by Nancy Carson
‘Algie!’ she called in a forced whisper, removing the scarf to reveal her face.
He stopped the bike, put his foot on the floor to steady himself and his heart skipped a beat. ‘Aurelia! What are you doing here?’
‘I came to see you.’
‘Aren’t you frozen? You’ll catch your death hanging around here in this weather. Why didn’t you wait inside?’
‘Because I didn’t want to be seen. Especially by Violet, my husband’s secretary. But thank you for your concern … I wasn’t even sure whether you’d be working this morning …’
‘Yet you waited all the same …’
‘Because I had to see you.’ She looked at him forlornly. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk? Away from this place? Somewhere people won’t know me?’
He looked around him, feeling useless. ‘I don’t know. A public house maybe.’
‘Isn’t there a café close by?’
‘There’s one in Brierley Hill High Street.’
‘No, not Brierley Hill,’ she said quietly.
‘Dudley town then. We could take a tram. It’s only a few stops.’
She nodded her assent.
‘I’ll leave my bike here,’ he said. ‘I can pick it up after.’
They walked to the nearest tram stop. Almost at once they saw and heard one rumbling towards them. Aurelia lifted the scarf to partially cover her face again as they boarded it through the smell of warm grease that emanated from the little steam engine at the front. They took a seat together, the only one that was free. The conductor touched his hat to Aurelia and her eyes, the only part of her face visible, glistened with a shy smile in response before she looked away self-consciously. Algie paid their fares, and she watched, preoccupied, as if all this was happening in somebody else’s life.
As the tram began to move, the two were aware that it could be taking them towards some sort of destiny. Yet it was impossible to talk, certainly not privately, in the continuous, deafening clatter of vibrating window panes. Not that either wanted to talk then. There was evidently so much to say, so much that she wanted to say, so much that he wanted to hear, but it must wait a little longer. And he waited, with the blood coursing through his veins at what she might reveal.
Dudley was heaving with folk and the tram’s passage down High Street towards the Market Place was of necessity slow, to avoid colliding with pedestrians who overflowed into the horse road from the pavements. They alighted at the Market Place and mingled, unidentified, with the town’s shoppers, till Algie spotted a place called Powell’s Eagle Hotel and Dining Rooms. Somewhere to sit and talk in quiet comfort.
‘Are you hungry?’ he enquired. ‘It says they serve hot joints daily, look.’
She shook her head. ‘Not a bit. But if they serve tea …’
He smiled affectionately. ‘Let’s see if they have a table free.’
It dawned on him as they entered the place so furtively, how much this meeting must mean to Aurelia, to risk being seen with not just another man, but a man who, by virtue of the clothes he was wearing, was so obviously working class and beneath her social status. Maybe it was this class difference that had prompted her to avoid recognition, but he had the impression that it had more to do with the fact that she was married to a man who was reasonably well-known as a factory owner, and for that reason did not want to be recognised.
The place was full, and noisy with conversation. As they stood looking for an available table, another couple vacated one in a far corner. Algie thanked them as they passed each other and the woman, also young and attractive, glanced at Aurelia and smiled knowingly.
They took off their topcoats and sat down, and Aurelia removed the scarf from her face. She smiled at Algie, such a beautiful yet reticent smile. Her blue eyes exuded a look of sadness – or was it apprehension? He was about to ask her why she’d taken the trouble to seek him out, but a waitress intervened, hovering, clearing the table from the previous occupants.
When she’d taken their order, Aurelia said, ‘I hope you don’t mind my meeting you from work, Algie.’
‘Mind?’ he answered. ‘Course I don’t mind. It was a hell of a surprise, though. But I’m mystified as to why you did. If I’d known, I’d have worn some better clothes to work.’
She smiled, evidently feeling more at ease now. ‘Your clothes are fine,’ she reassured him. She glanced up at the ceiling, then shuffled on her chair to make herself more comfortable. ‘After what we said last night, I felt I had to come. Our conversation was unfinished, Algie. There’s so much I want to say to you, so much I want you to know … things you didn’t give me the chance to say. If I say them now, promise you won’t walk out on me here …’
He looked steadily into her eyes, trying to read beyond those blue-tinted windows to her soul. ‘I promise I won’t.’
