by P. G. Glynn
“Your sister, Miss?”
“Yes.” Marie paused for thought. “You see, she lives with our mother in Monmouthshire and … and never uses the telephone as a rule. So when she used it this morning I knew before she said a word that something must be badly amiss. They’re such new-fangled things and as we haven’t one in our home she’d have had to go to the big house up the road and ask the Walford Prices for permission to ring. Little Lucy would never do that except in a crisis and … and the crisis is that Mam is sick. It was silly of me to go to pieces and send for the police, but shock makes people do silly things, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose it does, Miss.” The bobby looked concerned. A recent recruit, he knew nothing of the Offences Against the Persons Act of 1861 and, even had he known, would not have associated that Act with these circumstances, though he had been told to be on his guard in this part of Paddington. “How exactly can I help you?”
“Fortunately, your help won’t now be needed, though I’m hugely grateful for your offer. You see that motor-car?” Marie pointed past him to the Rolls-Royce, which was surrounded with curious urchins. “Well, while I was calling for the constabulary,” she warmed to her theme, “I also called for anybody who could come to assist me … and Mr Berger was first on the scene. So I shan’t after all need police assistance in reaching my poor, sick mother as he has kindly offered to escort me to Monmouthshire. I’m so sorry that you’ve been unnecessarily troubled, officer.”
“Oh, it was no trouble,” he told her, totally bewildered. He had never heard of police assisting people in visiting distant sick relatives but then he was not long on the force and obviously had a lot to learn. “Perhaps I can at least accompany you to your car?”
Once he had done so, shooing the urchins, and Otto had had a quiet word with the chauffeur the Rolls purred off from Raven Hill. “Blimey,” said Nell, settling into her comfortable kid seat next to Marie’s, “you almost had me convinced that your mother is ill!”
“Isn’t she?” asked Otto innocently from in front.
Ignoring him, Marie told Nell: “I had to say something to get Mrs Purfitt off the hook, considering that she had given back my money.”
“You said quite a bit,” Otto commented. “It made a fascinating story … and had the young policeman captivated. If he’s to rise in the ranks he’ll have to do better than that.”
“Are you suggesting he shouldn’t have believed me?” Marie asked indignantly.
“Would I stoop to suggest such a thing?” Otto grinned. “Especially after such a flawless performance. It was as fine as any I’ve seen you give on-stage – and it was unscripted too!”
“Oh crikey,” Marie exclaimed, suddenly noticing her feet. “We’ll have to go back for my other shoe!”
“No need,” said Otto, reaching down and producing the shoe his chauffeur had rescued. “It would have been a pity, wouldn’t it, to have had to go back now that we’re on our way out for the day?”
“Out?” Marie demanded suspiciously. “Out where?”
“To see whether or not you’ve tempted Providence.”
“What?”
“Just in case your mother has actually succumbed to a sudden illness, I feel that at the very least we should visit her.”
“Now?” Marie asked in horror. “In Monmouthshire?”
“Where else?” Otto said as the Rolls headed for the Great West Road. “We’re on our way there.”
17
Otto was jubilant. What could suit his purpose better than an unwanted baby? Marie now needed him. No woman in her position could risk giving birth outside wedlock. In today’s Britain this would be extremely foolhardy and, except in her love for Charles Brodie, Marie was not foolish. So, having baulked at abortion, she would soon come round to seeing the urgent need for a husband. It was fortunate for her that he was on hand – and willing to play the part of father to Charles’s bastard. Otto was quite surprised to find that he was not only willing, but eager. To win Marie he would do anything, even this. She was more than worth it and, besides, what did the child’s paternity matter? Once Marie was his he could soon forget that Charles ever existed. Mama had once said that he had a selective memory and he did. It was quite simple to remember what he wanted to remember and forget the rest.
So he would think of the baby as a Berger and bring him up as such, which would be one in the eye for Charles, wouldn’t it? Not that Otto felt vindictive. He felt serene – and on the verge of victory.
