Break of Dawn

by Rita Bradshaw

  And as for the living evidence of the trouble which had ripped their family apart, he would continue to pray each day that the child born of sin would not see its first year. Every time he looked at it he would see and hear Esther as she had been the night she had come home, brazen in her shame.

  His guts writhed and he lay for a moment more before quietly sliding out of bed. By feel he found his dressing gown on the chair by the side of the bed and put it on, but he left his slippers where they were and crept barefoot out of the bedroom. Once on the landing it was possible to see shapes and shadows, the large landing window being uncurtained, but he still had to watch his step as he made his way downstairs.

  He would make himself a drink of warm milk and take it to his study where he could work on his sermon for Sunday in peace, he told himself as he reached the kitchen door. There had still been a good fire in there last thing; it wouldn’t have gone out yet and a couple of logs would soon bring it to a blaze.

  He opened the door as silently as he had come downstairs and stood for a moment, his eyes fixed on the raised laundry basket in front of the glowing range. It was only then he acknowledged the real reason for the midnight sojourn, the thought that had been there from the second the child had taken breath. His heart began to race, pounding in his ears.

  He took a step into the room, then another, unaware of the icy chill from the stone flags under his bare feet, and then he froze as a rustle and sigh from a black mound by the kitchen table caused his gaze to shoot down. For a moment he couldn’t believe his eyes as he took in the mattress and the figure sleeping under the covers. That girl. What on earth was she doing sleeping on the floor of the kitchen?

  Without making a sound he backed towards the door, and it was only when he was standing in the corridor leading to the kitchen with the door shut that he let out his breath. He found he was shaking, whether from the enormity of the deed he’d been about to do or the fact that Bridget might have awoken and found him there, he didn’t know.

  He leaned against the whitewashed wall, moving one lip over the other, his head swimming. He remained there for several minutes until the nausea which had risen from his stomach into his chest subsided.

  He wouldn’t have done it. He ran a hand over his face which was damp with perspiration in spite of the freezing cold. He wouldn’t have. Would he? No, he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t. He told himself the same thing several more times before he could move, and then he stumbled upstairs to his study and fell into the big leather chair behind the fine walnut desk which had been his father’s. He drew in a great breath of air, as though he had been running for miles, and then put his head in his hands as he began to cry.

  PART TWO

  The Child

  1890

  Chapter 4

  Little had changed in Southwick over the last ten years. True, Southwick’s Local Board had defeated another Sunderland act to absorb the growing township, and as if to cock a snook, Southwick had seen to it that a cricket and bicycle club was formed, along with a tennis club and a rowing club later in the decade. Southwick now boasted its own purpose-built Coffee Tavern at the east end of the green, something the Temperance Society considered a huge step forward in its fight against the demon drink, and the Liberal Club had opened new premises at High Southwick. All in all, Southwick residents felt their independence as a separate entity was justified. They could manage their own affairs and didn’t want Sunderland muscling in where it wasn’t wanted.

  Outwardly, little had changed at the vicarage too. The vicar still visited his parishioners when the need arose, sat on various local Boards involved in good works, and preached fire and damnation from the pulpit every Sunday morning. Inside the house, however, the catalyst which had been dropped into their midst ten years before in the shape of one small baby had continued to bring changes which even now rippled an undercurrent within the family.

  It would be fair to say the vicarage was a house divided, and the divide came in the shape of Sophy. On the one hand Jeremiah, Mary and Patience made no secret of their loathing of ‘the child’ as Mary continued to call Esther’s daughter, but John, Matthew and David held their cousin in deep affection and the little girl was Bridget’s sun, moon and stars. Unfortunately for Sophy, the three sons of the family were at private boarding schools for a great part of each year, and she was left to the tender mercies of Patience, whose chief delight was finding new ways to torment her. And in this Patience was ably assisted by her mother.

