by Iris Gower
She sighed heavily and tipped her head up, so that their lips were almost touching. She heard Collins’ indrawn breath and her heart sang. ‘Collins,’ she said humbly, ‘will you kiss me?’
‘I’ll have it here in two days time, you go and tell them that, Hewson.’ Paul Marchant was looking down at him as if he was a piece of dog shit and Matthew didn’t like it one little bit. He had not wanted to come on this last trip at all, he had watched Paul Marchant idling on deck with his Irish colleen with a bitter taste in his mouth. Above all, he had known in his bones that something was going wrong. Now, all he wanted was to get paid and to return home in safety. ‘I’m not going to see that shark Monkton alone,’ he said, ‘not me, you can face the music yourself.’
They were sitting in the bar of Murphy’s lodging house, the smell of beer mingled with the pungent odour of cigars. Matthew rubbed his foot through the sawdust on the floor and wondered if he had been a fool to ever get mixed up in what was turning out to be a dangerous business.
‘We’ll go together,’ Marchant said at last. ‘Where is Monkton, where did he go when he stormed out of here yesterday?’
‘On board his ship, I suppose,’ Matthew said sulkily. ‘He’s too much of a skinflint to pay for lodgings ashore.’
Matthew thought of the nasty scene the previous day when Paul had been forced to tell Monkton there had been some mistake, the wrong cargo had been loaded on the Marie Clare, only empty horse-collars had arrived. It had become clear to Matthew then why Ellie Hopkins had bought a new load of tack, the one Smithers had been so concerned about. Paul had been a fool not to take the man seriously, he was not so clever after all.
‘Right, we’ll go over to the docks, then, tell him everything is all right, there’s been a bit of a delay but it’s sorted out now.’
‘Do you think that will satisfy him?’ Matthew was doubtful, he never had liked the look of the man Monkton, slit eyes, dead of expression, a mean mouth and a receding chin, a man to steer clear of.
‘The goods will be here in two days, that’s all I can promise.’ He took out the bill describing the cargo as boxes of leather tack which Bridie had given him in exchange for his signature. It gave him the right to collect the cargo from the Glorianna, a steam packet which Bridie had acquired some time ago and which Paul had sold off as an unnecessary expenditure to one of Bridie’s colleagues. He clutched at the bill, it gave him something to show Monkton, a little bit of evidence that all was well.
‘Shall we have another drink first?’ Matthew said realizing that he was nervous. Perhaps there was some way he could back out of the deal before any real harm came to him. On the other hand, if he went now, he would forfeit the big wad of money that was his due. No, there was nothing for it but to go through with the whole thing. Monkton knew that Matthew was only a sidekick, a name he had resented, but for which he was grateful now.
Marchant rose to his feet. ‘Better get it over with,’ he said and he sounded as reluctant as Matthew felt. Matthew glanced round, wishing there was some way out of this dilemma in which, somehow he had become involved. Then Paul Marchant was making for the door and all Matthew could do was to follow him.
Bridie sat in a chair looking up at Collins with worried eyes. ‘Have I done the right thing? I don’t wish any harm to come to Paul whatever he’s done.’
‘Now come on, Bridie,’ her name still didn’t flow easily from his lips. ‘Did you have any alternative but to make him sign those papers? Was there any other way you could have claimed back what was rightfully yours? Just ask yourself that.’
‘Come here. Hold me,’ Bridie said and closed her eyes as Collins took her in his arms. ‘That’s right, hold me close to you, make me feel safe.’
‘We’ll go home,’ Collins said firmly, ‘we’ll go home as soon as possible, there is no point in staying here a moment longer. You have what you came for.’
‘All right. We’ll leave tomorrow, on the early tide.’ Bridie said. ‘But,’ she smiled, ‘we might as well make the most of tonight, we will have a little drink to celebrate together, shall we?’
Collins looked at her somewhat wistfully as if he had not heard her speak. ‘It won’t be the same when we get home will it?’
