The Lorimer Line

by Anne Melville

  David sat on in his office long after the heart of the city had been deserted by all but the policemen left to guard his premises. He left the gas lamp unlit so that no light would attract attention from outside. Then at last he had time to remember the balances he had queried, the changes which had been made during his absence in London. He had accepted from John Junius an explanation which could only be excused by success. Now he realized that those figures would be scrutinized in the harsh light of failure.

  There was no need to look again at the books: he knew well enough what they said. The sweat chilled on his forehead as he thought what use could be made of the figures by angry men looking for a culprit. Nothing could alter the fact that he had accepted them – his only defence could be that as manager he had been bound to obey his chairman’s instructions. Could he rely on the chairman to agree that such instructions had been given?

  At the beginning of the day David had been upset at the fate of the innocent victims of the collapse. As night came he felt the ground fall from beneath his own feet. But John Junius would surely not abandon the man whom his daughter loved. David told himself that such a possibility was inconceivable.

  Later that evening, anonymous in a city which now reviled the name of Lorimer, he paced the streets and came to a halt at last on the bank of the floating harbour, the lock-controlled basin which ensured that once a ship had made her hazardous way up the tidal river there was enough water for her to remain in the Bristol Docks. A three-masted barque, with lanterns tied to each mast, was gliding to her mooring place after a voyage to West Africa and back. The wharf was crowded with men who hoped for the work of unloading her cargo and women waiting to greet the crew and relieve them of their wages. She was a twenty-year-old ship with long, low lines – more graceful than the high, wide hulls with which William Lorimer’s new steamships faced the Atlantic waves. Within a week or two, no doubt, if she had suffered no damage on her voyage, she would be off again on some adventure. David allowed his imagination to sail with her.

  But he was a city man, not an explorer, and he had no experience of trading. Such primitive parts of the world could offer him nothing but a refuge, and as yet he had not sunk as low as that. The interest with which he watched the barque reflected only an instinct which he had not yet consciously considered - that as soon as possible he must find himself fresh employment, and that he would have to look for it with no kind of recommendation and as far away as possible from Bristol.

  The thought led him to consider Margaret. He had kept away from Brinsley House, feeling that it was the duty of her father rather than himself to explain to her the loss of everything which she had taken for granted all her life. It would be a sour moment for the old man, and not one which he would wish to share with someone who was still almost a stranger. He and his daughter would need to comfort each other, although it was difficult to see what comfort either of them could provide, except affection. But it was clear to David that he must call on Margaret as soon as she had absorbed the first shock. He had told her that she could rely on his constancy, and at the time she could not have understood what he meant. Now that she knew, she might forget the reassurance. It must be repeated.

  Yet what had he to offer except affection again? A man without employment or prospects was hardly the most welcome knight to swear loyalty to a damsel in distress. He could tell her that he loved her, and it would be true, but how could he support her? Only a fool thought that two people could live on love alone. He could ask her to wait, but could she afford to wait? His head swam with the conflict. He could not bear the thought of losing her; nor could he think how to keep her. That night he lay awake in the lodgings which once he had thought too mean and which soon might be more than he could afford. He tried to look into the future and saw only blackness and despair.

  13

  Actions which betray an emergency speak more loudly than words of reassurance. On the day after Georgiana’s funeral Margaret and Ralph were startled to their feet by a sound usually heard only before the family’s annual holiday. The servants were bolting the shutters into position across the windows. John Junius must have given the instructions before he left for the bank. Hurrying to look from her bedroom window, Margaret saw that all the outside staff, although pretending to go about their business in the stables or gardens, were obviously on guard. The front door was chained as well as bolted and it was Ransome who, repeating David’s earlier instructions that she must keep to the house, at last told her why.

  When their father returned that evening they followed him into his study without being invited and stood in silence, waiting for him to speak. He sat at his desk and gave a great sigh of tiredness. Often in the past few months Margaret had thought he looked anxious. Tonight she saw that he was defeated.

  ‘It was all for you, and for William,’ said John Junius. ‘I never wanted more than to give my children an even better life than I had myself. And now I shall see you with nothing. With the failure of the bank, my fortune is lost. Entirely lost.’ He looked at each of them in turn. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  Never before in her whole life had Margaret heard her father apologize for anything. She hurried to embrace him, without giving herself time to consider the implications of what he said. But he was beyond comfort. He could only speak the words he had prepared.

  ‘You are to go to your brother’s house. I have sent a message that he should expect you. Until our affairs are settled, there may be ill-feeling towards myself. Take a few things and go at once. The carriage can return in an hour for your maid and whatever else of your possessions she has packed for you.’

  ‘But you will come with us, Papa?’

  ‘No,’ said John Junius. Defeat had not diminished his ability to be definite. Margaret hesitated, but she was already sure that he could not be persuaded.

  Half an hour later she and Ralph arrived at The Ivies. They were received by the butler. The master was down at Portishead, they were told, assessing the damage to the Georgiana, whilst the mistress had spent the day unwell in bed. It was a cold welcome for a visit for which no one was prepared. Margaret and Ralph did not speak as they were shown to musty rooms which were being hastily aired for them.

