The Black Candle

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘Nor can I, Janet, nor can I.’

  ‘She knew though, didn’t she?’

  ‘Knew what, Janet?’

  ‘That no way, no how, it could ever be. Nothing could come of it. She said that to me, more than once. It was as if it was all clear in her mind; and you know something, Joe? She knew in her heart that she would never get to your house, because she knew it wasn’t right. What am I going to do without her?’

  He didn’t answer. Her mother was asking what she was going to do without Liz, and he was asking, too, what he was going to do without Liz? Comparatively speaking he had known her such a short time, yet there had been something about her, something about her character that had deluded him into thinking he had known her all his life. And now he was lost, and that’s what Janet was saying.

  ‘I feel so lost already, Joe. The world seems empty.’

  ‘It won’t be, Janet, so don’t worry; I’ll always be there.’

  ‘I’d been looking forward to coming to your house, but not now.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘No, no. It wouldn’t be right. Anyway, I’ll keep on the shop. It will give me something to do till the time comes. It will save me from going mad, I suppose. But it will be the loneliness that I’ll have to get used to. Even while she’s been in hospital there was always the knowledge that I knew she was there.’

  He made no remark on this but he thought, Yes, it’s the loneliness that will take some getting used to. He had the house to go back to, his family, and the staff, yet they offered no consolation. He had lost Liz…There was that voice from the back of his head speaking at him again, saying, This is how Amy must have felt. Her family, or her parents, had been of no consolation to her when she had first lost him…And that was some years ago.

  Everything was linked. In a way, Amy was to blame that Liz had died, for if it hadn’t been for the closed door across the landing he would not have been so susceptible to the kindness and charm of another woman. Then, because he had, that jealous, mad woman had to cripple Liz, and now she was dead.

  Life was a linked chain and he was tied to it. And at this moment he wished to God that he too was dead.

  Fifteen

  ‘Well, how did it go?’

  ‘Very well, Mammy. As expected, very well.’

  Amy stood in the hall taking off her loose grey silk coat, which she laid over a chair before easing up her bun of fair hair, so as to release the elastic band that was holding her large, flat-rimmed, cream-coloured, leghorn hat in place, before answering her mother’s next question. ‘Yes, I told them that you were terribly sorry you couldn’t get there, because you weren’t well enough.’

  She now preceded Bridget into the sitting room and, after sitting down to the side of the fire, she took up the poker and began to rearrange the burning coals in the grate. This had become a habit of hers, but today it irritated Bridget, and she protested: ‘Stop that, Amy, will you, and tell me what happened?’

  Amy laid the poker down; then, turning slowly, she looked at her mother and said, ‘My daughter was married, that’s what happened, and all the family were there, and his family, too. It was supposed to be a quiet wedding but there were a lot of spectators around the little church.’

  ‘Well, I expected that; but I mean…well, you know what I mean. Don’t hedge. What happened when you met up with him?’

  ‘When I met up with him, Mammy, we greeted each other like civilised people. He said, “How are you, Amy?” and I said, “Quite well, thank you.” Then we stood together and had our photographs taken with the happy couple, as is usual, you know, at weddings, Mammy.’

  ‘You’re annoying me, Amy, you know you are. You’ve got into the habit of doing that lately.’

  Amy bit on her lip and turned to gaze into the fire again. Her mother had said she was annoying her. Dear God! If she only knew how that feeling was reciprocated, for there were times when she felt she would yell at her, scream at her.

  ‘What were his folks like? Were the titled ones there?’

  ‘Yes, I think they were.’

  ‘Weren’t you introduced to them?’

  ‘No. I kept in the background, Mammy.’

  ‘Were you asked to go back to the house?’

  ‘Yes, I was pressed to go back to the house. But as I told you before I left, I wasn’t going to do that.’

  ‘I should think not, a boarding house!’