  With each passing year Esther’s daughter had grown more beautiful and similarly, so had Mary’s hate of her niece grown. She lost no opportunity in physically punishing the little girl for the slightest fall from grace – of which there were many because Sophy was a spirited child – using her correction cane with righteous zeal and unerring accuracy for maximum pain. A word spoken out of place, a chore not carried out to her satisfaction, a glance she considered insolent – all brought forth retribution of the harshest kind. It was one of Mary’s regrets that she couldn’t find fault with the child’s aptitude for her lessons. Patience and Sophy were taught by a governess for four hours each morning, and although Patience was fourteen months older than her cousin she didn’t have half of her intelligence or natural proficiency. Once the lessons were over for the day Sophy was consigned to Bridget’s care with a list of chores from her aunt as long as her arm, and both Mary and Patience had taken to checking that these were being carried out at odd moments of the day, suspecting that Bridget was too lenient with her small charge.

  Jeremiah had little to do with the workings of the house and none with domestic arrangements. When he was at home he buried himself in his study, emerging only at mealtimes or when they had guests. At those times anyone would have been hard put to guess the state of enmity existing between husband and wife. Most of the time he ignored Sophy’s existence, and when he was forced to acknowledge her presence, his granite profile concealed a bitter resentment which had grown like a canker over time, souring every aspect of his life.

  As for Sophy herself, it would be true to say that but for Bridget and her parents the little girl’s life would have been unbearable. As it was, she accepted her lot, if not stoically – she had too much of her mother running through her veins for that – then with a fortitude which enabled her to be happy some of the time, although the older she got the more she questioned the unfairness of her position.

  As she was doing right at that moment whilst helping Bridget clean the household silver on the scullery table. ‘I’m going into double numbers tomorrow, aren’t I, Bridget?’

  ‘That you are, my lamb.’

  ‘Patience and David had a party when they went into double numbers. Do you remember the frock Aunt Mary bought Patience, the pink one with the silk sash?’

  Bridget nodded but didn’t comment. The mistress had spent a fortune on the dress from one of the la-di-da shops in Bishopwearmouth, but all it had done was to accentuate Patience’s extreme plainness ten-fold. No expensive frock could disguise the fact that Patience was the spitting image of her mother, in nature as well as appearance, Bridget thought darkly.

  ‘It was a bonny frock,’ Sophy murmured wistfully, glancing down at the plain grey serge dress her aunt made her wear every day except for the occasions they had visitors.

  Bridget sniffed. ‘Bonny is as bonny does.’

  Sophy stared into the round, rosy face of the person she loved most in all the world. Bridget sometimes said things which didn’t make any sense at all.

  ‘Kitty’s making me a birthday cake but we’ve got to keep it a secret,’ she whispered conspiratorially. ‘She said I can help decorate it and write my name in pink icing sugar.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Bridget knew she didn’t need to emphasise that the bairn’s aunt and uncle mustn’t catch a whiff of it, and Miss Patience, too, of course. She’d often thought it was a great pity Patience wasn’t a boy, because there was no doubt a major part of her fierce hatred of this child was down to the gr
een-eyed monster. And she could understand how Patience must feel in part, because if Mrs Lemaire had been pretty, her daughter was beyond bonny. Sophy’s skin was pure milk and roses, her wavy hair a bright golden auburn and her lips full and perfectly shaped, but it was the bairn’s eyes that took your breath away. They were like none she’d seen before in a human face, being a burned honey colour and as clear as amber, with thick sweeping lashes and fine curving brows above.

  ‘If my mother was here she’d have bought me a new frock.’

  It was a whisper but Bridget heard it and put her arm round the slender shoulders. ‘That she would, me bairn. That she would. And a matching one for herself, no doubt, then you’d have been two peas in a pod.’ She was exaggerating a little but felt it was called for. ‘Just like her you are, hinny.’

