Emma: There's No Turning Back

by Linda Mitchelmore

  ‘Too good to last wuz it, lovie? Summat’s ’appened and that’s fer sure. I’ve never known you at a loss fer words before!’

  Emma smiled weakly. ‘I know Seth used to see Caroline Prentiss—’

  ‘That little ’arlot! I ’eard she’d upped and left months ago. If she’s back and makin’ trouble between you and Seth, I’ll swing fer ’er.’

  ‘She won’t be back,’ Emma said. ‘She’s gone to America. Or going. So she says.’

  ‘So why the tears? Seth’s never gone with ’er?’

  ‘No, he hasn’t. But I don’t trust anything she says at all. So I’m all at sixes and sevens with it. And besides, she’s left Seth something to remember her by. His baby. A girl. Rose.’

  ‘Oh my sweet life,’ Mrs Drew said. ‘More tea, I think. A fresh brew. And a drop of somethin’ strong and ’ard in it this time.’

  Emma began to cry, overwhelmed by events coupled with the genuine concern and kindness of Beattie Drew.

  ‘How’s your cough?’ Emma asked, then hated herself for the question. She knew she’d only asked because she selfishly didn’t want Mrs Drew to die of bronchitis or the canker. She needed her. ‘I should have come to see you here before – as a friend, and not just when you’re cleaning for Seth and me – and you’ve been ill and I’ve neglected you. I’m sorry.’ Emma sniffed back tears.

  ‘Never you mind my cough. You paid the doctor fer ’is services, and you paid fer the medicine, so you’ve done your bit. And it won’t ’urt you to do a bit of ’ousework in that great mansion of yours.’

  ‘It’s not a mansion,’ Emma protested, but her throat felt raw getting the words out.

  Mrs Drew chuckled. ‘This ’ere entire cottage’d fit in your drawin’ room, now wouldn’t it? No, don’t answer that. You just get those tears out, my girl, or they’ll go bad inside you. Rot like liver with the fluke in it.’

  Emma shuddered at the thought. So while Mrs Drew busied herself making tea and tipping a drop of gin in it, Emma did as she was told. Her tears fell silently at first, just a lone tear, then more and more until she was almost howling the way she’d heard a bitch howl once when her pups were taken away and drowned.

  ‘Done, lovie?’ Mrs Drew asked, when Emma at last stopped crying, her throat burning and her eyes stinging from her salty tears. She doubted she’d even be able to speak for a while. ‘Now, you listen to me, Emma Jago. And I don’t want any interruptions the way you always do, questionin’ things. You’ll ’ear me out and then you can tell me if you think Beattie Drew’s an old fool or not. All right?’

  Emma nodded.

  ‘Seth’s a fine man and never forget it. Yes, I know Caroline Prentiss went to Hilltop a time or two, although I never let on to Seth I knew. And they didn’t jus’ sit ’olding ’ands in the drawin’ room, did they? Because didn’ I ’ave to wash the bed sheets?’

  Mrs Drew stopped for a sip of tea and Emma wondered if she was supposed to respond to the question. Not that she was going to, because it was far more information than she wanted to know.

  ‘And it was all before you and Seth got serious. But ’ere’s the truth of it – Seth only began to see other women because ’e couldn’t ’ave you. He thought you were sweet on Matthew Caunter for starters, and after ’e left fer foreign parts, that Mr Smythe up at the ’otel was trying to persuade you to marry ’im.’

  ‘I wasn’t sweet on Matthew Caunter. And I never would have married Mr Smythe,’ Emma croaked. ‘I’d have gouged my eyes out with carpet tacks first.’

  She wished Mrs Drew hadn’t mentioned Matthew. There was still the matter of his unread letter.

  ‘I said no interrupting, miss! ’Ear me out, for pity’s sake. Seth’s a man. Men ’ave needs. Urges like women don’ get – well, I never ’ave, at any rate. And men are weak where women are concerned. Especially women who drop their drawers, that’s if they’re wearin’ drawers in the first place. Now my Robert, ’e was a red’ead. And I’ve got six red’eads of my own, all sired by ’im. But if you look around you’ll see lots more red’eads walkin’ the streets whose parents never ’ad a red ’air between the lot of ’em. All before I dragged Robert up the church path to do the decent thing by me. What went before wuz none of my business, just as what Seth got up to before ’e married you is none of yours.’

