The Lock-Keeper's Son

by Nancy Carson

  ‘I’m worried about our Marigold, Seth,’ Hannah said, when their family were out of earshot. ‘I need to get her to our Edith’s to have this bab, but the weather’s against us as usual.’

  ‘What’s the rush?’ Seth queried. ‘It ain’t due till May.’

  ‘That’s if she’s worked it out properly. If you ask me, she’s a bit on the big side to be carrying a seventh month child. I wouldn’t be surprised if it came afore that.’

  ‘Well, when we’ve got shut of this gravel we’m a-carrying, I’ll see if we can’t get a load to the Black Country.’

  ‘But it could take weeks to get up to the Black Country, Seth, especially if this weather holds out. I don’t want her having this bab on the narrowboats, and especially not in this weather. If anything happened to her or the bab we’d never forgive ourselves.’

  ‘So what alternative is there?’

  ‘The train. I could take her to our Edith’s by train. If we could go tomorrow I’d be back the day after. The way the weather’s looking you’d still be here anyway.’

  ‘That’s if the trains am a-running,’ Seth reasoned. ‘How do we know the trains am a-running?’

  ‘The railway runs close by. I heard a train this morning. Some lines must be open at any rate. If not all. The railway companies will soon open them now the thaw’s set in.’

  ‘How much does it cost?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ Hannah asked. ‘My peace of mind is worth any price. I want her at our Edith’s.’

  ‘And what if your Edith don’t want her? You ain’t seen Edith for donkey’s years.’

  ‘Me and our Edith was always all right, you know we were. She’ll do it for me.’

  Chapter 31

  Algie rose from his bed and peered out of the window at the bleakness of this prolonged and unhappy winter. Abberley Street, where he and his mother now lived, was perched on a shelf high on one of Dudley’s many hills, but thankfully sheltered from the bitter east wind. The landscape about him wore a heavy shroud of white that seemed to muffle all sounds, rendering everything eerily tranquil. Sleepily, he shivered. The shock of the ice-cold air in his room exorcised the phantoms of sleep and jolted him into the full awareness of day. He pulled on his long johns, doffed his nightshirt, and went downstairs. His mother was already up and about, and had made a fire which was burning bright. A steaming kettle sat on the hob, and he poured some of the hot water into his shaving mug, which he’d retrieved from the cupboard next to the grate.

  He shaved and his thoughts turned, like pages in a book. Marigold, Aurelia, Harriet, Kate, Murdoch Osborne. So many unresolved questions did those pages pose, questions for which he had no answer. He pondered his unemployment; yet another problem to beset him, for it went against the grain of his nature to be idle … Tom Simpson’s idea of setting up on his own demanded some serious consideration. If only he could raise a hundred pounds …

  He rinsed off the residue of shaving soap, washed and dried his face and neck, then returned upstairs to finish dressing himself and comb his hair. Meanwhile, his mother was standing in front of the fire preparing his breakfast of bacon, eggs and fried bread. It smelt divine. When he came down again she set it before him, then sat opposite him at the scrubbed table in the tiny scullery of that rented house to enjoy her own breakfast with him.

  ‘It seems funny you not having to rush out to go to work, our Algie.’

  ‘I know it does, Mother, but it’s a novelty that’ll soon wear off. I need to get my teeth into something.’

  ‘Well, something will turn up soon enough.’ She hedged her chair a little nearer the table. ‘Maybe you’re just being a bit too fussy.’

  ‘How much money did my father leave?’ he asked outright, and forked a piece of crisp bacon into his mouth.

  ‘Just over a hundred pounds,’ Clara replied candidly. ‘Why?’

  ‘Have you still got it?’

  ‘Best part of it. I wasn’t about to leave it for Murdoch Osborne. Why?’

  ‘Would you lend it me? The biggest part of it?’

  ‘If you tell me why you want it, I might.’

  He smiled his appreciation and regarded her intently. ‘I’m going to set up my own business, building bikes. If I can do it for Benjamin Sampson with all the constraints he put on me, I can do it even better for myself. I need to rent a workshop first, though, and buy some second hand machinery and stuff.’

  ‘Don’t you think you’re being over-ambitious, our Algie?’ Clara suggested, putting down her knife and fork momentarily.

