The Woman From Heartbreak House

by Freda Lightfoot

  Bunty called after him but he didn’t stop walking. He just kept right on going till he was out of sight. Then she put her hands to her face and found it wet with tears.

  Bunty couldn’t believe his reaction. How could Callum be so cruel? Why didn’t he understand that she’d had no control over what had happened to her? She tried to see him again, to reiterate how helpless she’d felt but Toby refused to pass on any more of her notes.

  ‘I’m sorry but I told you, once only. I can’t put right whatever has gone wrong between you. And whatever it is, it has affected Callum badly. He’s taken to going to the Rifle Man’s every night now, instead of just Fridays. He’s drinking far too much and that’s not good, Bunty, not good at all. He’s getting in with the wrong crowd.’

  ‘Then help me to speak to him.’

  Toby considered this for a moment, then shook his head. ‘If I do that, he might cut me off too and where would that leave him? No, I promised Kate, promised his mother I’d watch out for him. I have to stay on his side. I’m sorry, love.’

  Since her mother never allowed her out alone of an evening, Bunty hung around the factory, hopeful of catching a glimpse of Callum. She was supposed to be taking an afternoon stroll and didn’t dare stay long, fearful as she was of alerting her mother’s suspicions. When a week of such loitering brought no results, she tried chatting with one or two of his friends who revealed that he didn’t even work at Tysons any more.

  Why hadn’t Toby told her that much, at least?

  His mates, however, did give her the address of his lodgings and she boldly paid a call and knocked on the door. A scruffy-looking young man answered, his unshaven face darkly unwelcoming. ‘What d’you want?’

  ‘Is Callum in? I need to speak to him. Tell him it’s me – Bunty.’

  The young man turned and shouted back over his shoulder. ‘Theer’s a lass here to see thee. Bunty, she sez her name is.’

  Silence, then a mumbled response came from within.

  ‘He don’t want to know,’ said the scruffy young man, and slammed the door shut in her face.

  Bunty was mortified. How could he be so rude? She hammered on the door again. This time it remained shut and in the end she was driven to admit defeat and go home.

  After that, life slipped from farce into nightmare. Lucy’s plans seemed to be intensifying, her determination to find Bunty a husband growing stronger by the day. Every week there were parties, dinners, social occasions lined up for her to attend, comprising mainly of much older men before whom she was paraded like a brood mare. More dresses were refurbished, her hair restyled, the aunts chivvied into long hours of sewing since money was tight.

  Lucy would study her chosen candidate’s attributes, age and assets as if she were studying form in order to place a bet on a horse in the Grand National. Should she choose the favourite, or the outsider? Bunty was given lengthy instructions on how to behave, how to capture the interest of this businessman or that financier.

  ‘This is like a bad joke,’ she complained. ‘You’ll make us both into a laughing stock.’

  ‘I’ll make us very rich.’

  Sickened by the whole performance, Bunty soon came to realise that there was nothing even vaguely amusing about the situation in which she found herself. She became deeply troubled and increasingly desperate, seeing no hope of escape.

  Today she would write Callum yet another letter which she would put through the letterbox where he lodged. Over the last several weeks she’d sent five already. Or was it six? Time made no sense to her now for there had been no response. Nothing but a long, terrible silence, stretching on and on.

  She walked and walked, needing time alone to think. This letter was her last hope, so she must choose her words with care. She walked for miles, right out of town, following the river till it narrowed through the villages of Natland and Sedgwick.

  Now she sat on the wooded bank, the water rushing and tumbling beneath an outcrop of moss-coated limestone, curving through a copse of slender birch and sycamore, onward to the estuary at Arnside and into the sea. Further along the bank she could see an angler casting his line, and upstream of him stood a watchful heron. Which would catch its prey first? She wondered.

  That’s what she was too, helpless prey, exactly like the poor fish.

  That summer when they’d first met she’d believed their love would endure forever. She and Callum used to pick anemones and sweet violets here. He’d taught her how to tickle trout, described how they buried themselves in the river gravel when the freezing weather came.

