The Beck eddied over the rough stones, gurgling and tumbling, and she stared down into the shallow water, tears scalding her cheeks, grieving for what had never been, and now never would be.
Chapter Six
“There’s never been owt like it in t’street before, and I don’t suppose there ever will be again,” Gertie Graham’s daughter-in-law said to another of the Sugdens’neighbours as they stood in a doorway opposite number twenty-six on the morning of Caleb Rimmington’s funeral. “First we have a blue-green motorcar parked in t’street and now we have a black funeral motorcar! It’s been outside t’ house for nearly an hour now so it shouldn’t be much longer afore they’re out.”
“And Lizzie Sugden’s a Rimmington, did you say?” There was awe in her friend’s voice. “A real, proper Rimmington? A Rimmington of Rimmington’s Mill?”
Gertie’s daughter-in-law nodded, enjoying her moment of self-importance.
“Then why is she living in Beck-Side Street?” her friend asked, mystified. “Why is she living with ordinary folk when she could be living in a posh house in Ilkley?”
It was a question that was completely unanswerable and that had the entire street flummoxed. And not just the street.
“Why, Mother?” Nina asked, her voice cracking in disbelief. “Why do you want to stay on in Beck-Side Street when we could be living in Ilkley, at Crag-Side? It doesn’t make sense! It …”
All of them, apart from Laurence, were about to leave the house.
“For me to go to your fa … ather’s fu … uneral would be li … ike thu … umbing my nose at him when he co … ould no longer reta … aliate,” he had said. “It wo … ouldn’t be a ma …
ark of re … espect. It wo … ould be a ma … ark of disre … espect.”
Lizzie looked unseeingly at her reflection in the small mirror that hung near the door. She was wearing a black cloth coat that no one had ever seen before and that could only have come from the most exclusive section of Brown & Muffs’fashion department. The buttons were of jet, the revers and cuffs edged in black watered-silk binding. Her black hat was wide-brimmed and heavily veiled, the crown swathed in ebony ostrich feathers. She looked exactly what she was. A stylish, graceful, middle-aged woman whose father had been one of the city’s most prosperous mill owners.
“It’s nei … ther the pla … ace nor the ti … ime for su … uch co … mments, Ni … ina,” Laurence said as sharply as he was able, acutely aware of his wife’s ash-white face and the depth of her suffering. “Pu … ut a scarf o … o … ver your ha … at, it will be wi … indy in the mo … otorcar.”
With unsteady hands Nina secured a black chiffon driving-scarf over the black velvet hat she had made herself and which so perfectly complimented her fiery hair and the austere severity of her home-made, black, broadcloth suit. Where had the money for their funeral clothes come from? Did Uncle Walter perhaps know that her mother was a beneficiary of his father’s will? And had he told her so? And had she accepted money from him as some kind of an advance on that legacy? It was impossible to think of her mother accepting money from him under any other circumstances. She was too fiercely proud.
As she followed Lizzie out of the house and across the pavement to the waiting motorcar, her frustration was so intense she had to clench her leather-gloved knuckles into fists in order to contain it. Her mother wasn’t only fiercely proud. She was ridiculously proud. Why, why, why had she turned down Uncle Walter’s suggestion that they make their future home with him, at Crag-Side?
She was dimly aware of Rose giving a little wave to Micky Porritt who was standing on Gertie Graham’s doorstep, enjoying a ringside view of their departure. A flare of annoyance complemented her frustration. What on earth did Rose think she was doing? Surely on this occasion at least she could act with a little dignity and decorum?
As Noel, looking strangely alien in a sober black suit, his white shirt sporting a high, waxed collar, his hair gleamingly slicked down, settled himself in the front passenger seat, Nina shifted herself into a more comfortable position between her mother and Rose, and laced her fingers together in her lap.
Why would her mother refuse the offer to live at Crag-Side? It didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t as if her father’s pride was at stake. How could it be when he was disabled and no longer even able to work? And it wasn’t as if the offer of a home at Crag-Side could be interpreted as being an offer of charity. Crag-Side was her mother’s family home, for goodness sake! She, and they for that matter, had every right to be living there!
