by Val Wood
Harry nodded. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Course you can.’
‘Mr Esmond said he intends to ride on the Westwood,’ Christina said. ‘When he gets his stable set up. He said I would be very welcome to – to visit.’ Her voice trailed away as she felt all eyes on her. ‘Of course, I said that I could only come if Mama accompanied me.’ Her cheeks were pink as she added, ‘And he understood perfectly.’
Billy drove them back into Saturday Market, for they had time to do some shopping before they returned to the railway station for their train. ‘Thank you, Mr Brown,’ Christina said charmingly. ‘It’s been very nice meeting you. Will you excuse me, Mama? I’d just like to dash across to the haberdasher’s. I need some more sewing silks. Will you come over?’
‘Yes, I’ll catch up with you,’ Jenny said. ‘Wait for me at the Market Cross!’ she called after her.
‘What will you tell her?’ Billy murmured as with a swirl of her skirts Christina hurried away.
‘I don’t know.’ Jenny stared after her. ‘She’ll ask, that I do know. I told her not long ago that her father’s name was Ingram. She picked it up immediately when Mr Esmond said it. What am I to do!’ Her words were faint. ‘I can’t lie to her.’
‘She doesn’t know how Christy died?’ Billy asked quietly.
Jenny shook her head. ‘I told her it was an accident. That he was shot. I haven’t told her about me.’ Her voice trembled and she was close to tears. ‘I didn’t tell her that I was arrested and accused of shooting him.’ She turned towards him. ‘What am I going to do, Billy?’
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
‘You don’t have to do anything,’ Billy said. ‘You might never see Charles Esmond again. But would you want Christina to find out from someone else?’ Jenny shook her head as he went on. ‘Better for you to tell her, explaining in your own words what happened, or –’ He hesitated. ‘As much as you want her to know. It was a long time ago, Jenny,’ he said softly. ‘Folks will have forgotten ’details, but they’ll remember something and your name will be linked. You have to tell it to those who matter.’
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I know that you’re right. But I don’t want to hurt her. Everything I’ve ever done was to protect her.’
‘She’s almost a woman,’ he said. ‘Sooner or later, she’s going to fly ’nest. You’ve got to prepare her. She won’t forgive you if you don’t.’
‘I didn’t know you were so wise, Billy!’ She gave a shaky smile. ‘Though I always knew you were a good friend.’
He looked down at her, his eyes warm and tender. ‘Aye! You don’t know how good, or how much better I can be, given ’chance.’
‘I’ll tell her,’ she said, averting her eyes; now was not the time for making promises. ‘But not yet. I need to think about what I’m going to say.’
Christina chatted all the way home on the train, and Jenny was beginning to think her fears were misguided, for Christina was quite childlike in her expressions of delight of the day spent in Beverley. It wasn’t until they were driving home from Driffield station in the carriage, which John Laslett had sent to meet them, that she mentioned Charles Esmond.
‘Mr Esmond was extremely pleasant, did you not think, Mama?’ she said shyly. ‘And it was extraordinary how we found we were compatible in so many ways. For instance, he loves his horses and so do I. He was brought up in the country as I was, and he’s very taken with Beverley and really looking forward to living there, and I,’ she added, ‘I said to him that I thought it was a delightful town.’
Jenny restrained a smile. ‘You’ve seen little of it, apart from Saturday Market and Mr and Mrs Johnson’s home and stables!’
‘Oh, but Harry – Mr Johnson – took me for a ride when I was in his trap, and pointed out St Mary’s church and a strange looking building with an archway beneath it, called North Bar, and the Westwood and the racecourse, so I have seen quite a lot of it!’
‘You haven’t seen it as I once saw it,’ Jenny said softly. ‘I’ll tell you about it, some time.’
‘Of course,’ Christina said. ‘You lived there. And my father did too. Didn’t you think it strange that Mr Esmond’s relatives had the same name? Do you think it’s the same family, or merely a coincidence?’ She paused for a moment and they jolted along in silence, and hung on to the straps as the carriage hit the potholes in the road.
‘It might be ’same family,’ Jenny murmured. ‘Perhaps I’ll enquire.’
