An Orphan's Secret

by Maggie Hope

  ‘But—’

  ‘Now, dear, no more of it. It is true you had to hit him, but Ralph was not himself, poor boy. He was a slave to drink. Couldn’t help himself, you know.’

  Meg gazed at her. She was such a tiny thing, lost in the great bed, but though her face was white and her eyes full of unshed tears, her voice was firm.

  ‘Do you think the police will believe us?’ asked Meg.

  ‘Of course. Why should they not?’ Mrs Grizedale managed to sound outraged at the idea that the police should not take her word. ‘Now go and see to your children, my dear. Two fine boys they are, you must be very proud of them. I shall be just fine now I’ve had my tea.’

  So Meg went up the flight of stairs which led to the second storey and the nursery, to where the boys were playing with some old toys they had found in a box. Fervently, she hoped Mrs Grizedale was right.

  Thirty

  ‘I think you should stay here tonight,’said Jonty. He and Meg and the two boys were sitting round the table in the large old kitchen of Grizedale Hall, eating scrambled eggs on toast. The kitchen was a great, bare barn of a place, the range neglected and rusty in parts and the walls stained and brown. Yet somehow, in the soft light from the lamp hanging over the centre of the table, it looked a cosy scene. Almost like any other family gathered round for a meal, Meg mused. She looked across Kit’s head at Jonty. He seemed tired and sad and worn, and her heart ached for him. She couldn’t just leave him on his own tonight, not after all that had happened. Besides, there was his grandmother. She could have a delayed reaction to her son’s death and then Meg would be needed to help her.

  ‘I’ll have to let Alice and Jackie know,’ she said doubtfully, wondering how this was to be done.

  ‘I’ll ride over to Winton Colliery,’ said Jonty. ‘I’ll be back in an hour.’

  Meg didn’t demur, though she knew what an ordeal it would be for him, trying to explain what had happened to her brother and sister.

  The doctor had been, and so had the police, and the body of Jonty’s father had been taken away for post mortem. For a panicky minute Meg had thought the police would not believe their story of how he had died, but Ralph had an evil reputation while Jonty was known as an upright, honest man. And, of course, the fact that Mrs Grizedale had witnessed his death counted for something. In the end, Jonty was told that as his father had had a head injury, he should hold himself available to answer any questions which might arise when the results of the post mortem were known. If the police had thought that it was strange for Meg to be in the house, they hadn’t said so. Perhaps they simply thought she was working as a maid in the Hall, she didn’t know.

  She had told her story of how she had found Ralph Grizedale in the bedroom, drunk and threatening his mother. And how she had tried to stop him, how she had fought. Her bruised face had been enough proof for them to think she was telling the truth. But Mrs Grizedale had insisted it was later, after her son had calmed down, that he had fallen, hitting his head on the bedpost. She told her story so convincingly that Meg almost believed it herself. Could she have dreamt her own part in Ralph’s death?

  Mrs Grizedale was asleep now, exhausted by the day’s events. The doctor had given her a bromide to help her sleep. Poor old lady, thought Meg. It must be a truly terrible thing to have had a son like Ralph. Yet even so she would grieve for him. She had loved him for all his faults, Meg was sure of that.

  Picking up her cup, she sipped her tea, wincing as the hot liquid got into the cut on the inside of her cheek.

  ‘Shall I take the boys back with me to stay with Alice?’ asked Jonty, finishing his meal and sitting back in his chair.

  So far, the boys were blithely unaware of what had happened. While Meg had waited for the doctor and the police, Jonty had taken them down to Home Farm and Farmer Teasdale had, after a word or two of explanation from Jonty, taken them in without asking any more questions. The farmer had brought them back half an hour ago, both of them full of excitement at what they had seen on the farm and with Kit once more determined he wanted to be a farmer when he grew up.

  ‘A horse farmer,’ he said.

  Now he paused, fork in the air, as he heard Jonty’s question.

  ‘Aw, Mam, I want to stay with you,’ he said, his lower lip trembling. And Meg was aware that though he didn’t know what had happened, he was well aware that his mother and his friend, Mr Dale, were very disturbed.