  ‘But it is my business! What are people going to think?’

  ‘And when did what other people think ever bother you, Emma Jago?’

  ‘Well …’ Emma began. It was on the tip of her tongue to say she’d organised a sham wedding so that people wouldn’t call her names for living with Seth unmarried. Mrs Drew wouldn’t spread that bit of gossip, she knew. ‘It’s never bothered me much,’ she finished. Now wasn’t the time to tell.

  ‘So, we’ll start with practicalities. I don’t suppose Caroline Prentiss blessed you with a case full of baby clothes. And I imagine you ’aven’t got any underpinnings for the baby. And there’s nowhere for ’er to sleep. Am I right?’

  ‘Yes. But …’

  Emma hadn’t given a thought to Rose living at Mulberry House. Surely Seth wouldn’t want that, would he? Then she remembered how tenderly he’d looked at Rose. How he’d cradled her in his arms so gently after Emma had thrust Rose at him. He probably would want to keep his baby. But did she?

  ‘Rose could be given up for adoption, lovie, but it would need ’er mother’s signature fer that. And I’d bet my life you’d never get it.’

  ‘No,’ Emma said with a shudder.

  Mrs Drew seemed to be reading her mind, knowing her better than she knew herself almost, and it was unsettling her.

  But what about my life? My business? She’d only just got it off the ground. Every week now she got a new client or existing ones wanted bigger orders. And still no one to help her in the kitchen.

  ‘I don’t know what’s goin’ on in your ’ead, lovie, and my guess is you won’t be tellin’ me. But whatever it is, I ’ope at the top of it is that there’s a little innocent mite over at Mulberry House needin’ love and attention. And food. So seein’ as those little baps of yours aren’t goin’ to produce a drop of milk, and mine ’ave long been wrung dry, we’d better see about feedin’ ’er.’

  ‘Yes,’ Emma said. She didn’t want Rose to die of neglect – she’d never live with that because didn’t she know what it felt like to have been half-starved and without parents? ‘We better had.’

  Emma tossed and turned in the unfamiliar bed. No groove for her to slot into easily after they’d made love, the way she did in the bed she shared with Seth.

  He’d been so pleased to see her when she’d returned from Beattie Drew’s that she’d almost given in then; almost told him that yes, of course they’d keep Rose. She’d be as good a mother as she could be to the child. But she’d refused to speak to him. To speak would have meant that she’d probably say more than needed to be said – things she might regret saying afterwards.

  If she did agree to be stepmother to Rose, what about when her own children came along? Would the love be different? Would she care for Rose less then? Put her own children first, always? Would she always see Caroline Prentiss and her cold, uncaring, eyes staring back at her whenever she looked at Rose?

  The baby was in the next room, just a thin partition away from the one Emma was in. On Beattie Drew’s instructions, Emma had taken the biggest, deepest, drawer from the largest chest of drawers and laid it on the floor, then made a crib of it for Rose. Afterwards she’d watered down some milk with water, stirred honey through it, and let Rose suck it off the back of a spoon. It would do until Beattie Drew arrived with bottles and powdered milk from Sarson’s. No one would query her buying it, Beattie had said, because didn’t she have enough children and grandchildren of her own?

  Seth had looked on, rather alarmed Emma realised now, as she’d cut one of his late ma’s best linen sheets into squares to make underpinnings. Seth hadn’t thought to see if the baby was clean and dry and Rose hadn’t been. Emma had retched
at the smell, but the job had to be done – and she’d done it often enough for Isabelle Smythe when she’d worked at Nase Head House, hadn’t she?

  Just as long as Seth didn’t think she was going to do it all day, every day, until Rose was big enough to take herself to the lavatory.

  Rose began to cry and Emma put her hands over her ears. She felt like crying herself. Everything had been going so well after all her hard work to get her business going, and now this.

  Still Rose yelled. Thank goodness there were no near neighbours to Mulberrry House and it was winter and the windows were shut tight, lined curtains drawn across to keep out the cold.

  It was Christmas Day already. How could she and Seth turn a child out into an uncertain future on a day like this?