‘I hope it’s not,’ Christina said in a subdued tone. ‘If it is, Mr Esmond might not want to know me.’ She glanced at her mother, who had a fixed look on her face. ‘As I’m illegitimate, I mean. And anyway,’ she added miserably, ‘perhaps no-one will ever want to know me.’
‘You’re the adopted daughter of Stephen St John Laslett,’ Jenny said bluntly. ‘Don’t ever forget that, Christina. That’s who you are!’ But she could see by Christina’s down-turned mouth that the reminder was of no consequence, and she shuddered at the thought that she had even worse to tell her.
‘I can’t sleep,’ she wrote in her notebook. ‘It’s two o’clock in the morning and I haven’t closed my eyes since coming to bed. As I sit here by the window, there’s a bright moon shining over the fields and the garden, and everything is lit up as if it is day and I barely need the candle to write by. But even though there is light, I can’t see my way out of my dilemma. How do I tell my daughter that I was accused of killing her father? That I was found with the gun in my hand by Christy’s father, her grandfather, who was my employer?
‘My emotions are very mixed. I felt so happy seeing my dear friends again: Billy, who has been so loyal and loves me still, and Harry who has always been my good friend; yet the happiness I felt was tinged with fear, and my hand shakes as I write, just as it did when I was in prison and afraid for my life, and my biggest worry now is that Christina will turn against me.’
John Laslett was not well the next day. He had a heavy cold yet still went out to oversee some job which the hind could have done. When he came home for supper he was shivering violently. Jenny ordered a hot toddy to be brought immediately and hot bricks to be put into his bed, where she dispatched him straight away, and surprisingly he didn’t grumble.
‘I’m glad you’re here, Jenny,’ he said breathlessly, when later she knocked on his bedroom door and went in to see if there was anything he wanted. ‘I know that if anything happens to me, you’ll see that things are run properly. You know, don’t you, that the boys will inherit the estate and the girls will be well cared for? Everything has been put in hand.’
She thought of Johnny, who had given up the position of heir in order to be a soldier, and John Laslett, as if seeing her disquiet, said gruffly, ‘And I haven’t forgotten Johnny, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
Jenny gave a wistful smile. ‘I’m also thinking that I hope you’re not considering dying yet!’
‘No, I’m not, but these colds can turn to something worse in a man of my age. Influenza, bronchitis –’
‘All the more reason for you to take things easy,’ she chastised him. ‘You don’t have to do so much. You have men who can do for you.’
‘I know,’ he sighed, and pulled the sheets up to his reddened nose. ‘But I do worry. Two women in the house and no man to take care of them. You should marry again,’ he said suddenly. ‘A farmer, perhaps – though’ – he reached for a large handkerchief and noisily blew his nose – ‘I’d have to make sure he didn’t get the estate.’
‘I’ve no plans to marry for the moment,’ she murmured. ‘Perhaps when the children are grown I might consider it.’
‘That doctor fellow, I suppose,’ he grunted. ‘I wouldn’t like to think he was living here!’
‘Dr Hill is a very kind, considerate man,’ she replied. ‘But I wouldn’t want to marry him. If I should marry anyone –’ She hesitated. ‘I’d marry someone of my own kind.’
He peered at her through bloodshot eyes. ‘Meaning what? Someone from the servant class? Come, come,
Jenny! You can do better than that.’ He sneezed. ‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow. I just want to sleep now.’
She closed the door behind her and stood for a moment with her hand on the doorknob. Should I tell him? she wondered. Would he understand my dilemma? Perhaps I might confide in him.
He was no better the following day and it wasn’t until three days later that he sat up in bed and asked for chicken soup. On the same day Jenny received a letter from Mr Esmond saying he was to be in Driffield the next day and would like to call.
‘If it is not convenient,’ he wrote, ‘then please advise your footman or maid to acquaint me at the door and I will go away disappointed, but with the hope that you and Miss Christina will receive me on another occasion.’
Jenny read the letter with misgivings and after some deliberation took it upstairs to show John Laslett. ‘He’s not coming to see me, of course,’ she told him as he read it, ‘but Christina.’