  ‘I’ll keep them here,’ decided Meg, seeing this. ‘We’ll stay together, all of us.’

  The boys had to know sometime about her and Jonty, she thought, for she and Jonty were together now, for the rest of their lives. Not that he had said anything as yet, but he didn’t need to, she was sure of it.

  When Jonty had gone, waving to the boys as they stood with her at the front door of the Hall, she took them back into the house and closed the door. The entrance was dimly lit by the lamp she held in her hand, the furniture loomed large and dark and shadowy, and Kit moved closer to her, taking hold of her skirt.

  ‘You’re afeared, our Kit!’ jeered Tucker, but in truth his own eyes were wide open and round, and he looked about him before running for the newly familiar kitchen.

  ‘I’m not,’ asserted Kit, but he clung to Meg with a trembling hand as they followed Tucker, looking relieved as she closed the green baize door firmly behind them and they were shut into the relatively light and warm kitchen.

  ‘Aye, you are, feardy cat, feardy cat!’ cried Tucker, dancing round his little brother.

  ‘Tucker! Behave yourself,’ said Meg sharply, and he subsided into a chair.

  She cleared the dirty plates from the table and took them over to the brownstone sink by the window. A brass tap was over it and she tried it experimentally, marvelling at the convenience of having a tap in the house instead of on the end of the row. By, it was a grand thing to have, it was. She looked at the range, searching for a hot water boiler or a set pot and was surprised to find none. She would have to boil the kettle then. The colliery house did have some advantages, she thought drily.

  The boys were very quiet as she finished the dishes and hung up the dish cloth before turning to see what they were up to.

  Tucker was sitting on the chair, his head lolling to one side, in imminent danger of sliding to the flagged floor and on to Kit, who was curled up at his feet, his thumb stuck firmly in his mouth.

  Their mother scooped Tucker up with one arm and Kit with the other, sitting down on the broad wooden chair and holding them to her. They stirred a little but slept on, and after a while her head drooped on to Tucker’s and she slept too.

  This was the picture which Jonty saw as he let himself quietly into the house and walked through to the kitchen. He stood for a moment, watching them, his heart filled with love for all three.

  He remembered how he had waited for Meg by the grassy knoll that morning. Such a lot had happened in the few hours since then. Everything had changed. Though he grieved at the pain his grandmother must be feeling at the death of his father, he could not help the feeling of happiness which the sight of Meg and her children brought to him. It was so right for them to be there, in his house, under his protection. He walked softly nearer to them and looked down at the three heads, all with thick fair hair though Tucker’s had a darker, reddish cast to it.

  Jonty thought of his anxiety when Meg hadn’t come to meet him that morning. He had waited and waited and in the end had decided he would go to Winton Colliery and find out if there was anything wrong. He must have just missed her on the road, he thought. Then his horse had cast a shoe and he had had to take time to go to the blacksmith a mile out of his way.

  Meg woke and saw him watching her and they smiled at each other, an intimate smile which meant more than words.

  ‘Jonty,’ she breathed.

  Later, when they had put the boys to bed in the room next to his so that he and Meg would hear if they woke during the night, he told her how he had gone looking for her that afternoon.

/>   ‘I was almost to the village when something seemed to call me back,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what it was, I just knew I had to get back to the Hall. I felt you were there and you needed me.’

  ‘I tried to reach you in my mind,’ she said. ‘I knew you would come.’

  They climbed the stairs together, hand in hand and walked along the corridor to the children’s room, peeping in on Tucker and Kit before going on to the bedroom at the end. There were still a lot of things they had to talk about, but not tonight. Tonight it was enough to sleep in each other’s arms.

  Meg awoke to the shrill piping of the boys’ voices sounding through the wall. Tucker was shouting with boisterous excitement and Kit giggling, he was always the quieter of the two. She reached out a hand for Jonty but there was only the warm place where he had lain and the dent in the pillow where his head had been. But the sound of his deeper tones was coming through the wall. He must have heard the boys before she did and got up to see to them.

  Rising from bed, Meg hurriedly pulled on her clothes and went into the next bedroom, to be greeted by the sight of Jonty swinging Tucker in the air and bouncing him on the bed. Tucker was giggling helplessly, filled with glee.