Again she smiled. ‘I hardly slept last night, you know, thinking of what you said. But more intriguing was what you wouldn’t say.’
‘I hardly slept either,’ he admitted.
‘You said you had no right to say something that was in your mind to say. I’d dearly love to know what it is. If it’s what I think – what I hope – it is, then I believe I have every right to hear it.’
‘So what did you think, or hope, it was, Aurelia?’ His heart was beating fast. She had not come this far on a whim of triviality. There was something significant going on here.
‘I hoped that it might have been a confession that you thought something of me,’ she said candidly.
He put his head in his hands. She was not about to let him escape. This was evidently going to be a defining moment in his life. He either had to tell her she was wrong and put an end to it before it started, or confess that her intuition was right, that he did feel something for her; that he always had, from the moment he had first set eyes on her. One thing was certain, though; he did not have the heart to disappoint her.
Aurelia reached for his hands, withdrew them gently from his face, and they remained clasped together on the table, her eyes meeting his directly. ‘I have to know, Algie,’ she whispered earnestly. ‘If you want me, I have something to cling to. If you don’t, then I apologise for troubling you. But I see in your eyes your feelings for me. Please don’t deny them …’
If you want me, she’d said … ‘I do have feelings for you, Aurelia,’ he uttered nervously. ‘But I have no right …’
‘I don’t understand your logic, Algie,’ she whispered. ‘What right do you need?’
‘I have no right because you’re already married. You belong to somebody else. You have his child …’
‘I am, as you rightly say, already married …’ She paused, squeezing his hand affectionately. ‘But my marriage is not a success, to put it mildly. I don’t love my husband, nor does he love me. Just because I’m married to a man I have no feelings for, doesn’t mean I’m incapable of feelings for any other. Oh, if only you knew …’ She sighed profoundly. ‘That evening we first met, Algie, when you came to dinner with that girl Harriet, there was something about you that intrigued me. At once I could see the kind of man you are. As the weeks and months passed I had lots of time to ponder you. That evening I sensed you were drawn to me, too … something you said that was meant only for me … “I wouldn’t put you through that”, you said. I remember it distinctly. Then, when you called at the house again, just as your father had passed away, I relished that unexpected opportunity to be with you once more – alone with you – even if I was only helping you over your grief. The problem is, Algie, that I do see in your eyes your feelings for me. It’s so frustrating to behold it, and for you not to bring it into the open.’
‘Into the open?’ he queried.
‘Just between the two of us, I mean. To declare it … to me. I would love us to declare what we feel for each other. You do feel this as strongly as I do, don’t you, Algie?’
‘Can you doubt it?’ His voice was stretched tight with emotion. He held on to her hand, trying to stem the trembling
in his. ‘But what good can it do us? We can never belong to each other.’ He shrugged despondently.
‘In spirit we can, if not in fact. I am in love with you, Algie … There … I’ve said it … I’ve had time enough on my own to think about it. If only you will allow me to share that love with you, it would make the unhappiness and the emotional squalor I put up with at home all the more bearable. My son is the only respite I get, yet Benjamin is all too anxious to send him away to a private school as soon as he is old enough.’
‘But what is it you want from me, Aurelia?’
‘The same as I hope you want from me. Love … Affection … A little tenderness … And everything else besides …’ Her voice tailed away as she spoke those last words, as if she was half ashamed of what she’d said.
The waitress returned bearing a tray. She set everything down on the table before them, including a hot pork sandwich which Algie had ordered for himself, and a warm pikelet with butter and strawberry jam for Aurelia.
But Algie did not feel hungry anymore. His appetite for food had mystically disappeared, so he let his sandwich lie. There was a lump in his throat that inhibited his eating anything right then. He had longed for Aurelia, fantasised about her, jeopardised his standing with Marigold because of her, and eventually lost Marigold because of her, even though Marigold wrongly believed it had been Harriet. Now, Aurelia was his for the taking … in spirit at least. What strange tricks life plays with us … and to what purpose?