‘Got an admirer already, has she?’ he muttered. ‘Where’s he from? Who’s his family?’
‘We met him in Beverley,’ Jenny told him. ‘He’s recently gone to live there. The difficulty is –’ She swallowed and licked her lips, which had suddenly become dry. ‘He’s a distant relative of Christina’s father – her real father, I mean,’ she stammered.
He frowned. ‘How distant?’ he growled. ‘Got to be careful, you know, breeding and all that!’
‘No. No, that’s not the difficulty. What I mean is –’ She started to grow hot and she ran her hand round the back of her neck. ‘It’s just that he won’t know – I’d have to tell him that Christina is illegitimate and that her father was an Ingram.’
‘Do you know that for sure?’ he asked. ‘That he was her father?’
Jenny flushed and started to protest. He waved aside her objections. ‘I have my reasons for asking,’ he muttered and remained silent for a few moments.
‘Mmm.’ His eyes, which were still reddened, glanced around the bedroom, hesitating at the pictures on the wall, gazing out of the window and coming to rest on the flickering fire. He heaved a sigh. ‘I’ve never told this to anyone else,’ he said slowly, ‘because I never thought it was anyone else’s business. But my wife was illegitimate. Her mother, who was from a good family, better than mine, gave birth to her but was never married. Neither did she ever tell anyone who the father was. She was sent away to God knows where. An asylum, I think. My wife was brought up by a tenant farmer and his wife, who received an annuity from the grandparents, whom she never saw.
‘When I met her, I knew I wanted to marry her, and I didn’t care about her background. Our children never knew, not Stephen nor the girls. We told them that their maternal grandparents were dead.’
‘Yet you refused to acknowledge Agnes when Stephen met her!’ Jenny was astounded by his double standards. ‘How could you do that?’
‘That was different,’ he said tersely. ‘She was a married woman. Another man’s wife. Stephen and Agnes should’ve known better. It wasn’t my wife’s fault that she was born out of wedlock. That was the fault of her mother, and whoever was her father.’
‘I’m Christina’s mother,’ Jenny said softly. ‘And you accept me – or do you?’
He didn’t look directly at her, but again turned his gaze out of the window where the rain was lashing against the pane. His lips pouted. ‘I don’t know the circumstances of your union with Christina’s father,’ he grunted. ‘But you married Stephen legitimately and you’re the mother of his sons and daughter. He saw fit to adopt Christina, therefore she’s of our family.’
‘But – about me?’ she whispered. ‘What about me?’ and she already knew in her heart that she couldn’t confess her past to him, that her predicament was her own and not to be shared.
‘You made a mistake,’ he acknowledged. ‘And I don’t hold that against you. You’ve been an asset to our family,’ he added gruffly. ‘And I’m fond of you, Jenny. Don’t think that I’m not. I couldn’t manage without you.’
What was it that Billy said? she thought as she went slowly downstairs. She paused, her hand on the polished handrail, and glanced down at the hall with its gleaming wooden floor and bright fire. The maids were instructed to light the fire early every morning and mop the floor every day. She noticed some finger marks on the wall mirror and made a mental note to tell someone to clean it with vinegar and water. You’re a housekeeper, Billy had said, and she’d refuted it. We’ve been given a home, she’d answered, and so we have, she thought. Perhaps in view of everything, it’s as much as I deserve.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Christina brushed her hair until it shone, and fastened a pink ribbon in it. Jenny suspected that she had also applied a little rouge on her cheeks for she looked flushed and pretty when Charles Esmond called. She had dressed simply in a white flowered muslin gown with white suede slippers, and Jenny saw instantly that he was enamoured of her.
They chatted over tea and cake, and Mr Esmond said again how he was looking forward to living in Beverley. ‘My mother is coming to visit next week,’ he said. ‘She is anxious, as you mothers always are,’ he glanced at Jenny, ‘that I will be unable to manage alone. But I’ve lived on my own in lodgings whilst I was at university, and am quite capable of arranging help, though Mother insists that she shall choose a housekeeper for me. I have advertised already and received several replies, and conducted some interviews.’