His instructions to the chauffeur before leaving Raven Hill had been very clear: under no circumstances was he to stop the car except on Otto’s orders. And Bennett had stood up well to Marie’s repetitive requests and threats. As if deafness afflicted him he had driven resolutely until they reached Witney where – after obtaining medical attention for Marie’s wrist – they were currently lunching.
“Why aren’t you eating?” he asked Marie. “The salmon is not off, is it?”
“As if it would be, in an hotel like this!” Nell said, looking again at their elegant surroundings and hoping that her intervention would prevent her friend having another go at Otto. Marie had been going on at him ever since leaving London and seemed appalled at the thought of seeing her mother, even though she had not seen her for almost a year. “Mine is delicious.”
“At least you aren’t angry with me.”
“Nell has no reason to be!” Marie snapped at him. “It isn’t her mother we’re visiting against our will.”
“I’ve never heard before of anyone not wishing to visit their mother,” he told her.
“That isn’t the issue here. The issue is that you’ve no right to make decisions unilaterally when these also affect Nell and me. Added to which is the question of how long it will take to get to Gilchrist and then back to London.”
“So Gilchrist is the name of your village?”
Furious with herself at letting this slip, Marie glared at him. “You’re worse than impossible!”
“Obviously it is! It will help to tell Bennett exactly where we’re headed. As to how long our little trip will take, don’t worry about it. Your uncle and Nell’s mother won’t be worried.”
“How come?”
He shrugged. “While you two were in the powder room I rang through to Claridge’s, asking them to hand-deliver appropriate messages to both your addresses.”
“You think of everything,” Nell said.
“Doesn’t he just?” Marie snorted. Then she asked Otto: “When did you, in your supreme wisdom, say we’d be back?”
“In time, naturally, for the curtain to rise on OLIVER TWIST.”
“Naturally,” Marie echoed sarcastically, “and a fine state we’ll be in after little sleep and all this travelling. Nobody in their right mind would travel all the way to Wales and then back again on a whim.”
“Listening to you, anyone would think Wales was far away,” said Otto.
“It is … isn’t it?” asked Nell.
“How can it be, when this whole country is tiny?” he queried reasonably. “By European standards Britain is a mere speck on the map. Distance need never be a problem. If we think of it as nothing it is nothing. I must admit that I’m looking forward to seeing Marie’s homeland.”
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She saw the mountains of home on the horizon and felt like crying. Southwest were the velvety Brecon Beacons and to the north she could see the brooding Black Mountains clad, today, in mist. Both ranges were often misty, with cloud clinging and clothing them in mystery. Pa used to tell her stories of hobgoblins and of witches swooping from peak to peak astride their broomsticks and his creations had been as real to her as her own reflection in the mirror. Oh, the stories Pa told!
They often began ‘As the mist came down over the mountains … ’ and would unfold in ways that held her enthralled. Pa had taught her that mountains were living things and that she was privileged to awaken each morning and see them beckoning. How they had beckoned when Pa was there to walk with her whe
re he would never walk again! Or did he still patrol those same paths, his soul perhaps soaring from mountaintop to mountaintop on the wings given to him? Yes, he surely did. His body might be in a grave far away in France but his soul would have returned to these mountains, where it belonged.
There had been a story starting ‘I’m looking for my grave … ’ which Pa had told in a quivering voice that had alarmed Marie. She had also been alarmed by the thought of death and of there dawning a day when Pa would no longer be around to talk to. Back then it had seemed unimaginable that the man who had always been there would one day be beyond reach and she had periodically panicked at the prospect, but Pa had said that death was a natural event and nothing to fear. Dying was just like walking through a door to a different dimension, he said, and if she were to speak to him after his departure he would hear her even if he could not answer. So, except while tormented in the immediate aftermath of his death, she had spoken … and had felt him near. Was he nearer than ever, now that she was approaching Gilchrist?
