The Cobweb Cage

by Marina Oliver

  'Do you know Mr Coulthwaite?'

  'Oh, no! He's too grand for us, but everyone's heard of him! He trained two Grand National winners!'

  They walked back to the car and he spoke slowly as they went.

  'I'm planning to stay somewhere nearby and visit my father's horses.'

  'Is he – are your father's horses going to run in the National?'

  'One day, perhaps, but there's nothing of that class yet. I come to see how they are doing occasionally, and take one or two of them out.'

  'Then you'll be – ' Marigold stopped, aghast at what she'd been about to say. It wasn't for her, an insignificant nursery maid, to presume. However friendly he'd been, Richard was one of the gentry, and would certainly forget her once he was back at his college. She couldn't hope he'd want to see her again, and it would be unforgivably presumptuous of her even to hint at it. Her heart sank at the very idea.

  'I could come back to Oxford the same day as you. We could drive back together if you'd like to.' He stowed the hamper and turned to face her.

  'Yes, I suppose so,' she whispered, her heart pounding in her chest in a strange, almost terrifying manner.

  He pulled her round to face him and with a firm but gentle finger under her chin forced her to turn her face up to his.

  'Why?' she asked baldly. 'Why should you want to help me?' It was all she could think of saying. It wasn't happening. It couldn't be true. The gentry didn't behave like this.

  'Because I like you, I want to know you better. Because I want us to be friends,' Richard said quietly.

  'It's not fitting,' she murmured distractedly. 'Not you and me.'

  His gentle touch was creating a fluttering, tingling warmth that radiated from the spot where his flesh met hers. It spread up to her face, and she knew her cheeks were flushed. Her whole body felt hot as the blood pulsed through her veins, carrying his touch so that she was enfolded within it. Suddenly their companionable walks at Oxford seemed full of a significance they hadn't had at the time.

  'We are friends, aren't we?' he asked now.

  'But I'm just a servant, it wasn't – I didn't – ' she stammered.

  'You're Marigold, a sweet, lovely girl I want to know better. What does it matter what you do to earn a living? Why should that come between us if we enjoy one another's company?'

  'People will talk,' she managed.

  'About us? Making vicious, ugly suggestions? Does it matter when we know they're wrong and untrue?'

  'It would matter to me if I were turned off without a character,' she said a little more strongly. Why couldn't he see? People from his background didn't make friends with servants. 'Mrs Roberts wouldn't understand, she'd think you'd – well, taken advantage, and I'd been dishonest.'

  'I can't bear never to see you again. If it's just what other people say we needn't tell them, though I'd be proud for them to know we were friends. No more, I promise. Just friends. Until you want more.'

  She shook her head. It wasn't possible. She'd never heard of a servant being friends with a young man from an Oxford College – a rich young man with a motor car.

  'It would be wrong to meet secretly,' she insisted.

  'Would your father object? Is it fear of him that stops you?'

  Marigold gave a slight laugh.

  'He'd think you were a Fabian!'

  'I'm not that. How could I be when my father employs so many men, and our money comes from manufacturing? And when the Government takes so much away from us in Income tax. But you're trembling. We'd better go on.'

  He didn't speak again until she was tucked up with the rug, and he had climbed in beside her.

  'When's your afternoon off? Will you meet me then? Surely you'd not deny me that?'

  It was tempting. The very idea of an occasional stolen hour with him was unbearably sweet. But she knew it was wrong. Everyone would condemn her. If Mrs Roberts discovered it she would lose her job. However kind and enlightened an employer she was, this would be too much for her to accept. And if Pa knew he might whip her. Mom would be disappointed, ashamed of her, and she wouldn't do anything to hurt her beloved Mom. There could be nothing for her apart from shame and disgrace. And a few precious, delightful hours when she could talk to Richard in a way she'd never before talked to anyone.

  As if he could read her mind Richard took her cold hand in his.

  'Marigold, I promise no harm will come to you. I won't even kiss you if you are frightened of me, though I long for it more than anything else. I just can't bear to say goodbye, never to meet you, never to talk together.'