‘What do you mean?’ Bridie asked but she knew what he meant. She would no longer need to live at the house in Clydach with her cousin Jono, she would be able to return to the luxury of her own home if she so wished, the home where Collins had been nothing but a servant. She was once more mistress of a large shipping fleet. ‘Nothing will ever be the same, not now that I’ve found you. Collins,’ her voice was breathless, ‘don’t you know how much I love you? I didn’t know what love was before. I want you with me always, you know that, Collins.’
There, it was said. She trembled at her temerity, what if he rebuffed her? ‘I wouldn’t have survived at all without you, you must realize that, Collins.’
‘I’m not in your class, Bridie, people can be so cruel. There has been so much gossip already what with you leaving home. You don’t want to add fuel to the flames.’
‘I’ve made up my mind,’ she said suddenly, ‘I’m not going back to Sea Mistress. I shall buy a little cottage, live in Clydach, near Jono. No-one will talk about us there.’
‘That’s a sudden decision.’ Collins’ eyes were warm as they looked down into hers. ‘But are you sure about this, you’ll be giving up so much?’
‘Nothing that is important to me. Why should I want to live in that big house again, it’s full of memories, most of them bad. I’ll shake myself free of the dust of my past once and for all.’
She threw back the bedclothes. ‘Come along, Collins, I think it’s high time we were in bed, it’s been a long, difficult day.’ She waited for him to take her in his arms, he did so tentatively at first and then as she clung to him, she felt him become aroused. She sighed softly, the bad times were over, now she was going to experience real happiness for the first time in her life.
The morning sun was stretching pale fingers into the room as Bridie came awake. There was a repeated knocking on the door and it was that sound which had intruded into her dreams.
‘I’ll go,’ Collins said. He drew on his clothes before opening the door a few inches and Bridie heard a soft Irish voice, heavy with the sound of tears and guessed, with a flash of anger, who it was.
‘Let Miss Murphy come in,’ Bridie said and turned to see the young, so young, girl, heavy-eyed with weeping, standing before her, shoulders hunched in an attitude of total misery. As Collins held the door open, she stepped hesitantly into the room.
‘I think Paul has abandoned me,’ she said, ‘I haven’t seen him since we came ashore, he didn’t come home all night and I love him so much I can’t bear it.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I knew it was wrong, knew I’d somehow be punished by God for sinning. He is your husband and I committed adultery with him, it wasn’t right but I couldn’t help myself.’ The words spilled from her. ‘Now I’m going to have his baby, I know I should be ashamed but I want it, I want this baby. Do you think he’ll come back to me?’
Bridie had drawn on a robe and had seated herself beside the dead grey ashes in the fireplace; she searched for some kind words to say to this girl who was little more than a child herself. She could find none. ‘What about your parents?’ She wondered if Paul had tired of the Irish girl, it was quite within his character and yet he had seemed so fond of her.
The girl looked up, her eyes dull. ‘They’ll turn me out,’ she said. ‘If Paul has left me, they won’t put up with the disgrace.’
‘Then they shouldn’t have encouraged you to sleep with him in the first place,’ Bridie said and hearing the sharpness in her tone immediately felt remorseful.
‘I wanted him, no-one forced me to do anything, I love him, do you understand that?’ There was no hostility in the girl’s manner just a pitiful humility.
‘Look,’ Bridie said, ‘come back to Wales with me, Paul will have to return sometime and then you can s
ort things out between you.’
A small spark of hope began to grow in the girl’s eyes. ‘You think he’ll still love me, even though I’m expecting?’ She was so wistful, so sad that Bridie could not find it in her to be harsh. In any case, Carmella had not stolen anything of value from her, not really.
‘That I can’t answer,’ Bridie said with some asperity. ‘All I can offer is to help you return to the house in Swansea.’
‘You are good and kind and I have wronged you,’ the girl said, ‘and when Paul comes back to me, everything will be all right, you needn’t bother with me any more.’
‘Go home,’ Bridie said. ‘You’ll have to pick up whatever you need for the trip back home. We shall be sailing with the evening tide.’
