The Cobweb Cage

by Marina Oliver

  Richard stared at her for a long, silent moment.

  'Is that your last word?' he asked calmly.

  'Until you have come to your senses, yes.'

  She turned away and went to tug a bell rope beside the fireplace. Kemp appeared with suspicious promptness.

  'Mr Richard and this person are not staying, Kemp,' she said haughtily. 'Show them out, if you please.'

  ***

  Chapter 9

  'It isn't private, and Johnny would want you to read it.'

  Mary smiled at Lucy. She was very fortunate in her daughter-in-law. Ever since Lucy and Johnny returned from their honeymoon at Blackpool, and Johnny had enlisted, Lucy visited them in Hednesford regularly every two weeks. She was just like another daughter, and becoming as dearly loved.

  Mary suppressed a sigh. It was almost a fortnight since she had been to Marigold's wedding, and she had heard nothing. John had spent four whole days in bed, saying nothing at all, staring into space. He was still silent and remote, and she knew he was suffering, but he refused utterly to talk about it and forbade everyone else to mention her name.

  'Does he say when he'll be going to France?' she asked now.

  'In a week or so, he thinks. He'll be driving some of the officers about, he says, so he's not likely to be too near the fighting.'

  'Thank God for that.'

  'Here, read it.'

  Mary took the letter, and despite her intention she could not help her eyes lingering on the words of love and longing Johnny wrote to Lucy.

  She was still feeling confused. She was thankful Johnny had found such a good girl, but they were both so very young. Not only had she lost her son to another woman, she might lose him completely to the Germans. The news from France was far from encouraging.

  The troops had retreated, there had been many deaths, and Mary was beginning to wonder whether the Generals knew what they were doing. The war would certainly not be over by Christmas, as many had predicted. And the longer it went on the more chance there was that Johnny would be killed.

  She tried not to think about it and concentrated on the letter.

  'There were long queues waiting outside the building. Everyone was very jolly, anxious to get at the "Germs". By the time we'd waited hours to be sworn in and more hours for medical inspections we weren't so eager, I can tell you. I was passed fit, given a warrant for the train and some food for the journey, and we set off.

  'It was all very rough and ready when we got to camp. There were a few huts, but they were for the officers. We had to sleep in tents, with just a blanket apiece and no pillow. The next day we were given some uniform, but there wasn't enough to go round, so some of us are wearing our own coats.

  'My boots aren't a bad fit, though. That's lucky for me. I don't know what agony some of the fellows are going through, for we seem to have done nothing but march up and down having orders shouted at us. If you can knit me some good strong socks and send them that would be better than anything else.

  'The food isn't very good. Half the time it's still cold, the other half it's burnt. I suppose having to feed thousands more men than they're used to must be a problem. I keep thinking of your cooking, Lucy, and those pies you made me while we were at your aunt's. I wish I could taste one now.

  'I also keep thinking of how happy we were then, and I pray all the time that I'll be home with you again soon, my dearest one. Take care of yourself. You are more precious to me than anything else, and I feel proud to be able to sign off,

  'Your loving husband,

  'Johnny.'

  'I may be able to see him for a few days before he goes, God willing,' Lucy said as Mary folded up the letter, already creased with much handling, and gave it back to Lucy. 'We'll come over to see you if we can.'

  'Yes, bring him over. Do you think he'd like me to knit him some socks?' she asked diffidently. Lucy might want to keep that sort of loving gesture to herself, Mary thought with a pang. She might resent it, consider it interfering, or a slur on her own competence.

  But Lucy was above such pettiness. For her Johnny's comfort was the prime concern.

  'That would be a relief,' she confessed. 'I don't knit very well, and if he relies on me he won't get any winter socks till next summer.'

  'Even the children at school are knitting for the troops, though Ivy usually manages to do other things.' Mary smiled.

  'Is she still drawing? That picture she sent me of the wedding was really good. You'd think a grown-up had done it.'

  'She's drawing all the time, except when she's playing chemists. You know this passion she has for collecting plants and making her potions, as she calls them? Well, she offered her teacher some ointments to make wounds get better quickly!'

  Lucy laughed. 'It's a good job we don't believe in witches these days, or she'd have people wondering. It's a strange thing, it's not as if she's interested in cooking, like Poppy, and wanted to use the plants for that.'

  'She isn't very pleased, with so many men lodging in the towns nearby and working on the camps on the Chase. Her Pa's told her she mayn't wander off up there like she used to. It's not fit, there are lots of rough men about.'

  'There were some loafing about near the station. I wondered what they were doing.'

  'Looking for trouble. There's been quite a few fights. Nothing for them to do but drink. It'll get worse when the whole of the Chase is one big camp for soldiers. I'm thankful Johnny doesn't drink.'

  They chatted for a while longer, and then Lucy had to leave to catch her train. Mary kissed her, and told herself to be sensible when she found her thoughts dwelling once more on Marigold, wishing it was her own daughter she held in her arms. Marigold had a wealthy young man to care for her. But she might have written to say she was well.

  *

  Marigold poured another cup of coffee for Richard, and smiled across the table at him.

  'So many letters,' she teased. 'I thought you didn't want anyone to know where we were?'

