by Nancy Carson
‘What?’ he uttered miserably instead. ‘What does it mean?’
‘It means that you are living in the house I used to live in. Which bedroom do you sleep in?’
‘One on the front. At the end of the landing on the right.’
‘That was mine! Oh, fancy, Algie, you’re sleeping in the same room I used to sleep in. Such a bizarre coincidence, don’t you think?’
‘Pity you still don’t,’ he said, trying to sound cheerful. ‘I wouldn’t be so cold and lonely at night.’
‘Just think. If things hadn’t happened the way they did, I might still be living there. You and I would have met anyway. That proves we were destined to meet. Just imagine if you had been slipping into my room in the dead of night,’ she chuckled artfully. ‘Because there’s no doubt in my mind that we would have become lovers sooner or later. Don’t you think so, Algie?’
‘The fact that your father married my mother wouldn’t have stopped me fancying you, Aurelia.’
‘Nor me you. That much I know.’
‘But I’m not even sure it’s legal,’ he remarked. ‘Stepbrother and stepsister.’
‘If they are of different blood, then there’s nothing to stop them. And we are of different blood, Algie. We could have married.’
I wish I had your confidence, he thought. ‘Your mother died a couple of years ago, didn’t she?’
‘Three and a half years ago. She died in the July. Her death was one of the reasons I was in such a rush to leave and get married …’
‘Oh? Why?’
‘Because I had to get away from my father,’ she explained. ‘I only stayed at home for the sake of my mother. When she died, the offer of marriage from Benjamin was an escape for me. My father assented to it because I believe he was just as glad to be rid of me.’
‘You seem to spend your life trying to escape one master for another,’ he commented.
She laughed. ‘Yes, I suppose it must seem that way.’
‘So why did you want to escape from your father?’
‘Because of what he did to my mother. He ruined her. I loathe and detest him for it, Algie. I couldn’t have stayed with him after my mother died if they’d crowned me with gold.’
‘So what did he do?’
‘The same as he’s done to your mother …’
‘Had an affair, you mean?’
Aurelia nodded. ‘It came to light, some years ago – I forget how exactly – that he’d had an affair with my mother’s youngest sister. It caused ructions in the family.’
‘Struth! I don’t suppose your mother was very impressed with this revelation.’
‘Well, you can just imagine, can’t you?… She never got over it. From that moment her health declined. She shut herself off from my father and from the rest of the world. I wanted to finish my schooling to be with her and to look after her, and so did my sister who is younger than me, but Mother wouldn’t hear of it. I dreaded school holidays, but I knew I had to go home to look after my mother and offer her my support, but I had nothing to do with my father ever again. In the house I avoided him like the plague. In the end I think my mother died of shame. In her day she was a beautiful woman, you know. From a respectable family. All the women on her side were beauties, though I say so myself.’
‘That’s who you get your looks from, eh? Your mother.’
‘Well, if I have decent looks at all, they’re certainly not from my father,’ she said scornfully.
‘So what happened to your sister?’
‘Rosalind? Oh, she seized her chance and eloped with a young soldier, a captain. She, at least, is very content with her lot.’
‘Her eloping raised a few eyebrows, I bet.’
‘Not half as many as my father’s affair with his sister-in-law would’ve raised, had that become common knowledge. Can you imagine?’
‘Just think,’ he said. ‘If you had married Clarence, he would have been Murdoch’s son-in-law. I presume Clarence knows all about Murdoch and your aunt.’
‘Oh, I doubt it very much. He knew I was not very friendly with my father, but he didn’t know the reason, I’m sure. Consequently, Clarence sided with me and didn’t admire my father for the simple reason that I didn’t.’
‘And yet he still joined the amateur dramatics society, and performed in their plays under his direction.’
‘Not till after I broke off our engagement. Maybe he felt peeved and thought he might get some sympathy from my father. They had women of the same family in common after all.’
‘I can’t get over you being Murdoch’s daughter,’ Algie said after a brief silence. ‘Where does that put us now, I wonder?’
‘Why should it make any difference?’