  ‘Well, boarding house it may be, but as far as I can gather it’s a very profitable boarding house.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Oh,’ Amy now shrugged her shoulders, ‘someone told me, that’s all.’ She couldn’t say she had got it practically from the horse’s mouth…

  She had always been a little jealous of John’s authority in the house. Yet, today it had been he who had shown her the most consideration, even more than had her eldest son, for Malcolm seemed to have been taken up with another one of the Barnett tribe, one of a number of laughing, giggling girls. But it was John whom she had been undoubtedly surprised to see at the wedding, thinking that he would be back at the house attending to the refreshments or whatever they were having. But apparently it was at Alice’s request he was there, so she had been informed by Bertha. Nevertheless, it was he who had spoken to her most kindly. She had been standing near the end of the church while more photographs were being taken on the green, when he addressed her, at first very formally, saying, ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Skinner. It was a lovely service, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, John,’ she had answered; ‘it was a lovely service.’ And then they had stood in silence looking at one another until he asked in a very ordinary way, ‘How are you faring?’ and she had replied, ‘Quite well, John. Quite well.’

  Two small bridesmaids and a page scampering between them caused an interruption; but, their eyes meeting again, he said quietly, ‘May I be allowed to say, Mrs Skinner, that we miss you, that I…we all miss you,’ and she had found herself quite incapable of saying a word and so she had turned her head away, only to see her husband talking to the overdressed woman she had earlier realised was the bridegroom’s mother. She noted that he had lost weight; in fact, he looked slightly gaunt, but handsome, very handsome, which apparently wasn’t lost on the woman who was ogling him. It was at this point she told herself, There I go again; I’ll never learn.

  She was brought back to face John’s gaze by his saying, ‘The house is just the same, madam…I mean, in spite of the business. There are four guests in at present and they mostly keep to their rooms, but the master has had a general sitting room made for them on the first floor. It is all very well arranged and it’s all in the west corridor, you know.’

  It was still impossible to make any reply to him. Then she was amazed by the liberty he was taking, and yet warmed by it when, his voice very low, he said, ‘The house is not the same without you; it needs a mistress,’ at which point the words were forced out of her and she said, ‘Oh, John, please!’ And he replied, ‘I’m sorry, madam, if I’ve overstepped the mark. But I thought I would like you to know.’ At this she had said, ‘Do you think you can bring my car around to the side gate? I would like to leave now.’

  ‘Of course, madam, of course…’

  She heard her mother saying, ‘There are things you are holding back from me, aren’t there, Amy? Did you have a talk with him?’

  She sprang to her feet now. ‘No, Mammy, I didn’t have a talk with him,’ she answered vehemently. ‘Would you like me to have had a talk with him? If you think I should have said, “Will you take me back, Joseph? Here I am ready and willing,” if you think I should have said that, then I will phone him now and carry out your orders.’

  ‘Don’t be impertinent! You know what I think.’

  ‘Yes, Mammy; I know only too well what you think.’

  ‘Well, in a way, you are wrong, because I only think what is for your good. I think of nothing else. I don’t want you to be used, to be hurt again, because what he has done
once he can do a second time. It’s over six months and it won’t be long before he takes up with somebody else. He is his father’s son. I shall go to the grave thinking that. And another thing, when we are talking so plainly, I think it very strange that you haven’t heard anything about the divorce. You did put in for it, didn’t you? You told me…’

  ‘Yes, Mammy, I told you I did, but I was lying, I didn’t.’

  ‘Oh, dear God!’ Bridget now sat back on the couch slowly shaking her head as she said, ‘You think you’ll go back to him, don’t you?’

  ‘No, Mammy, I don’t. I don’t think I’ll go back to him, for the simple reason he wouldn’t have me.’ She almost yelled the last few words. ‘And now, as you said, that we’re speaking plainly, I’ll tell you, during this last six months or so, I’ve had a lot of time to look back at myself, and what Father used to say I’ve found very true, there are all kinds of love. But I had thought there was only one kind, mine. You say you love me. Well, I can tell you, Mammy, your love for me was of the same type as my love for Joe, and it was that kind of love that drove a wedge between us. But there it is, I can’t love any other way, and apparently nor can you. So, because I now realise that, I’m not going to blame him for what he has done or what he might do in the future. That will be up to him.’

  As she turned and rushed down the room Bridget cried after her, ‘Come back here, this minute! Come here, girl!’

