The Lock-Keeper's Son

by Nancy Carson

  ‘This new play promises to be quite funny, Murdoch,’ Kate said as she stepped up onto his gig.

  Murdoch Osborne had just lit the side lamps and heaved himself in beside her. ‘It’s why I chose it,’ he said, picking up the reins. He clicked to the horse and they jerked forwards.

  ‘I’ve been thinking, you know, Murdoch … I reckon I could do this acting lark for a living. I mean, I ain’t bad-looking and all that, am I?’

  ‘No, you’re a fine-looking girl, and no two ways.’

  ‘I can sing, as well as act, you know. Do you think I’d be good enough to do it for a living?’

  He grinned amiably. ‘I’d forget all about that if I were you, Kate, ha? Folk look on professional actresses in a different light to them what belong to an amateur dramatics society like ours.’

  ‘Whether or no, it’d be better than working in a baker’s shop, on me feet all day. I wonder how you go about it.’

  ‘Forget it, I tell you. Stage actresses are regarded as no better than prostitutes, off with different chaps every night o’ the week after their shows, in different towns all the while. Your mother wouldn’t like it. D’you want to be regarded as a prostitute, ha?’

  ‘No, course not,’ she responded. ‘But I don’t see why I should be. Nobody thinks of Ellen Terry as a prostitute.’

  ‘Aye, brought up in the theatre, she was,’ he said disparagingly. ‘And wed by the time she was fifteen to some painter. Had a fling with that Lewis Carroll chap, as well, by all accounts, and he’s old enough to be her father. You can hardly say she’s virtuous.’

  ‘At least she got wed. I want to be like Ellen Terry. Whether or no, she’s respected. I don’t see why I shouldn’t be. I’ve got the makings … Anyway, how do you go about it? That’s all I want to know.’

  ‘You have to be seen. You have to take the fancy of some great impresario. You’d have to share his bed first, though, and no mistake. That’s the price you’d have to pay, just to be considered.’

  ‘Is that how it’s done? Is that how you get on? By going to bed with somebody?’

  ‘Aye. In that business.’

  Such a forfeit held no fear for Kate. ‘D’you know any of these impresarios?’

  ‘I do. I’ve been involved with the theatre – the amateur theatre – a good few years. I know one or two people, and I know how they work.’

  ‘Would you write to one for me?’ she asked earnestly. ‘To introduce me.’

  ‘Why, your mother would have a fit. I told you, it’s best if you forget that nonsense. I won’t have her blaming me for you going off the rails, ha?’

  ‘But it’s my life, Murdoch. I’m entitled to do with it as I please, aren’t I?’

  ‘Not till you’re one-and-twenty.’

  ‘Won’t you help me, then?’

  ‘Not till I’ve seen what your mother says first. Ha?’

  The next day, Thursday, Murdoch Osborne closed his butcher’s shop at dinnertime, a rare occurrence, and walked to the Bell Hotel at the end of High Street where it met Bell Street. There, he asked to see one of their residents, Mrs Stokes, who was occupying rooms with her daughter and son.

  ‘Mrs Stokes is in her room, as far as I’m aware, Mr Osborne,’ the landlord said, who knew him as a patron in his smoke room. ‘Up the stairs out there …’ He pointed to the door. ‘And second on the right.’

  ‘Thanks, Jacob,’ Murdoch said, and went up.

  He tapped gently on the second door, and waited. Within a few seconds, Clara Stokes opened it and peered around its edge.

  ‘Murdoch!’

  ‘How do, Clara,’ he said warmly. ‘I hope you don’t mind me dropping in on you unannounced, ha?’

  ‘Course not. Come in, come in …’ She opened the door fully, stepped back and allowed him to enter.

  He looked around. The bed was neatly made up, and the room tidy. ‘There ain’t too many men who’ve been in your boudoir, I suspect, Clara?’ he said with a grin. ‘I should count meself lucky to be among ’em, ha?’

  ‘Only ever my husband,’ she replied, feeling herself blush for the first time in years.

  ‘Aye, and that’s commendable, Clara. Very commendable.’

  ‘Anyway, what have I done to deserve this honour?’

  ‘D’you mind if I sit down?’

  ‘Course not. Take the weight off your feet.’

  He sat on the bed and gestured for her to sit down too.

  ‘I was talking to your Kate last night.’