  Sophy nodded. And that was why her aunt and uncle didn’t like her. She had learned much from listening to Bridget and Kitty’s chatter as she had grown, especially when they thought she was asleep in her pallet bed in the far corner of the kitchen. She knew her mother had been her uncle’s sister and that she had married a French nobleman of whom her family had disapproved. Her mother had been beautiful, like a fairy princess, and her father very handsome. She had added that last bit herself but she knew it to be true, for why else would her mother have left everyone and everything she’d known to marry him? It was like a story, even if it had ended badly with her father dying and her mother having to come home to her Uncle Jeremiah. Her aunt and uncle hadn’t liked her mother and they didn’t like her. She had said that once to Bridget, and Bridget had answered that her aunt and uncle didn’t like anyone, including each other, but then Kitty had shushed Bridget and told her to hold her tongue.

  She also knew that Bridget was wholly hers in a way no one else was, and this was often balm to her bruised heart when her aunt had been particularly harsh. Only last night she’d heard Bridget and Kitty talking at the kitchen table over a cup of tea before they retired for the night, Patrick ensconced in his chair by the range smoking his pipe.

  ‘Cryin’ shame, I call it,’ Bridget had said softly. ‘She’ll be ten the day after the morrer and still sleeping like a dog in the kitchen. What other man would hold with his own sister’s bairn being treated as scum, I ask you? She’s worse off than we are, at least we get paid for the work we do’ – here Kitty had snorted, and Bridget had amended – ‘even if it is a pittance, and we have our own rooms, Mam, now then. That little bairn has never been allowed to play, and she was made to slave from when she could walk. A pallet bed in the kitchen – it’s not right, not when the guest room is empty year in and year out, ’cept for when the bishop comes to stay for a few days.’

  ‘I know, lass, I know, but it’s none of our business. We work here, that’s all, an’ we could be out on our ear afore you could say Jack Robinson.’

  Bridget had been silent for a moment and Sophy had risked peeking out from under her blankets. Bridget was slowly shaking her head, her face sad but her voice angry when she’d murmured, ‘Makes my blood boil, the things that go on in this house, and all the time them actin’ the holy Joes. I’d like to take that little lass to one of his damn committees and show them what his lady wife does when she’s of a mind. Last time she caned her, she was black an’ blue all over.’

  ‘Wouldn’t make any difference if you did.’ Patrick had entered the conversation, which was rare. He was a man who didn’t say much. ‘The nobs stick together, as you well know. Like your mam says, it’s none of our business an’ you’d do well to remember that, lass.’

  This had effectively finished the conversation but it had left Sophy feeling warm inside that Bridget cared about her so much. Reaching up now, she whispered in Bridget’s ear, ‘I love you.’

  ‘An’ I love you, hinny.’ Bridget’s gaze rested on the shining hair which was strained into one tight plait so that not even a curl escaped. The mistress had insisted on it as soon as the baby mop of curls had grown, along with the dull dresses and ugly, thick-soled boots the little girl was made to wear, but nothing could disguise Sophy’s beauty, Bridget thought for the umpteenth time with great satisfaction. And that was something that stuck in the mistress’s craw all right, cruel devil that she was.

  As though her thoughts had conjured the mistress up, Bridget heard her mother say, ‘Good afternoon, ma’am,’ a moment before Mary appeared in the scullery doorway. She and Sophy stood to their feet, it was one of many niceties the mistress demanded but Sophy knew better than to stare at her aunt and kept her eyes lowered.

  Mary Hutton’s cold reptilian eyes swept over the silver on the rough wooden table. ‘Haven’t you finished that yet? It’s’ – she consulted the small silver pocket-watch pinned to the bodice of her thick linen day dress – ‘almost four o’clock and we have guests for dinner tonight.’

  ‘Nearly done, ma’am.’ Bridget dipped her knee just the slightest.

  ‘See to it the dining table is set with the silver and my best crystal, and use the new damask cloth I bought last week, the one with the roses and leaves. Eight places. And the fire in the drawing room needs attending to. It was almost going out when I left.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ Bridget knew this to be untrue, since she had piled up the coal in the large grate only an hour before, but not by intonation or expression did she reveal this. The mistress was never satisfied, and if there wasn’t anything to find fault with, she’d make something up. It had always been the same. ‘Do you want the best candelabra in the centre of the table, ma’am? The one with the crystals hanging from it?’