  Today there was already that nip in the air that betokened the onset of winter, and Bunty shivered. Where had the summer gone? What a waste that it should slip away unnoticed, the year passing by so quickly. If only there were somewhere she could hide, like the trout, before she too was caught in the freezing trap her mother had set; hooked by one of those dreadful old codgers fishing for a pretty young wife.

  She recalled with a sad smile the jolly picnics she and Callum had once enjoyed; that first one by Lake Windermere, going off to eat their sandwiches alone, sharing a first kiss. How wonderful life had been then, so full of promise and excited anticipation.

  A damselfly settled on a reed and Bunty chewed on her pencil and worried, mesmerised by its dazzling blue beauty. What could she say to touch his heart? What magic words would bring him rushing back to her? How to make him see that she was as helpless a pawn in her mother’s cruel games, as he was, as poor Kate had been.

  She began to write, pouring her heart on to the page as tears welled in her eyes and slipped down her pale cheeks. This was no hasty note begging for a meeting, for one more chance to explain, this was a cry from the depth of her soul.

  When the task was complete, and it took many failed attempts before she was satisfied, Bunty walked slowly home again, following the course of the river as far as she was able. Then slipping through town she dropped the letter through the letterbox of the still firmly closed door.

  Now all she could do was wait, and pray.

  She did not have to wait long. His silence was at last ended. The reply was delivered by hand the very next day, sent via a young boy, and its message was stark.

  Callum bluntly wrote that he’d thought about it long and hard, but had decided that he couldn’t ever see her again. He’d always believed her to be a better person than Lucy, but now he saw that he was wrong. She was exactly the same, every bit as selfish and ruthless as her mother, doing as she pleased without any consideration for other people’s feelings, or any moral sense of what was right or wrong. It concluded with a chilling message:

  Please don’t try to contact me again. I shall throw any more letters away unopened. Your family have ruined my mother’s health and all our lives. It’s over between us. I see no possible way for us to be happy. Callum.

  Bunty tore the letter into shreds then rushed to her room where she sobbed on her bed for hours. When her mother tapped on her door that evening and reminded her that they were expected for dinner at the Wilsons by eight, Bunty rose dry-eyed and obediently began to get ready. She knew when she was beaten, and if she couldn’t have Callum, what did it matter who she married?

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Kate did not regret her decision to move to Manchester. She was more than content with her little cottage. She always had preferred the cosiness of the old nursery, or the small parlour, to the grandeur of what she’d now come to think of as Heartbreak House. She felt well rid of it, was determined to look on the positive side and believe things had turned out well for her.

  She might miss seeing the aunts toasting their toes before the fire of an evening, Vera’s spectacles sliding down her nose and Cissie snoring gently in perfect rhythm with her spaniels, but she did not miss the stately rooms of Tyson Lodge. Not in the slightest.

  Kate hadn’t abandoned the aunts entirely and would often visit them. She and Flora would take the train up to Kendal on a Saturday morning and take lunch with them at The C
ounty, thereby avoiding Lucy’s presence, and pressing a little money into their protesting hands whenever she could afford to. She would also visit Callum, of course, and call on Toby who, without fail, would always urge her to stay on. Kate would smilingly assure him that she was very happy in Manchester, thank you very much.

  ‘What, working on a market stall?’ he would say. ‘That’s not good enough for you, not for the Kate O’Connor who built up her own business from scratch and saved Tyson’s Shoes, the first time it was in trouble at least. You’re worth more than that.’

  ‘All the more reason for me to keep learning and working, so that I can better myself and get back to where I was. I shall find my own way, Toby, have faith.’

  Everything changed the day she met Theo Ingram.

  Kate still cringed with embarrassment, remembering that day. She’d been messing about with the drapery drawers on Millie’s stall, had cheekily tipped out the contents of one, asking her to name all the mysterious contents.

  ‘What on earth is this?’