  When she had changed her dress, Margaret found herself drawn to the door of Sophie’s room, but reluctant to intrude. The sound of a groan decided her. She knocked on the door and went in without waiting for an answer.

  It was obvious at once what was happening. Sophie’s maid, a girl almost as young as Betty, was sitting beside the bed with a frightened expression, wiping her mistress’s forehead with a cool cloth, while Sophie herself gasped and writhed with pain. Margaret hurried to the other side of the bed.

  ‘Is it the baby?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s too soon,’ said Sophie. The pain passed and she collapsed back into the pillows again, gasping for breath. ‘There are seven weeks before it is due.’

  ‘But you must know if these are labour pains.’

  ‘If the baby is born now it will die,’ said Sophie. ‘It cannot be coming. A little indigestion, it can’t be more than that. It was so hot yesterday. And the shock of hearing William’s news about the Georgiana. And then this morning a message arrived to say that my father had been thrown from his horse and taken unconscious to hospital. I allowed myself to become upset. William told me that I should not cry, and I did not heed him. It will pass. Surely it will pass.’

  Margaret turned to the maid.

  ‘Has the doctor been sent for?’

  The girl shook her head.

  ‘Mistress wouldn’t let me. She said it was nothing.’

  Margaret tugged at the bell rope, then hurried downstairs without waiting for any of the servants to arrive. She found the butler in the hall and gave him quick instructions.

  ‘Send the footman for Dr Scott. He must be found wherever he may be, and he is to come at once. The midwife as well. Do you know where she lives? Send the victoria for her. Ask Mr Ralph to go at on
ce to find your master. Make it clear to them all that it is a matter of life or death.’

  She ran back upstairs and then stood still for a moment inside the doorway of Sophie’s room in order to steady her mind and banish any trace of panic from her voice.

  ‘Tell the cook to have hot water ready,’ she told the girl. ‘Bring me clean linen. Find the cradle and scrub it clean, and prepare it for the baby. Where are Matthew and Beatrice?’

  ‘Mistress sent them to stay with her mother this morning, when she began to feel unwell.’

  ‘Off you go, then.’ Margaret sat down beside Sophie again.

  ‘If the baby is ready to be born, we cannot stop it,’ she said. ‘You will injure your own health if you try.’

  ‘It’s too soon,’ moaned Sophie.

  ‘You have two beautiful children. And you will have many more. We will all do our best for this one. But the most important thing is to preserve your own health, to be a good mother to Matthew and Beatrice. The doctor is on his way. Lie back and calm yourself.’

  It was easy to say, but the next three hours were by no means calm. William was the first to arrive, although he had had the greatest distance to travel. Margaret heard him talking agitatedly in the hall and went out to enquire what was the matter.

  ‘The midwife was not due to come for five weeks yet,’ William told her, passing on a message which had just been delivered to himself. ‘She is in attendance at another confinement and cannot leave. She has given us other addresses. Ralph has promised to go out again at once.’

  ‘And Dr Scott?’

  ‘I don’t understand why he’s taking so long.’

  He came at that moment, and the first words he spoke made Margaret look at him in astonishment and horror. He was drunk.

  ‘Another little Lorimer,’ he said in a voice that was thick and slurred. ‘The Lorimers have need of a doctor. They snap their fingers and Dr Scott must come running. I snap my fingers back, sir. I say to myself, let the Lorimers show me the colour of their money. But the Lorimers have no money. And Dr Scott has no money either. His house will be sold over his head and his wife will starve and yet the Lorimers expect that he will run their errands and deliver their babies and be glad that there is one more Lorimer in the world to steal the bread out of the mouths of the poor. Well, I am come, sir, running to the snap of your fingers.’

  ‘And you may run straight back to your own home,’ said William, pale with anger. ‘You have no right to enter my house in such a state. Certainly you are not fit to attend my wife.’

  ‘Man has right to drink’s own brandy in ‘s own house, while he has it,’ said the doctor, swaying on his feet and waving his arms in an effort to keep his balance. ‘Man isn’t bound to spend every hour of the day waiting the pleasure of Lorimers. Message came. Doctor came. Colour of your money, Mr Lorimer, sir, colour of your money.’

  ‘Get him back into his gig,’ William ordered the footman. ‘Then go to Dr Gregory’s house. If you find him out, enquire - ‘

  Margaret did not wait to listen as her brother’s instructions continued. The messengers would no doubt do the best they could, but Sophie might not be able to wait. She went into her own room, where Betty was unpacking her trunk.

  ‘Have you ever seen a baby born?’ she asked.

  ‘Not since I was eight years old, Miss.’

  ‘The midwife may not come in time. Are you willing to help me?’

  ‘If I can, Miss.’ The workmanlike way in which she rolled up her sleeves gave Margaret confidence at once. ‘And the baby comes by itself most times, Miss. It’s the part afterwards that I don’t know about. Perhaps the midwife will be here for that.’

