The Lock-Keeper's Son

by Nancy Carson

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, turning round with a smile of relief.

  ‘Were you expecting somebody else?’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ She took his arm with warm affection and they began walking in the direction of the Eagle Hotel. ‘I saw you ride past the house on your way home from the factory. You slowed down and looked straight up at my bedroom window, then sped off. I knew you’d seen the vase. Didn’t you see me?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. Anyway, the plan works.’

  ‘This time at any rate.’ She gave his arm a squeeze. ‘Oh, I’m so thrilled to see you again, Algie. It seems ages.’

  ‘You look lovely, Aurelia.’ He looked into her clear eyes and grinned. It seemed the first time in ages he’d had occasion to be happy.

  ‘Thank you. Do I really?’

  ‘I don’t know how I keep my hands off you. I’d give anything to throw my arms around you now, in full view of everybody in Dudley, and give you a great big lingering kiss on the lips.’

  That made her laugh. ‘You’ve no idea how much it means to hear you say that, how much I’ve been looking forward to tonight.’

  ‘How d’you think I’ve felt?’

  ‘The same, I hope.’

  ‘Course I have … Are you hungry?’

  ‘Yes … but not for food particularly,’ she added coyly.

  He chuckled at the incongruity of her words and her manner of speaking them. ‘Well, I’m starving,’ he replied. ‘For food and for you. I bet that Mr Powell will look at us sideways when he sees us again.’

  ‘He should be glad of the business.’

  ‘I reckon he is … By the way, have you taken your wedding ring off?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘We’re a courting couple, aren’t we? I’m not a married woman engaging in a scandalous affair, as far as Mr Powell is concerned.’

  Snow was falling, swirling round in the wind, flakes swarming around the street lamps like white moths. Aurelia looked up into the slate-grey sky and blinked as the snowflakes skimmed her long eyelashes.

  ‘Don’t you mean to stay out all night?’ he asked, fearing a heavier fall and a problem returning home. ‘You haven’t got your overnight case.’

  ‘I have to get back,’ she replied apologetically. ‘Maude isn’t there to look after Benjie if he wakes – only Mary. She was granted the evening off by Benjamin. I can’t think why, can you?’ She looked into his eyes and smiled, as if to say that it didn’t matter anyway so long as she had him to love instead. ‘Besides,’ she went on, ‘it will look awfully odd to Mary if I too decide to spend the night away every time Benjamin does. Don’t you think? I get funny looks from both Maude and Mary as it is, when I tell them I’m going out. I only ever go out alone when he’s away. Lord knows what they must think.’

  ‘Then for the sake of their easy minds let’s hope the snow keeps off and doesn’t detain you.’

  ‘Well, that might not be so bad anyway,’ she answered with an angelic smile. ‘It’s not out of choice that I go back home.’

  They reached the Eagle Hotel and entered. Mr Powell spotted them and approached at once while they scanned the room for a free table.

  ‘Mr Stokes,’ he greeted. ‘Miss, er … Dinner for two?’

  ‘Yes,’ Algie replied, then added in a low voice, ‘and afters please, if you can accommodate us,’

  ‘Of course,’ Mr Powell said quietly, smirking to himself. ‘I’ll arrange for a fire to be lit at once. Your usual room?’

  Algie nodded and allowed Mr Powell to lead them to a vacant table.

  Aurelia ate little, but talked brightly while he listened and ate heartily. Her lively chatter pushed to the back of his mind for a while the unresolved problems he’d left at home. She gossiped about everyday things, told Algie how she’d been filling her days, all the time thinking about him, longing to be with him. ‘It’s torture,’ she said, ‘when I know you are there and I’m not able to see you, just because I’m married to him, and I have to sit in his house and pretend to everybody that I’m his devoted wife. I sit downstairs, or in my bedroom, in the dark and wait just to see you ride past our house. I feel such a hypocrite.’

  ‘If you won’t leave him, what can you expect?’

  ‘A little sympathy might not come amiss, Algie,’ she pouted. ‘I can’t leave him, can I? You know I can’t leave him.’