  ‘Course not,’ he replied dismissively. ‘And if everybody thought like that nothing in this country would ever get started. I know I can do it, Mother. I did it all before, but for the wrong reasons and the wrong man. He pinched all my ideas and designs. Those bikes – my bikes – are starting to sell like hot cakes from what I can gather. I intend to show him what a fool he was, treating me like he did … And I will … In more ways than one.’

  Clara looked pensive as she resumed eating. ‘Are you sure that’s a good enough reason?’ she said after a brief pause. ‘Just to get back at Benjamin Sampson?’

  ‘I have good reason to want to get back at him anyway, Mother. By fair means or foul. He’s despicable.’

  ‘But can you make a go of it, such a business?’

  ‘I’ve already got my first order. I’m going to make two bikes to start with, and the money I make from them I’ll put back into the business. In two or three years we could be well-off, living in our own smart house.’

  Clara smiled with admiration for her son. ‘We?’ she queried. ‘Are you sure you want me around you all the time? One day you’re likely to get wed. You won’t want me around you then.’

  ‘Then I’ll be rich enough to buy you your own house and pay for servants. Till then, I shall look after you, come what may. Have no fear.’

  His reassurance touched Clara. ‘You’ve been a good and dutiful son, our Algie, through all our troubles. No mother could have wished for better. Different to your sister. Course you can have the money, for as long as you need it. Pay me back, if you feel you must, when you can afford it. It’s hardly a fortune.’

  ‘Thanks, Mother …’ He smiled appreciatively. ‘No, it’s hardly a fortune, but I intend to turn it into one … Oh … and there’s something else I’ve been meaning to tell you …’ Now seemed as good a time as any.

  Clara regarded him apprehensively.

  ‘I fell in with another girl … A lovely girl …’

  ‘Ah … I wondered … You’ve given up on Marigold, then?’

  ‘She’s given up on me, more to the point. Nobody’s seen or heard of the Binghams since November. Not since my father died. It’s March now. Why should I wait any longer for her to show up, just to be snubbed again if she does?’

  ‘So who is this new girl? Are you going to tell me?’

  ‘You’re not going to like it …’

  ‘I won’t know till you tell me.’

  ‘Her name’s Aurelia …’ He studied his mother’s face to try and perceive whether the name meant anything.

  ‘Aurelia?’ A look of alarm clouded Clara’s face. ‘I only ever heard of one Aurelia, our Algie. Murdoch’s estranged daughter … You don’t mean her, do you?’

  He nodded solemnly.

  ‘But isn’t she wed?’

  ‘Wed, yes, and she has a child. But she’s miserably unhappy with her husband. She’s thinking about leaving him.’

  ‘Leaving him? For you, you mean?’

  ‘For me or not, she’s been thinking about leaving him anyway. I wondered whether you would be prepared to countenance her and her child staying here.’

  ‘No, I would not,’ Clara declared stoutly. ‘After all we’ve been through, Algie, you ask me to find succour for a fallen woman in this house? Not just a fallen woman, but the daughter of that rogue of a second husband I was misguided enough to marry? It would look well, wouldn’t it? Lord, we’d be a laughing stock.’

  The thin
g that really struck Algie was that his mother had obviously not connected Aurelia with Benjamin Sampson. During their short marriage, Murdoch had obviously never discussed his son-in-law.

  ‘I didn’t think you would agree,’ he said dispiritedly, and put down his knife and fork.

  ‘I don’t even know why you bothered to ask, our Algie.’

  ‘Aurelia hates Murdoch as much as you do, Mother. With good reason. You have that in common.’

  ‘It makes no difference, our Algie. She’s a married woman. Another man’s property, so never likely to be yours. It’s the road to nowhere thinking otherwise. In any case,’ Clara went on, ‘if she did come here, don’t think for a minute that I’d condone you and her sharing a bed, ’specially while she was still wed to somebody else. I don’t believe in that sort of thing between married and unmarried folk. I’m not so daft as to think such things don’t go on, though, you know. If you’ve committed adultery with her already, our Algie, well, it’s your business, but you should be ashamed of yourself all the same, and I urge you to give her up. I don’t know what the world’s coming to.’

