The Woman From Heartbreak House

by Freda Lightfoot

  Cissie wiped away a tear. ‘I shall miss little Flora.

  ‘To be sure you will, her endless chatter if nothing else. We’re going to stay with my friend Millie in Manchester till we can sort ourselves out. She’s offered to have us, and I’ve accepted. I shall send you the address when we get settled, then we can write.’

  Cissie dabbed at her eyes, blew her nose rather loudly. ‘That would be lovely. Oh, dear, this is all most unpleasant. You will come and see us, won’t you, my dear? We are still family, remember. Dear Eliot would want us to keep in touch.’

  Kate promised that she would, and made her escape before Cissie started blubbing again.

  Callum was more upset over not hearing from Bunty than at losing his job, for all it left him with no qualifications. Like all young men he believed he had plenty of time to earn new ones, believed absolutely in his own ability to make a good future for himself, but it was essential to him that Bunty be a part of that future. He’d written her so many letters, put them in the letter box with his own hand since his mother’s warning, so that no one could intercept them, yet he’d never received a single reply.

  Could she have moved to a different school? He’d begun to think that may be the case. Lucy had moved her, as she so loved to do as a means of maintaining control, and no doubt had in some way prevented Bunty from writing to him, or else forbidden her to do so. Her power was awesome and poor Bunty probably in no position to defy her.

  Callum was quite certain that he was right, and fully prepared to be patient for as long as it took for Bunty to break free. He would be waiting for her when she did.

  The company had been bought for a derisory sum by another shoe manufacturer from the south; one of Tyson’s competitors. They’d agreed to keep on a skeleton workforce, including Toby, although how long the arrangement would last was anyone’s guess as they also intended to bring in men of their own. Kate put in a word for her son with the new management and they graciously agreed that he could continue but Callum refused, on the grounds that if his mother was no longer working in the factory, neither should he.

  He also refused point blank to move to Manchester with them, insisting that he could find work in Kendal, that that was where he belonged.

  ‘I’ll be fine, don’t worry about me. How would Bunty know where to find me if I vanished into a huge city like Manchester? I must be here, in Kendal, when she comes home at the end of the year. We mean to be married then.’

  Kate tried to be kind, tried to warn him that Bunty might have changed her mind about him and that was why she hadn’t written, but Callum wouldn’t have it.

  ‘No, it’ll be all right once she gets back to Kendal, I know it will. Lucy can’t stop us getting married once Bunty comes of age.’

  ‘But she isn’t twenty-one for a couple of years yet. A lot can happen before then. She may well find someone else, and Lucy will almost certainly do everything in her power to prevent you from getting back together, be under no illusions about that, m’cushla’.’

  Callum merely smiled, hugged his mother and sister, and promised that he would visit them regularly, and that she and Flora could likewise visit him in Kendal.

  He was lodging with a friend Kate didn’t entirely approve of, and by the time she left her son still hadn’t found himself a job. But he was almost a grown man, so what could she do?

  However difficult it was to see everything she and Eliot had once loved taken away to be sold, and saying goodbye to friends at the factory, to Toby in particular, proved to be the hardest thing of all. He had become her best friend, the person she’d always turned to with her troubles. The one who had rescued her from that place of torment. Kate couldn’t think how she would manage without him.

  ‘Sure and I can’t say I’m sorry to see that house go,’ she told him. ‘But the thought of losing all we’ve worked for at the factory breaks my heart in two, so it does. It’s unbearable. All that effort, all that labour and enterprise, all those marvellous ideas gone, lost for ever.’

  ‘I agree it’s all going to be very different.’ Toby sighed in despair, pacing back and forth, his lean, loose-limbed figure restless and unsettled. ‘Not sure I fancy working here any more, not without you.’

  ‘Don’t be a daft eejit, you still have employment, have ye not? Who knows what the future might bring.’

  ‘You aren’t serious about going to live in Manchester, are you, Kate? You aren’t even properly well yet.’