Marie could suddenly see the flat-topped Sugar Loaf mountain, which was where she had walked most often with Pa, her hand in his, her heart tuned to the murmur of the stream. Seeing the familiar contour and then the heather’s purple amidst all the green reminded her that it was almost September – Pa’s favourite time of year. What would he think of this homecoming and of the fix his daughter was in? Would he be shocked by her condition – appalled, even? Marie could not abide it if he would be because more than almost anything she wanted him to be proud of her, just as he had always been. He would understand her love for Charles, wouldn’t he? Marie prayed silently that he would and that he could forgive her for carrying an illegitimate baby.
Mam would never forgive such a thing, but Mam did not matter by comparison, added to which Marie had no intention of telling her – ever. Now that abortion was no longer an option she hadn’t the foggiest idea what to do next, but then had had no time to think before Otto whisked her down here. There must be some avenue not considered as yet. Whatever the solution, Marie would find it … and she would never speak to Otto again after this trip. Bringing her home against her wishes was the final straw and unforgivably highhanded of him.
The Sugar Loaf was drawing closer and closer. Smaller than the farther mountains, this was not wreathed in mist and Marie’s heart filled with dread as she gazed at it. If Mam was looking out from her front window she was seeing the same view. Within minutes they would be arriving at Beulah.
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Janet Jenkins bustled about in her little kitchen preparing tea. She and her family invariably ate tea early of a Sunday so that the dishes were washed and dried in plenty of time for chapel. To Janet’s thinking missing chapel would be akin to taking an alcoholic drink. It was not something one did. She never missed morning or evening worship.
This was how she had been brought up and she was bringing up her daughters similarly. Alice and Lucy were good girls and dutiful. Janet sighed at the thought of Mary, who had been the apple of her father’s eye. Not that she was criticising Howard, mind. It was not in her to criticise for she obeyed to the letter the Bible’s teachings and wouldn’t dream of judging another human being, especially her husband, who was dead and whom she hoped had been granted eternal rest. But a parent should not have favourites … and his favouritism, if not actively encouraging Mary’s waywardness, had done nothing to discourage it. Mary had only ever to smile at him, right from a tot, and Howard would do or say whatever she wanted. Which had obviously been bad for her – and no good either for the younger two, who had needed a better example set by their father and big sister. Howard and Mary had done Alice and Lucy no favours. It was thanks to Janet that the two girls were turning out as well as they were.
She would have been proud of them had the Bible permitted pride. As it was she was quietly satisfied. With Alice apprenticed to a milliner in Abergavenny and with Lucy soon to learn dressmaking from Irene James in Brook Cottage, they would both be taking up honest trades and staying safely here in Wales. A young, unmarried woman’s safety was of prime concern these days, with temptation lurking along every byway. Why, only last week Janet had learned from Maggie-the-Milk that Glynis Davies had run off to Birmingham with the travelling salesman who had turned up out of nowhere and dazzled her with more than the wares he was hawking. Where would silly young Glynis be when he abandoned her and moved on to his next victim? With child, for sure, and as wretched as her poor Mam, who broke down in chapel this morning and disturbed Mr Lloyd’s sermon. She would be destitute too, unless Mrs Davies took her back in, facing all the shame that would then need facing. There was no place in this world for wicked girls with fatherless infants.
Awed from an early age by the devil’s existence and by the evidence of his handiwork, Janet had done her best always to stay on the side of Right which was of course the good Lord’s side. She shouldn’t boast but could put her hand on her heart and say that she had done her bit for salvation. She shunned Wrong as if it were the plague and said her prayers night and morning without fail. Janet prayed daily for her headstrong daughter, asking for her to be brought back into the fold and taught the error of her ways. Mary should have stayed where she had been put in the world instead of gazing from the tops of Blorenge and Table Mountain and the Sugar Loaf across to far off places and getting ideas above her station.