  ‘A puggaree.’

  ‘A what?’ The pair of them were giggling like silly schoolgirls when a voice had boomed out.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  He’d looked down his elegant nose at the mess spread all over Millie’s counter, making Kate burn with shame.

  ‘I take it, from the expression of guilt on your face,’ he said, in that rich, vibrant voice of his, ‘that you are not actually a customer but a time-wasting friend of my assistant here.’ He turned to Millie. ‘Put everything back where you found it, collect your wages and go.’

  Kate had gasped. ‘You can’t sack her for what I did! That’s not fair. We were just having a laugh, so we were.’

  ‘Then you can take your amusement at someone else’s expense, not mine. Life is never fair, I’ve found, but I expect loyalty from my staff, not levity.’ He began to walk away but one glance at Millie’s white, shocked face galvanised Kate into action, and she ran after this stranger who must be Theodore Ingram, the owner of the department store.

  ‘She has a family to feed, a roof to keep over her head! You’d risk all of that because we were having a bit of a joke? I’d never treat people so callously. What sort of man are you? What sort of an employer?’

  Millie was at her side, urging her to hush. ‘Never mind, Kate. It were me own fault, I shouldn’t have brought out the stuff to show you.’

  Kate rounded on her. ‘No it wasn’t your fault, Millie. It was mine. I asked you to open all those damn drawers, which should have been sorted out years ago considering much of their old fashioned contents. Pre-war the lot of it, if not Victorian.’

  ‘You know all about drapery, do you?’ the man acidly enquired.

  ‘Not a thing.’ Kate straightened her spine and confronted Theo Ingram, grey eyes blazing as they hadn’t done in months. ‘But I know a badly run business when I see one. Like your shoe department, for instance, which was surely created when Noah was building his Ark and hasn’t been changed since. I’d say a bit of a flood might do it a whole lot of good. No wonder so many women walk away having bought nothing.’ She wagged an admonishing finger at him. ‘And don’t tell me I know nothing about shoes either, because ...’ She stopped.

  Kate longed to tell him that she used to run Tyson’s Industries, the best shoe manufacturer in the north, but that would be treading on dangerous territory. She had no wish for him to associate her with the woman who had failed to save her husband’s business. He would be aware that the company had gone bump, perhaps even that Tyson’s widow had been incarcerated in a mad house for a while. It would never do for him to know. She’d no wish to spoil her chances of a fresh start.

  ‘I just know, that’s all,’ she finished, rather lamely. ‘I worked in a shoe shop once.’

  ‘So you think you know more about shoes than I do?’

  ‘I’m certain of it.’

  There was a silence, long and pained. In it Kate found ample opportunity to reflect on her own error of judgement. She’d fallen into the trap of losing her temper as she’d used to do so often in the past, sounding just as dreadful as Ingram’s boss. Millie was whimpering at her side, clearly wanting the ground to open under her feet, while Theo Ingram allowed his arrogant gaze to sweep over Kate from top to toe.

  Finally he spoke. ‘In my office. Both of you. Now, if you please.’

  She’d been forced to eat humble pie, of course. Kate felt duty bound to apologise for her rudeness because she’d been entirely in the wrong. In the first place by tipping stuff out of the display drawers all over the drapery counter, and secondly by insulting both Mr Ingram and his business. A worse catalogue of disaster it would be hard to imagine, and poor Millie was the one being punished. Didn’t her friend deserve better, after all she’d done for her?

  She tried not to think about how good it had felt to have the blood surging through her veins again, to feel fire and energy licking her spirit back into life.

  Theo Ingram stood listening to her explanation and garbled apology in complete silence, his tall, broad-shouldered frame rigid with disapproval. The worst of it was that he was exceptionally good-looking, and not in the least little bit old, for all his apparent pomposity. He couldn’t be a day over thirty-five, his hair dark and neatly cropped in a fashionable cut, his pin-stripe suit typically businesslike since he was on duty but nevertheless of the finest quality worsted. He wore a grey silk cravat, elegantly knotted and shoes of the finest leather. More important still, it was clear from the expression on his handsome face that he was unmoved by Kate’s halting apology, making no effort to ease her embarrassment. Standing rigid before her he could well have been carved out of stone; a beautiful Greek statue.

