The Lock-Keeper's Son

by Nancy Carson

  And, in a way, so had Harriet. Yet things were different with Harriet. He had never truly desired her. He could hardly imagine her as a passionate creature, steeped as she was in the traditions of a Church that instilled into its flock that sex should be confined to the marriage bed, was primarily for the procreation of children, and discouraged as a recreational or enjoyable pastime. Harriet, however, was always good company, to her credit.

  Algie made up his mind that Marigold, for all her lowly upbringing, was the ideal girl for him. If only he knew where she was. If only he could find her. When he did, he would smother her lovely face with kisses and confess how much he loved her till his tongue ached with fatigue.

  But wasn’t it strange how Eli Meese had invited him back into his home again …?

  Sunday came, and Algie rode his bike to the Stourbridge Canal, getting on the towpath at the Bottle and Glass, his first port of call. He asked Tom Simpson, the publican, whether he had seen anything of the Binghams.

  ‘Aye, Seth Bingham was in here last Sunday.’

  ‘Honest? Did you say anything to him?’

  ‘He’d heard as your father passed away. He was sorry to learn of it, he reckoned.’

  ‘Did he mention Marigold?’

  ‘Not a word.’

  ‘Did you see her?’

  ‘Not that I know of. Ain’t sure as I’d know her anyway.’

  ‘Did Seth mention me?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Damn.’

  ‘It slipped me mind altogether as you wanted to see Seth’s daughter, young Algie,’ Tom admitted. ‘I’m real sorry. I should’ve said summat, but we was that busy it never crossed me mind.’

  ‘Which way were they heading?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell yer.’

  Well, if Marigold had been that way and he’d missed her, maybe she’d called at the house and seen the note he’d left pinned to the door. He decided to go and ask the new lock-keeper if he knew anything.

  So he wheeled under the bridge, dismounted, and rested his bike against the fence at the side of the towpath adjacent to the first lock. He walked across the lock gate and was surprised to see that there were no curtains up at the windows yet. Maybe the new family hadn’t got round to hanging them. He clambered up the stone steps to the gate and opened it. It was a poignant moment for him. Already the garden, so diligently looked after by his father, looked dead and in want of care. He noticed a solitary rose, withering now after the early frosts had got to it. An omen, perhaps?

  He looked at the back door. The letter he had left pinned to it was gone. The new lock-keeper would have removed it, of course. His heart lurched at the possibility that the man might have actually handed it to Marigold, that she might have actually called. He would enquire, just to be sure. So he knocked on the door.

  No answer.

  He knocked again.

  Still no answer.

  He stepped back and looked at the upstairs windows. They were grimy where rain had run down, leaving faint trails of soot from the atmosphere. Nobody had bothered to clean them. If his mother could see them now she would have a fit. It struck him that maybe nobody was living here yet after all, and he stepped over a flower bed to peer into a downstairs room. He wiped the window clear with his hand and peered inside.

  It was just as they had left it.

  Empty.

  It made him angry that they had been ordered to leave this house when it was patently not necessary, just to get rid of them. The consequences of that had been monstrous …

  But Algie did not want to dwell on these things; what was done was done. He was heartened by the fact that his letter had gone. Maybe soon he would receive some message from Marigold through somebody. He would have to be patient; he was by no means certain from whom, or from which direction it would arrive. Nonetheless, not content just to sit and wait, he rode towards Kidderminster in an attempt to find her, before turning back and riding in the opposite direction to Dudley. As darkness fell, he made his way back tired, unsuccessful and heavy-hearted to Kingswinford.

  It was Christmas Day. Marigold Bingham awoke, shivering in her bed in the freezing cabin of the Odyssey. The bitter cold made her realise that the stove had burnt out. She peered over the bedclothes at the cabin window to see if there was any sign of daylight yet, but it was difficult to tell how far the sombre dawn had progressed through the frosted-up window. As far as the weather went, it would be another grey day, with temperatures below freezing. In any case, there would be little to celebrate, Christmas Day or no. So she cuddled up to her younger sister for warmth and pulled the bedclothes over her head, anxious to sneak another few minutes before her mother came and roused them.