  Amy had reached the door. She stopped as if pulled up short in her tracks and, turning and looking up the room towards her mother, she cried, ‘I am not a girl, Mammy, I’m a middle-aged woman of forty, and I am a fool. I always have been and I shall likely go on being one.’ And with that she went out and banged the door.

  Bridget now pressed her hand tightly against her ribs. Her heart was beating loudly in her ears, and she felt a swimming in her head. The feeling wasn’t new, but as it came she cried, ‘Oh! Douglas, Douglas. Where are you? What a way to come to the end of life, because I am near the end. I shall soon be with you, and I want that, the sooner the better. But I can’t leave until I know she will see sense.’

  Her heartbeats began to slow and as they did so she said to herself, ‘She will never see sense, so thank God I am seeing sense for her. Vindictive as it might seem, I wouldn’t rest in my grave if I thought The Grove and that man were prospering through a penny of mine. Victoria would understand what I am doing is right. Oh, yes, she would understand.’

  There now crept over her a chill feeling, as if a window had been opened and a blast of air had suddenly filled the room. Her eyes were closed but there before her, standing with his back to the fire, was Lionel Filmore, and he was leering at her. His lips were back from his teeth and he was actually leering at her. And when his lips began to move she was reading the words, as she had so often read his daughter’s, and he was saying, ‘You didn’t have a bastard, but you lowered yourself by lusting after a common workman, and you did sell Victoria to me. Two thousand pounds you paid me to take her, do you remember? And I did murder for that two thousand pounds. You started all this. You said so yourself, and now you’re going to finish it, aren’t you? Well, my bastard has beaten you so far, and there’s still the future. Here! Take Joe Skinner to help you on your way.’ He was holding out a long black candle towards her, and at this point she almost lifted herself to the front of the couch, her eyes gaping wide now; but there was nothing between her and the fire but the high railed fender.

  As she cried, ‘No! No! Imagination, impossible. Just imagination,’ she got to her feet. Her hand held tightly across her mouth, she whimpered, ‘Oh! Douglas, Douglas. Why did you have to go? And why did you have to trick me before you went? That’s what’s made me feel so bad, your tricking me. You who loved me so much. You adored me, yet you tricked me. Knowing how I felt about him you tricked me.’

  She now groped her way to the door, pulled it open, but felt she could go no further, and Rose Grey and Ada Flannigan, crossing the hall together at that moment, turned and saw her. They hurried towards her and each took an arm, and as they helped her up the stairs Ada kept yelling, ‘Miss Amy! Miss Amy!’

  Sixteen

  Bridget took to her bed on the day her granddaughter was married, which was the first Wednesday in May, 1925, but she didn’t die until the second of January, 1926.

  Only four of her grandchildren attended the funeral: Alice was with her husband in Australia, where he was now in a solicitor’s firm; Malcolm was teaching French at a school quite near them. He was to return in the spring when he was due to marry his brother-in-law’s cousin. The idea of a situation in the Paris Embassy had not materialised.

  Joseph had attended the funeral, but naturally he had not returned to the house, and so on this day Mr Kemp had only five of the family seated before him, together with three maids and the two outside men, and it was with evident distaste that he began to read the will. William, Jonathan, Kitty and Bertha had remained still while hearing what their grandmother had left them, and also about the ten thousand pounds left to Malcolm. But it was when they realised how their grandmother had treated their mother that their heads turned towards her, to see her face as white as that of any corpse, and her fists so tightly clasped at her waist that the knuckles showed white, and they all, at one point, shuffled in their chairs as if moving towards her.

  When Mr Kemp was finished there was silence in the sitting room until, standing up and looking towards the staff, he said, ‘Would you kindly leave us for a moment, please?’ and his glance included Amy’s two sons and daughters. But William said, ‘No, we won’t leave Mother; and let me say, Mr Kemp, I think it’s scandalous, outrageous. She must have been mad, like Henrietta.’