  Emma had a pocket watch wrapped up in tissue paper that she’d bought from Jamieson’s Jewellers for Seth. She’d been in and put a deposit on it back in September, when Seth had asked her to marry him, and Mr Jamieson had put it behind the counter for her. She’d been calling in every week to pay for it with her own money, even though she knew Seth could buy himself a hundred pocket watches if he wanted to, now that fishing was so good and his pa was dead and no longer able to cook the books.

  Rose was still crying. Would it hurt her lungs to cry like that? Emma wondered. Why hadn’t Seth gone to her? Surely he could hear her? Mrs Drew had said it never did to answer a baby’s first cry or they’d soon get used to it. Bleat for any little thing. But perhaps Rose was cold? Or wet? Or dirty? Or in pain? How was Emma ever going to stay awake in the day if she was up all night seeing to Rose?

  Rose’s crying was getting to her. Emma remembered how, when she’d been ill and the doctor had got her lodgings with Mrs Phipps, that she’d cried her heart out one night, grieving because both her mother and her brother were dead, just six weeks after her father, Guillaume, had been laid to rest in the churchyard of St Mary’s. How could the kind doctor have known that Mrs Phipps would appropriate the food he had ordered to be sent for Emma’s recovery for herself?

  Seth had called to see her there, but Mrs Phipps had refused to let him in. Had Seth known then that his father, Reuben, had repossessed Shingle Cottage and stripped it of all Emma’s belongings? Sold what was of any value, and burned the rest. How she’d wept to have so little left of her life with her parents and her brother, but there’d been no one to comfort her. How cold and hard that had felt in her heart and her mind.

  Emma slid from the bed. She was wearing a pair of Seth’s woollen socks that she’d borrowed to keep her feet warm. She’d been too tired to boil water, fill a stone bottle, let it warm the bed before she got into it. The coat she’d worn when she’d gone for her walk to do some thinking was downstairs. So, lacking the warmth the coat would have given her, Emma pulled a blanket from the bed, wrapped it shawl-like around her shoulders, then tiptoed out of her room to Rose’s room.

  ‘Sssh, sssh,’ Emma whispered into the darkness. She kept her voice low, gentle, so as not to startle Rose further and make her yell even louder although she doubted that would be possible. She pulled back the curtains to let in a bit of moonlight, then she lifted Rose from her makeshift crib. The child stopped crying immediately.

  ‘You little vixen,’ Emma whispered. She dropped a kiss on the baby’s head, shocking herself with the impulsive giving of it.

  But when Emma checked, the baby was wet. Very wet. And so were the bed things. Wrapping Rose in the nearest thing that came to hand – a pillow case from a freshly ironed pile on the chest of drawers – Emma changed the baby’s bedding, then the baby. For good measure she sprinkled a little rose-scented talc on Rose’s tummy.

  ‘There you are little one. Very apt with the talc being rose.’

  Emma didn’t much care for the scent of roses herself, but the talc had been a gift from Ruby when they’d worked together. And Ruby, Emma realised with a jolt, would be here in two days’ time. How was she going to explain Rose away?

  ‘There, that’s you sorted little miss,’ Emma said, laying Rose gently down on the fresh bedding. But the baby began to howl again so she immediately snatched her up, held her close. How delicious the baby smelled now – rose talc and a special scent that Emma assumed was simply a baby smell.

  She began to sing. ‘A claire fontaine, m’en …’

  Immediately the baby hushed. Emma heard Seth cough – to clear his throat of night mucus probably – in the next room. Then silence again. How he’d been able to sleep with the noise Rose had been making she’d never know.

  ‘… Il y’a longtemps que je t’aime, jamais je ne t’oublirai.’

  Emma finished the lullaby, after at least five renditions. The baby seemed to be sleeping now, but the words of the lullaby were still going around in Emma’s head. When singing in French, Emma thought in French. But now her mind automatically translated the last line of the lullaby into English – ‘I’ve loved you for a long time, I’ll never forget you. And I’d never, ever, forget you, Seth Jago if I left,’ she whispered. ‘So I won’t. We’ll work something out.’ She felt tears slide down her cheeks.

  And then Seth’s hand on her shoulder.

  ‘I didn’t hear you,’ she sniffed. ‘Did you hear … everything?’

  ‘Yes.’ Seth sat down beside her, put an arm around her shoulders and Emma leant against him. She felt his lips on her hair.