He sighed heavily. ‘It shouldn’t,’ he replied, giving the answer that would provoke no alarm or heart searching.
Of course it would not be expedient to reveal his suspicions. He had no proof that he was Murdoch’s son. He might yet be wrong. But if he suggested that they might be closely related, Aurelia might well find their affair an abomination and end it when, in the long run, there might be no need. He enjoyed the intimate stolen hours he spent with Aurelia. Being suddenly faced with the possibility that he was her half-brother could hardly alter the way he felt, nor could it obliterate the intimacy they’d already shared. What was done was done, whether she turned out to be his half-sister or no. Only convention could have any material effect at all.
‘I wonder what time it is,’ he said. ‘If the snow’s coming down heavy maybe we’d best leave while the trams are still running.’ His inbred regard for the morals of convention and decency were surfacing within him; his suggestion would give her the opportunity to take advantage of the offer of escape under the pretext of the foul weather, and yet be a salve to his own probity.
‘So soon?’ she protested.
He clambered out of bed and peered through the curtains. Snow was still falling, but it was certainly no blizzard. He watched a tram chug past from the direction of Top Church.
‘The trams are still running,’ he reported.
‘I can hear.’
‘It’s not too bad out there. In any case, we could walk it if need be.’
‘So come back to bed, Algie.’
He looked at her, her head just visible over the sheets, her hair awry, her eyes wide with expectation.
‘Come back to bed and let me try and take your mind off things.’
He grinned. Of course he was going back to bed. How could he resist? She was so beautiful, so desirable, and so appreciative. Odds were that she was not his half-sister anyway …
Aurelia stepped off the tram into the flurrying snow. As she crossed the street, Algie caught sight of her and waved. She blew him a kiss in return, and disappeared into the darkness. Pondering their night of love and the things they had spoken of, she sauntered the short distance home. Yes, it was very tempting to leave Benjamin, and elope with Algie, to dwell in some strange town where nobody knew them, where they could live happily as man and wife and bring up Benjie as their own. It certainly appealed to her romantic instincts. But she could not pin her hopes on that just yet; she was conscious that the uncertainties raised by Algie’s sister’s affair with Murdoch Osborne, damn him, were too real and must affect everything at some time or other. Time alone would determine their fate, and it would be foolhardy to rush into anything now.
She walked at a leisurely pace up the drive to the house, the gravel and the fresh snow crisp beneath her feet. It must be about half past ten, she reckoned. Not too late; not extravagantly late at any rate. Mary might still be up awaiting her return. Lamps from a couple of the front downstairs rooms shone out welcomingly onto the snow through the windows, suggesting that the girl was still up.
She opened the front door and entered. The drawing room was lit up. Strange. Mary would not presume to sit in there to wait. Then she smelled tobacco smoke, heard the rustle of a newspaper. Her heart, all of a sudden, seemed to have stopped beating.
> ‘Is that you, Aurelia?’
Benjamin.
‘Yes, it’s me, Benjamin. You’re home a day early.’
‘To be sure. Where the hell have you been?’
She presented herself at the door in her snow-flecked mantle and bonnet.
‘Oh, I, er …’ She scoured her mind for a plausible excuse. ‘I only popped out to see Mrs Holden, my dressmaker.’
He looked at her in patent disbelief. ‘On a night like this?’
‘I had … a note in the post this morning. There was a query on a new dress I ordered.’
‘Take your hat off.’
Biddably, she doffed her hat and melting snowflakes dripped onto the carpet at her feet.
‘Are you sure that pulling a dress over your head at the dressmaker’s has made your hair so unkempt?’ He got up from his chair, putting the newspaper down and approached her, his eyes steady upon her. ‘You look as if you’ve just got out of bed. Are you sure you’ve not taken to becoming a dolly-mop to earn some pin money on my nights away?’
Maybe he knew.
Good God, what if he knew?