  ‘I don’t reckon I’m capable of giving much sympathy at the moment. You’ll have to forgive me, Aurelia. I’m afraid I’ve got troubles enough of my own to worry about.’

  ‘Why? What’s wrong?’

  ‘Oh, nothing to do with you and me.’ He smiled reassuringly, and reached for her hand across the table.

  ‘What then? Do you want to tell me?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘But it doesn’t concern us?’

  ‘No, no. It concerns my sister.’

  ‘Is she in trouble?’

  ‘She’s ever likely to be …’

  ‘Does Clarence Froggatt have anything to do with it?’

  He shook his head, his expression grim. ‘No, it’s nothing to do with Clarence … I don’t want to talk about it, Aurelia. I want to forget all about it while I’m with you. Only because I have no desire to trouble you with it.’

  She smiled sympathetically. ‘Then let’s be happy that we are together, if only for a few hours.’

  He nodded and smiled, gladdened by her tenderness. ‘If you’re ready, I’ll get the room key off Mr Powell.’

  By the time they entered the room the fire was blazing gloriously. Algie parted the curtains and looked out onto the street below. It was still snowing, but not heavily, and there was a mere suggestion of a covering on the ground. He undressed quickly and dived into bed naked.

  ‘God, it’s cold in this bed.’

  ‘Warm my side up please, Algie,’ she pleaded as she doffed her chemise. ‘Maybe we should’ve asked for a warming pan.’

  ‘No need,’ he said, shivering. ‘Quick, get in here. We can warm each other.’

  She slid in beside him and laughed, then shivered too as the cold of the sheets enveloped her. She snuggled up to him, and he luxuriated in the warmth and smoothness of her skin against him. He held her tight, their lips met and they kissed passionately. Her leg came across his and they were instantly entwined in a fervour of mutual desire. There was barely any time for foreplay, barely any need. He rolled onto her, pressed himself urgently against her for entry. She gripped his buttocks and, with an ecstatic vocal gasp, felt him slide easily into her with such sweet, sweet intensity.

  ‘Oh, Algie,’ she sighed. ‘I’ve wanted you so much …’ She relished the pleasure that was flowing through her and out of her.

  This must be how it is for a husband come home from the seas or from the wars, Algie thought as he wallowed in the sumptuous sensations she eagerly bestowed on him. The feel of her as he moved inside her was delightfully familiar by now, of course, and yet somehow new, fresh and unexplored. It was a sheer, sensual joy to be here, and the comparison crossed his mind, not for the first time, between Aurelia and Marigold. For a few seconds he imagined it was Marigold beneath him, moving in pleasurable concert and emitting little vocal sighs, just like she used to do. Oh, where was Marigold now?

  They lay silent in each other’s arms for some time afterwards, content and perspiring in the heat of that room with its blazing fire. The ceiling was alive with the swirling glimmer of the fire’s flames, which cast a jigging shadow of the unlit gaslight hanging down. Algie absently watched this frolicking display for some time, while Aurelia lay with her eyes closed, a look of serenity on her beautiful face.

  Thank God he had Aurelia. She was a sort of touchstone, as she had been in the past. She was easy to talk to, easy to pour out your troubles to, as well as being an enthusiastic lover. And he had troubles enough looming. Troubles galore. Troubles on which he would dearly love some sound advice.

  ‘Aurelia, are you awake?’

  ‘Yes, I’m awake, my love,�
� she answered softly. ‘I was just resting my eyes, thinking how lovely it would be to wake up next to you each morning.’

  ‘Yes, wouldn’t that be grand? But even that would become commonplace after a while.’

  ‘Of course it would,’ she sighed. ‘But at least we’d be happy, wouldn’t we? You can put up with the commonplace easily enough if you’re happy. I know we would be happy, you and me. I sense it. We’re like souls, Algie, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ he said sincerely. ‘I don’t feel as if I have to put on airs and graces for you.’

  ‘Nor should you. I don’t put on airs and graces for you. I am as I am. But we understand each other, don’t we? We have a rapport.’