It was silent in the room when Carmella had gone. The wonderful mood of the night before had evaporated. Bridie looked up at Collins longingly. ‘Let’s forget Paul, forget everything. I want you to come back to bed, Collins, I want you to hold me, to kiss me, to make me feel like a woman again.’
He took her in his arms and held her close. Their kisses became more passionate, his hand reached to caress her breast beneath the thin cloth of her nightgown. His breathing became ragged, he kissed her deeply, his tongue probing. Then they were undressing each other with frantic hands. He was a good lover, much as he wanted release, he wanted to make Bridie sing with happiness and passion and as she moaned in delight, she knew that everything she wanted, except for the return of her sons, was right here in this room.
Afterwards, they lay together entwined as though they had always been a couple, familiar with each other’s bodies. Bridie propped herself up on one elbow and looked down at him, tracing the line of his moustache with her fingertip. ‘By the way, Collins, I have one more important task for you to do before we leave, is that all right?’
‘I’d better do anything you say.’ He was teasing her and she knew it. ‘And what is this important task?’
‘As if you didn’t know.’ She smiled up at him before drawing him, once again, towards her eager body.
CHAPTER TWENTY
‘Well, Mac,’ Arian Smale tapped her teeth with her pencil, ‘you’d better go and interview Mrs Marchant yourself, this looks like an interesting story.’
‘Her husband has chosen not to come home, what’s so interesting about that?’ Mac said, dropping ash from his cigar onto the polished surface of his desk.
‘Bridie returns home from Ireland without her husband but with the so-called housekeeper in tow, there’s a mystery in that, somewhere, believe me, I can smell it. Go to it Mac, find out what you can.’
Arian sat at the desk Mac had vacated and looked around her in satisfaction, her newspaper was successful beyond her wildest dreams. But then, she had a good team working for her and of all her reporters Mac was the most talented, he had an amazing gift for ferreting out a story from the tiniest bit of gossip. If there was any mystery behind Paul Marchant’s disappearance, Mac would, before long, be in possession of all the facts.
A feeling of well-being settled over her; Arian closed her eyes for a moment, hearing with pleasure the hum of voices, the clatter of typewriting machines, all the sounds of a busy office. At last, after many failures, she had pulled her life together, made something of herself. All the times she had tried to get on her feet and fallen again were amply compensated for by her present success. She could hold her head high, she had achieved something positive in her life.
The doorbell jangled startling her out of her reverie. Arian looked up, a man in a stout mackintosh was at the front desk, head bent forward in what appeared to be earnest conversation. For some reason which she didn’t understand, Arian felt a prickling of apprehension. The clerk was turning, looking towards her as if in doubt as to what she should do next. Arian rose to her feet and moved forward, the polite smile felt frozen on her lips.
‘Could we talk somewhere in private, Mrs Simples?’ She felt as though she had been struck, it was so long since Arian had been called by her married name, a name which brought her nothing but unpleasant memories. She led the man to one side of the office, a little way off from the noise of the typewriters. ‘What is it?’ she asked but with a sinking of her heart she already knew.
‘It’s your husband, Mr Simples, he’s been taken poorly.’
Arian stared at the man. ‘But he’s in that place because he’s – he’s poorly, as you call it.’ She heard the thin sound of panic in her voice and made an effort to control the trembling that had seized her.
‘You don’t understand, this is different, Mr Simples is sick in body, very sick. I think you should come to see him.’ Before it is too late, the words hovered in the air without being said.
‘I’ll get my coat.’ Arian was surprised how normal her voice sounded but her hands still shook as she hurried upstairs to her apartment.
Gerald was sick, how sick? Guilt hung like a heavy weight inside her, she hadn’t been to see him in a long while, she had meant to go; every weekend she had promised herself she would take the trip to the edge of town and visit her husband but the weekends came and went as, feebly, she made up excuses, any excuse not to go to the special hospital where Gerald now spent his days.