As the motorcar began to slowly trundle away over the cobbles, she saw that the curtains were closed at every window. It was a traditional mark of respect when there had been a death but only, usually, if the death had occurred in a neighbouring house. Had their neighbours drawn their curtains out of sympathy with their loss, or would they have drawn them anyway on the day of Caleb Rimmington’s funeral? The vast majority of Beck-Side Street residents had, after all, been employed by him. Which only made her mother’s refusal of her Uncle Walter’s offer more incomprehensible than ever, because her mother must surely realize that no one in Beck-Side Street would continue treating them with unselfconscious neighbourliness. How could they, now they knew they were related to the Rimmingtons? They would be cold-shouldered and ostracized just as surely as a mill worker’s family encroaching on middle-class, or upper-class, territory would be.
Rose shot her a covert, perplexed look. Squeezed up close to Nina she could positively feel her tension, but she didn’t understand it. Nina’s remark to their mother, that they could be living at Crag-Side if they wanted to, was news to her. No one had told her that their Uncle Walter had made such an offer, but then over the last few days she’d very rarely been home for anyone to be able to tell her anything.
“If you want me to come with you, for company like, I won’t talk if you don’t want to,” Jenny had said on more than one occasion.
Rose had appreciated her sensitivity but had declined her offer. Not usually a person to brood, her grandfather’s death had affected her profoundly and she had wanted to be on her own for long periods in order to come to terms with it.
Even now, five days after learning of his death, she felt strange. It was as if the world had shifted on its axis and had still not righted itself. She wondered if her cousin Lottie felt the same. As the motorcar eased on to the Ilkley road at a suitably funereal speed, she wondered if her cousin Lottie would understand that even though she, Rose, had never met their grandfather, she had always loved him – and would always miss him.
“Our cousins?” Lottie, dressed in black from the silk-ribboned boater on her head to her ebony buckled shoes, stared at her father, her tear-stained face pale and bewildered. “Why are you asking me to be mindful of their feelings, Papa? They didn‘t even know Grandpa! We were the ones he loved, and who loved him! He wouldn’t have wanted the Sugdens at his funeral! It’s … it’s like inviting strangers!”
Walter pressed a hand towards his temples. Why was everything in life so difficult? Why couldn’t Lottie be just a little more understanding?
“I think your grandfather’s spirit will be far more at peace knowing that all his family will be at his graveside, mourning him, than it would be if the situation had been otherwise,” he said, speaking with as much patience as his fraught nerves would allow. “And as your cousins are going to find it very strange being at Crag-Side for the first time, a little thoughtfulness from you would be—”
William, who had been standing looking out of the window at the gravelled drive and the four black-plumed horses in the shafts of the ornate, as yet still empty hearse, turned around, his eyebrows high.
“They’re coming to Crag-Side? I hadn’t realized. I thought they’d simply be at the Cathedral and the cemetery.”
Walter cleared his throat. He had yet to tell any of his children that he had offered Lizzie and her family a home at Crag-Side. He wondered whether he should break the news to William and Lottie now
, unhappily aware that it wasn’t the most ideal of moments, not when his father’s body was lying in almost royal state in the Chinese drawing-room and Lizzie and her children were expected at any moment. Perhaps if he impressed on them that as Crag-Side had been Lizzie’s childhood home …
“William … Lottie …” he began, his headache intensifying.
The door opened and without stepping into the room Harry said tersely, “A funeral car has just turned into the end of the driveway. I assume it means Aunt Elizabeth and our cousins are arriving.”
“Harry makes it sound as if they’re proper cousins,” Lottie said to William with deep, hurting resentment as their father, vastly relieved at the interruption, joined Harry at the door and strode off with him towards the Italianate entrance hall.