  ‘I’m perfectly fit, so I am, making a good recovery thanks to you, but I do wish Callum would listen to me and stick to his apprenticeship. Unfortunately, his pride won’t let him. He’s refused to come with us, so he’ll have no job and no home to call his own. What if something should happen to him?’

  Toby smiled. ‘I’ll keep an eye out for him, you know I will. I might even be able to help find him employment, I know one or two independent shoemakers. It’s not Callum that worries me, it’s you.’ His grey eyes looked so sad, so beseeching, that she almost reached out to him then but stopped herself just in time.

  ‘I’ll be fine, so I will. I can’t bear to stay and see everything ...’ She stopped, her voice breaking with emotion.

  Toby waited for her to find the strength to go on, but, as so often happened, she seemed to have lost the thread of the conversation, her mind engaged elsewhere.

  Kate rubbed her forehead with two fingers, trying to ease away the ache which constantly plagued her. She was thinking that the loss of all their property and the business - Eliot’s bequest left in her keeping - meant she would now have nothing to pass on to their son. Callum would have no inheritance of any kind. It meant that all those sacrifices she’d made years ago on his behalf had been to no avail.

  Her son was now unemployed, like many another, admittedly with some skills at his fingertips but no proper qualifications. Only one step removed from Poor House Lane.

  Despite all her hard work and effort, all the battles she’d fought, she’d lost. Lucy had won and destroyed them all. It was little comfort to know that her sister-in-law had ruined her own life too, and that of her own sons. Kate wished she could have found the strength to fight harder, to hang on to the company at least. In her heart of hearts she felt that she’d let Eliot down, let Callum down, failed everyone in fact, even the aunts.

  She gave a small, tired sigh, tears sliding down her cheeks which she brushed hastily away. Self pity only sent her hurtling back into that dark pit of depression, and the merciless hands of Elvira. Kate put back her shoulders and managed a smile. ‘I shall miss you too, Toby, and you will ever remain my very best friend.’

  ‘You know that I’d like us to be more than friends, don’t you?’

  Kate looked into his face, saw the anxiety there, the rawness of hope in those dark eyes and knew what it had cost him to reveal his feelings, particularly after that kiss he had so bitterly regretted. She dropped her gaze, not wishing to witness the pain she was about to cause him.

  ‘It’s too soon. As you said yourself, we don’t have that kind of relationship and I don’t think I’m ready for any further complications, not just yet.’

  ‘I’d give you all the time in the world if only you’d stay?’

  Kate shook her head, swallowed the lump of fear that seemed to be lodged in her throat. ‘I do care for you, Toby, but I’m not sure in what way or even if it’s enough. I’m too confused, too sore after all that has happened. I need a breathing space. Can you understand that?’

  She was meeting his gaze now, begging him to see her point of view. ‘I have to make a new beginning, a fresh start. If I don’t know what to do with my own life, can’t even trust myself to make sensible decisions or reliable judgements, I’d only be a liability, a danger even, to everyone around me. I need to find myself again, do you see?’

  He nodded, struggling to smile, seeming to fight a small battle with himself and then reaching out for her, pulled her roughly into his arms. ‘God, I’ll miss you, Kate. You don’t know how much
.’

  This time the kiss carried with it all his emotions from the depth of his soul. Deeply passionate, there was no sign of concern for any lack of respect or overstepping the line, but then they were no longer employer and employee. With Kate held tight in his arms it seemed as if he might never let her go, and as she clung to him with equal fervour, answering the need that was swelling and blooming inside her like a flower being brought to new life, she didn’t want him to.

  When finally he released her, as abruptly as he had pulled her to him, she kept her eyes closed for a second longer, until she felt the cold draught of her loss. She could change everything with just a few words. But Kate said nothing, and the silence strung out endlessly between them.

  Toby rubbed his hands together then shoved them in his pockets, as if afraid they might develop a will of their own and snatch her to him again. ‘If you need me for anything, you’ve only to say the word.’