It was wet in the street outside the offices of The Times, the paving stones shimmered in the mist, treacherous, uneven, a trap for the unwary. A thin fog hung over the rooftops, obscuring the chimney stacks, mingling with the smoke from many fires. It was a cold, cheerless February day. Arian was grateful to settle into the cab the man had waiting. She glanced at him, trying to read something in his expression. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name,’ she said quietly. ‘I think your news upset me so much that I forgot my manners.’
‘Upset you? I’m sorry.’ Was there a hint of sarcasm in his tone or was it just her conscience, she wondered. He spoke again. ‘I’m Dr Thornton, I was coming into town and I thought I’d call and see you personally, convey the bad news myself.’
She couldn’t make out if he was rebuking her or merely being polite. ‘How bad is he?’ The words had to be forced from between her lips. She had never loved Gerald and yet she owed him a duty and even in that she had failed miserably.
‘He has an infection of the lungs, both lungs,’ the doctor said evenly. ‘I’ll be blunt Mrs Simples, this condition has been with him for several days and it has worsened overnight. I don’t expect Mr Simples to recover, I’m sorry but there’s no other way to say these things.’
‘I see, well thank you for your frankness.’ She paused. ‘Don’t you think I should have been informed of Gerald’s condition before this?’
‘Our policy is not to alarm the relatives of our patients unnecessarily.’ Dr Thornton said smoothly. ‘Patients who are on drugs, who are largely inactive, do unfortunately develop all sorts of complications. Sometimes the symptoms pass without anything serious occurring, sometimes, as now, the situation becomes grave.’
Arian wished in that moment that Calvin was beside her, helping her through the ordeal that was most certainly coming. What did she feel? She tried to picture Gerald’s face, he had been handsome but never, never had she felt the slightest liking for him let alone love. He had trapped her into marriage and she had never forgiven him for that and she couldn’t now, not even if he was on his deathbed.
The stark walls of the hospital loomed up out of the mist and Arian felt her spirits sink even lower as she imagined herself walking in through the doors, the chains and locks that had to be undone, leading to what?
When she was led by a nurse into the hospital ward where Gerald was lying, Arian gagged at the smell, stale urine and formaldehyde mingled together in a pungent cocktail of despair. Gerald was almost unrecognizable, he had grown so thin in the weeks since she had last seen him. His cheekbones jutted grotesquely, his nose and chin were gaunt against the parchment of his skin.
Arian stifled a gasp, how could anyone be so sick and still go on living? His breathing was noisy, his lips blue, he looked as though h
e was already dead. She sat beside the bed not sure what she should do. She reached out a tentative hand and then drew it back, repelled by the sight of the man in the bed.
‘How long has he been like this?’ Arian glanced up at the nurse who shook her head.
‘Don’t know, madam, I only came on duty this morning.’ She moved away in a rustle of starched linen leaving Arian alone with Gerald.
It was as though he had been waiting for that moment, he opened his eyes and stared directly at her and she started back in her chair, frightened by the lucidity in his face.
‘I’m not ready to go yet,’ his voice was faint, reedy but there was a demonic glow in his eyes that frightened her.
‘I won’t let you be free of me, ever,’ he said, ‘I’ll come back and haunt you even from my grave, you are my possession, Arian, no other man can take my place.’
‘Hush,’ she said quietly, ‘don’t try to talk.’ She was surprised that he was so rational, his ravings seemed to have gone, his senses were restored. Perhaps it was just a temporary state brought about by the cessation of the sedative drugs that were usually in his system. Perhaps even the worst sort of mental sickness was overcome by the will of the dying.
He closed his eyes as though very tired and turned his thin face away from her. Arian wanted more than anything in the world to run out of the hospital, to go home, to wash away the stink of the hospital, wash away any thoughts of Gerald Simples. But she sat, frozen in misery looking down at the man in the bed, her husband.
The nurse returned and hovered near the bed, Arian looked up hopefully. ‘Can I speak with Dr Carpenter?’ she asked almost pleadingly.
The nurse nodded. ‘He’s waiting to see you in his office, madam.’