“However strange it may seem, Lottie love, they are,” William said, not able to understand why she was making such an issue of it. He put an arm around her shoulders, giving her a loving hug, adding comfortingly, “Weddings and funerals are always the same. People turn up at them that no one’s seen or thought of for years and then, when the niceties have been observed, they disappear back into the woodwork again. The Sugdens coming to Grandpa’s funeral is typical funeral manners, that’s all.”
Lottie longed to be convinced but was full of terrible doubt. It seemed so wrong to have strangers intruding at such a time, especially when those strangers were claiming they had been as closely related to her grandfather as she, and William and Harry, had been.
Did it mean that all the time she had thought she was her grandfather’s pride and joy and little love, she had really not been so special after all? When she had been enjoying outings with him had he sometimes been thinking of the Nina person, or the Rose person? Jealousy roared through her, intensifying her grief. She didn’t want her grandfather to be dead. She didn’t want the Sugdens to be coming. She didn’t want to feel as if nothing in life could ever again be regarded as being fixed and certain. Her throat choked with tears. She wanted it to be before they had gone to London. She didn’t want it to be now. She wanted it to be then.
Walter Rimmington strode across the marbled floor of Crag-Side’s circular entrance hall to greet his sister and his nephew and nieces. “Lizzie, dear,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion as he took hold of her hands and kissed her on her cheek. “Oh Lizzie dear! I’m so glad you’re here! The coffin is open and is in the Chinese drawing-room. I haven’t been in to pay my last respects yet. I couldn’t. Not by myself. Perhaps when we have done so together, Noel and Nina and Rose could do so and—”
“Only Noel,” Lizzie said thickly, and though her arm was resting in his, it was obvious to everyone present that emotionally and mentally he was leaning on her. “It wouldn’t be fair to subject Nina and Rose to such an ordeal, not when they never met Father whilst he was alive.”
Nina opened her mouth to protest and then thought better of it. She’d never seen anyone dead and she didn’t want to do so now.
Rose was looking at her cousin Harry. She would have recognized him anywhere. Even though he was dressed very formally, in black trousers and morning coat with his hair, like Noel’s, brushed into total submission, there was still an overwhelming sense of vigour and good temper about him.
“The rotunda is no place for family introductions,” Walter said, aware that his nephew and eldest niece were standing in stiff discomfiture and that William and Lottie had not even had had the good manners to put in an appearance, “but as Harry is here …”
Harry dutifully stepped forward.
“Lizzie, my second son, Harry. Harry, your Aunt Elizabeth.”
“I’m very pleased to meet you, Aunt Elizabeth,” Harry said. And meant it. Why on earth had he imagined she would be an embarrassment? No matter how unsuitable her marriage there was nothing clogs-and-shawl about her. She carried herself with grace and style and great dignity. And despite the fact that, until his grandfather’s death, she and his father had had little or no contact for years and years and years, there was obviously a bond of great affection between them. As for his cousins …
“I’d like to introduce you to your cousin Nina,” his father was saying, and he was looking into green-gold eyes, wide-spaced, black-lashed, and a creamy-skinned face of flawless perfection framed by the most glorious coloured hair he had ever seen in his life.
As she proferred him the tips of her gloved fingers a charge like that of a jolt of electricity jarred through him, all-engulfing horror following hard on its heels. He was in a state of urgent physical arousal for God’s sake! And with his much-loved grandfather laying in state only rooms away!
“And Rose,” his father was saying.
Aghast at the indecency of his reaction to her sister he murmured something polite – shook her hand – but her face barely registered and neither, when he was introduced to him, did her brother’s. All he could think of was the incredible experience he had just undergone. What did the French call it? Coup de foudre? Instant, unreasoning, overpowering sexual attraction. And for his cousin for goodness sake! For a Sugden!
“William and Lottie are in the small drawing-room,” he heard his father saying to his aunt as, her arm still in his, he began to lead the way out of the rotunda. “Other mourners who are leaving for the cathedral from the house are gathered in the west wing drawing-room. We’ll be going to the cathedral and on to the cemetery in carriages, of course. Much more dignified than funeral cars. But first …” his father’s voice shook slightly, “First, Lizzie, you and I must pay our last respects to Father.”