  Then he turned on his heel and strode away, shoulders hunched.

  Kate put a trembling hand to her mouth and watched him go in tearful silence.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Kate never imagined that moving to Manchester would be easy. It might represent a new beginning but many of her problems she carried with her, perhaps would do so forever. Her first concern was for her children, wondering if she’d done the right thing; worrying about Callum who’d lost his apprenticeship and was unemployed; fretting over Flora, thinking she might miss her friends too much and find it hard to settle.

  Flora was growing up and never complained, although Kate noticed she’d become very protective of her mother, and more than a little clingy.

  Kate herself grew stronger each day, although she remained troubled by headaches. She also suffered strange lapses of memory and panic attacks, genuine ones this time, not the imaginary sort manufactured by Jack or Lucy. This troubled her, and she put the blame firmly on the treatment she’d received, on the experiments that had been carried out upon her.

  But that was all in the past now. It had taken no more than a few days for her to fall in love with this city. At first Manchester had seemed huge and noisy, used as Kate was to the comparatively gentle bustle of a market town. She’d felt disorientated, still unsure of herself. Yet every small decision taken, even what to cook for Flora’s tea, represented a small step towards her ultimate recovery and independence.

  Despite everything she’d been through: dealing with her grief in the aftermath of the accident, losing the baby, her incarceration at the asylum, the loss of the firm, for the first time since Eliot’s death Kate felt a genuine belief that she could find happiness again. Thirty-four was surely still young enough to make a fresh start and she was more than ready to face the challenge. Being far removed from Kendal, and from her sister-in-law, was a huge relief, providing the breathing space she so desperately needed.

  But at what cost?

  Lucy did not feel herself young enough to start again, she felt old beyond her years, cheated and robbed of a brilliant future despite all her careful planning and scheming. They said forty was a turning point for women and it certainly had been for her. She’d been let down by everybody, surrounded by fools and idiots who hadn’t the first idea how to run a business. Even her darling Jack had deserted her. Georgie too had insisted on bunking with one of his pals, refusing to live in a ‘mausoleum’, as he described the house in Heversham. And really, she couldn’t blame him.

  But here she was, stuck in this musty old house with the mad aunts.

  Lucy paced back and forth in her bedroom, the largest in the house but still inadequate so far as she was concerned, and felt like a trapped tiger in a cage. What could she do? It was a painful reality that if she’d failed to find herself a husband when she’d been comparatively wealthy and below forty, there was little hope now.

  Returning to her desk, she screwed up the letter she’d been writing and tossed it aside, then picked up her pen and began again on her letter to Bunty. Still ignorant of what had befallen them, the girl had to be told that no further funds were available to pay for her finishing school in Switzerland. It was proving to be an extremely difficult letter to write because what other future did Lucy have to offer her daughter?

  No beautiful home, and worse still, no money.

  Lucy had written to the headmistress, hoping for an introduction to some family of note who might take Bunty under their wing, but had as yet received no reply. Her last hope was that perhaps the girl herself knew of someone.

  What else could she do? Teddy and the Bennet Boys once loved to tease her, calling her their ‘old fruit’ and Lucy had tried to take it in good part, assuming it was meant kindly, that they were her true friends. Yet there was no sign of these people now. Despite her entertaining them with fashionable dinner parties and weekend affairs, subsidising them through sticky times when they’d been short of funds, not a single one of these so-called friends of hers had picked up the telephone and commiserated with her over her loss. Not one had called to see how she was, to offer a crumb of comfort or soft word of condolence. They’d cut her off completely.

  No one had contacted her save for the loathsome Swainson. He’d turned up again, like a bad penny, and Lucy had taken great satisfaction in telling him that the well had run dry. She hadn’t hung around to hear his curses.

