The Runaway

by Audrey Reimann

  The old man was apoplectic. ‘That’s the way you treat your elders, is it? You think you can do as you like because you’ve got a bit of money? Well, you’ll not buy me and mine!’ He moved to set about Oliver with his walking stick. Rosie screamed and ran towards the scullery door.

  Oliver caught the stick. He wrenched it from the old man’s hand and raised it. ‘Get out of my house! Yes, my house!’ he roared. ‘I’ll give you one hour to pack your things and go. You can sit on the station all night. There’s a train out at five o’clock. See you’re on it!’

  The old man was not prepared to challenge him for, with a cry of bitter rage, he turned and went from the room. His wife swept after him.

  Oliver went to the scullery. He had silenced the old couple and they would be gone within the hour. Rosie was clutching the edge of the sink, retching sounds coming from her as she leaned over its edge. ‘Come with me,’ he ordered. ‘Put your coat on and come down to The Pheasant. We’ll talk there.’ He grabbed her by the hand and led her towards the front door. ‘Come on, lass. Wipe your eyes. We’ve a lot of talking to do.’

  By the time they reached The Pheasant Rosie had regained control of herself but Oliver heard, all the way along Rivergate, the quick, catching breathing of a woman in distress. They sat in his room at The Pheasant. Oliver went down for hot punch and was grateful to the Billingtons for saying no word of disapproval to him.

  ‘I can’t stay in this town, Oliver. Scandal will do us both a lot of harm.’ Rosie sipped the punch, ashen-faced, leaning against his shoulder. ‘You’re not angry about the baby?’

  ‘No.’ Oliver slipped an arm around her waist. ‘I’m not angry. I can’t believe it though. Me! A father!’

  ‘Let me go back to the house. I can’t stay here all night,’ she said.

  Hand in hand they walked through the dark streets to the house Oliver had rented for Rosie. They cared nothing for their reputations that night. The Hadfields were gone. They had left her a bed and little else.

  ‘We’ll look for a place in Southport shall we? For you and the baby. I’ll come over at weekends.’ Oliver held her in his arms. ‘We can’t be married yet but we can live together as if we were. It will be all right, Rosie. We’ll have a proper home.’

  He left her in the early hours of the morning, when he was sure that the Hadfields would not return. She was his. At last she was his.

  Oliver chose the house. He hated little houses. The quarry-master’s house he’d lived in until he was eleven had not been large. When Dad had been killed, Dolly, he and Tommy had been thrown out of there and given the tiny cottage at Hollinbank; a tiny cottage with one room and scullery downstairs and one bedroom and a cubbyhole above.

  Now he found and bought a house in a prosperous locality where the houses were large, built for stylish family living. The red bricks shone as if they had been polished, making a perfect background to the plaster of the ornamental window lintels and sills. The front gardens were short with walls to the street of the same red brick. Cream paint on the triangular coping stones finished off the walls at shoulder height. Herbaceous and wooded gardens at the back gave privacy and a feeling of the country in the heart of town.

  Oliver’s house had bay windows to all the rooms at the front. The attics had little bays. Inside the double front doors a tiled entrance porch opened on to the hall where stained glass cast a warm glow over the wide staircase.

  Golden oak doors, perfect in their proportions, opened to reveal three fine reception rooms with marble fireplaces and elaborate cornices. Six bedrooms opened off the wide landing and a concealed staircase led to two pretty attic rooms.

  Downstairs, at the end of a narrow passageway, were the more modestly appointed servants’ rooms and a large, square kitchen where ovens were set into a steel fireplace and a modern gas range was installed. Beside the kitchen was a pantry, shelved in cool slate and, next to that, a door to the back stairs and servants’ quarters.

  Outside was a veritable warren of outhouses and a long flight of stone steps with iron balustrades leading down to the garden.

  ‘Isn’t it a wonderful house?’ he asked Rosie, his face a picture of satisfaction. ‘It’s what I’ve always wanted. I only wish I could come home to you every night. We’ll have more children, Rosie. We’ll have at least six … and you’ll have servants to help you. I’ll find you a cook and a housemaid to start with.’