‘I’ve idolised you from a distance from the moment I set eyes on you,’ he admitted softly. ‘Yet it never crossed my mind that you might ever feel the same for me … Except when my father died – I did have an inkling then, but I told myself I was living in cloud cuckoo land for even imagining it.’
She smiled, a broad, relieved smile that revealed her lovely even teeth. ‘We can meet,’ she whispered enthusiastically. ‘If you’re prepared to take a chance … Just as often as we can. With Benjamin away so much on business, being together is hardly likely to be a problem.’
He returned her smile eagerly. ‘Could we meet tonight?’
‘Yes, yes. We could, if you want to. And tomorrow. And the evening after that. Every evening, in fact, till Benjamin comes home on Thursday.’
‘But where would we go? We would have to keep our meetings secret. And it’s hardly the season for strolls down country lanes.’ He had visions of them cavorting in that secluded field near Dadford’s Bridge.
‘Where would you like to take me?’ she asked, and a flicker of waywardness lit up her eyes, a look he had never witnessed in her before.
‘Oh, I know where I’d like to take you, Aurelia,’ he said quietly, daring to match her fleeting capriciousness.
‘Do tell me,’ she pleaded.
He smiled sheepishly. He was anxious not to go too far, too fast, out of respect for her. ‘No, it wouldn’t do.’ He shook his head, embarrassed. ‘You wouldn’t think very highly of me at all if I told you. Besides …’
‘Besides what?’
‘Well … you’re a lady. A cut or two above me …’ He looked into her eyes intently, his expression serious. ‘What do you see in me, Aurelia? I don’t understand it. I’m nobody. Just an ordinary working chap.’
‘Oh, Algie,’ she sighed. ‘Even if that were relevant, do you think it would make any difference? Anyway, I don’t consider myself a cut above you. I’m not a cut above you at all. Our backgrounds are not so different. My father’s only a tradesman—’
‘But you don’t even sound like me,’ he interrupted. ‘You sound polished.’
‘Because I had a good education, which my father was prepared to pay for. I was surrounded by people who spoke well and it rubbed off. My husband’s family are hardly dukes and earls either. They’ve been lucky or hard-working enough to make money in the past, and I happened to marry into it. But you, Algie, are more worthy than any man I’ve ever met. I only wish I’d met you before I met Benjamin.’
‘Believe me, I’ve wished the same,’ he said ruefully.
‘Have you honestly?’ She smiled, happy to hear him admit it.
‘I just wish I’d met you before I met Marigold.’
‘I wonder what our lives would be like now,’ she mused.
‘But you wouldn’t have looked at me twice.’
‘Oh, that’s where you’re wrong.’ Aurelia lifted the lid of the teapot and gave the tea a stir.
‘So tell me how you came to marry Benjamin.’
‘Well … as I have already admitted, Algie,’ she said quietly, ‘my marriage is a sham these days, a sham that I am trapped within. We married too young, and in haste, I think, Benjamin and me. Well, I was too young anyway. I was barely nineteen. I was already engaged to somebody else when I met Benjamin, and it was destined to be a longish engagement, certainly not leading to marriage before I was one-and-twenty. My fiancé at the time was articled, you see, and studying to pass his examinations. One summer Sunday afternoon he took me to watch him play in a cricket match at Enville, and there I was introduced to Benjamin, who was playing in the same team. Clarence was the opening bat—’
‘Clarence?’ Algie’s heart seemed to stop beating.
‘Clarence Froggatt. Do you know him?’
‘Oh, I know Clarence Froggatt.’
‘Don’t you like Clarence?’ she asked hesitantly, picking up animosity in Algie’s tone.
‘It’s not that …’
‘What then?’