  ‘She told me. She says you wouldn’t encourage her to go on the stage. I must say, as I appreciate—’

  ‘I ain’t here to talk about your Kate, Clara. It’s you I want to talk about. I didn’t know till she told me, that they’ve turned you out of house and home, ha?’

  ‘That’s why we’re here. There’s nowhere else to go till we find a suitable house.’

  ‘Well, that’s a dirty trick and no two ways. And I can see your difficulty, Clara … I sympathise … The truth is, I might be able to offer a solution, if you’ll only take time to think about it serious, ha?’ He looked at her with an earnestness that surprised her, but she said nothing, awaiting his next words. ‘You see, there’s room a-plenty at my house—’

  ‘Your house? But—’

  ‘No buts, yet.’ He raised his hands as if fending off her inevitable objections. ‘Hear me out. As you know, I’ve been a widower these past few years, me daughters have deserted me, and I’ve got this big house as I share with a maid and a cook, who look after me good and proper. There’s plenty room for the three of you – your Kate and your Algie – and yourself, o’ course.’

  Clara sat silently for some seconds. This had come as quite a shock and she was not sure of the implications. Was he doing this out of the kindness of his heart, because he felt sorry for them? Or was there another motive? Did he, for instance, intend to ask Kate to be his wife? She hoped not; he was much too old for Kate.

  ‘That’s a very generous offer, Murdoch,’ she said blandly, when she had collected her thoughts. ‘But we hadn’t intended being anybody’s lodgers. I’m not made of money, you know. I’ll have to depend on Algie and Kate now.’

  ‘Lodgers!’ he exclaimed, as if the idea were ridiculous. ‘No, I wasn’t contemplating you as paying lodgers …’

  Later that same evening, Reggie Hodgetts and his family moored up in the basin outside the Bottle and Glass on their way to Stourport and Kidderminster. It was dark and cold and, at his mother’s behest, he shovelled a few cobs of coal into the stove of their untidy narrowboat. Smoke swirled from the soot-blackened chimney pipe in an eddying cloud and was dispersed at once by the wind, only to be subsumed into the greater volume of smoke created by the Black Country’s industrial might. He unhitched the horse from its halter, divested it of its empty nose-tin, and walked it back down the series of locks to the stabling near the general stores. As he strolled past the Stokes’s cottage, he saw that it was in darkness.

  ‘What’s up yon?’ he asked the stableman, called Jonah, pointing to the lock-keeper’s cottage. ‘They’m all in darkness.’

  ‘Ain’t you heard about Will Stokes?’ Jonah asked, as he took the horse and led it into an empty stable.

  ‘Why, what’s he done?’ Reggie asked.

  ‘Gone and kicked the bucket, that’s what he’s done.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Aye, peritonitis.’ He emptied a bucket of oats into a manger and the horse thrust his nose into it at once. ‘Turned nasty, by all accounts. Old Doc Froggatt from Brierley Hill did all he could, but ’twas no good. ’E was a goner, mate, afore ever the doctor had been gone five minutes.’

  ‘It was a bit sudden, eh?’ said Reggie, astonished by the information. ‘He wasn’t a bad sort, was he, Will Stokes?’

  ‘A good bloke.’

  ‘So that’s why the house is in darkness, eh? In mourning.’

  ‘Oh, no, they’n flitted a’ready,’ Jonah said. ‘There was a new chap due to start Monday, but we ai’ sid
sight of ’im. We did ’ear, though, as he’d turned the job down at the last minute. We shall miss Will Stokes.’

  ‘I was hoping I might see young Kate, the daughter.’

  ‘Oh, well, we all want to see her, eh?’ Jonah grinned waggishly. ‘Fair piece that, and no two ways about it. Mind you, I don’t envy the bloke as gets her in the finish – he’ll have his hands full as sure as God med little apples. Her’s got a roving eye, and no mistek.’

  ‘I thought she was a-courting, Jonah. Some doctor’s son.’

  ‘Well, that’s as maybe, I wouldn’t know. Whether or no, there’s an envelope pinned to the back door. I sid it meself when I went to see if the new lock-keeper had moved in.’

  ‘An envelope?’ Reggie queried. ‘I wonder who that’s for.’

  ‘Dunno. I can’t read much, me. Leastwise, I can’t read fancy swirls like what’s on the front of that.’

  ‘Nor can I, but I’ll go and have a peep. It’s very likely for me, see. From Kate. We’ve been friendly, like, over the years, Kate and me. I’ll get somebody to read it to me. How much do I owe you for the hoss?’