  And neither could she. The very thought of not seeing him again was a piercing agony she'd never before experienced. It was far worse than the terror she'd known when she'd seen Ivy falling towards the fire, or when Pa had been carried home from the colliery, so badly hurt.

  She turned and smiled at him, her eyes shy but trusting, and Richard was desperately hard put to keep his promise, and not sweep her into his arms and cover her dear face with kisses.

  ***

  Chapter 5

  Marigold insisted that Richard didn't take her right into the town. They came down the long hill from Heath Hayes, and before they reached the first house he stopped the motor car.

  'I'll see you just here in four days, early in the morning. I'll wait for you by that field gate,' he promised.

  She jumped down, and stood waving as he drove away.

  She walked down to the town centre with a light, springing step, then climbed Church Hill towards home. She still couldn't believe she had ridden in a motor car, and Richard wanted to see her again. It simply wasn't credible, and yet she could still hear his deep voice, with the slight tremor in it as he countered her objections, saying he wanted to be friends.

  It wouldn't last. He would grow tired of her. He would meet some other girl, someone from his own world, who would be a more suitable – a more suitable what? Her thoughts halted.

  There could be no future, their worlds were too far apart. He might say he just wanted friendship, but she had heard Ethel and the parlourmaid from next door giggling about the young men they were walking out with, confiding in one another. She wasn't entirely clear what they found so titillating. Marigold was unusually ignorant, having spent the time looking after the home, without the companionship of her friends at a time when they were discovering the dangers and delights of sex.

  She knew that in some strange and frightening way girls could be ruined if they became too familiar with men who said they wanted just friendship. Girls were shunned if they bore bastards, but Marigold had only the haziest notion of what they had to do in order to get into such a predicament.

  She couldn't ask Mom. Nor could she tell them at home about the motor car, she realised with a sudden pang. It wasn't as if she wanted to brag about having ridden in one, but she had never before kept secrets from Mom or Poppy.

  It was with a mixture of emotions, wonder that Richard liked her, and sadness that she would have to keep this incredible joy from her family, that she turned into her street.

  She walked up the ginnel to approach the house from the back, as they always did, and didn't see the broken window, boarded up with roughly nailed planks. She knew, however, that something was seriously wrong immediately she walked into the kitchen.

  Poppy was rolling out pastry, thumping the wooden rolling pin so fiercely against the table that Marigold winced. Ivy sat with her back turned, shoulders hunched, her knees either side of a bucket as she peeled potatoes.

  'Marigold!' Ivy shrieked with joy and dropped the potato and the knife into the bucket, splattering the clean tiles with drops of dirty water, and flung herself on her sister.

  Marigold returned the hug, then gently set Ivy aside and went to kiss Poppy, who had ignored her entrance.

  'What is it, Poppy?' she asked fearfully. 'Is it Pa? Or Mom?'

  Poppy pursed her lips, and glared across the kitchen to where Ivy stood. Her blue eyes were unnaturally bright.

  'No,
they're well. It's that little liar!'

  'Ivy? What's she done?'

  'I didn't!' Ivy shouted. 'I wasn't in the house, whatever she says! I don't know how it happened! I was just coming in from the lavatory when I heard the smash!'

  'What smash? What are you talking about?'

  'Look in the parlour,' Poppy said, picking up the pastry and thumping it down again so hard that she knocked the bowl of flour off the table. 'Damn you, Ivy! Now look what's happened! Just look at that mess!'

  She collapsed into angry tears, and Marigold looked at her, aghast. This was clearly far worse than the normal squabbling her sisters habitually indulged in.

  Out of habit she took charge.

  'Poppy, sit down a minute until you've calmed down. Ivy, be a love and sweep up this flour. Luckily there isn't much and it's a tin bowl.'

  Firmly she took the rolling pin from Poppy's convulsive grasp, and put it on the table. Then she went towards the parlour and saw immediately the broken panes of glass, boarded over so that almost no daylight seeped into the room.