  ‘It’s Christmas morning,’ Emma said. ‘This is like the Christmas story all over again, except the world isn’t going to rejoice about Rose, is it?’

  ‘I feel like rejoicing,’ Seth said.

  ‘Because of Rose?’

  Emma knew that once a child came, a parent had to spread their love to include the child, but she hadn’t expected that Seth would be doing that quite so soon. Was it selfish of her to have wanted him all to herself for a little while longer?

  ‘No. Because you came back. The hours you were away were the worst of my life. When I went into the bakery and you weren’t there, and I saw your coat had gone, it felt as though something was sucking all the air out of my body. I wanted to come and look for you, but I couldn’t leave Rose. Where did you go?’

  Emma let Seth’s words wash over her. Her mind was all over the place wondering what to do about this sudden change of events. And there was a letter from Matthew Caunter waiting to be read. Well, the second she went downstairs and the fire in the range was lit, then she’d throw it in the flames – unread. She didn’t need any other complication in her life, did she?

  ‘Everywhere,’ Emma said. ‘The cemetery to talk to my mama and papa. To the harbour. Up on the cliffs. And then I went to Shingle Cottage. Mrs Drew gave me tea. With gin in it. And she let me cry. And I told her about Rose. And who her mother is. Perhaps I ought not to have?’

  ‘What would we do without Mrs Drew?’ Seth said. ‘She’ll keep our secret, or spread the story we decide upon about how Rose is here.’

  But what was that going to be? Emma yawned. She was so tired. In a few hours she’d need to be up to prepare the goose for the oven, and the vegetables. And to get the pudding on to steam. And to throw Matthew’s letter onto the flames.

  ‘Oh, Seth, what are we going to do about Rose? What are we going to do?’

  Chapter Five

  ‘Oh, la pauvre, petite fleur,’ Emma said, as Seth watched her lay a sleeping Rose back in her makeshift crib.

  ‘What did you say?’ he asked. Emma often sang to herself in French, or if she was cross because a tart or a cake hadn’t turned out the way she wanted it to, she chastised herself in French, too. At least that’s what Seth thought she was doing – he hardly knew a word of the language – ‘Fleur?’

  ‘ “Poor little flower.” And she is. She’s with strange people in a strange house, with different smells and sounds around her, it’s no wonder she’s unsettled. At least she’s got the name of the most beautiful flower in the world.’

  ‘Quite by chance,’ Seth said. ‘Caroline asked the registrar what his wife’s name was and when
he said it was Rose, she said, “That will do”.’

  ‘She didn’t! That’s terrible! Had the registrar’s wife been called Mavis or Gladys or Prudence then she’d have been called that. Poor little thing. Not wanted really. By her mother anyway.’

  ‘I want her, sweetheart,’ Seth said. ‘I want both of you. I can take care of you both.’

  ‘She’s sleeping now, let’s get back to bed,’ Emma said.

  A bit sharply, Seth thought, and there was a lurch in his insides that Emma was taking things minute by minute, hour by hour. Not thinking of a future for them, even though he’d heard her say she wouldn’t be leaving him. But had he heard correctly? His blood had been pumping in his ears at the time after leaping out of bed so quickly when he’d woken to the baby’s cries.

  ‘Bed?’ he said. Would Emma go back to the spare bedroom? He felt cold without her – both physically and emotionally – beside him.

  ‘Our bed. We’ll talk about the baby in the morning. But we’re digging ourselves into a hole, what with our faux wedding photograph and now a baby. The way we keep digging, I don’t suppose Annings will have a shovel big enough to dig ourselves out with.’

  ‘In the morning, sweetheart, we’ll talk then.’ Seth struggled to suppress a laugh at Emma’s shovel comment. But relief was washing over him that she’d made it all the same.

  ‘Yes, we will. But I’ve got something to ask you now.’

  She wanted to get legally married? A registry office somewhere? Seth’s heart skipped a beat.

  ‘Ask away,’ he said, as he pulled Emma gently to a standing position and began to guide her from the room.

  ‘Fleur,’ Emma said. ‘I’d like to call her Fleur. If you’d like that as well, that is?’

  ‘Fleur it is,’ Seth said. ‘I like it better than Rose anyway. Especially after …’