Not for nothing were we put where we were. The Lord in His wisdom decreed who should go where and who were we to interfere with His wishes? People who went from their appointed area did so at their peril. Look what had happened to Howard after he went off to war. Being a schoolteacher and no longer young he needn’t have gone but, being the man he was, there had been no stopping him going. He said he could not leave the fighting to other men and now he was dead. It was only to be hoped that Mary had reaped at least a little of her mother’s sense and that if she were ever put to the test this would stand her in good stead.
Janet was not too hopeful. After all, now that Mary lived in London she was coming under John’s influence and although he had married wisely (his sole act of wisdom in a life full of folly) Gwendoline had no control over him. It was John that Janet blamed for Mary going on the stage. But for him being a betting man and sending that ridiculous telegram, which Howard for some inexplicable reason had kept and later shown Mary, nobody here would have known about Lillie Langtry having a horse that had won some stupid race. Yes, the blame for this and plenty more could very definitely be laid at John’s door. He was a poor excuse for a brother and often a source of shame. Janet could not begin to guess what Howard was thinking of when he stressed that if Mary made it to London she must lodge with John. The pity was that one could not have gone against him even if he was dead and buried. A good wife honoured and obeyed her husband, dead or not.
It was a husband that Mary needed, not the theatre. The girl should be tamed, not given a free rein, and at almost twenty-one should be devoting herself to housewifery. Where would the world be if all girls behaved as selfishly as Mary? Nowhere, when it was a woman’s clear duty to cook and clean for a husband and rear his children. That should be Mary’s role, not those she played on-stage, and Janet would tell her so again at the very first opportunity.
Spreading bloater paste on the wafer-thin slices of bread she had cut and buttered, she thought back to that last letter from Gwen in which mention was made of a gentleman calling for Mary in a motor-car. Janet only hoped that Mary had not climbed into one of those contraptions unchaperoned and had written straight back to Gwendoline saying so. To date Janet had received no further information but of course John’s wife was poorly educated, which explained her reluctance to put pen to paper. Mary, with a schoolmaster for a father, had no such excuse for writing so seldom and it really was too bad of her to write home only fortnightly, when contributing to the family finances. A weekly letter should not be asking too much of her – and one that said more than she was in the habit of saying. Come to think of it, Mary’s
letters did not say anything worth knowing and she had written not one word about a gentleman caller with a motor-car. She wrote glowingly about London and about John (Janet had noticed that she never mentioned Gwendoline) and about the success of OLIVER TWIST, but that was about it. Considering the debt Mary owed for her upbringing one could be forgiven for expecting better things. It was hopeless, though, expecting others to do as one did. Janet had learned this long since and had stopped fretting over it. If few – including her own daughter – could aspire to her standards, that was not to be wondered at.
The sandwiches made, she sugared the swiss roll she had earlier spread with home-made preserve and carried these two further plates through to the living room, setting them down on the table. Janet eyed the final result with satisfaction. On the spotless white cloth was set her best china tea-service (Royal Doulton, no less!) and three clean napkins neatly in their silver rings. There was a chocolate sponge filled and iced with butter-cream, a dish of crab-apple jelly to go with the plate of thin bread and butter and finally the wimberry tart Alice had made from fruit picked by Lucy. Doubting there were many tea tables to match hers, Janet went to put the kettle on and call the girls.
Alice was hoeing the vegetable patch out the back and Lucy had just finished feeding the chickens when they heard Mam calling from the kitchen door. Glad that it was tea-time, Lucy was less sure about chapel which would follow on from tea almost immediately. She wished she didn’t have to attend twice each Sunday week after week and had once asked Mam whether Marie had to, up there in London. Mam’s answer – if you could call it an answer – was that Mary had been taught right from wrong and now the matter was between her and her conscience. Did this mean Marie attended or not … and why did Mam insist on calling her Mary against her wishes? Lucy doubted there could be a better name than Marie Howard and it seemed to her like a dream that her own sister was a famous actress.