  'Not the first few days. I wanted you all to myself,' he replied. 'But we have to be practical. I have to make arrangements for you.'

  'I wish we never had to leave here,' she sighed. 'Even when it rains it's beautiful, with the mists swirling across the hills. And the heather is still so bright, even at this time of year.'

  'It isn't so beautiful when it's really stormy, or when the roads are blocked with snow,' he replied. 'Although we're only a few miles from Leek people get cut off quite often in winter.'

  When they had been so unceremoniously rejected by his mother Richard, white faced, had marched back through the sumptuous rooms of his home, thrown their luggage back into the motor car, and driven off at a furious pace.

  Marigold had been silent, fighting back her tears. It was all her fault! She ought never to have married him. She'd known it would cause trouble. First her father and now his mother had rejected them.

  When they'd driven down into Newcastle-under-Lyme, Richard had booked a room at an hotel, and made a tremendous effort to behave normally. Marigold did not attempt to talk apart from polite comments about the hotel and the food until they had eaten and retired to their room.

  'I'm sorry,' she said then.

  'Sorry? What for, sweetheart?'

  'Your mother. I didn't want to cause you to quarrel.'

  'If my high and mighty mother is too grand to see that she has a beautiful, sweet angel for a daughter that is her loss. I am not proposing to plead with her or my father to be treated with common courtesy. When they can be polite to you, and accept you properly as my wife, I will see them again. Darling, you mean far more to me than the whole of the rest of my family. I could leave them, never see them again, without more than a slight pang, but I will never, ever, give you up. I love you too much.'

  He refused to speak of it again, but that night he loved her with an intensity Marigold recognised as an inner need for comfort. She felt so much older as she held him close, and afterwards when he rested his head on her breast she stroked his
hair and crooned to him as she would have to a hurt child.

  The following day they drove up into the hills and moorlands of the utmost northerly tip of Staffordshsire, and found a charming little inn, secluded in its own valley, where they had been the only guests.

  For a week they made love, walked on the hills, braving the wind and the rain, ate the delicious country food, talked endlessly of anything except their families, and made love again. Marigold thought nothing about the past or the future, she was too absorbed in soaking up every experience of the present.

  Now she realised Richard had, with loving care, been making plans.

  'What are we to do?' she asked trustingly.

  He frowned, and spoke brusquely.

  'You cannot live with my parents, and yours have no room for you, even if they forgave you once I go back. It isn't fitting for you to live on your own, and I don't think you would like having just an unfamiliar maid for company.'

  Marigold shuddered. It would be enormously embarrassing, apart from other considerations, to be thrust suddenly into the position of employer, when a few days ago she had been a maid herself.

  'I feel so guilty at letting Mrs Roberts down.'

  'Don't worry, the Professor was sympathetic, said he understood my need of you was greater than theirs!'

  'Richard!' Marigold blushed deliciously.

  'He wished us well, said you would make an excellent wife, and hoped we might one day go and stay with them.'

  Marigold stared at him in amazement.

  'Why didn't you tell me before?' she demanded.

  'Don't you believe me?' His eyes gleamed with amusement. 'But that doesn't provide you with a home while I'm away.'

  'Did you expect your mother to reject me?' she asked softly. 'You were prepared to defy her?'

  'I thought there was a good likelihood of it, but hoped that if we took her by surprise she would be too startled to do anything until she'd had a chance to get to know you, when of course she would have begun to love you.'

  He smiled ruefully.

  'I didn't know my mother very well after all. I thought Americans treated everyone as equals, for it is said to be the land of opportunity, where a man's background is unimportant and it's what he is and does that matters. I tend to forget she comes from the old Boston aristocracy. They are more determined to behave as if they were Royalty than any British Dukes and Princes!'

  'So what have you planned for me?' She had to stop this self-torture which was causing him such agony.

  'I wrote to Archie and he and Lexie write that they would be delighted for you to stay with them. You can have your own rooms if you wish, it's a big enough house. Lexie in particular hopes very much you will agree.'

  'With the Cranworths? In Edgbaston? Oh, how good of them!'

  'Would you like that?'

  'Do they really mean it?' Marigold was dubious. It was such a generous offer, but Lexie was impulsive. She might regret it.

  'Yes, I think she is lonely. And she did say she liked you enormously, you felt like a sister to her.'

  Marigold longed to go, and soon Richard had persuaded her the offer was genuine.

  'I'll arrange with Mr Frayne, my lawyer, to pay a proportion of the household expenses, and he will make you a monthly allowance. The rest of my income apart from my own expenses will also be available for you, so if you need it you can apply to him for whatever you wish.'

  Marigold had not even thought about money. She realised how naive and heedless she had been, leaving it all to him.

  'Your income? Does your father pay you a salary? Will he continue to do so?'

  'I am a junior partner, I have income from the profits of the firm. My father cannot touch that. And I've made a will leaving everything I have to you.'

  These prosaic words made her realise with a sudden stab of fear that he faced death. She had known it in the depths of her subconscious, but pushed the knowledge away from her.

  'No!' she cried out. 'Richard! Oh, my darling!'

