Her gaze wandered to a line of hazel bushes near the house, naked except for dainty grey tassels that trembled in the bitter wind.
She felt like that inside – trembly. Trembly and afraid. In Italy her new accomplishments would have fitted perfectly the role of wife to the Morosinis’ estate manager, but here she was neither fish nor fowl, as her grandma used to say. The folk she had grown up with – people who had been kind to her and who’d liked the granddaughter of Mabel Gray whose parents had been lost so tragically, would call her an upstart. Oh yes, they would. She nodded in emphasis to the thought. And all the more so because before, when she’d simply been the ‘poor Shelton bairn’ – as she’d heard more than one well-meaning neighbour refer to her in the past – they had been able to feel sorry for someone less fortunate than themselves. Oh, she knew how her people thought, and it was only in the last ten years when she had been brought to the perimeter of the privileged world of the Ashtons and looked on in wonder, that she’d realised the working class was every inch as snobbish as the upper classes, perhaps more so.
She sighed, brushing a strand of hair from her face before bringing her hands in front of her as she stared down at their smooth soft prettiness, her nails clean and well-shaped. Not one of the women in the village would have hands like this, except perhaps the schoolmarm.When she had been at home her hands had been sore and chapped most of the time from helping her grandma with the household chores and washing and so on, and when she had first come to Grange Hall her duties in the kitchen had left them so angry and chafed they had cracked and bled no matter how much goose fat she had rubbed in them at night.
She had changed. Inside and out. Even her use of grammar and the way she expressed herself was different. But one thing was the same and would always remain so: her love for the tall, brown-eyed man who had caught her in his arms as a young lad when her father had trusted him to catch her. The years between, Matt falling in love with Tilly and fathering a child with her, and all her experiences here at Grange Hall and the travelling and wonderful things she had seen and heard, were as nothing compared to that love. Circumstances couldn’t touch it or change it.
She didn’t know why she loved him as she did. She closed her eyes, picturing his face. But at the oddest times, often when her whole being was wrapped up in staring at a beautiful sunset or the view across Lake Garda or listening to Charlotte who played the piano with the skill of a virtuoso, there would come into her body an ache to see him, an ache so strong it would rob her of the joy of the moment and bring the taste of ashes to her mouth. Stupid.
She opened her eyes once more. And it was stupid, to let her need of him spoil such times, but she couldn’t help it. She had railed and fought against it, prayed against it, attempted to bring logic and reason to bear, but to no avail. Matt was her Achilles heel. A fleeting smile turned up the corners of her mouth as she imagined his reaction if he ever heard that. But it was true. She wanted to be near him. Even if she featured as nothing more than a friend in his life, she wanted to be near him. No, she needed to be near him.
She straightened, smoothing her hair and stiffening her shoulders. And she wouldn’t apologise for the person she’d become when she went home to live among her old friends and neighbours either. She accepted them as they were. They could accept her.
And Vincent McKenzie? The voice in the back of her mind brought to the fore the name she’d been trying to ignore since deciding on returning home. Her stomach turned over and she pressed her lips together. If – and she didn’t know this for sure, since he might have accepted that she wanted nothing to do with him – but if he tried to press his attentions on her again, she would go and see the Constable. She would not live in fear of that man. But she wouldn’t be silly either. There was nothing wrong with protecting herself and she would see to it she had the means. She was acquainted with firearms; she had looked on when Sir Henry had taught Edmond the finer arts of shooting, and although she had, of course, never participated herself, she had seen how to fire a pistol. She would buy one once she was living alone and keep it in a safe place. She hoped she would never have to use it to threaten anyone, but just knowing it was there would help her sleep better at nights.
She glanced at the pocket-watch pinned to the front of her dress. Lunchtime. She would feel better once she had eaten. She had always known the day she said goodbye to Edmond and the rest of the family would be a disturbing one. But all that to one side, her course was set. It had been set from the moment she had read Molly’s letter.
Christmas was a subdued affair at Grange Hall. Normally the house was full with friends and family of the Ashtons, and Florence would have been cooking for days. The servants had a little get-together which was pleasant enough, but everyone was wondering what the new master and mistress would be like and how they would be affected by the changes. They knew the Stewarts were a young couple recently married and at present on their honeymoon, and that in this they were fortunate. Had the new owners been older they might well have brought their own servants with them. Mrs Stewart’s father was a powerful and influential politician in the House of Lords, and Mr Stewart the only son of a hugely wealthy individual who – according to the titbits of information which had filtered down to the servants – owned half of Scotland. Constance thought this might be somewhat exaggerated, but as it pleased the rest of the staff to believe it so, she said nothing. It wouldn’t affect her one way or the other anyway, since she would be gone before they arrived.
By Twelfth Night, when the main servants’ ball took place, everyone was a lot happier. Just after Christmas a package had been delivered to the house by a special courier from Scotland. It had contained generous monetary gifts for each of the remaining staff, from Mr Rowan down to the scullerymaids; Christmas boxes from the Stewarts. Everyone agreed this boded well for the future. And so on 5 January, when Florence brought out the King’s Cake – remembering the visit of the three Magi to the babe in Bethlehem – the staff were merry after an evening of feasting and dancing and drinking copious amounts of ale and wine.