  ‘No, William; I’m afraid she wasn’t mad, and, as you know, she’s of a different breed from Henrietta. Vindictive, yes, which apparently stems from a cause which originated way back in her life.’ He now looked at Amy, who was still sitting rigid in her chair, and he now cried, ‘I tried to persuade her otherwise. I did my very best, but she was adamant, and I must admit again, full of vindictiveness. Oh yes, full of vindictiveness. I have never before met anything like it; and I was amazed by her attitude, because she had always been a kind and caring woman. Of course, she was very strong willed and she had her likes and dislikes; but haven’t we all? But that she would do this to you—’ He now bent over Amy and lifted up one of her clenched fists and gently unfolded her fingers, as he said, ‘But don’t let it floor you. You are still a young woman; there’s a lot of life before you. You’ll have a home as long as you want to keep it…’

  ‘It’s scandalous!’ Kitty’s interruption checked him now; and she went on, ‘Couldn’t you have told her it was cruel, dreadful? And her only daughter. She needn’t have left us anything; that wouldn’t have mattered, would it?’ She looked at Bertha, and Bertha shook her head. ‘Yet she goes and leaves ten thousand to Malcolm, and what has he ever done for anybody but himself? Here’s Willie; he works from morning till night, but she didn’t leave you ten thousand, did she?’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘I won’t shut up. I feel mad. I wish she was here, I would…Oh!’ She ground her teeth, not daring to say what she would like to do, which was to slap her face.

  She now went to her mother and put her arms around her neck, saying, ‘I know you would lose everything if you came back, Mammy, but oh, Mammy, we do miss you. We really do. The holidays are not the same. I’m glad to get back to school. And Daddy’s like a wet blanket…’ Her voice trailed off.

  William said quietly, ‘I’ll come down tomorrow and we’ll have a talk.’

  Amy looked up at him. Willie was kind; he was like her father; he used to say that he regretted he had never gone in for farming so that he could work with pigs. Willie too liked working with pigs. Her father used to say they were the most sensible creatures and weren’t dirty at all; they smelt, but so did everybody else, if the truth was spoken. And there was Kitty and Bertha. They seemed to love her too. What was the matter
with her? A few minutes ago she had been burnt up with hate of her mother; now it had ebbed, pushed back by members of her family. Jonathan was the only one as yet who hadn’t said a word to her. She looked towards him, and he came over to her and, dropping on his hunkers before her, he took her hands and said, ‘I’ll come here and stay with you, Mother. I can learn the violin anywhere. There are good teachers round about…’

  She took her hand from his and put it on his head, saying, ‘Thank you, Jonathan, but that’s the last thing I would want, to interrupt your career. But thank you, dear, for your suggestion.’

  ‘Well, there’s no reason why the girls can’t stay here.’ She turned to look at William now, then to the girls who were nodding assent, but she said, ‘Now, now. Leave things as they are for a time. Let us all cool down. That’s the best way, isn’t it, Mr Kemp?’

  Mr Kemp had been gathering up his papers and he nodded his assent. ‘Yes, my dear, that’s the best way. Give things time, something will evolve.’

  ‘Could the case be taken to court?’ William asked him, which caused Mr Kemp to raise one hand as if taking an oath and to say, ‘Oh, my dear fellow, now you have posed a question; and the answer to it is, yes, if you are willing to try to prove that your grandmother was of unsound mind at the time she made her will.’

  ‘I think she must have been.’

  ‘Well, as I said, young man, that would have to be proved, and the responsibility would lie with your mother.’ He now looked at Amy and she, looking back at him, said, ‘Yes. Yes, Mr Kemp, the responsibility lies with me.’

  They’d had supper in the breakfast room, and they were still seated round the table, the four of them looking at their father where he sat at the end of the table, his head bowed. He had listened to them interrupting each other, their indignation on their mother’s behalf still spurting from them, and he had imbibed their feelings, even to the pity they were expressing for Amy. But he was thinking: The bloody, cold-blooded old bitch. She’s tied her up so she can’t move. She’ll lose at every turn, and if she doesn’t divorce me, she’s left in such a position she’ll hardly be getting more than is doled out to her staff, and not half as much a week as it costs to keep that madwoman in the asylum. God in heaven! I can’t believe it. Well, I can do that much for her. I can give her a divorce…And this was one thing he could say to them; and so, raising his head slowly, he looked at one after the other and he said, ‘Well, the way’s open for me to make her path smooth in one way. She can have a divorce and that’ll ensure she gets what is rightfully hers.’