Emma: There's No Turning Back

by Linda Mitchelmore

  ‘Well, it’s more what I ’aven’t done. Them letters with the French stamps. You threw one onto the range one time when I brought it. They ’aven’t stopped coming to the ’otel. I’ve just stopped bringin’ ’em over. I think you ought to read one at least, ’cos they’re not French stamps on the letters. Tom says they’re from America. New York. I thought you ought to know what with the rumours about Caroline Prentiss and everythin’. I’ve brought you the latest. Just in case it’s from ’er, or about ’er. The rest is locked in a box under my bed up in the attic.’

  New York? Matthew? Caroline Prentiss? And Miles? Was there a connection?

  ‘I think, Ruby, just this once, you might be right.’

  She held out a hand, palm upwards, for the letter that she knew Ruby was itching to give her.

  ‘Cheeky bleedin’ madam you are, and ungrateful with it.’ Ruby laughed. She slapped the letter down on Emma’s palm. ‘Now if you want to skip off to read that somewhere private then you can.’ She turned her back on Emma and began cracking eggs into a bowl.

  How lucky Emma was to have such a true and loyal friend; one who could keep what might become a secret even Emma didn’t want to think about.

  Ruby looked back over her shoulder. Grinned at Emma. ‘Skip off like I told you!’

  Emma went, not exactly skipping but with a lightness that Matthew hadn’t given up and was still writing to her.

  Emma took the letter to the far end of the garden, to the mulberry tree, after which her house was named, with its wide and sweeping branches and its cover of new leaves, to read the letter.

  523 Laurel Avenue

  Brooklyn

  New York

  My dear Emma,

  When I picture you in my mind, you are wearing the amethyst necklace I risked my life, my career, to get back for you. I hope you wear it still because it sits so well on you. Even more so now, I suspect, that you are a woman.

  Emma clasped her hand around the amethyst that had been her mama’s. There’d been a time when she’d thought the necklace had gone the way of the rest of her things that Reuben Jago had either sold or burned, but no … it had survived. And here it was, still around her neck. That it had subsequently been discovered that the amethyst necklace had been around the neck of poor murdered, Sophie Ellison, and that Carter Jago had snatched it from her when he’d murdered her, dropping it outside Hilltop House, Emma tried hard to forget. And it was hard. Just as she was finding it hard now not to have the thoughts of Matthew that she’d had at the age of fifteen. She knew exactly what he meant by his words ‘now you are a woman’.

  Enough introduction from this letter, Emma. Have you read all the others I sent you? I doubt it somehow. So, without preamble this time, Emma, it’s with the heaviest of hearts that I tell you Annie has left me. You’ll remember my wife, I’m sure. But it’s not another man she’s left me for, but for a woman. They are, Annie tells me, lovers.

  I can hear your gasp of shock from here! You can take your hands from in front of your mouth now, and read on.

  Emma shivered. Her hands were in front of her mouth, they’d flown there of their own volition when she’d read the words. Another woman? Everyone in the town knew that the Misses Porter weren’t actually sisters, just friends, but could women be lovers the way she and Seth were? Could they? She loved Ruby but it had never crossed her mind to get into bed with her.

  It was as though Matthew was standing on the grass beside her, reading his own letter over her shoulder. She gave her shoulders a shake, but it only served to make another shiver ripple between her shoulder blades.

  My ego took a dent from that, I can tell you, Emma. Had it been another man I could have gone and punched his lights out, but a woman … well, you know me, ever the gentleman where women are concerned. I could hardly do that in the circumstances, could I?

  Annie has taken our son, Harry, with her. I’m not happy with the situation, but given the job I do it is for the best. It’s the safest option for Harry. I will write him often when he is old enough to read. And Annie promises to let him visit when he is older, too. But I miss him, Emma – a real ache of a miss in my chest. Especially at night when the last thing I always did when we were a family, was to go into his room and place my hand on his chest to feel the timbre of his breathing.