  He took her in his arms and there was an edge of demand as well as affection in his tone as he told her: ‘You can forget all about your old life. You’ll be known as my wife.’

  Rosie refused to have more than one servant. Later, she said, when she was more used to giving orders she would consider taking more, but, ‘Why,’ she asked, ‘should one woman, living alone, need more than one extra pair of hands?’ Besides, they would surely not be furnishing the whole house immediately.

  In this she was wrong.

  Oliver took the train to Southport early on Friday afternoons, arriving before the shops were closed, giving him more time to choose his furniture. He delighted in his home though he could spend no more than two days each week there. He would have been happy for them to brazen it out together and buy a house in Middlefield but now that their first child was due he would not have accusing fingers pointed at his family.

  He’d marry Rosie as soon as she was free and, meanwhile, there was the excitement of making a home. He ordered the large pieces of furniture from a cabinetmaker; wardrobes, chests of drawers and tallboys. He bought washstands and china washing sets. He bought a mahogany dining suite with a table, which he opened out for the fun of it, placing leaf after leaf into the space revealed, still not overcrowding the dining room with its splendidly ornate sideboard and two matching sets of chairs with hard-stuffed tapestry seats.

  He told Rosie to order anything she fancied and she made a tentative purchase here and there but upbraided him for spending half the weekend in shopping for china, silver, curtains and covers.

  Oliver ordered the nursery to be painted in blue and he bought an expensive picture frieze. A safety guard for the fire was made to his own design and cradle and cot, cupboard and clothes awaited the little one.

  And he loved it. He loved seeing the house take shape. He stood at the doors of the rooms he had furnished, pleased with his choices. He made Rosie stand by the windows and the fireplaces to complete the picture as he gazed in satisfaction.

  He also bought the layette. Horse-drawn vans arrived daily, bringing long cardboard boxes filled with clothes; nightdresses in fine cotton, a dozen at a time, each separated from its neighbour by layers of tissue paper. A dozen lace caps, a dozen day dresses, a dozen petticoats, two dozen lambswool vests, two dozen cotton undervests – more came by every delivery.

  He chose the perambulator with the utmost care and it took pride of place in the nursery, splendidly coach-built, with enamelled black and gold paintwork and noiseless rubber tyres on the elegant spoke wheels.

  Rosie remonstrated, ‘We don’t need all this for one baby, Oliver,’ as the pile of parcels mounted for him to unpack at weekends and place carefully into the empty chests of drawers in the nursery.

  ‘Nonsense! Our child will have everything of the best,’ he repeated, when she raised an objection. ‘You never knew your parents. I had only a father, and him only until I was eleven. Our son will have a proper home, with a mother and father. He’ll have everything I ever wanted.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Oliver told no one the reason for his weekend absences from Middlefield. He had expected a lot of gossip to be abroad over the hasty departure of the Hadfield family from the town but it appeared that no one had heard of the events that had led to Rosie’s disappearance.

  It was better that they did not know, he decided. This way, his child would have a proper upbringing and Rosie, when she felt able, would join the congregation of one of the chapels, since chapel-going had been such a big part of her life until now. Oliver professed to be just as mysti
fied as everybody who had known the family. He determined to keep it a secret, even from Albert. When asked by Albert if he too planned to buy a home of his own, he replied that he was content to remain at The Pheasant.

  It wouldn’t be the same at The Pheasant when Albert was married but he’d keep his evenings occupied, studying the stock market.

  Albert and Edith were planning a June wedding and the first bricks had been laid on the house they were building on the hill below Balgone. Oliver took as much interest in it as they did and on his visits to Lucy Grandison he always stopped to watch the work progressing.

  Oliver called on her, one afternoon in late November.

  She seemed frailer, not quite as quick on her feet as she had been but he knew she looked forward to his visits and referred to him in fun as ‘My gentleman caller’.

  ‘What a lucky woman I am to have the attentions of such a handsome young man, at my age!’ she said. They stood together at the window of the drawing room, watching a gardener raking leaves into a damp heap and Oliver pointed out to Lucy the site of Albert’s house.

  ‘The wedding’s in June,’ he told her, ‘and I’m to be Albert’s best man.’

  A log fire crackled in the grate and a stack of hot buttered muffins waited under a linen napkin on a side-table where tea and cakes were set for them.