  ‘Of course, girl.’ It was a snap. ‘I told you it’s a dinner party.’

  And if I’d put the best one out you’d have said you wanted the second best that the bishop bought, Bridget thought grimly.

  Mary stood a moment more, surveying the maid. She hadn’t glanced directly at Sophy but each feature of the child’s face was burned on her mind, day and night. It was through this creature that the gulf between her and Jeremiah had come about – she had long ago glossed over her own actions in the matter – and her marriage had been ruined. She had been forced to lie to the bishop and the rest of her family – the truth would have brought unthinkable humiliation – and continue the deception year after year. And the child herself, she was the very embodiment of the mother’s provocative predilection for lasciviousness, with her great saucer eyes and Titian hair. She had watched her own sons soften towards the girl despite her warnings that they should have little to do with her, and the scut was a cross that her poor Patience had been compelled to bear daily. From a small child the girl had displayed the same waywardness as the mother – it was in her every glance, the tilt of her head, the pout of her lips. But she would break her spirit, Mary thought; the creature would not get the better of her.

  She now turned about, her petticoats swishing and her carriage ramrod straight as she left the kitchen after checking a few details about the evening meal with Kitty. Sophy sank down on the bench and continued to rub at the silver plate she had been cleaning when her aunt had made her entrance, Bridget disappearing to see to the drawing-room fire.

  She liked it when her aunt and uncle had a dinner party. Kitty always let her stay up late and have a taste of the different dishes, just a mouthful, before Bridget whisked them up to the dining room, and often there were five or six courses instead of the normal three the family had. She slid off the bench and sidled into the kitchen where Kitty was occupied in expertly filleting a whole salmon. ‘What are they having for dinner, Kitty?’ she said, standing by the kitchen table.

  Kitty smiled. She knew what Sophy was really asking. ‘Salmon puffs to start with, like they had when the bishop came last time, do you remember?’

  Sophy nodded. Kitty had done a whole extra puff for her and the filling – a mix of salmon flakes, cream, butter, flour, eggs and spices – had been mouth-watering.

  ‘Then soup, chicken fricassée, followed by lamb cutlets. The hot pudding is pears in ginger sauce
, and the cold is Charlotte Delight, and I’ve made some of my shortbread to go with their coffee. Does madam approve?’

  Sophy nodded, grinning. Pears in ginger sauce was her favourite pudding.

  ‘An’ aye, before you ask, you can stay up, as long as you’re in your nightie in case the mistress takes it on herself to come down for any reason.’ Kitty had the notion the mistress was beginning to suspect that on such occasions the odd treat or two found its way into Sophy’s small frame.

  Sophy nodded again, her eyes alight as she hugged herself in anticipation. Pears in ginger sauce, and her birthday tomorrow. Last year Bridget, Kitty and Patrick had bought her a sketchbook and coloured pencils which she kept hidden under her bed away from prying eyes. They always bought her something. One year it had been a whole box of chocolates to herself, another, a picture book which resided with the sketchpad and pencils and had been looked at so often it was falling apart. Her favourite present, though, was one she’d received when she was five years old, a cloth dolly she’d named Maisie. She slept with Maisie every night and in the day tucked her well down under her blankets on the pallet bed, knowing if Patience or her aunt ever became aware of the doll’s existence, that would be the end of Maisie. ‘I’ll stay in bed and look at my picture book and if we hear anyone coming I’ll hide it under the covers and pretend I’m asleep.’

  ‘Aye, that’s right, hinny, you do that.’ Kitty’s voice held a tinge of sadness, and as she had done countless times before, she thought, You poor little mite. There was this bairn, as bonny as a summer’s day and as sweet as a nut in nature despite the way she was treated by her own kith and kin, and then there was Miss Patience, as spiteful and mean-minded a little madam as ever had been born, who was spoiled rotten by the mistress.