‘Nothing really … Fancy you being engaged to Clarence Froggatt once … Go on anyway. Clarence was the opening bat …’
‘Well, while he was out there batting away stoutly, Benjamin kept me company until Clarence was bowled out. I was flattered by his attention, of course, especially as it was a long innings. He seemed quite taken with me. Then I learned that his father was a wealthy metal master – a self-made man. Benjamin sent me flowers – oh, quite a few times – along with invitations to meet him. In the end I did, to cut a long story short. Before very long I’d fallen in love with him, and he with me, I’m sure. Anyway, he asked me to marry him and, with the prospect of the life of Riley, I said yes.’
‘You mean you were blinded by wealth and position?’
‘I suppose I was.’ She shrugged. ‘You must appreciate, Algie, that I was a very susceptible young girl at the time … My mother had not long passed away … I was vulnerable. I was swayed by his gifts, by the trappings of wealth that surrounded him, by his loving attention. I felt like a goddess.’
‘So how did Clarence take your breaking off the engagement?’
‘Badly. We had been very close, Clarence and I. I still have a soft spot for him.’
‘Do you regret not marrying Clarence then?’
‘Oh, no. That might have never worked out either. Clarence is too self-centred, rather like Benjamin in that respect. It might have been an equal folly to have married him. He wanted an angel, and I was no such sublime entity.’ She glanced at him enigmatically. ‘Anyway, when we married, Benjamin and me, we rubbed along well enough at first. Yet before even our son was born we drifted apart. I had the suspicion that he might be associating with another woman …’
‘And is he still?’
‘Oh, I’m certain of it.’
‘Do you know who she is?’ he asked, his curiosity intensely aroused.
‘Oh, yes … Her name is Maude Atkins. You’ve met her, I think. At least you’ve seen her.’
‘Have I?’
‘She is my son’s nanny.’
‘Her? Good God!’
Aurelia saw the look of astonishment in his eyes. ‘Benjamin’s real disinterest in me began almost the same day that Maude began her employment with us. Most Sundays my husband goes out under the pretence of visiting his mother. He is gone for four or five hours, time that I know full well is not entirely spent with his mother. An hour, maybe. But it coincides with Maude having her Sunday afternoon off. Of course, they don’t arrive back at the same time – that would be too
obvious – but I’ve seen the way they look at each other …’
‘Still, you could be wrong, Aurelia.’
She shook her head. ‘No. I’m not wrong, Algie. When he goes on business trips, Maude is always given time off – at his instigation – the first night he’s away usually. She was away last night, under the pretext of staying with her parents. She wasn’t due to return till this morning, which she did … looking very tired. It’s easy to put two and two together. I expect he takes her to an hotel close by.’
‘Maybe this one.’
‘No, no, nothing like this place.’ She glanced around her cursorily. ‘It would have to be somewhere more plush.’
‘No wonder you’ve been unhappy,’ he said earnestly.
‘But I don’t care anymore, Algie. I’ve grown to hate him. All I know now is that I can’t bear him to touch me.’
‘How could he have treated you like that? He wants horse-whipping.’
‘Benjamin was a spoilt child, Algie. In the beginning, I was a pretty plaything, I suppose, until he tired of me, the same way he tires of all his toys. He grew used to me, took me for granted. I suppose, when he met Maude he preferred to find his pleasure with her, once he realised she was amenable. I’ve asked myself since, why shouldn’t I as well? What’s good for the gander is good for the goose, as I see it …’
She paused a moment to pour the tea.
‘This place, Algie …’
‘Yes?’ He glanced around him.
‘It’s an hotel, isn’t it?’
‘I believe so.’
‘As we leave … if you have no objection, of course … why don’t you ask if they have a vacant room for tonight? Nobody knows us from Adam. We could spend the night as Mr and Mrs Algernon Stokes … If you have no objection, of course …’
Chapter 24
‘I’m going out tonight and I shan’t be back,’ Algie announced as the family were sitting down to their dinner that Saturday evening. ‘So don’t wait up for me.’
‘Where are you going?’ Clara asked. ‘I don’t like to think of you being out all night. I shall be worried. Make sure you’ve got enough warm clothes.’