  But too soon she heard her mother rapping the window. She rolled over and tried to shut out Hannah’s voice by pulling her pillow over her head, but still she heard her stepping onto the gunwale and then rattling the door.

  ‘Time to get up, you lot,’ Hannah called. ‘There’s still work to be done even if it is Christmas Day.’

  Rose, Marigold’s sister, whose warmth she had been borrowing, was first to stir. She sat up in the bed, disturbing Rachael, younger still, who complained of the biting cold, and disappeared immediately back under the bedclothes.

  ‘Time to get up, our Marigold,’ said Rose resignedly, in her croaky morning voice. ‘We’ll get no peace till we do.’

  Marigold pushed back the bedclothes and swung her legs out of bed. At once the clinging, clammy cold stung her all over like needles, and she huddled inside her nightdress. Her teeth began to chatter. She reached for the thick dressing gown hanging on the door of the cabin, a garment which had been handed down from her mother, then opened the stove, raked out the ashes and laid a new fire. As she struck the match to light it, she shook with shivering. Her teeth were still chattering and her breath was rising up in steam. But it would be some time yet before they felt the benefit of the stove.

  ‘I wonder what time it is,’ she said. ‘Oh, it’s so damned cold.’

  Hannah returned, opened the door and entered. She was fully dressed and had a shawl around her shoulders. ‘My God, it’s freezing in here. You’ll catch your deaths. There’s warm water to wash yourselves in the Sultan and the stove’s hot, so get yourselves round there as soon as you can. I’m doing bacon and eggs for your breakfasts.’

  The aroma of frying bacon wafted in, on the icy, foggy air.

  ‘I can smell it, Mother,’ Marigold said.

  Then it hit her; the morning’s first wave of nausea. Already it was agonisingly familiar to her. Suddenly she felt hot, and a white mist seemed to blur her vision. She felt the urgent need to retch, and rushed past her mother who was at once indignant at being shoved out of the way so abruptly. Marigold leaned over the stern and vomited, hardly noticing the piercing frost attacking her small bare hands as she held on to the tiller for support. Again she retched.

  ‘Is that our Marigold being sick again?’ It was Rose’s voice, evidently resigned to the frequency of the occurrence.

  Marigold felt instantly better, except for the bitter taste of bile that lingered in her mouth. With her head bowed she pushed past her mother. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and sat down on the cross-bed, her head in her hands, anticipating Hannah’s torrent of insults, for she must realise, as well as Marigold herself understood from this display, just what this symptom meant. So far she had been able to hide it. Up till now her retching into the canal had been accomplished in relative privacy, save, obviously, for the ears and eyes of Rose.

  ‘You lot,’ Hannah said sternly. ‘Out. Go to your father right away. I want a word with our Marigold.’

  As Rose and her siblings wrapped themselves up for the icy jaunt between the two boats, Marigold concealed the tears that were now trickling down her cheeks, her face hidden in her hands. This nausea, this symptom of her pregnancy, had been plaguing her since the onset of the cold snap at the end of November. At first she’d put it down to the weather; the
shivering, the hot flushes and feeling that she was going to faint, the awful vomiting that always followed. How it unsettled your system. It didn’t take long for her to realise it had nothing to do with the weather.

  Marigold decided to try and escape too, and she dragged herself outside, defiantly pushing past her mother again in an effort to delay the inevitable onslaught. She clambered over the gunwale onto the narrow towpath, following her younger sisters. A freezing fog had fallen and a deathly silence surrounded them. The hedge that divided the canal from the Great Central Railway line, which ran alongside, was coated in a grey-white rime, as were the rails. One thing Marigold did notice was that the Odyssey did not rise in the water as she stepped off it; it was trapped in a layer of ice.

  Willoughby Wharf on the Oxford Canal, roughly halfway between Rugby and Daventry, was already frozen over to at least an inch thick, and no sign of a let-up in the grisly weather. If the ice thickened much more it would be impossible to gain access to the Grand Union Canal tomorrow, let alone shoot off on the southern arm of the Oxford, where the Binghams were to offload the coal they were transporting from the Black Country’s pits. Despite her preoccupation with her condition, she couldn’t help wondering whether the canal company would be able to bring out the icebreakers on Christmas Day. If not, they could be held up for days at Willoughby Wharf, and even weeks if there was no let-up.