  I wanted you to know because you understand loss as, I think, no other person that I know understands it. I didn’t fully understand your plight when first we met, you and I, because I’d never known loss – certainly nothing like I feel at the loss of Harry, as though my soul has been sucked from me. I was flippant with you, rude even at times. I was forever telling you how to behave, how to live your life, and while that came from the very best of intentions – I wanted the best for you and still do – I ought not to have done. I do hope you can forgive me.

  Emma stopped reading, her eyes swimming with tears. She held Matthew’s letter to her face and sniffed in the scent of the paper; it was different from English paper in every way, thinner and more crackly.

  ‘Nothing to forgive, Matthew,’ she said.

  She refolded the letter and put it back in the envelope. Stuffed it down to the bottom of the pocket in her apron. She would read the rest later.

  And send a reply to say how sad she was for him. Yes, she’d have to do that. How could she not?

  ‘Sold!’ Seth said. ‘Or as good as, sweetheart. Contracts have been exchanged. I’ve signed my set of papers already.’

  ‘That was quick.’ Emma carried on rinsing out Fleur’s nightdress and vest – very quickly because the water was icy cold – in the sink.

  Her heart sank to somewhere around her boots. How long before Seth would mention Canada again now the business was more or less off his hands? How long before he began to talk of them moving there? While he still ran the fishing fleet, Emma had been free to develop her business. But now?

  ‘It’s been a month on the market, actually. But time flies when you’re having fun, so they say.’

  Seth wrapped his arms around Emma’s waist from behind and kissed the side of her neck, letting his lips linger. She felt his tongue, warm and soft, dart out from between his lips and lick her deliciously.

  ‘I haven’t got time for that sort of fun,’ Emma said, wishing that she did, because already Seth was stirring longing in her, the way he always did with his touch. ‘And neither have you. Mrs Drew will be here in a minute anyway.’

  ‘Ah yes, so she will. It wouldn’t do for her to turn up and find us writhing about on the mattress and Fleur yelling from her cot, would it?’

  Emma laughed. ‘We’d never hear the last of our neglect of our child, would we?’

  Our child. She’d said ‘our child’. She did think of Fleur as theirs and not just Seth’s, but all the same she couldn’t wait for the day when she and Seth would have a child together – except that day seemed to be a long time coming. If she didn’t fall soon she’d go and see Dr Shaw to see if there was a reason why she hadn’t.

  ‘Not a word to Mrs Drew about the sale, sweetheart.’

  ‘It’s not a sale yet, Seth. You said so yourself.’

  ‘I know. I know. It’s just that I can’t wait to see the back of Pa’s boats and that’s the truth. My hand was shaking with excitement when I was dipping the nib in the ink ready to sign.’

  ‘As long as the other person doesn’t pull out.’

  While Emma had never owned anything that needed a contract to buy it or sell it, she knew these things could fall through, or whatever the jargon was, at the last minute.

  ‘Oh ye of so little faith,’ Seth said, smiling at her. ‘He shouldn’t do. He’s seeing Bettesworth’s partner this morning.’ Seth took out his pocket watch and glanced at the time. ‘Ah, make that the past tense. His appointment was for nine o’clock. All should be signed, sealed, and ready to be delivered by now. And—’

  The telephone ringing halted Seth’s flow of words and he raced to the hall to answer it.

  Emma wished
she could share Seth’s excitement. While she understood his reasons for wanting to see the back of anything that had belonged to his pa, she was worried. Seth had never worked for anyone else in his life. Was he ready to be an employee rather than an employer? Emma, with her business now doing so well, knew she’d find it difficult to have to take orders from anyone else ever again.

  Canada and their move there was still in the equation, she knew that. And she also knew that Seth’s aunt wrote to him regularly. But Seth had mentioned working for Olly, so she could only live in hope that that was what he would do.

  Emma edged closer to the door, trying to eavesdrop on Seth’s conversation. What if it wasn’t the solicitor? What if it was the authorities about Miles? And what if it was Mrs Prentiss? Telephoning from New York asking for more money? Could you reach New York by telephone? Emma had no idea. All she did know was that she was becoming weary of living on the edge of other people’s misdemeanours. She’d written to Matthew to say how sorry she was to hear about Annie and that she hoped he and Harry would meet often in the future. And she’d told him she and Seth were married. She even gave him the date of their ‘wedding’. She’d had no further correspondence from him since. Perhaps that was all he needed? To tell someone and to know that someone understood. And to have the good sense not to be writing to another man’s ‘wife’.

