The Black Candle

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘That’s got nothin’ to do with it. Nothing. Nothing.’

  ‘I think it has. Yes, in my opinion I think it has, because it shows you to be a man of good and sympathetic nature and moral heart. We all know how a young woman who gives birth to an illegitimate child is looked upon in this day and age. Especially when her people turn against her, when her only choice, if it can be so called, is the workhouse. And it is known that you have become a very loving husband, a family man. All your neighbours will vouch for this, but more so does your employer who cannot speak more highly of you.’ He now turned and looked towards the jury, asking of them, ‘Is this the picture of a man who would stab his brother to death and go home and crack a joke with his neighbour, as Mrs Leary has already described—’ he coughed twice before continuing, ‘then, as she said, pick up the child from its basket-cradle and give it…a shuggy, as she amply described, while its mother protested about its being wakened from sleep? Again I ask you, is this the picture of a man who had just murdered his brother? I leave you to answer that question.’

  It was at this point that the judge bent and said something to the clerk. The clerk spoke to the usher; then the usher turned and declared, ‘The court is adjourned until two-thirty o’clock of this day.’…

  Bridget made straight for the washroom. She felt she was really going to be sick but, finding the room crowded, she stayed only as long as was necessary.

  As she came out she was hailed by Mrs Leary: ‘There you are, miss. There you are. How d’you think it’s goin’? I put it over right, didn’t I? I told him, and I would have done more, only that bloke kept shutting me up. But I got me say in, that I did. Now would a man go and kill his brother, I said, then come home and hold the bairn tight against his decent coat. Not that its nappies had had any time to get wet. I did tell him, didn’t I? Spankin’ clean, Lily is, and that child is kept as dry as if it never peed. Dear God! They’re easily shocked, that lot in there. Queer cards altogether. Even the man who is supposed to be speakin’ up for Joe, he wouldn’t let me get a word in…You’re lookin’ right peaky, but you’d have a long way to go to reach the colour that Lily is this day. Ill, she is, never away from the closet, her stomach runnin’ out of her.’

  ‘Mrs Leary, you’ll…you’ll have to excuse me, my…my solicitor and advocate are waiting for me.’

  ‘That’s all right, deary. That’s all right. We’ll be meetin’ later on, if God wills, ’cos you’ll be goin’ to Lily’s, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I’ll call this evening.’

  ‘You’re a good lady, a kind lady. God, you are that. Who among the gentry would show concern for a worker like you have. No, begod, not one of them but yourself!’

  Bridget walked away with the words, ‘show concern for a worker’ gyrating round her mind. If it was only known how, in her heart, she held that worker, she’d be the object of scorn, and, yes, from Mrs Leary. She’d be no lady then.

  The men were waiting for her in the Merchant’s Court. She remembered this room. It was the most beautiful apartment, in which were stored the records of the company of Merchant Adventurers dating back to 1215. It had a magnificent fireplace, and the walls of panelled oak reaching to the moulded ceiling and the panelling holding the coats of arms of all the Lord Mayors. These Merchant Adventurers must have taken upon themselves in some way or another the splendour and dignity of this place when dealing with not only shipping, but all kinds of merchandise that was produced or passed through this ancient city.

  However, today none of this touched her. In the crowded room she presently espied Douglas, and, as if he had been waiting to catch her eye, he nodded towards her, but did not make his way to join her or her solicitor, or advocate, because, in a way, his witness would be acting against their cause.

  And Douglas was even now worried about something, the while telling himself it was of no consequence and had no bearing on the case. When on the witness stand he had been asked whom else he had seen in the wood that night, he had answered in the same way as he had done up till then; four riders returning from the hunt. He hadn’t said he had spoken to one, for the question hadn’t been put to him. Another point, the riders were gentlemen. What could they possibly have to do with this sort of case that was dealing with a family feud between two brothers and they working men?

  As they walked from the Guildhall to a nearby hotel, Mr Beale said to Bridget, ‘It’s a great pity that young man who was on the stand chose that evening to select stone.’