  Sighing, she took off her coat and hung it up on a nail in the passage.

  'Tell me,' she said gently, sitting opposite Poppy, who by now was weeping uncontrollably.

  Gradually she disentangled the story, with Poppy and Ivy competing to tell their separate and contradictory versions.

  Poppy, returning home from the shops, had heard the breaking glass from round the corner. When she'd turned into the street there was no-one about, but as she came through the ginnel she'd been almost knocked over by Billy Bannister, running along without caring who he bumped into.

  'Then Lizzie came after him, screaming to him to wait. When she saw me she burst into tears.'

  'Lizzie's a cry-baby,' Ivy said scornfully. 'And she doesn't like the dark. It's dark in the ginnel.'

  'Shut up, Ivy! They'd been with her, Marigold, playing in the parlour, and they'd broken the window! I know they had!'

  'We didn't! I don't know why they were here, I tell you. Perhaps they came to fetch me to play, but I was in the lavatory, and the first I knew was when Carrots came screaming out of the kitchen yelling at me.'

  'Don't call me that, you little devil! You were in there, in the parlour. The cushions had been moved, and there was a lump of mud on the floor, and I cleaned the floor only that morning.'

  'There wasn't any mud! It's you telling fibs. It was all clean when Mom came home.'

  'Because you'd cleaned it up, you sneaky little rat!'

  Ivy began to cry, and held out her arms to Marigold.

  'It's horrid now you've gone,' she sniffed. 'Poppy's always getting at me, saying I did things when I didn't. I don't know who broke the silly window, but it must have been someone from outside, someone who ran away.'

  'Where was the glass?' Marigold asked.

  'Mostly outside,' Poppy insisted, but Ivy vehemently shook her head.

  'It wasn't! It was inside, and you must have thrown some of it out so's you could make it look like my fault! You're mean to me, you hate me!'

  'The curtain was all torn, a great big hole. That wasn't done by the glass catching in it. And there wasn't a brick or anything inside!'

  There was no way of proving anything. Both could have been telling the truth. The glass could have fallen either way. It had to be some lad who had broken the window, then run away. Or Ivy was lying. Marigold couldn't believe this of her baby sister, and she was rather shocked Poppy found it so easy to think the child was capable of telling untruths.

  She supposed Ivy could have been frightened to admit it if she had broken a window, but if it had been an accident neither Mom nor Pa would have been too stern. They never were, especially with Ivy. Still, Ivy shouldn't have been in the parlour on her own. Unless she'd been making Christmas presents, and hiding them away when she thought Poppy was due to return home. They'd all done that.

  But Ivy wouldn't persist in telling lies. And she wouldn't have taken Lizzie and Billy into the parlour. They were never allowed to play in there.

  Marigold sighed. She had to believe Ivy.

  'Go on with the potatoes now,' she said gently. 'Poppy, let me have your apron and I'll finish the pastry. What's it for?'

  Poppy sniffed. 'Pies, to use up the meat.'

  'We had ever so much meat at Christmas,' Ivy began to explain, her fury forgotten.

  Gradually, under Marigold's calming presence, they set to again, and by the time John and Mary came home dinner was almost on the table.

  No more was said about the broken window, and Marigold gave out the presents she had brought and received her own. On the surface it was a happy family evening, with her describing the festivities at Oxford, and them telling her all their news, and lamenting that she and Johnny had not been able to come home at the same time.

  Later on in bed Marigold was unable to sleep. Fearful of disturbing her sisters sleeping beside her in the big bed she rigidly controlled the impulse to toss and turn.

  Her mind was a jumble of tangled thoughts. Always near the surface were her thoughts about Richard. They were a mixture of delight that he wanted to go on seeing her, and fear that he would soon find other interests.

  Always intruding were her worries about Ivy, and whether she had told lies, as Poppy maintained. Poppy had always been in an odd way resentful of Ivy, yet Marigold had never before seen the vicious looks Poppy had been directing towards her younger sister today.