  Perhaps, Emma thought, as she took another step forward, it would be safer if Matthew didn’t write again, because he was coming to her – disturbingly – in dreams more often. Once, in her dream, they had even been wrapped in one another’s arms and … no, don’t remember. Don’t!

  Emma strained to hear Seth speaking, but couldn’t pick out any actual words. Then silence as whoever was on the other end was talking. Seth again.

  And then Emma heard the receiver being replaced on the hook and she raced back to the sink and began wringing out Fleur’s nightdress so hard she thought she might rip it in two.

  ‘Done!’ Seth said, rushing back into the kitchen.

  Emma dropped the twisted nightdress onto the draining board and clapped her hands together. She was delighted for Seth, she really was.

  ‘Any chance of a steak and kidney pie for supper tonight?’ Seth said. ‘With one of your fancy upside-down apple tarts for afterwards? With cream?’

  ‘Oh, I should think I could manage all that,’ Emma said, airily, although in truth it was going to be a jigsaw fitting in all the things she had to do today – one large order and six small ones for a start.

  ‘In that case, I’ll call into Tolchards and buy a bottle of champagne. Toast the sale, and our future. What do you say?’

  Champagne? The first time she’d drunk champagne she’d been drinking it with Matthew Caunter up at Nase Head House the night Seth’s pa and his brothers had been arrested. She only had to think of champagne and she conjured up Matthew in her mind – the way he’d teased her when she’d said the bubbles were tickling her nose and he’d said that was because champagne usually did have bubbles in it. Now, with the loss of his marriage and his son, would Matthew ever have that lightness of heart to tease again?

  She wished Seth hadn’t mentioned the word champagne – that he had just come home with it – because she knew Matthew, and her memories of him, would flit in and out of her mind all day now. And she’d been doing her best to forget him. Even though he was part of her past. Just as Seth’s pa and brothers were.

  Was it adultery to be thinking of another man when in Seth’s company? she wondered. Was it? And was it ‘out of sight, out of mind’ or ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ that was the truism? When she’d been Matthew’s housekeeper, she’d never yearned for him when he’d been away doing his covert job, certainly not the way she’d yearned for Seth when she hadn’t seen him for a while. Each had been special to her in their way back then when she’d been so young, so alone, so helpless. Was it, Emma wondered, possible to love one man just as much as another? And at the same time?

  ‘You’ve gone very quiet, sweetheart,’ Seth said. ‘It doesn’t have to be champagne if you don’t like it. I could get a sweet French wine if you’d prefer that.’

  Emma swallowed. ‘No. Champagne will be perfect.’

  ‘Good. Ah, is that Mrs Drew slamming our front gate in her usual manner?’

  ‘It is,’ Emma said, putting her hands over her ears and wincing at the sound of the gate catch engaging like gunfire. ‘And even more forcefully than usual!’

  Emma often wondered if Mrs Drew slammed the gate to give her and Seth warning that she was approaching, should they be kissing, or something else even more intimate, to give them to time to spring apart before she came in the door.

  ‘I’m off, then,’ Seth said. He cupped Emma’s face in his hands and dropped a gentle kiss on her lips. ‘Wish me luck. I’ve got to break it to the men I won’t be their boss for much longer. I’m not sure how they’re going to take it.’ He released Emma and took his hat from the hook behind the back door.

  ‘Who is their new boss?’ Emma asked.

  ‘Ah, I’ve been waiting for you to ask that.’ Seth took a deep breath before opening the door. He stepped outside. ‘Charles Maunder.’

  ‘But I thought he’d been ill. A bad heart.’

  Charles Maunder? Him? Father of Caroline Prentiss? And, Emma thought with a shudder, Fleur’s grandfather. How could Seth have sold his fishing fleet to him! Would she ever be rid of them all?

  Seth turned back to look at her. ‘Better, and thank heaven for that!’ Seth said, before shutting the door behind him.