  ‘Well, what do you mean?’ Bridget slowed in her step and he, looking at her as if she were a young naive girl, said, ‘Well, now, what do you really think? Not only has that incident condemned him, but his mother, as far as I can see, has tightened the noose round his neck. My dear. My dear.’ He put his hand on her elbow and almost hurried her into the hotel; and he said nothing further until they were seated, when he said, ‘If I am able to get for him a term of imprisonment, I shall consider I have won this case; and the only way I can see of achieving this is by continuing the line on which I ended this morning’s session: the father of the child.’

  ‘But we don’t know who the father of the child is, do we?’ Mr Kemp was inclining his head deferentially towards the big man.

  ‘I think I know, sir. And the prisoner’s reactions, when I brought up the fact that the child his wife had borne was not his, seemed to confirm my thinking. It was somebody’s, wasn’t it? And that someone was known by the prisoner. And whom did he know as well as he did…his brother?’

  Both Bridget and Andrew Kemp stared at the man, and Bridget was crying to herself, ‘Oh no,’ then, ‘Yes, yes. He was keeping silent to shield Lily.’ But on another thought she voiced it, saying, ‘But if she brought this to light it would condemn him straight away.’

  ‘I’m aware of that, Miss Mordaunt, very aware of that. But I intend to play on the fact that this man is keeping something silent in order to shield his wife further pain. It will, of course, be put over in such a way that even the dullest of the jury will know why Joseph Skinner killed his brother Frederick. There is no hope it would prove him not guilty, but there is every hope it will enable him to evade the gallows and, instead, do a term of imprisonment. And with the latter judgement he would be left with hope, whereas what can one say about the former? Anyway, as they say, where there’s life, there’s hope. So let us eat.’

  Twelve

  Bridget’s face was an ashen colour, but her eyes were dry, wide and pain-filled as she looked down at Lily: the child in her arms, she was sitting rocking it backwards and forwards, and had been for the last half hour; and she looked as if she would never stop. She didn’t speak for a full twenty minutes after Bridget and Mrs Leary had entered the house, nor had either of them opened their mouths. It must have been Mrs Leary’s silence that conveyed the dire sentence to Lily, with the result that she cried out, ‘No, no; they wouldn’t, not to Joe. He would never do that. Never, never. Would he? Would he?’ Then she had lain down the child to do what she had been doing for the past two or three days, run to the closet. When she returned she again picked up the child and from then had sat rocking herself and it.

  When Mrs Leary suddenly burst out, ‘They’re bastards! The lot of them,’ then on a quieter note, said, ‘I’ll make a pot of tea,’ Bridget brought her chair as close as she could to the rocking body and placed her hand on the trembling shoulder, and, doing so, she thought that right until the day she died two things would remain in her mind: first, the sound of the judge’s voice as he intoned, ‘And will be hanged by the neck until…’ She couldn’t bring her mind to finish the words; it skipped them and placed before her the look on Joe’s face. And this, too, would remain with her: Joe’s face was devoid of colour and seemingly of emotion. It was as if the sentence was no surprise to him; that he had known from the beginning what the outcome would be.

  There had been a great kerfuffle outside the court: people of varying opinions standing arguing, reporters rushing for cabs. And then h
is mother standing facing her in the road just as she was about to step into the carriage and almost whimpering, ‘I…I didn’t think he would get that, I didn’t. Prison, aye, but not the other. That’ll be two of them now, two of them gone. What’s to become of me?’

  ‘You should have thought of that some time ago, Mrs Skinner, and curbed your venom. You’re a wicked woman, an unnatural mother.’

  It was then she allowed Douglas to help her into the carriage and as he was about to close the door, she leaned towards him, saying softly, ‘Come with me, Douglas, please, will you? I’ve…I’ve got to go to…Lily’s, and I…I don’t think I can stand much more today.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

  After he had taken his seat beside her she had turned for a moment and looked out of the window to where Mr Kemp’s advocate was standing outside the Guildhall. Mr Kemp looked very perturbed; his companion’s face showed no emotion: he had lost his case and through that a workman would lose his life. It was all in a day’s work.

