by Nancy Carson
‘What about her?’
‘Did you and she ever …? You’re obviously a practised lover …’
‘I’d never admit to any such thing, even if I were guilty of it,’ he said with a grin, throwing her own words back at her, which made her laugh.
‘Touché!’ she exclaimed. ‘But you loved her, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, I loved her.’
‘And once you have loved somebody, I think you always love them. Leastwise, I think it would be awfully easy to rekindle that love in the right circumstances. Don’t you?’
‘I think it’s very possible,’ he answered truthfully. If he ever saw Marigold again, he felt sure his heart would pound fourteen to the dozen.
‘So tell me about her. I’ve told you about Clarence.’
‘You’ve only told me half,’ he teased. ‘So I’ll only tell you half … She was a sweet girl, uneducated and as natural as sunshine. She was blessed with a lot of common sense, and she wasn’t troubled by the restrictions of a religious upbringing—’
‘Neither am I,’ Aurelia butted in. ‘Except at school where we had to worship daily. But it all passed over my head. Sorry … go on …’
‘She was thoughtful and kind. She’d willingly hand you her last farthing if she thought you needed it more than she did. She was a devout daughter, who idolised her mother and father. She was pretty as well – very pretty, with wide blue eyes and a shock of very dark hair. A bit like you, to tell you the truth, but a year or two younger.’
‘And did she have a good figure?’
‘Oh, yes, a lovely figure,’ he answered truthfully.
‘I can understand why you loved her so much. You must’ve been desperately hurt when she said goodbye.’
‘She didn’t stop to say goodbye, Aurelia. She just disappeared. But yes, course I was hurt.’
‘Because you had hurt her … That’s why she acted like that.’
He sighed at the recollection of it. ‘I suppose I must’ve done, but I did it without thinking. It wasn’t intentional.’
‘But that’s the trouble with men. They don’t think sometimes, and they leave their womenfolk to pick up the pieces.’
‘Yes, I know,’ he said sadly.
‘Kiss me again, Algie,’ she sighed. ‘I feel a distinct urge to love and be loved welling up again inside me. And it would be a cardinal sin to pay no attention to it …’
The next day, Monday, Marigold walked into Rugby, while Hannah took it upon herself to look for work in Daventry. Then they would compare which town afforded the better prospects.
Marigold’s belly was beginning to show, but in her mantle and the frocks she wore, she could hide the fact that she was pregnant from a prospective employer, especially since she wore no wedding ring. In any case, as soon as there was a let-up in the weather, they would be off to Oxford. When that happened there should be work a-plenty for the Sultan and the Odyssey, with a backlog of goods piling up in the warehouses.
While she walked along the towpath towards Rugby, through that flat and bleak landscape, she pondered her lot. Her baby would be born sometime in May, she’d worked out. It would be hard trying to wean a child and bring it up decently on a narrowboat, but the prospect did not daunt her unduly. Her mother had done it several times; most of the boatwomen had done it at some time. She was lucky as well in that she would have the help and support of her family. They had not condemned her for getting caught with a child out of wedlock. They merely hoped that once this awful winter was past they could be on the move again. If they could find Algie before she had the baby, and in time to get wed, so much the better. They would regale him with the news that he was about to become a father. Marigold just hoped she had not driven him away completely by her jealousy over Harriet Meese. She was frustrated at her inability to give him her heartfelt apologies and patch things up; she couldn’t write, so was unable to send him a letter. Yet even if she could, she had no idea where to write to; he could be living anywhere since his family had left the lock-keeper’s cottage at Buckpool.
She bore Algie no animosity for her condition; she was as much part as he was of the private covenant that caused it, just as keen to indulge in the delightful pastime that created this child she was carrying. She recalled with fondness and pleasure the times they had lain in the grassy hollow just off Watery Lane near Dadford’s Shed, hidden by gorse bushes aflame with bright yellow flowers during that glorious summer last year. If only she could recapture those times of loving tenderness and live them again. She would do nothing different, only curb her jealousy. This absence from Algie had made her realise that jealousy was not pleasant; it made you miserable, it sowed mistrust, it had cost her her love and, in consequence, any chance she felt she had of future happiness. Even if she experienced jealousy again, she vowed to herself never to reveal it.