  ‘You’re not trying to put me off her for another reason, are you?’ he asked suspiciously.

  ‘What other reason?’ Clara enquired, looking mystified. ‘What other reason could there be?’

  ‘Well … what if I was Murdoch’s son, for instance?’

  ‘What d’you mean, Murdoch’s son?’ The notion elicited a look of disdain on Clara’s face, a response which gave Algie hope.

  ‘I get the feeling you might have had a fling with him after you married my dad.’

  Clara gasped with indignation. ‘I most certainly did not. I don’t know where you—’

  ‘Sorry, sorry.’ He held his hands up in a defensive gesture. ‘It’s just that … if I thought I was Aurelia’s half-brother, course I would have to give her up.’

  ‘I can assure you, our Algie, if I thought it would make you give her up I would say you were Murdoch’s son, if it was the truth. But you’re not, and I won’t lie, not even to achieve that. I never heard such a thing in all my life. Rest easy, Algie, you’re not his son!’

  ‘Well, that’s a relief at any rate.’ He smiled his apology that he could think such impropriety of his mother. At the very least, it freed him to pursue Aurelia with a greater conviction. He’d held back because of his doubts. Now he could encourage her wholeheartedly to leave Benjamin, with marriage to her his own ultimate goal. ‘I admit it was a stupid notion, but one that kept gnawing at me. I just wanted to be sure.’

  ‘Have you been worrying yourself over that?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘Silly boy … So what do you intend to do about this Aurelia?’

  ‘I intend to have her, by hook or by crook. She’s such a lovely girl … More like her mother, I suspect, than her father. I know you’d love her.’

  Marigold and Hannah arrived at Stourbridge Junction in the late afternoon of the 18th of March, a Wednesday. They stepped from the train, carrying a large canvas bag containing Marigold’s things, and began their walk through snow-lined streets to Rectory Road in Oldswinford, where Hannah’s sister Edith lived. The sun, having finally broken through the dismal winter earlier in the day, hung low, a red lantern in the western sky.

  ‘I haven’t been around here for years,’ Hannah remarked with a sigh of nostalgia. They turned into Church Road, which in turn dog-legged onto Rectory Road, just a short walk from the station. ‘Why, it’s just as pretty as ever it was.’

  Church Road was overhung with tall trees, their branches burdened with the weight of snow that lingered upon them in the shimmering rosy glow of the setting sun.

  ‘It’s like a grotto,’ Marigold said. ‘And that’s a lovely little church ahead. Does my Aunt Edith live close by?’

  ‘Just around the bend by the church, past the big house. Course, this is Oldswinford, our Marigold,’ she said approvingly. ‘Not really Stourbridge at all.’

  The house they were seeking overlooked the walled churchyard. It was a beautiful setting, typical of the loveliest of English villages, surrounded by fields blanketed in deep snow. As Marigold opened the wrought iron gate and walked up the path she felt pangs of apprehension. What if Aunt Edith refused to take her?

  Hannah rapped the polished brass knocker, and waited.

  The woman who opened the door bore a distinct resemblance to Hannah, except that she was older. Her greying hair was swept up on her head and topped off by a white mobcap. She wore wire-rimmed spectacles that seemed to enlarge her kind blue eyes, which creased appealingly with a smile of delighted astonishment as she recognised her caller. ‘Why, it’s our Hannah, or I’ll eat coke.’

  Hannah grinned affably. ‘Hello, our Edith.’

  ‘What brings you here after all these years?’

  ‘I brought me daughter, Marigold, to see you.’

  ‘Marigold?’ She looked Marigold up and down. ‘Well, I never. Why, Marigold, you’re quite the young lady now. You were little more than a babe in arms last time I saw you. Come on inside, both, out the cold. How have you got here?’

  ‘By train. We just arrived.’

  ‘I bet you’re clammed in this weather. Let me put the kettle on and I’ll get you something to eat. You must be frozen to death.’