  ‘Did you know that Florence is returning to Cheshire?’ Lucy said with what appeared to Oliver to be studied unconcern.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ he replied. He could match her now for composure, though the news, to his dismay, had unsettled him. ‘Will they live in Churchgate as before?’ he asked in an even voice.

  ‘Yes. Mrs Mawdesley doesn’t enjoy living in London and Florence wishes to return.’ Lucy poured tea. ‘Will you be at The Pheasant for Christmas, Oliver?’

  ‘No. I’m spending Christmas in Southport. I have friends there,’ Oliver replied. ‘I spend the weekends with them. And you, Mrs Grandison? Will you be at Suttonford?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. But I don’t go until Christmas Eve. Will you come to Balgone on the Wednesday before Christmas? I have a little gift for you.’

  ‘Of course I will.’ Oliver changed the subject quickly to talk of the new factory. ‘Albert is coming in as a full partner, after the wedding,’ he told Lucy. ‘The Claytons are giving Edith a marriage settlement. We’ll buy the factory next to ours.’

  ‘You’ve done well,’ Lucy said. ‘Does that mean that you’ll not have complete control?’

  ‘Of the factory, no. But I’m going to take out my original investment – Bill’s gift to me,’ he told her. ‘And with that and the braid workshop income I’m going to do as he did and invest.’

  ‘Would you like to see Bill’s investment diaries, Oliver?’ Lucy asked him. ‘I still have them. It may help you, especially as he kept a record of the market prices along with them.’

  ‘I would.’ Oliver knew how much it would assist him, to see the way the old man had dealt. Bill had taught him how to buy. ‘But I’m going to buy local stock, as far as possible. I want to buy land.’

  ‘Sir Philip is going to sell off some of the estate land soon, I hear,’ Lucy said. Oliver looked at her sharply. Was she hinting that he should buy it?

  ‘Well, he certainly wouldn’t sell it to me,’ he replied with a laugh.

  ‘Come, come, Oliver,’ she said. ‘Let us not talk of sordid things, like money.’ She laughed lightly. ‘Tell me all about your partner’s wedding.’

  In the music room at Suttonford, Florence, in a dress of yellow silk, deep bustled and trimmed in satin ribbon, sat next to Aunt Lucy. Grandfather had taken it upon himself, since her return, to fill her days and most of her evenings with social diversion.

  This afternoon she looked around at the guests who sat on gilt chairs waiting for the musicians to arrive, and felt she would scream if she had to sit here for a whole hour, listening and politely applauding.

  ‘Aunt Lucy,’ she whispered. Aunt Lucy looked at her enquiringly.

  ‘Come with me to the library, will you?’ Florence mouthed the words so that she should not be overheard. She saw assent in Aunt Lucy’s smile, rose and made her excuses as she edged along the row to the door, smiling apologetically, pretending not to see Mama’s frown of annoyance.

  It was cold in the hall and Florence hurried on white, high-heeled slippers that tapped against the marble floor of the hall. She opened the library door, leaving it ajar for Aunt Lucy and went to warm her hands at the big log fire.

  ‘Don’t you want to hear the music, Florence?’ Aunt Lucy closed the door and joined her in front of the flames. ‘I thought you liked concerts.’

  ‘I do,’ Florence said. ‘But I couldn’t wait a whole hour to talk to you.’ She turned her grey eyes, expressive and questioning, onto Aunt Lucy. ‘Have you asked him?’ she said.

  ‘Yes. He will come to Balgone next Wednesday,’ Lucy told her. ‘I hope he doesn’t blame me for such a small deceit. I’ve not told him that you’ll be there.’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘He is much changed, Florence,’ Lucy told her. ‘He is no longer the gauche boy you knew. He is a man; a man of great assurance and charm.’

  ‘Does he look the same?’ Florence asked eagerly. ‘Is he as handsome?’

  Lucy sighed and gave Florence a smile of understanding. ‘He’s more so. Are you sure you want to see him?’

  ‘I want to see him,’ Florence said firmly. ‘Does he have an attachment, Aunt Lucy?’