  As the carriage had begun to roll away down the uneven road Douglas had caught hold of her hand and held it tightly. He hadn’t spoken, nor had she; she had lain against the padded back, her eyes closed. He, too, had lain back and for the most part had remained silent until Danny Croft brought the coach to a stop outside Lily’s house, when he had said, ‘I won’t come in with you.’

  ‘I shall try not to be too long.’

  ‘Take your time, Bridget. Take your time. She’ll need comfort,’ he had responded.

  Bridget was feeling she could take no more at this moment for Lily’s grief on top of her own personal feelings was weighing her down. ‘Listen Lily,’ she said, ‘I will be back early tomorrow, and everything will be all right…I mean, your future will be. You have nothing to worry about in that way. But I feel I can be of no help to you at the moment, for your grief is too great. Yet Joe would not want you to grieve so. He loves you, very dearly, and you must make an effort and go and see him. You will be allowed to.’

  The rocking stopped. Lily turned her agonised gaze on Bridget and she said one word, ‘When?’

  Bridget didn’t know whether she was asking when she could visit Joe or when the fatal day was, so she answered, ‘I’ll enquire tomorrow morning before I come here.’ She did not add, ‘Try not to worry, for time is a great healer.’ Such words were futile.

  She turned now to where Mrs Leary was screwing the black kettle into the heart of the fire and saying, ‘It’ll be boiled in a jiffy,’ and she said to her, ‘I’m going now, Mrs Leary. I’ll be back in the morning.’

  ‘We’ll look forward to it, miss. Yes, that we will. We’ll look forward to it.’ And now accompanying her to the door, she added, ‘You’ve been a Godsend indeed, for He is like that, God. It’s His way: He never bangs a door on you but He pushes another open.’

  Under other circumstances Bridget would have laughed, now she just nodded at the woman who opened the front door for her; then she walked across the pavement to where Douglas was standing by the carriage as if he hadn’t moved from the time she had left him.

  As the carriage bowled away amid a scampering of children and gaping faces from doorways, Douglas asked quietly, ‘Was it dreadful?’ and she answered, ‘Yes. Yes, it was dreadful, Douglas. Yet, this is only the beginning for her: there will come the final day, then the aftermath. God! Why do these things happen?’

  He made no answer, for what could he say? Could he answer with a platitude such as, you’ve got to take the good with the bad, or the rough with the smooth…? Everything in life must be paid for; it’s God’s will; and so on, and so on. Platitudes or otherwise, there were no words to ease the agony of living.

  The journey was half over when she turned to him and said, ‘I’m sorry, Douglas; I’ve wasted a lot of your time.’

  ‘Now, don’t talk nonsense, Bridget. What would I do with my time? I ask you, what have I ever done with my time but sit nicking bits of stone, wondering all the while if it’s worth it? Now, if I can do anything to help at all, it will give me a feeling that I’m of some use.’

  ‘That’s good of you, Douglas, so good. But…but I understand that you are creating a business and…and I know from experience…’ She stopped here, cleared her throat, and then her words were hesitant as she went on, ‘As I know from experience that…business must be attended to if one is to suc…ceed.’

  Her voice trailed away as her mind yelled. Succeed! Succeed! She had wanted Joe to succeed. She had been chastising herself for days now…no, not for days, particular thoughts such as hers could only be chastised in the night, for it was then she would tell herself she should have done what she had wanted to do when first she had taken over from her father. Joe was still a young fellow then and would have jumped at the chance to go to school, to a real school with the prospect of going on to college, there to be really educated, and, what was equally important, to be polished, to have the rough edges smoothed down, made acceptable to…Oh lord. Oh lord. There was a great rough-edged lump rising from her stomach to her throat. It was choking her; and now her gasping breath was breaking the outer shell and there was water spouting from her eyes, nose and mouth, and she was moaning aloud.