  'There, my love, don't cry, I'll come back to you, I promise I will,' he murmured. 'Nothing can separate us for long. Even death won't destroy our love. We'll still be together, it'll just be a parting. Now dry your eyes,' he went on after the storm of weeping had subsided. 'You need to be strong to look after our son. Shall we drive to Birmingham today and settle in for a day or so before I have to leave, or stay here?'

  Marigold looked out on the moors, bleak suddenly as the low clouds rolled down into the valley. It was no longer a haven. She could not forget again.

  'Let's go,' she said quietly.

  *

  For four days Marigold and Richard revelled in freedom. The Cranworths owned a large new villa near the Hagley Road, quite near Birmingham town centre, in an area of large elegant houses which had been built on the former Calthorpe estate. During the previous century many wealthy industrialists had moved to this area, still largely rural.

  Lexie welcomed them warmly, apologising for Archie who had gone to London.

  'Something to do with the War Office. He hopes to be back before you leave, Richard.'

  'You are both exceedingly good.'

  Lexie grinned wickedly. 'I never was especially fond of your mother, Richard. She's behaving in her usual high-handed way, and she'll be the only loser. Marigold is a gem, and you would have been an unutterable fool if you'd let her go.' 'I know.'

  'Don't worry, she'll come round one day. I'm sure your father will make her see sense. I know he likes a quiet life, but he has his own ways of getting what he wants, like Henry! You need to take a few leaves out of their books!'

  Marigold was at first scandalised, then amused, when Lexie, with a naughty gleam in her eye, led them into the large bedroom overlooking the pleasant garden at the back of the house which she had given them.

  'I've had it fitted out as a sitting room,' she said innocently. 'I don't imagine you'll want to be in the drawing room all the time. So stuffy, you can't relax. No one will disturb you here. I've given orders it's only to be cleaned when you're out of the house.'

  'You are a wicked angel,' Richard told her. 'I'll be eternally in your debt.'

  When they were not in their room they spent the days wandering through the city, so much bigger and noisier than anything Marigold had ever known, apart from her brief journeys through it when travelling between Hednesford and Oxford.

  Like Hednesford, which had been a tiny village until the discovery of coal and the expansion of the collieries half a century before, Birmingham had grown enormously in the previous hundred years or so, built on the vast industries and innumerable workshops which had developed there.

  Marigold was fascinated by the majestic buildings of New Street, and the wide new Corporation Street.

  'They hoped to recreate the Paris boulevards,' Richard told her.

  They went into the older part of the city, to the ancient High Street and the still thriving market in the Bull Ring, and drove into the rapidly expanding suburbs where seemingly endless rows of little houses spread in all directions. In Edgbaston and the surrounding areas there were hundreds of villas even larger and more opulent than that of the Cranworths.

  'I can't believe there are enough people rich enough to afford these,' Marigold exclaimed.

  'Apart from the manufacturers there are the bankers and the shopkeepers, the professional men who supply their needs and grow rich themselves by doing so,' Richard explained. He had rarely given it a thought, and seeing life through Marigold's eyes made him appreciate the vast gulf between his world and the mean one she had been born into.

  They drove out into the countryside, to Kenilworth and Warwick, where Marigold gazed in awe at the castles.

  'It's like a fairy story,' she gasped. 'I never thought real buildings could be like that, I thought the artists had made them up to put into books. I could look at them for ever, imagining everyone who's ever lived there!'

  'We'll come back another day. Now shall we go and have tea and cakes somew
here?'

  Their days were filled with explorations, their nights blissful with leisurely but passionate loving.

  First, however, Richard suggested buying Marigold some new clothes.

  They plundered all the best establishments. As well as ready made clothes they were fortunate to find a dressmaker who had some clothes which fitted Marigold, clothes that had been cancelled by the wealthy but capricious young wife of a leading jewellery merchant.

  'I can do the finishing touches within a day,' the dressmaker declared, thankful that the garments would not be left on her hands. 'Which would you like first?'

  'The evening dress, and let's see, this blue walking dress. Then the dustcoat for driving,' Richard decided.

  'We'll go and dine at the Grand,' he said as the left the shop. 'You can wear the evening gown. Now for some shoes and gloves and a cloak.'

  Marigold suddenly realised that if he wished to take her to public places he wanted her to fit in. That was why he needed to buy her proper clothes. She had to become accustomed to the fact she was now married to a rich man. He would have been ashamed to be seen with her in her old clothes, especially where he might meet friends, and the only good dress she had was Lexie's, the one she'd been married in.

  Richard seemed to delight in heaping gifts on her. For the first time in her life she wore silk stockings and underclothes, brightly coloured gowns instead of utilitarian dark ones, and sprayed herself lavishly with French perfume instead of one of Ivy's flower water brews.

  He also bought her jewels, fine gold chains, a string of pearls, a sapphire necklace to match her eyes, and a brooch of garnets.

  'One day, my darling, when we've time to look properly, I'll give you better jewels than these,' he promised.

  On their last evening they ate dinner at the Grand, a luxurious hotel completed thrity or so years earlier. Marigold had never before been in such a luxurious public place. She had also never before been treated with such deference by waiters and flunkies.