  ‘Marigold!’ Hannah called. ‘Come here, I said I wanted a word with you. D’you hear?’

  Marigold halted in her tracks, dithering in the cold, and looked at her mother forlornly. Resigned to receiving a lambasting, she walked slowly back to the Odyssey and entered the cabin.

  A spare dressing gown, a child’s, was hanging on the back of the door. Hannah took it and offered it to Marigold.

  ‘Put this round you as well. You’ll catch your death.’

  Marigold allowed her mother to wrap it around her shoulders caringly, and shivered again, glancing at the stove. Smoke, like animated hanks of grey wool, was being drawn up the chimney pipe as the coals ignited. Pray God they would soon benefit from some warmth.

  She looked at her mother with fearful eyes. This kind gesture with the old dressing gown must be the lull before the storm. The moment of retribution was finally upon her. There was no escape. Her mother knew her guilty secret.

  ‘Well, this is a fine Christmas box and no two ways.’

  Marigold nodded, just perceptibly, and shuddered with a profound sigh of apprehension.

  ‘How long have you been getting the morning sickness, eh?’

  ‘About a month,’ Marigold answered, as honestly as she could.

  ‘And you guessed right away what was causing it?’

  ‘Nearly right away.’

  ‘Then you must have guessed about the same time as I did.’

  ‘You knew?’

  ‘Course I knew. And if I knew, you must’ve known yourself, I kept telling myself. I was waiting for you to come and tell me. Why didn’t you?’

  Marigold shrugged under the two dressing gowns. ‘’Cause I was ashamed. ’Cause I was afeared you’d go mad.’

  ‘Oh, our Marigold …’ Hannah put a comforting arm around her daughter’s shoulder and gave her a hug.

  Marigold sniffed and wiped another tear that had run down her cheek, prompted by her mother’s gentle kindness, so unexpected. She could not understand why, so far, she was getting off so lightly. ‘Well, what made you think I might be carrying a child?’ she asked, hoping to glimpse the mysterious ways mothers have of divining such things.

  ‘We generally see at the same time o’ the month, you and me, our Marigold – and our Rose come to that – but the last couple of times I’ve noticed that you ain’t bled when I have. There’s been nothing in your drawers, has there? I haven’t seen a clout from you in weeks. I am your mother. I can’t help but notice.’ Hannah looked hard at Marigold, a look which she caught.

  Marigold put her hands to her face again, in shame and embarrassment. ‘Did you know all along, then, that me and Algie …?’

  ‘I mostly do your washing, our Marigold. I do see your dirty drawers … You only have to put two and two together. I suppose it can only be Algie Stokes’s child?’

  ‘It couldn’t be nobody else’s, Mother, and that’s a fact.’

  ‘Oh, our Marigold …’ Hannah sighed profoundly, entirely sympathetic to her daughter’s dilemma. ‘And you’ve fell out with him.’

  ‘I know.’ Marigold was moved to further tears by this unanticipated commiseration. She felt so small, so pathetic, yet so guilty.

  ‘You’ll have to let him know, somehow,’ Hannah said kindly.

  ‘I know …’ She sighed again. ‘I would, if I knew where to find him. Don’t forget as his father passed away and they’ve been kicked out of their house, by all accounts.’

  ‘We’ll find him some way or another. Let’s just hope he hasn’t got off with some other young woman, since you was so keen to shun him. It’d serve you right for being so pig-headed if he had. I don’t believe for a minute as he was interested in anybody else when you thought he was.’

  ‘Nor me, Mother. Not really. Not now. Not now I’ve had time to think about it. I thought he was seeing a girl called Harriet Meese, but now I know he couldn’t have – not in the way I thought.’

  ‘And didn’t it cross your mind that you might be carrying?’