  ‘As far as I know there is no woman in his life but he has never confided in me on these matters,’ Lucy told her kindly. ‘You’re not much changed, darling, are you? You have spent nearly two years away and yet you still have a fondness for Oliver.’

  ‘I am changed, Aunt Lucy,’ she said. ‘I can manage a household, arrange flowers, engage a cook, entertain my husband’s friends, when I have a husband, of course. I can dance and I can sing – oh, and I can be flirtatious without giving offence. Don’t you think those are desirable accomplishments, Aunt Lucy?’

  ‘I do, dear,’ Aunt Lucy said, ‘but where are you going to use them?’

  ‘On Oliver, my dear, sweet aunt. And you are going to be my accomplice,’ Florence said emphatically. ‘I’ve warned Mama that I intend to see him again.’ She lifted a delicate hand to push a strand of her spun-gold hair back into the fashionable upswept style she now adopted. ‘She believes I no longer care for him, of course,’ she added. ‘And Mama is not herself. She has to take brandy to calm her nerves. She says she despairs of me; says she cannot go on much longer trying to make a match for me.’

  ‘Your grandfather is intent on finding a young man of good family for you, Florence. He has high standards.’ Aunt Lucy was not smiling. A frown of worry had settled on her face. ‘Your mama told him that you’d have none of the dashing young men you met in London. You must marry.’

  ‘Grandfather is intent on finding a young man of good income for me, Aunt. He is not in the least concerned about either my happiness or his lofty standards,’ Florence replied.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I, my darling,’ she said, ‘am intent on marrying Oliver Wainwright.’

  Oliver was taken completely off guard when he called at Balgone with Lucy’s Christmas gift. He was shown into the drawing room by the maid and had taken his usual position by the window when the door opened and the girl he had put into a secret compartment of his mind stood before him.

  For a moment or two neither spoke. He took in her poised and elegant appearance at a glance. ‘Florence. How lovely to see you again.’ He clasped her hand warmly and, astonished, saw that he had forgotten how beautiful she was. She wore a dress of green velvet, which made a perfect background for her translucent skin and the dazzling glory of her hair. He looked at the golden-haired girl he once wanted so desperately; he thought with love of Rosie and his child so near to birth, and kept himself aloof from the least intimacy with Florence.

  ‘You are changed, Oliver. You have the air
of a man of purpose!’ She spoke the words lightly and the warmth of her smile took away any sting of reproach he might have detected.

  He had known, since Lucy had mentioned her homecoming, that he would see her and he had asked himself how they would act, face to face, after so long. He knew that he loved only Rosie; but he had often reflected on the speed with which she replaced Florence in his heart. Had Florence, too, given up all thoughts of him?

  Now he was relieved that their first words had been spoken. She had not thrown herself into his arms with tears and words of love. How ridiculous of him to have imagined she might.

  ‘And how does a Man of Purpose look, Florence?’ he teased. ‘Do I have the light of ambition in my eye?’ He widened his eyes in jest and the embarrassment of their first encounter after so long was gone.

  Rosie had never had so much time to herself. Her earliest memories were of work; work in the workhouse that even the children shared and work before marriage and since. There had only been the lying-in week after each girl was born, when she’d lain, rigid as an Egyptian mummy, bound from chest to thigh with bolster cases pinned tightly round her body. The old women said it put everything back in place after the birth.

  It wasn’t going to be like that, this time. This time it would be proper linen binders and her breasts bound too, if she didn’t suckle.

  Oliver was like a child. He came only at weekends – and when he was with her he played at ‘house’, just as she and Agnes used to do when they were little – changing round the furniture and setting out the cupboards. Then he left her alone, from Sunday night until Friday; alone with nothing to do but wait – and think. And she wasn’t used to being alone. She couldn’t sleep, alone. Every night, when she lay alone she awoke at two o’clock. The girl, Iris, slept, the town slept, only Rosie was awake, needing Oliver and the comfort of his arms.

  She had started to build a good fire so that it would be in, glowing and reassuring, when she woke. But the bedroom had a tiny fireplace and often the fire went out. It was then that she heard the voice. It never came when Oliver was there or when she was talking to the girl, Iris. At first she used to place her hands over her ears and blot out the sound. Lately she’d been listening.