  ‘Yes, a rapport,’ he repeated with a smile. ‘That’s a good word.’

  ‘It is. It describes us perfectly.’ She turned towards him and fingered the patch of sparse hairs that were sprouting on his chest. ‘The only insurmountable problem is the fact that I can never be yours. Oh, I’m yours in spirit – you know I am – but I can never be yours in reality. The fact that you understand it so readily makes it easier for us in a way. At least I’m glad of that.’

  ‘How does it make it easier for me?’ he asked. ‘I hate the thought of you and your husband … It’s just something else to myther about … I wish you’d leave him.’

  ‘It’s a tempting thought, believe me.’

  He turned onto his side to face her. Up till now she’d said it was impossible, unthinkable. ‘Then do it.’

  ‘But where would I go?’

  ‘We could live in glorious sin together.’ He grinned boyishly. ‘Just think – we’d be the talk of the place.’

  ‘Where would we live?’

  ‘I’d rent a house … A long way from here, where nobody knows us.’

  ‘Your romantic streak is getting the better of you again, Algie.’ She planted a kiss on his lips. ‘But I love you the more because of it.’

  ‘Just think,’ he said again, his enthusiasm for the idea increasing. ‘We could live as Mr and Mrs Stokes, and nobody need be any the wiser. Benjamin would be my son as far as anybody else was concerned. I’d find work wherever we went …’

  ‘But you wouldn’t be able to afford to send him to a public – or even a private – school.’

  That unanticipated comment highlighted his own limitations, and he felt suddenly inadequate. ‘But you’d have him with you all the time,’ he countered. ‘He needn’t leave home, I mean. There are other schools.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true …’

  ‘And, who knows? We might have children of our own.’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered dreamily. ‘Of course we might. Who knows?’

  ‘But I couldn’t afford to keep you in the way you’ve been used to,’ he admitted, expanding on the theme of his financial constraints to see how she would react. ‘There’d be no servants.’

  ‘Do servants make you happy, Algie? If I was happy I wouldn’t give a fig whether I had servants or not. They can be a bit intrusive, if you want to know the truth. They can steal your husband … Anyway, if I had no servants I would find things to occupy me all the time. Looking after my new family …’

  ‘Then will you think about it? Will you think seriously about leaving Benjamin and everything it involves?’

  ‘I will. It all sounds delicious. I’ll think about how many illegitimate children we might foist on the world in our life of relative poverty.’

  ‘Oh, we won’t be that poor,’ he said with a smile. ‘I intend to do well in life. But things might be hard at first.’

  ‘I wish you’d tell me what it is that’s troubling you about your sister,’ she said, changing tack completely. ‘It can’t be any worse than the usual scandal of being in the family way. There’s nothing fresh in that. It afflicts a lot of families.’

  He sighed heavily. ‘I feel too ashamed to tell you,’ he replied. ‘Lord knows what you would think of me and my family if I did. It’s dreadful, Aurelia. It really is.’

  ‘So you don’t want to tell me?’

  ‘Oh, I would tell you, if only to get it off my chest. But I’m fearful of what you might think of us afterwards.’

  ‘If it’s something your sister’s done, why should I think any the less of you?’

  ‘Because it’s bound to involve my mother and me at some time. Especially my mother.’ Suddenly his notions of eloping with Aurelia looked somewhat remote. ‘Sometime soon there’s going to be a massive eruption in our house, like some bloody great volcano going off.’

  ‘Do tell me, Algie,’ she begged. ‘It sounds such a juicy scandal. And I do love a juicy scandal.’

  ‘If I tell you, I don’t think you’ll want to risk being seen with me again. I doubt if you’d want to elope with me anymore. You’ll run a mile in the opposite direction.’

  ‘Oh, Algie,’ she sighed. ‘Nothing could ever be that bad. I love you, my darling. I’m hardly likely to turn against you. Especially about something over which you have no control, something that’s not your fault. You have to trust me more than that …’

  At the word ‘trust’ he felt more inclined to reveal the torrid secret. Of course he could trust her.