  ‘I pray so,’ said Margaret. She led the way into Sophie’s room and straightened herself to keep her courage up. She had never seen her sister-in-law except when she was dressed for company. To expose her naked limbs, to be forced to stare and to touch - would such an intrusion ever be forgiven? And yet if Dr Scott had been less obviously drunk, he would have been admitted to the bedroom to see and touch whatever parts of his patient’s body he liked, and Sophie would not have protested.

  Margaret realized that the objections were all in her own mind. No one, since she became a woman, had seen her own naked body: she had never even looked at it herself. But one day, if she married David, she would lie exposed to a doctor and midwife. Even before that David would have the right to share her bedroom. Margaret did not know much more about marriage than most young women of her age, and her mother’s warnings had served to frighten her. She knew that David would want to touch: she suspected that he might also want to look. Somehow she must make herself think of a body, whether Sophie’s or her own, as an object which was sometimes in need of care or repair. It was not a cause for shame, she told herself firmly as she fought to control the deep flush which had suffused her face and neck at the thought of David in her bedroom. She forced herself to smile reassuringly as she walked across to Sophie and drew back the sheet.

  Much later that night, in the unfamiliar bed, she lay awake for a long time in spite of her exhaustion. The baby was so tiny that the birth, for all Sophie’s cries, had not been a difficult one, and a midwife had been found who arrived in time to slap the new arrival into protesting breath and to deal with the after-birth. So small a baby could not be thought of as having a secure place in the world, but for the moment the emergency was over. Margaret had discovered that she could see her own hands covered in blood without either faintness or disgust, and she had felt almost the same sense of achievement as the mother when she supported first the baby’s head and then its whole slippery body in her hands.

  The feeling which disturbed Margaret and kept her awake was a complicated one. She had been brought up to be useless. She had no training to do anything but live as a mistress of servants, and that life had now been snatched away from her. Although she lacked the skills, the events of the evening had persuaded her that she would not lack the ability to be useful if only she could be properly taught: she had always had the wish to undergo some kind of training. But then she had to remember that she had agreed to marry David, and no husband would allow his wife to be anything but a wife.

  No sooner had this thought overthrown the previous one than it in turn came under challenge. David had wanted to marry the daughter of a wealthy banker who was in a position to advance his career. He might be less enthusiastic about allying himself to a member of a ruined family, taking a bride who lacked a dowry as well as any domestic skills.

  Such contradictory feelings fought in her mind to keep her tossing on the bed for half the night. Dawn was already breaking when at last she fell asleep, and it was noon before Betty came to wake her. The first sentence of greeting was enough to banish the doubts of the night.

  ‘Mr Gregson called while you were asleep,’ Betty said. ‘They told him at Brinsley House that you were here. He asked most particular for you to be told that he’d hoped to see you and that he’ll call again.’

  Margaret hurried from the bed and called for her clothes as quickly as though he could be expected at that moment.

  ‘And the baby?’ she asked. ‘Are he and his mother both well?’

  ‘Mrs Lorimer is well enough. But not the baby. They found a wet nurse to come this morning, but he’s not strong enough to suck. And now they say there’s trouble with his breathing. He was christened an hour ago. They think he’ll not last the day.’

  The news increased Margaret’s haste. She gave Betty no time to lace her more than perfunctorily, nor to do more to her hair than brush it and tie it back with a ribbon as though she were still a child in the schoolroom. She emerged from her room just in time to see Dr Scott leaving the house.

  ‘How could you let that man come back?’ she demanded as soon as she found her brother.

  William shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘He was sober this morning. Sober enough to apologize for last night. It was as he said - he had no reason then to expect a call.’
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br />   ‘But William, he hates us. If he had been sober he might not have spoken as he did, but those would still have been his thoughts.’

  ‘It makes no difference,’ said William. ‘Sophie is well enough, and the nurse will care for her. As for the boy, there is nothing to be done for him. He will die, but that is no fault of the doctor. He was born too soon.’

  ‘Was it the doctor who said he would die? And do you any longer believe what he tells you?’

  ‘Look at the child for yourself, Margaret,’ said William. He, like everyone else in the house, was tired and strained. With no energy left for argument, he turned away.

  She did what he suggested and was shocked to tears by what she saw. When the baby was born his skin had been a beautiful reddish gold. Now all the blood seemed to have drained away, and his lips were blue. Margaret could tell that every breath was a struggle, and that he was too weak to fight for much longer.

  ‘Doctor says there’s some obstruction,’ the nurse told her. ‘And his lungs aren’t strong enough to overcome it, poor mite.’

  Margaret stared down at the tiny face, its eyes screwed up against the light. Then she made up her mind and knelt down beside the cradle, putting her lips to the baby’s. When David called an hour later she was forced to send a message that she could not see him.

  He came again during the evening of the next day. Margaret, who had been listening all afternoon for the ring of the doorbell, ran to fling herself into his arms as soon as he was shown into the drawing room. The household was too disturbed for anyone to reflect that a chaperone was required, and the events of the past hours had undermined all the formality of manner which had inhibited Margaret herself in the past.