  Perhaps being away from home made you see things more clearly, she mused. Perhaps it made things obvious that would be ignored when you lived with them all the time.

  Like the cramped room and the smells she had never apparently noticed before. After the spacious rooms at Gordon Villa, where even her bedroom was larger than the one she now slept in, and the day nursery could have accommodated the entire house, her home suddenly appeared tiny and horridly overcrowded.

  It had never before seemed so. Indeed she had thought it luxurious when she knew how many children had been crammed into the tiny back to back houses in the town.

  Worse than that, however, were the smells. At Gordon Villa, which was very near the country, although it was in a town, they had fresh, country smells. The linen and the clothes were kept with fragrant lavender sachets, and the beeswax Mrs Roberts insisted on using for all the furniture was redolent of some tangy spice.

  Bowls of pot pourri lay all over the house, and even in winter bowls of flowers and greenery scented the rooms. A bathroom had been installed for the use of the family, and water closets, even one near the kitchen for the servants.

  Marigold had wrinkled up her nose as she came through the back yard. It was not only the pervasive, throat catching smell from the spoil heaps, which always hung about the town, but the stench of pigsties and chicken runs too close together in a small space. Somehow, on the farms they sometimes walked past near Oxford, animals didn't smell so strong, even though there were more of them!

  And even more offensive was the reek from the lavatories. The houses were never free of it even immediately after the night soil men had done their necessary but revolting work.

  Inside the house it was worse. Wet steamy washing days had left the scullery with an ingrained aura of damp. Damp penetrated into the kitchen, seeping out from behind the wooden dado and up from the quarry tiles laid straight on the earth. Mingled with cooking smells, oil lamps and stale food, it was repulsive, degrading. Marigold wondered how she had endured it before, how her family could live there and not appear to notice.

  They had no choice, she realised. She noticed only because she compared it with the luxury of Gordon Villa. Most people in the colliery towns lived in even worse conditions. It was to prevent their slide from comparative ease into an even more disgusting slum that Mom worked so hard.

  Marigold vowed with a fierce determination that one day, however she achieved it, she would take her family away from here. She would give them something better, something clean and wholesome, where they didn't have to catch the co
ckroaches that crawled out from the cracks in the wall, and endure stinking chamberpots under the bed all night.

  She'd find a better life for them, somehow.

  *

  Richard also lay sleepless in his bed at the George in Lichfield. The more he discovered about this girl the more puzzled he became. She was painfully shy, which perhaps explained his desire to protect her. Underneath, though, he detected a core of inner strength which was more attractive than her surface beauty.

  His mother entertained lavishly and since he was eighteen had ensured he met dozens of girls. He enjoyed female company but never felt deprived at the thought of any of these damsels departing from his life. He admitted ruefully to secret apprehension that all they wanted from him was marriage and a wealthy future.

  In Oxford he'd met different types. There were the daughters of his professors, some as empty-headed and frivolous as his mother's protegees, some determinedly blue-stockinged. About the town he and his fellow undergraduates were shamelessly ogled by girls eager to meet young men with money. And then there was Flo.

  At the thought of her he squirmed in embarrassment.

  'I'm visiting a friend in Jericho, why don't you come too?' Edwin said one dismal October day, two months ago.

  'Jericho? But that's no more than a slum. How can you have a friend there?'

  Edwin laughed. 'There are many sorts of friends. Remember Berthe in Bonn?'

  Richard understood, and felt his pulses quicken. For three months he had visited Berthe in her small apartment near the university. She had inducted him into a world of erotic sensual pleasures and voluptuous delights, and all with a delectable air of gratitude, concealing the fact they both knew that she had been subtly instructing him in ways of gratifying a woman as well as himself.

  'Bessie and her sister are not whores,' Edwin reassured him. 'They just like a good time. Why not come?'

  Richard succumbed. When Edwin and Bessie, with no excuse or apology, vanished up the stairs of the tiny, cramped house which was nevertheless surprisingly well appointed, Flo giggled. Loosening the neck of her blouse, she moved across the room to sit on Richard's knees, nestling close to him.