Naturally, she wondered how Algie was, what he was doing, how his work was faring, whether he still loved her as much as she loved him. Even if he didn’t love her, how often did he think about her? She hoped against hope that she had not driven him back to the arms of Harriet. She would never forgive herself if she had.
She trudged on towards Rugby. She knew that after about half an hour’s brisk walking she could leave the canal at Barby Wood Bridge and take the lane north. Otherwise the canal would take her around the east of the town and add an extra mile to her journey. Her feet were cold, her nose was cold, and her ears ached where the ice-cold studs of her dangling earrings pierced her lobes, but she pressed on, duly leaving the canal.
It was a change to walk along a lane and see the occasional horse and cart, hear the sounds of farmyards. Eventually, after walking for more than an hour, she found herself on Rugby’s Lawrence Sheriff Street, and crossed it to the footpath on the opposite side. A troop of boys in a military column headed towards her, all dressed alike, evidently from the Rugby School which she was now passing. One or two of them were looking at her with interest.
Pretending she hadn’t noticed them, she turned right into High Street, drawn by the shops and inns, and decided to ask in each and every one if they needed an assistant. Her inability to read would be a handicap, but she could count money and, once she knew the prices of everything, nobody would be any the wiser. The first place she tried was a drapery shop, and she got short shrift there. She didn’t like the place anyway, nor the man who owned it, whom an assistant referred to as Mr Bromwich. Next was a bookshop … well, that would be a waste of time … She tried a grocer and tea dealer, a clockmaker, a tailor and woollen draper, a butcher’s shop, an ironmongery, even a café, and was losing heart …
Then she happened upon a baker’s shop, and she thought about Kate Stokes. She gazed in the window at the different loaves of bread, at the iced buns, at the fancy cakes. When she smelled the fresh-baked bread wafting deliciously into the street she realised she was hungry. She plucked up her courage and went inside. The homely warmth and divine aromas seemed to embrace her.
A man in a white apron and a straw hat was transferring egg custards from an enamelled tray onto a counter display.
‘Yes, my lover?’
‘Excuse me, sir, but I’m looking for work,’ Marigold said hesitantly. ‘I wondered if you needed anybody to help in the shop.’
‘How old are you, my dear?’ he enquired amenably, still transferring the egg custards.
‘Nineteen, sir.’
‘And what’s your name?’
‘Marigold Bingham.’
‘Bingham?’ He pondered the name for a second or two. He had finished what he was doing and looked at her with curiosity. ‘Can’t say as I know any Binghams … Rugby lass, are ye?’
She smiled apologetically. ‘No, sir.’
‘I thought not. Where’re you from then?’
‘The canal at Willoughby.’ She decided it was best to be totally frank. ‘Me father’s a number one on the narrowboats and we’m stuck in the ice there. I needs to find work to see us over, ’cause we’ve run out of money
.’
The man smiled kindly, moved by her candour and refreshing lack of pretence. ‘By God, I bet it’s cold on them narrowboats this weather, eh?’
‘Well, we got stoves and all that,’ she said brightly. ‘We keep warm most of the time.’
He looked pensive. ‘I’ve already got a lass who works with me in the shop,’ he said. ‘So I don’t need anybody in here.’
Marigold’s expression told of her disappointment.
‘Mind you,’ he went on, ‘I could do with somebody in the bakehouse. Somebody hard-working who I could rely on. Have you had any experience working in a bakehouse?’
Marigold shook her head.
‘It’s nice and warm in the bakehouse,’ the man said temptingly, ‘what with the oven and that. D’you like cakes?’
‘Oh, I love cakes.’
He grinned matily. ‘We bake cakes after the bread. You’d love ours. Best in Rugby … and beyond, if you want the truth. Have you got your character?’
Marigold looked at him, puzzled.
‘A letter from a previous employer saying how reliable and trustworthy you are,’ he explained.
She shook her head. ‘Didn’t know as I’d need one. I never worked for nobody before, ’cept me dad. He’d tell you right enough that I’m reliable and trustworthy, though, and no mistake.’