  Hannah smiled at Marigold reassuringly as they followed Edith. Inside, their boots echoed off the tiled floor of the hallway on their way to a neat little parlour at the rear. A coal fire was burning cheerfully in a low grate and, on the mantelpiece, a shelf clock in a wooden case whirred, about to chime the half hour. Marigold noticed the floral curtains and the sofa that looked so comfortable and inviting, the rugs on the floor that would protect your bare feet from the cold tiles. This all looked very cosy, very accommodating. She could be comfortable here … if only Aunt Edith would allow her to stay …

  Marigold realised that her mantle concealed her belly, so that Aunt Edith had most likely not yet ascertained that her young guest was pregnant. When she did, that would be the critical moment, the moment that might well decide whether or not she would be allowed to stay, for it would then be obvious why she had been brought here.

  ‘I’ve already got some hot water on the hob in the scullery,’ Aunt Edith declared as the clock struck the half hour. ‘I’ll make a pot of tea. What can I get you to eat? Fancy some bread and jam to keep you going till later? I’ll cook later if you’re stopping. I got a rabbit from the butcher’s only yesterday.’

  ‘Let me come and help you, our Edith,’ Hannah suggested. ‘We can talk while we work. I’ll just get me mantle and bonnet off.’

  Hannah duly divested herself of her mantle and bonnet, winked at Marigold and followed Edith into the scullery.

  ‘Still living on them barges, our Hannah?’ Edith said, lifting the kettle onto a gale hook over the fire.

  ‘Narrowboats,’ Hannah corrected with a smile. ‘Yes. Same as ever.’

  ‘No regrets, I take it?’

  ‘Regrets? We’re poor as church mice, our Edith, but I’ve got no regrets.’

  ‘So how’s Seth?’

  ‘Seth’s golden. I love him, and I’m proud of my children. I got five now, you know. No, I’ve got no regrets. I take it as you’ve never been interested in remarrying, our Edith?’

  ‘Me, remarry? Well … you never know who might be round the next corner, eh? But being a widow has its compensations. What little bit Harold left me sees me through.’

  ‘The reason I’ve come, our Edith, is to bring our Marigold to stay with you for a few weeks. If you’ll have her, o’ course. I take nothing for granted.’

  Edith took a loaf from a wooden bread bin. ‘Ah … Is she in trouble?’

  ‘In the family way, yes, but I couldn’t let her go through the misery of childbirth on a narrowboat, like I’ve had to do, especially the weather being so bad … Here, let me slice the loaf … I wondered if you’d look after her till she finds her chap again. She lost contact with him, see.’

&
nbsp; ‘Lost contact?’ Edith looked at her sister cynically, passing her the loaf. ‘You mean he hopped it as soon as he knew she was carrying?’

  ‘No, no, it wasn’t like that at all,’ Hannah asserted. ‘He’s a good lad, is Algie … Where d’you keep the butter, our Edith?… Oh, ta … We’ve been froze up for weeks near Rugby. The poor chap has no idea she’s carrying, and she couldn’t let him know either. Well, none of us can write that well for a start, but then neither did we know where to write to, ’cause we heard that his father had died, so Algie and his poor mother had to move house. We don’t know where he lives now, but it ain’t because he tried to give our Marigold the slip. They was in love, and no two ways. It was beautiful to see. I’m sure that as soon as she finds him they’ll get wed.’

  ‘ ’Tis to be hoped, if she’s having his child. Does she know where to start looking?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Folks he knows, places he goes to. I’m sure she’ll find him.’

  ‘Then let’s hope he still wants her.’

  ‘Oh, I agree, our Edith. You can’t take anything for granted. Let’s hope and pray he does. But he thought the world of her, like I say.’

  ‘A child puts a different complexion on young love, our Hannah. It takes the shine off romance, as you know to your cost. I wish I’d got two foot of lead piping in me hand and that swine that put you in the family way standing next to me. Would I give him what for!’

  ‘It takes two, our Edith,’ Hannah said philosophically. ‘I was as much a party to what went on as he was, so I was as much to blame. It ain’t as if I didn’t know what was what. I should’ve had more sense, I’m the first to admit. I’m only thankful that you and Harold took me in when our mother and father disowned me … And that’s why I thought of you when our Marigold told me she was in the family way. I thought you’d take kindly to her and help her through her trouble.’

  ‘Takes after her mother, don’t she?’ Edith said, tongue-in-cheek.

  ‘And for that reason, I can’t be angry with her. Apart from everything, she’s a golden wench. She needs my support now more than ever.’