  ‘Well, all right … I suppose I’d better start at the beginning … It began just after my father died. The house we lived in was owned by the Stourbridge Canal Company and therefore tied to my father’s job as lock-keeper. So we had to move out of it to make way for a new chap who was due to take over. We had nowhere to go, of course. We knew we would have to rent a house, but there just hadn’t been the time to look, what with the upset, making funeral arrangements and everything else. So we rented two rooms at the Bell Hotel in Brierley Hill to tide us over. When along came this chap who, it turns out, used to be my mother’s sweetheart when she was about eighteen. He came to see her while me and our Kate were at work, and he suggested we all go and live with him. The only stipulation was that my mother should marry him – he was a widower, you see.

  ‘Well, to tell you the truth, Aurelia, I wasn’t very keen on the idea. My father was still warm in his grave, and I thought it was much too soon for her to think about marrying again. But she convinced herself that it was the right thing to do, and so I went along with it, thinking it might bring her some companionship and security in her later years. After all, I thought, I would most likely leave and get married at some time, and so would our Kate. So, from that point of view it seemed sensible.’

  ‘And did she?’ Aurelia asked. ‘Did your mother marry this man?’

  ‘By special licence within a couple of days. Then we all moved to his house in Kingswinford.’

  ‘And yet you’ve never told me any of this, Algie. Why?’

  ‘Because I was ashamed. I was ashamed of my mother marrying again so soon after my father’s death. And folk talked when news got out. I know how they talked.’

  ‘Folk do,’ she said. ‘Imagine what folk would say about us. They’d talk about me especially, a married woman having what they would regard as a sordid affair, especially if we go off and live in sin. Lord, they’d talk the clack off a church bell. But I don’t care. Our affair isn’t sordid, Algie. It’s beautiful. So they can say what they like. Words never hurt anyone … Anyway, we digress. How does your dear sister fit into all this?’

  ‘My dear sister already knew this chap … And I sort of knew him a bit, though I never really liked him. I don’t know, for the life of me, whether anything was going on between this chap and our Kate before, but—’

  ‘My God … Oh, Algie …’ Her face was an icon of sympathy and shock. ‘Are you saying something’s going on now?’

  ‘No question of it.’

  ‘But your poor mother … Are you absolutely certain of this?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘How can you be so certain?’

  ‘Because I’ve heard him go to her room at night. I’ve heard them at it – the bed springs creaking. I’ve seen him coming out of her bedroom afterwards and go b
ack into my mother’s.’

  Aurelia gasped. ‘Oh, but that’s just dreadful, Algie. No wonder you didn’t want to tell me … But what a risk they’re taking. Have they no sense, no respect? I mean, they’ve already been found out, haven’t they, if you’ve witnessed their comings and goings.’

  ‘But I’ve said nothing to anybody. Only you. I don’t know what I should do about it … If anything …’

  ‘Can’t you confront your sister?’

  ‘She’d only deny it.’

  ‘So how did she know this chap previously?’

  ‘Because she’s a member of the Brierley Hill Amateur Dramatics Society. She met him there.’

  ‘Oh?’ Aurelia looked suddenly alarmed. ‘You’ve already said it’s not Clarence Froggatt.’

  ‘Clarence is hardly likely to have wanted to marry my mother,’ he answered flippantly, belying his concern.

  ‘So who is it?’

  ‘His name’s Murdoch Osborne.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ She sat up, immediately erect, and held her head in her hands as if suddenly stricken with a severe pain.

  ‘What’s the matter, Aurelia? Do you know him or something?’

  ‘Do I know Murdoch Osborne? Oh, yes, I know him all right …

  ‘How?’

  ‘He is my father …’

  Chapter 28

  ‘You know what this means, Algie?’ Aurelia said, after the initial shock had worn off.

  That you might be my sister, he was half inclined to remark. The horrible possibility had been gnawing at him corrosively ever since his first doubts about his mother’s propriety, or lack of it, in her younger days; whether or not she’d had an illicit affair with Murdoch.