  ‘My turn! My turn!’ shouted Kit, and Jonty obligingly picked him up and swung him round before pretending to fall and they both landed on the bed beside Tucker. Tucker scrambled on top of Jonty, holding his arms down, and Jonty shrank back in mock submission.

  ‘Skinch! Skinch!’ he cried. ‘I give in.’

  ‘That bed will collapse in a minute,’ observed Meg.

  All three of them sat up and gazed at her, their faces flushed and eyes sparkling.

  ‘Mam, Mam, Jonty says I can have a ride on his horse,’ cried Kit.

  ‘Yes. Well, for now, how about having a wash and getting dressed so that we can all have some breakfast?’

  ‘Aw, Mam,’ wailed Tucker. ‘What do we have to wash all the time for?’

  ‘Come on, lads,’ put in Jonty, before the rebellion could go further, ‘I’ll race you to the bathroom.’

  ‘Bathroom?’ asked Kit mystified. Curiosity was enough to make them forget their aversion to soap and water. They had never seen a room kept solely for bathing in and neither had their mother. She made the beds and tidied the rooms before following the sound of splashing water and excited cries.

  ‘Eeh, it’s grand, Jonty.’

  She gazed round the bathroom, at the hot water geyser on the wall, the boys sitting in the large iron tub, half-filled with hot soapy water. By the wall was an ornate basin with two brass taps. And Jonty, standing before the basin just like any ordinary father, watching his children while he shaved.

  ‘We’ve saved you some hot water, Mam,’ said Tucker virtuously. ‘By, isn’t it grand?’

  ‘Don’t splash so much about,’ she said calmly, for all the world as though the sight of her boys in the huge bath was an everyday thing. ‘I don’t want to be wiping up after you.’ But her eyes met Jonty’s in the mirror and her smile was full of love. They were cocooned in a cosy little world here, she and Jonty and Tucker and Kit. Of course it could not last forever, they had to face the outside world sometime. But at least they had a little while to help each other recover from the shocks and traumas which had affected them in the last few weeks.

  ‘I’ll see to your grandmother’s breakfast,’ she said, and hurried along to the old lady’s room where she found her already awake.

  ‘Good morning, Meg,’ Mrs Grizedale greeted her. ‘Oh, my dear, I’m so glad you decided to stay for a while. Jonty needs you, you know.’

  As Meg tidied her bed and helped her wash and comb her hair, she wondered if Mrs Grizedale would be quite so happy if she was aware that Meg had spent the night with her grandson.

  ‘What did Alice say when you saw her, Jonty?’

  They were sitting at the table drinking an extra cup of tea. The boys had found a ball in the old nursery and were off in the stable yard, kicking it about. Their whoops and cries could be heard through the kitchen window, the sound happy and excited.

  Meg looked apprehensively at him, remembering her sister’s disapproval of their relationship, but Jonty smiled.

  ‘Oh, Alice said she understood. I told her my grandmother was ill and you were helping out for a day or two. Well, it wasn’t a real lie, was it?’

  ‘And she didn’t mind?’ Meg was astonished.

  ‘Well, she was full of her own plans to try for a scholarship. She hopes to get into Durham University. St Mary’s College, she said. And evidently her teacher thinks she stands a good chance.’

  ‘She didn’t say anything about that to me,’ said Meg, feeling sad that her sister hadn’t confided in her. But then, she thought, she had been so full of her own troubles, perhaps Alice had felt she wouldn’t be interested.

  ‘Maybe she was waiting until she had something definite to tell you,’ suggested Jonty, ever sensitive to Meg’s feelings.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and rose to her feet. ‘Well, I think I’ll go and get Mrs Grizedale’s tray and see what she needs in the way of help.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said. ‘The boys will be fine in the yard for now.’

  The old lady was sitting up in bed, looking a little stronger. She watched as Jonty and Meg came into the room, seeing how close they were, even when standing on opposite sides of her bed. There was such a bond between them, she mused, they belonged together.

  ‘You’re looking better, Grandmother,’ Jonty said as he bent over her and kissed her cheek.