Aurelia feared that he might have guessed, just from the lingering, tell-tale signs of passion enjoyed; her rounded cheeks still glowing from recent exertion, her eyes, still soft and dreamy and full of the loving tenderness she’d shared with Algie Stokes. Aurelia felt naked under her husband’s scrutiny, as if he could even perceive her wetness from ardent and prolonged lovemaking, could see the sensual skin of her pleasured body glowing like a lamp through the fabric of her clothes where Algie had caressed and savoured her. The intense tingling she’d felt deep in her groin that still lingered, seemed to be radiating its message. In a brief exchange of wordless looks, he seemed to know.
‘Go and tidy yourself up, Aurelia.’
‘I’m going to bed anyway.’
She could not shift from her mind, however, the sheer joy and pleasure of feasting on Algie’s torrential desire. It was going to be hard to contain her emotions; it was going to be even harder to maintain her equilibrium in her increasingly mundane marriage. But did Benjamin really know anything? He had not accused her directly. Maybe he was just testing, to see her reactions. Well, she would test him. She turned back to her husband.
‘Are you suggesting I’ve been with another man? Or even men?’
‘How the hell would I know whether you have or no, without having you followed? But your leaving the house while I’m away, and coming back at this hour looks mighty suspicious.’
‘And what if I told you I had been with another man?’ she asked airily. ‘What would you do?’
‘Have you been with another man?’
‘As I told you, Benjamin, I’ve been to see my dressmaker. But you haven’t answered my question. What would you do if I had been with another man?’
‘I’d whip you. I’d thrash you good and hard.’
‘Which would endear you to me no end … Wouldn’t it occur to you that maybe I have reason enough to be unfaithful, Benjamin? You don’t care for me anyway. You treat me like a servant. In fact, you are more polite, more considerate to our servants than you are to me. Never have you shown me any tenderness, any consideration. At the first opportunity it’s your intention to rob me of my son by packing him off to some distant boarding school. You have no interest in what happens to me or to him. Yet you were quick enough to steal me from under the nose of Clarence Froggatt, wooing me with fine words and promises of enduring happiness, none of which have ever materialised. Oh, you flaunted me in front of your friends and your family, putting on a show of attention, so that they could envy you and compliment you on your choice of fiancée. But all it tells me is that you are only interested in yourself. It tells me that all I ever was to you was an ornament, a fashion accessory that enhanced your own standing in the eyes of others. Once you married me – once you owned me – once I was out of everybody else’s reach – it seemed that you wished you hadn’t bothered. Looking back at the frequency of our intimacy, it amazes me that Benjie was ever conceived.’
‘Since you mention it, I’ve harboured the same doubts.’
Aurelia looked at him scornfully. ‘Oh, you can be sure he’s your child … Our marriage doesn’t work,’ she went on after a pause. ‘Oh, it might work for you. I’m sure it works very well for you. But it certainly doesn’t work for me. Marriage is not merely a convenience for men to be waited on hand and foot, to bed their wives for a bit of selfish sexual indulgence whenever the fancy takes them. It is a partnership – or it should be. Two people striving together, in harmony, with love and visible affection between them, sharing the responsibility of raising the children they have made. I don’t see our marriage in that light, Benjamin. Nor can you.’
‘So, as far as you’re concerned it’s failed.’
‘Yes. To be frank.’
‘I had no idea you felt that way, Aurelia,’ he said limply.
‘Because you don’t look. I’ve felt it since Benjie was a tiny baby. I should have spoken of it sooner, perhaps. It’s as if you think I should be grateful to you for you deigning to marry me.’
‘You were grateful, at the time, I seem to remember.’
‘I would have survived. Possibly better if I’d stuck it out.’
‘Then see if you can still survive, my dear,’ he said ominously. ‘Maybe we should consider a separation. A temporary one at any rate, to see whether we’re as incompatible as you make out.’
‘Yes, perhaps we should,’ she replied, prepared to call his bluff, and left him to go to bed.
While they waited for the tram back home, Algie and Aurelia had talked about ways he could approach the problem of his sister and his stepfather, but reached no conclusion. She’d suggested that if his mother’s marriage had not been consummated, then it was likely it could be annulled. Algie, however, considered such a circumstance unlikely, given Murdoch’s past record.