  The coward! Seth hadn’t been able to stay in the room after delivering that bit of news, had he?

  Seth waited until the transfer of business deed was exchanged and signed by both parties before he allowed the transaction to become common knowledge.

  He felt it his duty, though – once he’d given all his crew the news that the fishing fleet had sold – to inform his tenants himself that it wouldn’t be him collecting the next week’s rent money as their tied cottages had been sold with the fishing business.

  ‘Landed on ’er feet when ’er married you, an’ all, didn’t she?’ Mrs Phipps said when he gave her the news, choosing to do it on her doorstep rather than go inside and have to witness the mess that Mrs Phipps lived in. It always made him shudder to remember Emma had lodged here for a while after she’d been orphaned.

  ‘I don’t remember bringing my wife into this conversation, Mrs Phipps. And I’ll thank you to remember her name is Emma, or Mrs Jago, if you prefer, not ’er.’

  Mrs Phipps sniffed, then spat a gobbet of phlegm onto the blue-grey leaves of a lavender bush beside her front door.

  Seth thought he might be sick. He turned to go.

  ‘Not so fast, Seth Jago,’ Mrs Phipps said, grabbing at his arm. ‘’Ow do I know this new landlord ain’t goin’ to throw me out?’

  ‘You don’t, any more than I do. But we shook hands on it in a gentlemen’s agreement that he would wait a year before making any decision about future occupation of the cottages. Tied and otherwise.’

  ‘That’s what you say. I don’t know I can trust anythin’ a Jago says. Seems to me it was some sort of fiddle you didn’t go down with your brothers and your pa. Rot like your pa did in Exeter gaol. All them houses fallin’ in your lap like that.’

  Seth let the woman have her rant, doing his best to avoid looking at her rotting, black teeth. He turned his head slightly so as not to have to smell the stench that was coming from her mouth. He’d never been more glad than in that moment that the responsibility for all his properties was now transferred to Charles Maunder.

  Mrs Phipps, he had a feeling, would be the first of the new landlord’s tenants to be evicted.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘What’s up with you, Emma?’ Beattie Drew said.

  ‘I’m tired that’s all,’ Emma told her, rather sharply she realised. She waited for Beattie to admonish her for it, but she didn’t. So Emma carried on: ‘It’s been a busier
summer than I expected it to be for my first year in business. And what with September being so warm there are still lots of tourists around, so trade’s not dropping off yet.’

  ‘And thank goodness for that. Especially after the fire and all that set you back. My Edward’s been well occupied ’elpin’ and aren’t I grateful for that! Now I don’t want this to go to your ’ead and make it bigger than what it is already, but it’s been a good summer for you because you made it so,’ Beattie Drew said. ‘I saw the lamp burnin’ in the bakery some nights when I was on my way to bed. You’ve worked all hours.’

  And it’s paying off, Emma thought, although how she’d have managed without Beattie to care for Fleur she didn’t know. Fleur was nearly fifteen months old now, and walking. Or teetering dangerously on her chubby little legs a few steps at a time before falling over. And she was saying a few words, too. Papa. Mama. Roo, for Ruby.

  It had crossed Emma’s mind – fleetingly she had to admit before she banished the thought – that Caroline Prentiss might send her daughter a card for her birthday, but no card had arrived on the July 16th. She did not mention her wonderings to Seth, though. And neither had he brought Mrs Prentiss’s name into the conversation at the birthday tea they’d held for Fleur. His talk that afternoon had been all about how he was looking forward to having more time for painting now he’d sold the fishing fleet, which he was certain was the right thing to do. He’d always been top in Art at school, he’d said.

  Had he? He’d never said before. There was so much Emma still didn’t know about Seth, wasn’t there? And what was more, no art materials had appeared in the house even though Seth was working for Olly now and had more time to paint.

  But, mercifully, Seth hadn’t mentioned going to Canada lately.

  ‘Lawks a mercy, lovie, I don’t know where your ’ead is, but it ain’t ’ere with me in this room! It seems to me there’s a mountain of stuff on your mind and if you take my advice you’ll have a day off from it on your birthday,’ Beattie said.