  ‘The usual. Sixpence.’

  Reggie gave him his coin and made his way back up the towpath. At the lock-keeper’s cottage just before the bridge, he crept furtively across the lock gate and up the stone steps to the back gate. As he reached the back door, the sky lit up with an orange glow, as if all the fires of Hades had been thrust to the surface of the earth. By its reflected luminosity, he could see a letter pinned to the door. He snatched it, the drawing-pin that held it falling to the floor, and stuffed it in his pocket. He knew with certainty that it was not intended for him. Kate Stokes had gone up in the world, and was hardly likely to be leaving messages for him these days, especially now she had that doctor’s son. It was much more likely to be for Seth Bingham’s daughter, a love letter from that stupid bugger Algie. Well, he owed Algie a bad turn for setting about him that night when he was giving Kate a good seeing-to against their shed, hurting nobody. Tomorrow, when he was away from here, he would ask somebody to read it to him. It would be nice to know the sort of softness Algie Stokes was capable of; he deserved no better than having his pathetic love letter burnt. Young Marigold would never receive it; it would burn a treat in the stove. She deserved no better either. For meagre boat folk, the Binghams were way above themselves.

  As Algie Stokes cycled back from work that evening, he pondered the progress of his new job and his relationship with the new draughtsman, whose job it was to translate the concept of his proposed bicycle into an engineering possibility. Algie already had the feeling that he was being used, that once his ideas had been subsumed, he would be of little further use to Benjamin Sampson. Despite Benjamin wooing him for his creativity, with that slap-up dinner to seduce him – which seemed a lifetime ago – the infatuation was evidently over already. Benjamin had got what he wanted, and now he could hardly find a civil word to say to him. If Algie had been of a more cynical nature he might have seen it coming, but he was not, and so he had not. He felt cast aside like an old shoe that has given sterling service but is of no further use, and he did not like the feeling.

  Algie made up his mind finally; he did not admire Benjamin Sampson. He did not admire him at all.

  He arrived back at the Bell Hotel. He left his bicycle in the passage, which he had permission to do, took off his cycle clips and went upstairs to his room. He removed his jacket, scarf and cap and tapped on the door of the room his mother and Kate were sharing.

  ‘I thought it’d be you,’ Clara said.

  He thought how attractive she looked today, despite her mourning and pale complexion. A sparkle had returned to her eyes, replacing the distant look of preoccupation that had afflicted her since his father’s death. It was good to see that she was getting over her grief so quickly. He didn’t like to see his mother so haunted by misery, as she had been.

  ‘Kate not back yet?’

  ‘Not yet,’ she answered, ‘but I don’t expect she’ll be long. It’s nowhere near so far to walk back here as it was to walk back home.’

  ‘How about if we go for something to eat at Mrs Daniel’s Dining Rooms in Mill Street tonight, Mother?’ he suggested. ‘It’d be a change for you. Let’s get you out of this place and out into the big wide world.’

  ‘I’d rather not, Algernon,’ Clara replied typically. ‘I’d just as soon eat here. Anyroad, there’s something I want to talk to you both about, but it’ll keep till our Kate gets here.’

  He shrugged. It was always the same. She never wanted to go anywhere. ‘What d’you want to talk to us about?’

  ‘Oh, just an offer of cheap lodgings,’ she said dismissively.

  ‘Lodgings? I thought we wanted to rent.’

  At that Kate returned. ‘I got us some cakes,’ she said brightly as she walked through the door. ‘Mr Mills said as we could have them for nothing ’cause they’re broken. They’re ever so nice, though.’ She placed her basket on the floor and took off her mantle and bonnet. ‘Shall we have one a-piece now, or save them till later?’

  ‘Mother’s got something she wants to talk to us about,’ Algie said, patently not interested in the cakes. ‘Shall we talk about it over our dinners downstairs or here, before we go down?’

  ‘Before we go down,’ Clara said with a decisiveness that brooked any argument.

  Kate peered in the mirror set in a wardrobe door, preened her lustrous dark hair and admired herself with a sideways look at her reflection. ‘So what is it, Mother?’

  ‘Shall we all sit down?’

  ‘Well, let’s have a cake then.’

  ‘Never mind the cakes for now, our Kate. Having a cake will spoil your appetite for your dinner.’

  Kate sat on the bed compliantly but disappointed, for she was hungry and fancied a cake. Algie sank into a wicker chair that was under the window and looked at his mother expectantly.