At midnight, when Epiphany began, everyone drank to the Christ Child and the party ended. Constance went to her room but not to sleep. Tomorrow she was leaving Grange Hall. The estate agent Sir Henry had engaged had done a thorough job, and through him she had agreed to buy what he described as a pretty cottage near Findon Hill, south-east of Sacriston. The agreement was she would inspect the property with him the following day, and if she liked it funds would be transferred. If not, she would rent the cottage for a month or so while he continued his search for her.
Sir Henry, with kind forethought, had left instructions that Fred Weatherburn, the coachman, would drive her to her new home when the time came for her to leave. Constance didn’t know how she felt about arriving back so grandly – it would confirm her position as an upstart, that was for sure – but the weather was harsh and the journey long, and she would be glad of travelling in the Ashtons’ very comfortable carriage. Although it wasn’t the Ashtons’ now, she reminded herself, as she lay in bed watching the moon surrounded by scudding clouds through the window. It was the Stewarts’. Everything had changed and there was no going back – and in a strange sort of way that was comforting. For right or wrong, her path was set.
She snuggled deeper under the covers. The room was icy cold but she had a stone hot-water bottle at her feet and a thick eiderdown on top of the many blankets piled on the bed, and she was as warm as toast.
Should she have told Molly of her plans? But if she had, likely Molly would have let it slip to someone or other that she was coming back. Molly was a love but she couldn’t keep a secret to save her life. And she wanted to settle in and establish herself before she saw anyone. Before she saw Matt. She needed to be in control.
Control. The word mocked her. When had she ever been in control of her feelings where Matt was concerned? Nevertheless, if she could have a few days to find her feet she’d feel better. The estate agent was due to meet
her at the cottage after lunch, which meant an early start the next day, but once she was there she could begin to take stock. He had promised he would see to it that the cottage was warm for her arrival and that there was food in the cupboards. He’d been extremely helpful in every regard, and was certain she’d fall in love with the house he’d found.
Her heart began to race at the thought of the next day before she told herself to calm down. She needed to sleep. Everything would pan out. She had done the only thing she could have done by returning home to Sacriston once she’d received Molly’s letter. And it didn’t matter if no one else in the world understood that. She did.
With this last thought came peace. In a couple more minutes, she was fast asleep.
PART FOUR
The Third Chance
1911
Chapter 20
Rebecca sat in her grandmother Heath’s kitchen watching her knead dough. It was Monday afternoon, her half-day from the shop. Her long working week – from seven o’clock sharp in the morning until eight at night from Tuesday to Saturday meant that most of the daylight hours were spent indoors, and on a Monday afternoon in the summer she often went for a walk before calling in on her grandma. Today though, with the deep snow and raw wind, she’d been glad to make her way straight to Ruth’s warm kitchen.
She had arrived at nearly three. Mr Turner, the owner of the village shop, was crafty, her da said, insisting her half-day began after her half-an-hour lunch-break at two. Mr Turner always saw to it he was busy out the back in the shop’s storeroom doing this, that or the other on a Monday at two o’clock, which meant she nearly always worked in the shop rather than ate her lunch till two-thirty, and even longer some days. Like today. He’d been measuring out sugar from the big barrel into little blue bags to be sold in the front of the shop, and hadn’t wanted to stop till they were all done.
Not that she minded, not really. Mr Turner wasn’t a hard taskmaster and Mrs Turner was lovely, always slipping her bits and pieces to take home. She’d brought her latest hand-out, a bag of bacon bits to her grandma today. She knew the old couple were struggling. Since the strikes towards the end of last year her granda, a dyed-in-the-wool union man, had found his pay savagely docked by the weighman, Mr McKenzie, along with other miners who had got under the owners’ skins. But for the help of her da and uncles, her grandparents would be starving on what her granda brought home. But other people were having it harder.
Only last week her da had come home beside himself after hearing that one of his pals had hanged himself from a tree in Barrashill Wood. He’d been another militant union man and after the last strike the colliery hadn’t taken him back. When the family had been turned out of their cottage they had moved in with one of the man’s sisters, but that had meant eight of them living and sleeping in the sister’s front room, and apparently the sister had a big family of her own to feed. One morning the man had said goodbye to his family, the way he always did when he was leaving to see if he could pick up a day’s work doing odd jobs for folk, or failing that collecting firewood which he’d tie into small bundles and sell round the doors, and he hadn’t come back. It had been his eldest boy, a lad of nine, who had found him. She knew the family by sight. All the bairns were as skinny as rakes and their teeth looked too big for their mouths.
‘You’re a sobersides today, hinny. Owt the matter?’ Ruth paused in her kneading, surveying her grand-daughter’s round pretty face. ‘Not fell out with that lad of yours, have you?’