The man laughed, taken with this girl’s openness and lack of guile. ‘I don’t need your character, Marigold,’ he declared. ‘I know enough of human nature to know when to trust my own judgement. It’d mean starting early, you know. We have to get the bread baked in time for the shop opening. Could you get here by five in a morning if you gotta walk all the way from Willoughby?’
‘Yes,’ she said eagerly, her face lighting up. ‘I could do that.’ She was calculating what time she’d need to get up to get there on time. It would be the middle of the night, but she would do it. Her family needed the money and they were depending on her.
‘Then you’ve found yourself a bit o’ work, miss, to tide you over. I bet there’s a train you could catch at Willoughby Station, save your legs. You’d have to find out if they run that early, though.’
‘Depends how much it costs, sir. Anyhow, what’s the wages?’
‘Two shillings a day, eh? And I’ll throw in a loaf of bread every day as well for your family, eh? Can you start tomorrow?’
‘Yes, if you want me to. But when would I get paid?’
‘Of a Saturday. This coming Saturday, I’ll pay yer what you’ve earned in the week out the till, eh? No working a week in hand with me, especially if you’re all strapped for cash. How does that sound?’
Marigold nodded. ‘Oh, thank you, Mr—’
‘Fairfax, miss.’
‘Thank you, Mr Fairfax. It all sounds very fair. I’ll start tomorrow, then. Five in the morning.’
‘Oh … and here’s an egg custard for you to be going on with.’ He picked one off his display and, with a jovial smile on his kind face, placed it carefully in a bag and handed it to her. ‘You look as though you could do with feeding up a bit …’
Chapter 26
After those evenings Algie spent with Aurelia at the Eagle Hotel, he returned home and took himself off to bed, too tired and too contented to take much notice of what was going on around him at home. Then came the unavoidable interruption; the day that Benjamin returned from his trip to Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. Their assignations, of necessity, had to be suspended till the day he went off again somewhere else.
Algie and Aurelia had agreed a signal to let him know for certain when Benjamin was away, for he could not entirely rely on the information he picked up at work. Benjamin might be away from work at any time; it did not necessarily follow that he would be away from home. When Benjamin had gone away Aurelia would place a red vase containing yellow paper flowers in her bedroom window. Leaving a gas lamp turned up bright and the curtains open would draw his attention to it as he rode past on his way home from work. The maid would not have the temerity to alter it, so the signal could be relied on, she assured him. The plan was to meet at the Eagle Hotel about seven the same evening. If a room was available they would rent it; if not, they would seek accommodation elsewhere.
Three whole weeks passed and Algie was hungry for Aurelia. Enquiries at work had failed to reveal any planned trips. During the third week of February, with still no hint of a departure for Benjamin, Algie went to bed dispirited. Naturally enough, he pondered on Aurelia, reliving the tender hours they’d spent together making love in that hotel room in Dudley. He tossed and turned with frustration. If only they could meet soon, so that he could tell her how he felt. There were still so many things that had to be said, so many more assurances yet to be made, so many more emotions and sensations yet to be explored.
His brooding was disturbed by the sound, coming from the landing, of a door catch, followed by the familiar creak of floorboards. He had all but forgotten about these strange nocturnal activities. Somebody was up to something nefarious, and right under their very noses. He sat up in bed, listening intently.
A door clicked shut again.
Algie slid out of bed in his nightshirt, silently opened his own bedroom door a little and harkened. He could hear nothing. The silence in the darkness was actually overwhelming. Aware that he too might cause the floorboards to creak and so alert the culprit, he crept out onto the landing gingerly. Thankfully, there was only the slightest creak, barely audible. A minute went by … two minutes … Then a stifled chuckle emanated from Kate’s room.
Algie lingered, inordinately curious. Before long he was rewarded with the sound of creaking bed springs, restrained but still clear in the surrounding silence. What cheeky swine possessed the gall to enter this house at night and indulge himself with his sister?
He had an idea.