Despite his evening of stolen love, Algie was depressed. Doubts about his parentage rendered the prospect of any elopement with Aurelia abhorrent. He would carry the burden of this secret fear alone, however, until such time as it was resolved. Its outcome would determine any future they might have together but, if it turned out that he was Murdoch’s son, telling her would be the hardest thing he’d ever have to face.
Anger and concern about Kate’s perilously illicit affair with Murdoch, and not least his worries for his mother, were piling up on him as well. His mother did not deserve this degeneracy going on behind her back, whatever she might or might not have been capable of in the past. She had only recently buried Will, her first husband. Now her second marriage was in turmoil, although she was not aware of it yet. Algie just did not know what to do with the devastating knowledge he possessed, and it was driving him mad, tearing at his emotions.
Algie arrived back home shortly after Kate and Murdoch returned from the Drill Hall and their rehearsal. Murdoch walked in the house noisily stamping the snow off his boots, after tacking down the horse. He greeted Clara cursorily.
‘Where’s Kate?’ Algie asked.
‘In the scullery getting me my tot of whisky,’ his mother replied. ‘Can’t do without my tot of whisky these days.’
Murdoch smiled patronisingly. ‘Yes, get it down you, my flower. It does you the world of good.’
Algie looked at him with loathing for being so two-faced. How he hated this man. ‘I think I’ll have one as well, Mother,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and do it and take it up to bed with me.’ It would get him out of the way. Besides, he needed a drink after what he’d learned tonight; that Murdoch was Aurelia’s father.
Kate had taken the bottle of whisky to the scullery and, as he entered, he witnessed her pouring a few drops of something from a tiny bottle, patently not whisky, into the glass.
‘What’s that you’ve got there?’ he queried, alarmed at what it might be.
‘Oh, it’s you, Algie.’ She smiled innocently, sweetly, and quickly turned her back on him to put the c
ork back in the tiny bottle and slip it into the pocket of her skirt without him seeing. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’
‘Answer my question,’ he rasped, his patience in tatters. ‘What have you just put into Mother’s glass of whisky?’
‘Nothing,’ she protested.
‘You liar. I just saw you.’
‘Don’t you dare call me a liar, Algie Stokes,’ she answered with indignation. ‘You’ve got a nerve.’
‘Give me that bottle you had in your hand a second ago.’
‘What bottle? You’re seeing things. Look …’ She raised the empty palms of her hands to show him.
‘I know what I saw, Kate. What have you done with it?’ He glanced around him rapidly but there was no sign of it.
‘You’re going mad, our Algie,’ she said, laughing scornfully. ‘I’ve thought it for some time now. You’re going soft in the head.’
‘Soft in the head I might be and no wonder at it, but my eyes have never deceived me yet. What have you done with it? Is it in the pocket of your skirt?’
‘Don’t be daft. There is no bottle.’
He grabbed hold of her, surprising her, and felt around her skirt deftly where he knew her pockets to be. There was something hard there, something that could well have been a small bottle. But Kate soon recovered her equilibrium and struggled frantically, releasing herself from his grip.
‘How dare you assault me,’ she hissed, trying to maintain some semblance of quietness, to keep this matter private, and not to alert the rest of the household.
‘I swear I just felt it in your pocket. Give it me.’
‘Go and jump in the cut.’
Algie grabbed her again, twisting her round so that her back was towards him. He thrust one arm around her neck and pinned both her arms together tight behind her with his superior strength, so that she could not strike out at him.
‘You’re hurting me, you swine,’ she shrieked.
She wriggled like a snake in her effort to break free, calling him all the names she could lay her tongue to, but his greater force ensured he held her fast. She kicked out at him with her heels and hurt his shins. He winced with the pain, but would not let go. Eventually, accepting that she was trapped, she ceased her struggling. When he sensed that he could let go of his arm from around her neck he fished in her skirt pocket. As he withdrew the bottle, he shoved her away and scrutinised it.