Rebecca shook her head. ‘’Course not, Gran.’ She hadn’t been able to believe it when her da had relented and said she could start walking out with Larry at Christmas. Larry had told her her da had taken him aside one day at the pit and given him a talking-to about treating her right and being respectful before he’d given them his blessing, but she didn’t mind that. Neither had Larry. And now when Larry came round theirs he and her da got on all right.
‘What’s up then?’ Ruth’s voice was soft. ‘Missing your mam?’
‘No. Yes. I mean I am missing Mam, ’course I am, but it’s more that Da’s . . .’ Her voice trailed away. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Gran.’ How could she explain? If she said her da was different since her mam had died, her grandma would say that was only to be expected and it was early days. And she knew that herself. But it was the way he was different. It wasn’t just that he was sad and weary, it was more that he was drained of emotion. Empty. He put on an act for her, and when Larry came or they saw her grandparents he tried even harder, but she knew it was just that – an act. She had never seen him like this before; not even in the past after one of her mam and da’s rows when things had been awful for weeks had he looked so . . . dead. It frightened her. And after her da had told her about his pal she’d been even more frightened. People did awful things when they lost all hope.
‘He’ll come round, lass. It’s early days.’
There, she knew that’s what her grandma would say.Woodenly, she murmured, ‘Aye, I suppose so.’
‘Losing your mam like that was bound to hit him hard. When you’ve been married to someone for umpteen years you grow together and when one is taken . . . Well, it’s not easy, lass. It takes some adjusting to. And the wife is the homemaker, after all.’
Rebecca said nothing. She had noticed that since her mother had died, since she had become ill, in fact, she seemed to have acquired sainthood in everyone’s eyes. Even her grandma insisted on speaking as though her mam and da had been the most happily married couple ever, and yet her grandma knew well enough this wasn’t the case. She and Larry had discussed this and he was of the opinion that superstition came into it – ‘an irrational fear of speaking ill of the dead’ was the way he’d put it. He had also said that mis-directed reverence could be a dangerous thing when it blurred reality. She loved talking to Larry. He wasn’t like a lot of the lads hereabouts whose only interests were football and beer. He loved books. Half his wage went on books, and not just stories but books on astronomy and philosophy and the natural world. He and her da had been having a conversation about lost civilisations yesterday when he’d come for Sunday tea, and the way man’s desire to conquer and rule others meant that wars would never cease. She’d found that a bit depressing, to be honest.
‘Don’t worry your head about your da.’ She came out of her thoughts as her grandma put a doughy hand on hers. ‘He’ll be all right in a while.’
No, he wouldn’t. Her love for her father told her so. From when she could toddle she had adored him and wanted to be near him every moment she could, and she knew this had been one of the things which had caused the divide between herself and her mother. But it hadn’t mattered. She could have done without her mother as long as she had her father. But now, somehow, he’d gone away. He was still around physically, but something had died. And yet he hadn’t loved her mother; until recently, she hadn’t even thought they liked each other. She didn’t know what to do. She was no consolation to him; she couldn’t help him. Forcing her fear to the back of her mind, she smiled at her grandma and changed the subject. Her grandma had enough on her plate and she didn’t want to add to her worries.
By four o’clock it had started to snow again and it was so dark her grandma had lit the oil lamps. Rebecca was putting on her hat and coat when a tap came at the back door followed by the appearance of Mrs Mullen, her grandma’s next-door neighbour.
‘Ee, lass, I didn’t know you were here,’ she said on catching sight of Rebecca. ‘Come to see your grandma then? That’s nice.’
Rebecca sighed inwardly. Mrs Mullen was the biggest gossip for miles around, and once she started talking no one could get a word in edgeways. Rebecca would be standing here like a lemon waiting to say goodbye now.
Sure enough, without taking a pause, Mrs Mullen went on, ‘I just thought I’d pop in and see if you’ve heard about Constance Shelton, Ruth? I know you were close to her an’ her grandma at one time, and when our Fanny told me the news I couldn’t believe me ears. “Are you sure
it’s her?” I said to our Fanny, and she said her Seth would know the lass anywhere. “Great big blue eyes and the spitting image of her mam”, he said. No mistaking her.’
When Mrs Mullen came up for air, her grandma said, ‘What about Constance, Sarah?’
‘She’s back. Back here. Well, not exactly here – she’s too good for the village now, by all accounts. She’s taken Appleby Cottage, the one the other side of Findon Hill where Colonel Vickers used to live. Bonny place, you know? Seth went to deliver a wagonload of coal and logs and said he nearly died when she opened the door. Some house agent from Chester Le Street had set everything up, but he didn’t know who the new owner was, and there she stood. Bold as brass. Thanked him and gave him a good tip an’ all, like she’d been born to it, he said. You didn’t know then? That she had moved into Appleby Cottage? That she was back?’
‘No. No, I didn’t.’
‘That’s what I said to our Fanny. “Ruth would have told me if she knew,” I said. “She’s not one for being secretive for no reason. Open as the day is long, that’s Ruth Heath”.’
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