Whoever it was must have come in through the back door. To make it as easy and as quiet as possible, Kate must be deliberately leaving it unlocked. He would go down, lock it back up again and hide the key. That way, the cheeky swine would be trapped, unable to get out. He would love to see the look on the face of either Reggie Hodgetts or Clarence Froggatt, whichever it was, when he realised there was no way out except by Algie’s kind permission. He particularly hoped it was Clarence Froggatt; would he have something to report to Harriet …
Downstairs he crept, feeling his way to the back door in the darkness. Fully expecting to open the door, he tried the handle, but the door was locked. He felt for the key and found it, gently turned it one way, then the other. It had been locked all the time.
The front door then … He made his way through the hall, his bare feet tingling with cold by this time on the icy tiles. The front door was locked too.
It could mean only one thing; the culprit must have been entering early and hiding in the house all the time; a highly risky pursuit. There was nothing for it but to wait.
So he waited.
He sat on the floor of his own bedroom with the door ajar so that he had a view along the landing to Kate’s room. His eyes gradually grew accustomed to the darkness and he was able to see sufficiently well. An unremitting draught seared across the landing, drawn by the chimney in his own room, and Algie shivered. It was cold enough to warrant a fire in his room and it had been banked up with slack. Most of its heat was going up the chimney anyway, affording little warmth to the room, till he opened the flue in the morning and gave it a poke.
He had no idea how long he waited, but eventually he heard a muffled voice. At once he was alert, peering into the dimness, focusing on Kate’s door. Before much longer it opened, and the night-shirted figure of a tall man silently appeared and immediately disappeared, like some grey, floating spectre, into the room his mother shared with … Murdoch …
Bloody hell!
Just what was going on?
In that split second of realisation all emotion drained from Algie. He was aware only that he was chilled, chilled to the marrow. Almost in a trance he stalked across his bedroom
to the fireplace. A set of fire brasses stood on the tiled hearth and he picked out the poker. He poked the slumbering fire and opened the flue. The coals guttered into life. The smouldering slack, wetted and patted down on top of the coals to make it last the night – but dry now – ignited into a fluster of sparks and half-hearted blue flames. Algie sat cross-legged before this display of hampered pyrotechnics and stretched out his hands to warm them, hardly able to come to terms with this devastating discovery. He rubbed his feet to restore some semblance of warmth to them, and realised he might be warmer in bed.
But bed, for once, offered no enticement.
As the fire’s flames spread and its warmth increased he went across to the window and parted the curtains. The frosted trees on the opposite side of the road were silhouetted against the lighter clouds of night. A barn owl, like some airborne ghoul, flitted silently past the window looking for prey.
He wished he’d had a drink or two, that he’d gone to bed drunk and slept undisturbed in a stupor all night. Better to be ignorant of this abominable liaison than to be aware of it, and not know what to do for the best. He wished, too, that his feet were not still so cold as he stood on the oilcloth under the window. He wished he could stop this shivering. Maybe it was nerves. Yet no wonder.
Slowly, the first coherent thoughts of exactly what was going on began to infiltrate his mind; his sister and his stepfather! Murdoch Osborne was committing adultery with his own stepdaughter. The picture invading his mind was suddenly extraordinarily vivid, almost as if it were a photograph and hanging, lit up, on his bedroom wall. And what a picture it was! Did they understand just what they were doing, those two? His sister and his stepfather? Did they comprehend the implications, the likely consequences? And not necessarily the consequences of Kate conceiving a bastard child from this ill-matched and stupid liaison. The consequences would affect each of them, and in different ways.
Algie had half a mind to go to Kate’s room. He felt like giving her a thorough shaking and a good slap across her stupid face. How could anybody be so half-witted as to take her mother’s husband for her lover? Had she no respect, no feelings for her poor mother? Come to that, what respect did she have for herself? None, obviously. She deserved to be on the receiving end of some avenging justice. But what? Plain, down-to-earth adultery was one thing, but this … His sister and his stepfather! This whole thing was bizarre, scandalous. It was so loathsome and unspeakable that it was not something you could broach with the perpetrators without creating monstrous upheaval. It would be like stirring up a wasps’ nest. Worse. Most likely, what they were doing was illegal.