  Now she felt dull and lifeless, used up and quite wrung out. Even her skin had become sallow, her hair dull, losing its once glorious sheen, and her voluptuous figure which darling Charles had once admired so much was ballooning out of all proportion. But then, what else did she have to do with her days but nibble sweets? Lucy was bored out of her mind.

  If she didn’t watch out, she would be the one going mad, not Kate O’Connor.

  What was the answer? She couldn’t stay here, in this shabby old-fashioned Victorian villa, growing old with the maiden aunts. She needed ... if not a husband, a benefactor of some sort. She certainly had no intention of seeking a post as companion or governess to earn a crust. Faded gentility did not suit Lucy Tyson.

  She glared at the empty sheet of paper, and then the answer came to her, clear as day. If she was too old for marriage, her daughter, at just nineteen, was ripe for it. There was the solution staring her in the face. She must bring Bunty home and marry her off to someone very rich. Once sufficiently besotted and captivated, wedded and bedded, he’d make little protest if Bunty wanted her darling mama to move in too.

  The perfect solution. They would both be comfortably placed for life.

  Lucy drew out a fresh sheet of paper, gave up all thought of letter writing for the moment, and began to draw up a list of likely candidates.

  If it hadn’t been for Millie, Kate thought that she might not have found the courage to go on. Millie opened up her home and her heart to her old friend, just as she had done all those years before in Poor House Lane, welcoming Kate back into her life without a moment’s hesitation.

  She looked much plumper than the thin, underfed scrap she’d once been, but remained the same cheerful soul within, taking life in her stride and letting nothing get her down, despite having lost three of her children to consumption.

  ‘The hair’s gone a bit grey,’ she admitted, ‘thanks to that rapscallion brood of mine.’

  Most of Millie’s substantial brood had thankfully left home and gone their separate ways, except for Tommy, who at seventeen was still at home and unwed, and the youngest child, Sal, a year older than Flora, who’d recently started work at the department store where Millie too worked in the haberdashery department. The one in between these two, Maisie, had just got married at sixteen and produced a child of her own. Millie was revelling in having a baby to dangle on her knee again. It wasn’t her first grandchild, and certainly wouldn’t be her last.

  ‘Aw, wait till you’re a grandmother, Kate, won’t you just love it?’

  ‘Sure and I hope it won’t happen quite yet. Flora is far too young, and Callum can’t afford to think of marriage, not till he
finds himself a job and a decent place to live. Not that he has a young lady friend, so far as I know.’

  ‘A lad doesn’t tell his mam everything.’

  ‘There’s Bunty, Mammy,’ Flora reminded her.

  ‘Aw, wasn’t she no more than a childhood crush? I think Bunty has found another beau, and Callum can’t quite accept it.’

  Flora’s little face was very serious. ‘I don’t think so, Mammy. Bunty loves our Callum. And he loves her.’

  Kate quickly changed the subject. ‘So, when am I going to be meeting himself?’ referring to Millie’s new husband.

  ‘Don’t ask,’ was the swift response. ‘He walked out on me a year or two back, ran off with the new barmaid from the Crown. I haven’t seen him since. Good riddance to bad rubbish. We manage well enough without him.’

  ‘We’re both widows then, in a way.’

  ‘Aye, you could say so, lass, so yer right welcome to stay. We can keep each other company, a nice quiet life, eh?’

  Nobody could accuse Millie of being short of company, or consider her life to be the least little bit quiet. There was a constant stream of visitors popping in at all hours of the day and night since her family had now expanded to include sons and daughters-in-law, as well as numerous grandchildren. And they all seemed to be in constant need of cups of tea, reassuring chats, and an endless out-pouring of their problems.

  ‘Eeh, it’s like London Road station here, at times,’ she laughed.

  Kate soon began to feel the need for a quieter place, somewhere to call her own.

  Bunty came home in a fever of excitement, taking this sudden show of interest from her mother as a display of affection. It was what she had longed for, to be forgiven her terrible sin and allowed home, though it came as a shock to discover where her mother was living, and why.