  Kate stuttered to a halt, gathering the last of her pride about her. ‘I can see that I’m wasting my time. Perhaps you’re a man with no heart, as well as no soul.’

  She sensed Millie flinch, heard her friend’s quick indrawn breath, and realised that she’d done it again. She’d entirely ruined her long-drawn out apology by tacking an insult on to the end. Maybe the treatment she’d endured in that Scottish castle had robbed her completely of common sense?

  Kate risked a glance up at Mr Ingram’s face and caught a glimmer of something she couldn’t quite believe. In anyone else she might have called it amusement, but it vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Maybe she’d been mistaken.

  And then he caught her completely off guard, as he had on many occasions since, by bluntly and without warning, offering her a job. ‘If you think my shoe department is in such dire straits, then perhaps you should come and put it right. The drapery I shall leave in the fair hands of Millie here. Perhaps she is in a more fitting position to decide whether a – pudger –‘

  ‘A puggaree,’ offered Millie.

  He actually smiled then. ‘Pray what is that, exactly, Millie? It looks simply like a length of rather moth-eaten muslin to me.’

  Millie cleared her throat. ‘It was used in India to form a turban or to wrap around a hat, sir.’

  ‘Ah, a leftover from our colonial days. Then you may have a point, Miss, er, um - I’m afraid you haven’t given me your name? And I do like to know all my employees personally.’

  ‘Kate. It’s Kate – ‘ and then before Millie had the chance to cut in, she added – ‘O’Connor.’

  ‘Well then, Kate O’Connor, will you accept my offer or are you not in the market for a job?’

  There was only the slightest pause before she answered. ‘I’ll take it and gladly. Thanking you kindly, sir.’ Lord, she thought, I sound like some humble skivvy. And Kate bit down hard on her lip to damp down this newfound fire in case it seared her tongue and made her say something that would spoil everything yet again.

  That was more than a year ago now and Kate had worked for Theo Ingram ever since, loving every minute of it, although he was not an easy man to please. He was the most picky employer imaginable. The most disagreeable, independent, pig-headed, domineeri
ng man she’d ever met. He was the sort of person, in Kate’s humble opinion, who knew the answer to everything and the value of nothing. He was always absolutely convinced that he was right. Perhaps that was why she liked him, because he reminded her of Eliot.

  But only a little. Theo Ingram possessed a single-minded ruthlessness in business which Eliot had never possessed. He lacked her husband’s charm, his sweet nature, his caring thoughtfulness and Eliot’s natural artistic flair.

  ‘Retailing,’ Kate would tell him, ‘is all about flair. You don’t just put things in drawers or stack them in piles and hope they will sell. You have to display them, make them look enticing. Set the product in an environment which will give the customer some idea of what it will look like in her own home, or, in the case of shoes, on a lady’s own feet.’

  ‘Is this your way of telling me that you need new display stands, Kate?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kate agreed. ‘I wouldn’t give house room to that boxed in staircase you use to line the shoes upon in your window. Just shows how penny-pinching this store is. Or those dreadful chairs you expect women to sit on while they’re trying on shoes. And not a single mirror in the place! It’s time Ingram’s Department Store started treating its customers with proper respect.’

  He’d glared at her and walked away, but a week or two later a huge carton had been delivered to the shoe department, containing all manner of display units and shoe trees, even posters and show cards. Kate had been triumphant.

  Later came new chairs for the department which set the shop girls in a lather of excitement, and even two mirrors which could be set on the green linoleum at just the right angle to flatter a lady’s feet. Kate would have liked a new carpet too but settled for a strip upon which a customer could walk about, to check the comfort of the shoes and admire herself in the mirrors while she did so.