  ‘I am, I think,’ she replied, before turning to Meg. ‘I must know, there was something you were saying yesterday when you were struggling with my poor misguided Ralph—’ She faltered for a moment.

  ‘Please don’t distress yourself, Grandmother,’ Jonty put in swiftly.

  ‘No, I’m all right, I think it’s better to talk about it,’ she answered, her voice strengthening. ‘Candyman, that’s what it was. Candyman, you were saying. Now why would you call him a candyman?’

  Meg sat down suddenly on a chair by the bedside and clasped her hands tightly in her lap.

  ‘Yes, candyman. I always thought of him as the candyman, ever since I was small,’ she said, her voice low. And she recounted the story of the evictions from the railway cottages, how Ralph Grizedale had watched the candymen doing their work, sitting there on his great horse as she and her mother and little Jack were chased up the line by the candymen. And how ever since she had thought of Ralph Grizedale as ‘the biggest candyman of them all’, as she heard someone say.

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Grizedale, sounding suddenly very old and weak, ‘I’m sorry, my dear. If only I’d been able to do something. He always loved your mother, you know. Poor Nell was always second best for him.’

  ‘Please don’t upset yourself,’ Meg begged, going to the bed and taking the old lady’s hand. ‘None of it was your fault, none of it. And it was so long ago.’

  But in her heart she denied that Ralph could ever have loved her mother. If he had done, how could he have hounded them as he had?

  The funeral of Ralph Grizedale took place the following week, after the post mortem had revealed he had died from natural causes after suffering a cerebral haemorrhage. The blow to his temple was attributed to his striking it on the bedpost, as his mother had testified.

  ‘What difference does it make now?’ Jonty said privately to Meg when the verdict was known. At least it meant that the inquest was straightforward and they could put it all behind them and start a new life.

  They and Jonty’s solicitor were the only mourners at the funeral, though afterwards there were many who came to the Hall to see if Jonty was going to honour his father’s debts. He vowed he would pay them all in full.

  But the debts were higher than he had reckoned on. Much higher.

  ‘Grizedale will have to go,’ he said sombrely, when he and Meg were at last on their own one evening some time later. Jonty had been in Bishop Auckland all that day, clear
ing up his father’s affairs. ‘We were already carrying a heavy mortgage, you know,’ he added.

  ‘Oh, Jonty, I’m sorry. It’s been your home for so long, it’s a shame you have to leave it,’ sighed Meg. ‘But what about your grandmother? She will miss it so terribly.’

  She looked round the shabby drawing-room, still showing signs of its former splendour. She sat on the edge of a well-stuffed sofa, the brocade cover worn and threadbare, looking and feeling uncomfortable. She didn’t like this room, she reflected. The chairs were too soft and the furnishings much too ornate. She preferred sitting in the kitchen on a hard chair before the range. No, she wouldn’t miss Grizedale Hall, but her heart ached for Jonty and Mrs Grizedale. She was sure they would miss it.

  ‘Will you mind?’ asked Jonty.

  ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I would rather have a smaller house, one I can keep nice myself. Mind, the boys will miss the bathroom.’ They laughed together. Both Kit and Tucker were still enchanted with the bathroom, taking a bath every day without a murmur of protest. Jonty looked relieved. He had thought that Meg might want to live in the Hall and he knew it had to go.

  He was sitting at a small occasional table, working on the estate books. After all his father’s creditors were paid off there would be nothing left of his own inheritance. But if he could sell the Hall and Home Farm, well then, he would still have enough to stock a small rented farm somewhere, a place where he could earn a living for his newly acquired family. Farming was all he knew and he owed that knowledge to Farmer Teasdale. He would offer the farmer the chance to buy Home Farm, he thought. It was the least he could do for him.

  ‘Do you think you would like to move away from here, Meg? Could you be a farmer’s wife?’

  ‘Move away?’ Oh, she thought, how she would like to move away and leave all her unhappy memories behind.

  ‘We could go abroad, emigrate?’ suggested Jonty.

  ‘Or maybe just get a place by the sea? Could we find a place by the sea, Jonty? Oh, I loved the sea, and you would love it too. Up Marsden way, maybe?’ Meg looked up at him eagerly and in an instant Jonty dropped any idea of emigrating.