  Marigold shook her head, tears falling onto Hannah’s shoulder. ‘I never thought it would happen to me, and he always said as how careful he was. I never expected you’d be this easy about it, neither. I always thought you’d rant and rave if I got meself in the family way afore I ever got wed.’

  ‘Ah, well,’ Hannah replied softly. ‘I’ll let you into a secret. I was like you once. I got into trouble as well when I was about your age – it was you I was carrying – but I wasn’t as lucky as you. The chap I’d been with could never marry me, you see. My family took it out on me. They disowned me. And after what I went through, I knew I could never do that to my own daughter, no matter what.’

  Marigold raised her head in wide-eyed astonishment. ‘Are you telling me that me dad’s not me father?’

  Clara stroked Marigold’s hair tenderly and nodded. ‘That’s right, my flower. I never imagined breaking it to you like this, but no, Seth isn’t your real father. Yet he’s always been a father to you. Always remember that.’

  Marigold was stunned at this news, forgetting for the moment her own difficulty. She’d had no inkling ever that Seth was not her father; it was something she’d never pondered, and it came as a complete shock. She fell quiet for some seconds, pondering the fact, trying to come to terms with it. Wrapped in her mother’s embrace for these epic minutes, she hardly noticed the cold and the freezing fog that was pervading all, the water that looked like lead covered in frost’s coarse white powder as it froze solid in the wharf.

  ‘Don’t you want to know who your real father is?’ Hannah asked eventually.

  ‘Would I know him?’

  ‘No.’

  Marigold looked into Hannah’s eyes and shook her head. ‘So what does it matter?’ she answered typically. ‘Whoever he is, he never cared about me or you, did he, by the sound of it? Why should I care about him? As far as I’m concerned, Seth’s me dad. I love him. That’s enough for me.’

  Hannah gave her another hug and smiled thankfully to herself. ‘Yes, maybe it’s better that way … In the meantime, what about young Algie Stokes? Do you still want him, our Marigold? D’you still love him?’

  ‘With all my heart and soul, Mother. As long as I live there’ll never be another chap for me. But he might not want me anymore now …’

  ‘That’s something we shan’t know till we find him.’ She gave her daughter another hug. ‘But it’s my belief as he should face up to his responsibilities once we do find him.’ Hannah sighed, growing even more sympathetic to Marigold’s plight. ‘D’you reckon you can face some breakfast now, afore it’s ruined?’

  Ma
rigold nodded and managed a smile. ‘I’ll try, Mother … Had we better tell the others yet that I’m having a baby?’

  ‘Why not? They’ll find out soon enough. Might as well be open about it. Let me tell your dad first, though, when we’m on our own.’

  Flames licked around the coals in the stove, and already its precious warmth was perceptible in the intense, damp cold.

  ‘There’s still work to be done today, our Marigold,’ Hannah said, as they rose from the bed on which they had been sitting. ‘Your dad’s already got the mangle and the dolly tub out. Providing the pump over at the Navigation ain’t froze up, there’s washing to be done.’

  ‘I’ll help you with it, Mother.’

  ‘No need, if you don’t feel up to it. We gotta look after you good and proper now. Our Rose and our Rachael can help instead. They’m gunna have to do more jobs now.’

  ‘Fancy having to do your washing on Christmas Day,’ Marigold sighed as they stepped off the Odyssey together. ‘Not like some o’ them swells in their nice houses with their feet up in front of a nice warm fire, I bet, with maids to do all their work.’

  Hannah smiled. ‘I remember days like that,’ she said as they stepped side-by-side along the narrow towpath to the Sultan, moored fore of the Odyssey. ‘I remember living ever so comfortable in a warm house with roaring coal fires, and Christmas dinners with all the family there …’

  ‘Drying washing will be a nightmare,’ said Marigold thoughtfully, unheeding her mother’s reminiscences. ‘Especially if we’m stuck here in the ice. I can’t remember a colder winter, Mother, can you? I mean, ’specially afore Christmas.’

  ‘Eighty-two was bad, as I recall. Don’t you remember? We was froze up at Northampton for weeks. We lost a load of money … Seth!’ she called. ‘We’re coming for our breakfasts now. Can you put two eggs on to fry?’