Harry, eager for the opportunity of escorting Nina and putting his violent physical attraction to the test, said swiftly, “I’ll take Noel and Nina and Rose into the small drawing-room and introduce them to William and Lottie.”
His heart was racing as if he had been running. What was going to happen when he fell into normal, natural conversation with her? Was the magic going to vanish into thin air? And if it didn’t? If it persisted? What then?
“William and I have already paid our respects to Grandfather,” he said to Noel as his father shepherded his aunt into the sombrely curtained confines of the Chinese drawing-room. “It will be rather strange for you, I expect, with you never having known him.”
Noel looked across at his cousin sharply, wondering if he was being condescended to, but one look at Harry’s handsome, bold face assured him he wasn’t. Whatever Harry’s faults might prove to be, Noel was certain snide sarcasm would not be among them.
Every single fibre of Nina’s being was struggling to remain outwardly composed. So this was Crag-Side! This was where her mother had been born and had spent her childhood! This was where she, too, if her grandfather hadn’t so disapproved of her father, would have spent childhood holidays and weekends and Christmases! That she had never done so, hurt like a physical pain. How could her mother have never resented being denied all this opulence and grandeur? How, after being brought up in a house that seemed as vast as a palace, could her mother have ever happily settled for life in Jesmond Avenue, let alone life in Beck-Side Street! To Nina it was unimaginable. Inconceivable.
“William, cousin Nina,” her unnervingly personable cousin Harry was saying, and she was shaking hands with the young man who would one day inherit the great Gothic magnificence that was the Rimmington family home.
Ever since her first glimpse of him, as he had escorted Lottie into the glittering bright interior of Brown & Muffs, she had known that he was far more intellectual looking than his brother. Now she saw that he was also extremely attractive in a reserved, understated way. His hair was darkish and straight, with a suspicion of a cow’s lick which, today, had been brushed into near annihilation. He was tall and lean and there was a preoccupied expression in his eyes that she felt wasn’t there just because of the sombreness of the occasion but was, instead, part and parcel of his intriguingly reserved personality.
“Lottie, our cousin Nina,” Harry was saying smoothly.
A gir
l a year or two younger than herself, and dressed to look far younger, stared stonily at her. For a heart-stopping second Nina’s composure threatened to desert her. On his many visits over the last few days to Beck-Side Street her Uncle Walter had been so unequivocally accepting of all of them as family, that she had forgotten all her earlier fears of not being accepted by her Rimmington cousins.
In the sophisticatedly black broadcloth suit she had designed and made herself, she had felt as if no one could view her as not being their equal. She had stepped from the funeral car into the marble-floored splendour of her mother’s family home and had immediately felt as if she belonged there. She hadn’t felt out-of-place or overawed or intimidated. She had felt herself to be what she knew herself to be – a Rimmington, as well as a Sugden, a Rimmington who had inherited all her mother’s head-turning grace and innate sense of style. And if her overpampered and cossetted younger cousin was going to try and make her feel socially inferior then she was in for a big disappointment!
As Harry introduced Lottie to her, Rose took one look at her cousin’s pale, pinched face and felt immediate empathy with her. Lottie had known their grandfather. His home had been her home. She had spent time with him, been taken out on treats and visits by him. And if she hadn’t been with him when he had died, she had been very, very near – in the next hotel room perhaps. It must have been a traumatic experience for her, for it was quite clear by the grief and suffering in her eyes that whatever their grandfather’s faults, he had had none where she was concerned. Lottie had loved their grandfather, and was grieving for him deeply.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Lottie simply, meaning the words with all her heart. “It must be terrible to lose someone you’ve loved so much, and who has loved you so much. I didn’t know Grandfather but I wanted to. The world seems strange now he isn’t in it anymore, doesn’t it? It’s as if nothing is the same. As if it never will be the same.”
Yorkshire Rose Page 9