  Douglas was holding her tightly to him. He wasn’t saying, ‘There! There! Cry, that’s it,’ he was saying nothing at all, he just held her shaking body, and his own too was shaking for never before had he embraced a woman like this. He had danced with young ladies, his one hand on their waist, the other outstretched supporting the tips of their fingers, but never had his body as yet been close to that of a woman—he could not even remember the touch of his mother—but here he was holding Bridget tightly to him, cradling her, in fact, and his being was being swamped by a revelation brought into life by her sorrowing for another man.

  Thirteen

  She was standing looking at Joe. There was a table between them. The room was small and there was a policeman standing with his back to the door.

  Joe was speaking. He was saying in a strangely ordinary voice, ‘I’ve told Lily, miss, that you said you would look after her, and the bairn. And I told her not to worry; we’ve all got to go sometime.’

  ‘Oh, Joe.’

  ‘Don’t frash yourself. You get used to the idea, you know.’ He now glanced at the policeman standing to the left of him. Then he bowed his head for a moment before placing his hands on the table and bending towards her. He said, with a touch of his old spirit, ‘The road would be more bearable, miss, if I had done what I’d said many a time I would do. But I didn’t do it. You believe me, miss? I didn’t do it.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, Joe, I believe you.’

  He straightened up, then glanced at the seemingly immobile policeman again before having to draw spittle into his mouth to enable him to say, ‘Will you do somethin’ for me, miss?’

  ‘Anything. Anything in the world, Joe.’

  ‘Will you, if you can, try to get to the bottom of it?’

  She paused a moment; then answered him with deep emphasis, ‘Yes, Joe. I promise you that.’

  ‘It won’t do me much good, but…but it’ll show them I wasn’t lying.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, Joe, it’ll show them.’

  The still figure at the door now stirred and Joe said, ‘Well, goodbye, miss.’ He held out his hand towards her and she gripped it in both of hers. But she couldn’t speak. When she let go of it he moved backwards from the table the two or three steps before turning away and going through the door that the policeman was holding open for him.

  She herself was leaning over the table gripping its edge for support when another policeman came in and, with a gentle hand on her arm, brought her upwards and led her from the room, along a passage and into the hallway where Douglas was waiting. He now took her over from the policeman, acknowledging his support by an inclination of his head, then led Bridget out and into the street to the waiting carriage.

  After helping her inside, he paused a moment, his foot on the step, saying, ‘We won’t go h
ome straight away; we’ll stop at an hotel. You must have a drink and I need fortifying, too.’ And with that he looked up at Danny and gave him directions to a particular hotel.

  In the carriage he immediately placed his arm around her shoulders, saying, ‘I should have told you not to go, that you shouldn’t go, but I know that would have been fruitless. Could…could you tell how he’s taking it?’

  It was some time before she answered, and there was a note of surprise in her voice as she said, ‘Quite…quite calmly. It was strange, he was much less disturbed than I was, except…except for one moment when he made a request of me.’

  ‘Well, that’s to be expected that he would want you to look after Lily.’

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t that. I would have done that in any case. I have that all worked out. No; he asked me if I would try to get to the bottom of this, in other words, find out who the real culprit is.’

  ‘Oh, dear, dear, that’s a tall order. It would be better all round if the matter were to be dropped now, because just think of the consequences of your finding out who really did kill his brother, if Joe didn’t. Everybody, the whole country I should imagine, would be up in arms at the miscarriage of justice. As for the man’s family, and I suppose he has some sort of family, the exposure would be unthinkable.’

  Bridget made no answer to this, but only thought: Yes, the exposure would be unthinkable.

  It was on the last Friday in May that Joe was hanged in Durham jail, and it was on this day, too, that the national newspapers gave front headlines to the event, as they had done on the day that he had been convicted of the murder of his brother. And it was from this date, also, that the unwinding of the tragedy began.