  ‘I had a visitor today,’ Clara began, and paused.

  ‘Oh? Who?’ Kate urged with typical impatience.

  ‘Murdoch Osborne.’

  ‘Murdoch?’

  ‘Mr Osborne to you, our Kate.’

  ‘Mr Osborne tittle! He’s told me to call him Murdoch. He’s a good friend of mine, Mother. I think I know him better than you.’

  ‘Well, he’s a good friend to me as well, our Kate. Always has been.’

  ‘I want him to help me get on the stage,’ Kate added pettishly.

  ‘You’re not going on the stage, our Kate …’

  ‘Is that why he called? To talk about me?’

  ‘Why would he want to talk about you?’ Clara said, irritated by her daughter’s conceit.

  ‘Because it’ll mean me going away from home if I’m going on the stage, that’s why.’ She shrugged nonchalantly. ‘He wanted to know how you’d feel about that before he helped me.’

  ‘He knows how I feel about it, and you’re not going on the stage,’ Clara replied. ‘As a matter of fact, he called to see me. He wanted to explain that he’s got a great big house with only him in it, and a maid and a cook who he kept on to look after him. What he wanted to say was that there’s plenty of room for us at this house of his.’

  ‘As lodgers, you mean?’ Kate queried, a little more enthusiastically. ‘That’d be handy.’

  ‘How much would he charge us?’ Algie wanted to know. ‘We have to think whether we can afford it.’

  ‘He says he doesn’t want money,’ Clara replied.

  ‘So he’s offering a roof over our heads out of the kindness of his heart?’ Algie sounded dubious. There had to be an ulterior motive.

  ‘There’s one condition, our Algie.’

  ‘Ah … I thought there might be.’ He glanced at Kate who was inspecting her fingernails. ‘So surprise me.’

  ‘The condition is that I marry him.’

  ‘You?’ Algie stood up, at once perturbed, alarmed that his mother might already have accepted.

  ‘Yes, me.’

  ‘Bu
t my father hasn’t been dead five minutes,’ he protested loudly. ‘He’s still warm in his grave. You can’t marry Murdoch Osborne, Mother. Even if I liked the idea – which I definitely do not – it’s too soon. It’s much too soon. Folks will talk about you scandalous.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with anybody else, our Algie. If folk want to talk, that’s up to them.’

  Mental images of his spotless mother in bed with Murdoch Osborne at once plagued him and horrified him utterly. He imagined them coupled, his mother lying submissively beneath this grunting and groaning and writhing man whom he did not particularly like, this man who gave Marigold the creeps.

  ‘So have you accepted him, Mother?’ Kate asked.

  ‘I’ve been weighing it up. Murdoch isn’t short of a shilling or two – a situation I’ve never known myself – so we wouldn’t want for anything. It’s a nice house he’s got, he says, and in Kingswinford – a nice place. Then there’s a maid and a cook. I could have a lovely easy time of it.’

  ‘But Mother, didn’t you hear me?’ Algie protested. ‘My father isn’t cold in his grave yet. I just wish he could hear you, already planning to get wed to somebody else.’

  ‘I haven’t said that I’ve accepted Murdoch yet, have I?’

  ‘I should just hope you haven’t. In a couple of years you could maybe start to think about remarrying. But after three weeks …?’

  They fell silent for some time, long moments when they all contemplated this outrageous proposal. Was his mother about to make the worst mistake of her life, a mistake that would adversely affect Algie, and Kate as well? Was she prepared to make a bargain with Murdoch Osborne, trading the promise of a misguided and inappropriate, middle-aged romance to escape the likelihood of loneliness and insecurity in old age? Perhaps. Yet that, in itself, was excusable. What was not excusable was whether she was prepared merely to become a submissive bed partner and lose her self-respect, just to avoid the inconvenience or indignity of having to be kept by her own son.

  Algie could hardly conceive of his mother actually loving Murdoch. Yet wasn’t it natural enough that she should be flattered whether or no, and perhaps even a little surprised, to find herself still capable of inspiring admiration, perhaps even desire, from another man? Always assuming that middle-aged men and women still felt such things. Wasn’t it natural that she should want to grasp any opportunity to scramble from the depths of misery and uncertainty into which she had been plunged? Why shouldn’t she allow herself to be diverted from her grief, which might otherwise beset her for many more months yet? Indeed, was it not a recognised fact that a sure way of mending a broken heart was to expose it to new love?