Jenny nodded. He seemed too young and innocent to be at the mercy of servants. ‘I think your mother’s quite right,’ she said. ‘’Wrong servants might take advantage of you.’
‘Because I’m a male?’ He laughed. ‘Perhaps I should employ a butler, a footman and a bootblack, and then I should be able to shout at them and they wouldn’t be offended!’
Jenny couldn’t help but think of Christy and how he cajoled the servant girls to do his bidding. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Because you’re a male. You most definitely need a good housekeeper to keep ’others in order, until’, she added, ‘you take a wife.’
‘Ah! Yes,’ he said softly, his eyes straying towards Christina. ‘Yes, indeed.’
I’ll say nothing, Jenny decided. Not yet. Not unless he declares himself. Perhaps it’s no more than a young man’s fancy. Christina is young and so is he. They’re not ready for a commitment.
And so she said nothing, not to Christina nor to John Laslett, who when he was up once more seemed to have less energy than he had before.
Billy called unexpectedly. Unlike Charles Esmond, he didn’t write first. He told her that he had been to Driffield market, but though she believed that he had been there, she was convinced that he had come specially to visit her. She introduced him to John Laslett as an old friend, and he, on discovering that Billy was a butcher, chatted to him quite amiably on pigs and cattle, and the price they were bringing, and William, coming downstairs from his lessons, joined in the conversation.
‘Perhaps when my pigs are ready, Mr Brown, I could interest you in buying them,’ the boy said animatedly. ‘I’m rearing them myself! They’re fed on the finest cereals and apples from our orchard.’
Billy nodded and replied seriously, ‘Aye, I’ll take a look at ’em. Send me a note when they’re ready and I’ll come over specially.’
‘You can look at them now, if you like,’ William said eagerly.
‘Not now, William,’ his mother admonished. ‘Mr Brown won’t want to go tramping amongst ’pigs. He’ll need to bring his rubber boots.’
‘Got those with me,’ Billy said. ‘I allus bring them in ’trap, just in case I need them.’
William gazed at him and then at his mother. ‘You talk just the same as Mama, Mr Brown,’ he said. ‘You’ve got the same kind of voice!’
‘That’s because they’re from the same background,’ his grandfather interrupted, and Jenny felt his eyes on her. ‘Every district has its own voice.’
‘Have I?’ William asked. ‘Some of the lads in the village say that I don’t speak the way that they
do, and Thomas says that sometimes they talk differently on purpose so that we can’t understand them.’
‘Then you should see more of them,’ Billy said. ‘It’s important to know where you belong and who your folks are.’
Jenny, not quite knowing why, felt proud of Billy. She had expected him to be reticent or self-conscious in the company of John Laslett. But he wasn’t; he was confident and assured and when John Laslett got up to leave the room in order to attend to something, Billy stood up and offered his hand to the older man, and said he was pleased to have met him.
John Laslett grunted in his usual manner, but then said, ‘Call again next time you’re out this way, Brown. We’ll be glad to see you.’
William left the room too and Jenny and Billy were left alone. ‘I can see you’re settled here, Jenny,’ Billy said. ‘And I understand that you wouldn’t want to leave your bairns.’
‘My bairns!’ she said softly. ‘No, I wouldn’t, not yet anyway.’
‘But one day?’ he asked. ‘Might you?’
She gave a deep sigh. ‘I’m so afraid of my past catching up with my future, Billy, that I can’t think forward with any certainty. I don’t know what ’future holds for me.’
‘I’ve told Annie Fisher that I’ll not be seeing her any more.’ Billy clasped his hands tightly together. ‘Not for ’music hall or socializing and that. She can come into ’shop for a gossip if she wants to, but I don’t think she will, not now she knows there’s no hope.’
‘Poor Annie,’ Jenny murmured. ‘She’s waited so long.’
Billy stood up from his chair and looked down at her. Then he bent and kissed the top of her head. ‘What about poor Billy who’s waited even longer?’
‘I don’t know what to say,’ she said. ‘I can’t give you any hope either.’
‘But you’re not refusing me or turning me away?’