley which held her cream lace veil in place and settled it on her head. Cream, not white, Elizabeth had been determined on that. She was not starting her new life with a lie.
‘It’s lovely, it is! You look lovely, our Elizabeth,’ Jenny breathed. ‘Doesn’t she, Alice?’
The other girl nodded quietly. She was still a bit standoffish with her sisters though when Elizabeth and Jack had gone to see her, and her adopted family realised Jack was gentry and a mine owner, they had thawed noticeably towards Alice’s natural family. Elizabeth didn’t care what the reason was, she was happy to have both her sisters here for her wedding after all the years of separation. But for Jenny she would always have a special affection, dear Jenny.
‘I’m going to live on the farm, I’m not going to sell it,’ she had told Jack when he’d offered to see to it for her. ‘I have enough money to look after it, haven’t I?’
Jenny had looked at him with those clear hazel eyes under dark, straight brows which she’d inherited from her father. She was growing up now, Elizabeth told herself, she knew what she wanted. And so the land and the stint on the moor had been let to a tenant for five years, by which time Jenny reckoned she would be able to run it herself. Only she had big ideas for it; she wasn’t going to let it go to rack and ruin as Peart had done. There were already builders repairing the walls and roof of Stand Alone Farm, the track had been cleared properly and a tarmac surface laid.
The important thing was that Jenny was happy in her school in Darlington, happy to live in the Victorian villa which Jack had found them, conveniently placed on West Auckland Road so that he could easily get to Morton Main. But happiest of all in the knowledge that one day she would be going back to her beloved Weardale in the northern Pennines, able to roam the high moor at will.
There was, naturally, one cloud which dimmed the happy prospect of the future. Jimmy was not there to give his sister away. And there was no one else, no one she felt would be right.
Elizabeth’s musings were interrupted by the sound of a car arriving and Mrs Wearmouth calling up the stairs.
‘Jenny! Alice! Howay now, it’s time.’
The two girls went off down the stairs, and Elizabeth heard the car start up and go. Mrs Wearmouth was sharing it with the bridesmaids so Elizabeth was left in a suddenly hushed house. She stood up and went to the window. From here she could see the yard next door where she had played in the days when the family were all together. She felt the familiar ache of regret. But only for a minute. She was too happy today. The past was over, dead and gone.
‘Can’t you help Ben get a job somewhere else?’ she had asked Jack when she’d heard how he had sent the Hoddles away from Morton Main. ‘Kit will hate us forever if he thinks it’s my fault they had to leave.’ And, bless him, Jack had got them a place at Chilton, seven miles away, a hewing job for Ben in Chilton pit.
‘You’re not sending them an invitation to the wedding, though, are you?’ he had asked.
‘Well,’ she looked doubtfully at him, ‘to the church? There’s Kit, you see.’
The car was coming back for her now. She could hear it turning the corner into the back street. Elizabeth smiled and her face lit up with radiant happiness. She went to the bed and picked up her bouquet of wine-red roses and went downstairs to the car.
‘On your own, pet?’ the driver asked, surprised.
‘On my own,’ she said.
‘Good luck,’ someone shouted from the knot of women gathered at the gate to see her off. ‘You be happy, hunny.’
‘Thank you, thank you!’ she answered. ‘I will.’
At the red-brick chapel, only a couple of streets away, Jenny and Alice were waiting for her in the porch. Jenny rushed to straighten her veil and place the train of her dress in just the right position, and then the organ began to play and Elizabeth started off down the aisle with her sisters behind her. The congregation rose to its feet and she saw Auntie Betty and her brother Kit near the door. Betty looked uncertain but Elizabeth smiled brilliantly at them both and they smiled back, even Kit, affected by the aura of joy which surrounded her.
‘They’re all here, Jimmy,’ she whispered. ‘All the family.’ Even he was here, in spirit at least, walking beside her, ready to give her away to Jack, her lovely man.
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ALSO BY MAGGIE HOPE:
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Taken in by her grandparents to ease the pressure on her poverty-stricken family, Katie Benfield knows she’s one of the lucky ones. Even so, she dreams of a better life and of pursuing a nursing career. Despite many hardships, Katie achieves her goal but tragedy strikes Winton Colliery when both her grandfather and childhood sweetheart are killed in a mining accident. Shocked and distraught, Katie finds herself vulnerable to the advances of the owner of the mine, Matthew Hamilton, a married man who wastes no time in taking advantage of her.
Thrown out by her grandmother, her reputation and career in tatters, Katie finds herself facing a home for unmarried mothers. Only Matthew Hamilton offers her a way to keep her baby, but only if she forgoes her principles and becomes his mistress …
ALSO BY MAGGIE HOPE:
A Nurse’s Duty
Torn between love and duty …
Following a disastrous marriage to a miner, Karen has devoted herself to a nursing career. Rising to the challenge of caring for the wounded soldiers returning home from the Great War, she has resigned herself to putting her vocation before any hope of a romantic life.
However, she finds herself drawn to handsome, troubled Patrick Murphy. But Patrick is also a Catholic priest. Dare Karen risk scandal and her position by falling for the one man she cannot have …?
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First published as ‘A Blackbird Singing’ in 2000 by Piatkus Books
This edition published in 2012 by Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing
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Copyright © 2000 Una Horne writing as Maggie Hope
Maggie Hope has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
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