Then one evening Eliza opened the local evening newspaper and turned pale. She sat in silence for so long that it was noticed by her sister-in-law.
“Is anything the matter, Eliza?”
“The death of a girl I used to know well,” replied Eliza quietly.
She turned the leaves of the newspaper, folded it, laid it down casually, and left the room. Immediately her sister-in-law picked up the paper and scanned the appropriate column.
“James Butterfield’s wife has died at last, Tom,” she said in a meaning tone.
“Who’s James Butterfield?” said Tom.
“Have you forgotten him? He used to teach in the Resmond Street Sunday School, don’t you remember? We thought he and Eliza would make a match of it, don’t you remember? We haven’t seen much of him lately, it’s true. But mark my words, Eliza hasn’t forgotten him.”
“Oh, rubbish,” said Tom in an uneasy tone. “Don’t go putting ideas into her head, now.”
“I shan’t say anything either way. She’s old enough to know her own mind.”
She kept to this resolution and made no comment when a few days later Eliza left the house clad in the all-embracing black garb then thought proper for funerals.
The chapel was cold and empty; apart from the minister and the necessary attendants, only the widower and his young son were present.
Eliza from the shadows beneath the gallery had a long clear view of James as he followed his wife’s remains out of the building. Her heart turned over in pity. She remembered James young, tall, fair, strong; she saw a man middle-aged, elderly in appearance, with bowed shoulders, thin greying hair, anxious eyes, wrinkled cheek. He was quietly weeping. The child beside him, hand reluctantly in his, had all Esther’s pert dark beauty—and also her mutinous resentful air.
What tumult of feeling, what agony of decision, went on in Eliza’s mind we cannot know. But she remained in the shadow, unperceived, and James passed by.
“But why didn’t she step forward? Why didn’t she seize on James and marry him?” I cried, exasperated.
“She told me,” said my mother hesitantly, “that she was afraid she might not be able to keep silence, you know, if she married him.”
“Silence? About Esther, you mean?”
My mother nodded.
“And why not? That little viper was dead.”
“Turn James against the child? Let him know he’d wasted his life for a lie?”
“Well! So nothing happened?”
So nothing happened. Nothing, nothing, at all, for days, weeks, months, a couple of years. Then one evening the newspaper announced James Butterfield’s death. Best not enquire in what anguish Eliza spent that night. Next morning she received a letter from an Annotsfield solicitor about the matter of her executorship of James Butterfield’s estate. Astonished, she called on the man, who read James’s Will to her. All was left to “my dearly loved son, Philip,” and the solicitor and herself were joint executors. Finding perhaps something a trifle odd and muted in her response, the lawyer said suddenly:
“Mr. Butterfield had secured your consent to the executorship, I presume?”
Eliza replied truthfully: “No.”
The lawyer raised his eyebrows. “In that case,” he said: “It is my duty to ask you now whether you will undertake it. There is the child, you know, the son. Philip. He is nine. Mr. Butterfield had no relatives to whom he could be entrusted.”
“What about Mrs. Butterfield’s relatives?”
“Unfortunately she had quarrelled with them.”
“So if I do not undertake the executorship?”
“I see nothing for it but an orphanage. Perhaps you will decide on that in any case? There are some reputable establishments.”
It would seem that here again Eliza had a chance to break out in a fury, to reveal Esther’s betrayal, to decline all responsibility for this by-blow Philip, to announce in trenchant tones that Philip was not James’s son. But she was silent.
After a moment she said quietly: “I accept the executorship.”
“Ah, good!” said the lawyer, relieved. “And the boy? An orphanage?”
“I will enquire whether my brother will consent to receive him into his household. There are four children there already—one more can perhaps be squeezed in.”
This was tried, but proved a most uncomfortable failure. At that stage Philip was almost everything a child ought not to be. Not only peevish, selfish, bad-tempered, unmannerly, but a sneak, a would-be tyrant, even possibly a little of a thief. To strangers he was charming, and he lied about his peccadilloes so convincingly that Eliza’s nieces and nephews were always finding themselves in trouble for sins committed by him. After a few weeks they could not stand him any longer, and after he had ridden the eldest boy’s bicycle without permission and smashed the lamp, the whole family blew up into a flaming row. Tom, enlightened by his daughter, declared that he would not have that detestable trouble-maker in the house a moment longer.
“Then I shall have to leave too,” said Eliza firmly.
“You will do nothing of the kind,” raged Tom. “That fellow’s affairs are in a hopeless mess. They’re no concern of yours, and I insist that you renounce the executorship and resume a quiet life with us here.”
But Eliza did not renounce the executorship or the care of Philip. She moved out into the cheap little house behind the railway station which had recently been the only home James could afford, and devoted herself to bringing up Esther’s child. Her brother was furious and washed his hands of her. He was not the kind of man, as he truly said, to resent his sister’s spending her money in her own way instead of leaving it to his children—though it was annoying—provided the way was sensible and made her happy; but this was all for a twopenny ha’penny chap, a poor tool, who’d jilted her into the bargain.
His contemptuous references to James Butterfield were from the monetary point of view correct. There was no National Health Service in those days, and his wife’s long illness had stripped James of all his savings. Then again, the promise of his youth in industry had not been fulfilled. Egmont’s still employed him, but in a very subordinate capacity; his attendances had been too irregular, his mind too preoccupied, to earn promotion. In a word, James’s legacy to the child he believed his son was simply a mountain of debt.
With this Eliza struggled. There were Philip’s school fees, too, and his frequent illnesses, and as he grew older his extravagances. Eliza’s small patrimony slowly melted. In those days women of the middle class were not trained to earn their living, and presently Eliza took to doing fine needlework and mending, for pay, as the only gainful activity of which she was capable. When Tom heard this he was really upset. He came down from his high horse and went to see his sister, and employed the kindest tone he could find to urge her to return to them and give up her efforts for the child. He would speak to someone he knew about getting Philip into a good orphanage, he said.
“Come back to us, Lizzie love. Clara begs you to come back.”
“I can’t, Tom. It was all my fault.”
“What was all your fault?”
“Never mind. I can’t leave the boy.”
“Well, I can’t help you much, Lizzie, and that’s a fact,” said Tom heavily. “Textiles aren’t too good just now.”
For the year now was in the 1890’s, when the sudden American tariffs brought many a West Riding firm to ruin.
“I know, Tom; I understand; don’t worry about me,” said Eliza, kissing her brother’s solid cheek. “We must both do the best we can.”
“Aye! Well, it’s a poor do,” said Tom. “Let me know if you get really hard up, you know.”
“I will. But I expect I shall manage.”
She managed. She saw Philip through chicken-pox and measles and a dose of pneumonia, through cricket and football and homework and prize-givings; she earned for him, washed for him, sewed for him, put up with his tantrums, improved his temper, taught him manners, gave him parties for h
is friends, kept the silver frame which held his mother’s photograph spotless, started him off in his profession, and never by any chance gave him the slightest hint that he was not James Butterfield’s son. When he grew up, of course he left her.
“Left her?” I exclaimed.
“Well, that was hardly his fault. It was his profession, you see,” said my mother.
“What was his profession?”
“Didn’t you know? He was an actor,” said my mother. “Quite well known. He took a different name, of course; Butterfield was impossible.” She gave the name of a defunct actor, not, certainly, in the very top rank of his profession, but not very far below. “He was quite good, temperamental of course—your father and I saw him once or twice in London. He’d improved a great deal in himself, too—Eliza straightened him out.”
“Was he fond of her?”
“As fond as he could be. She was no relation to him, of course. But he was as fond as he could be—he used to send her a Christmas card every year,” said my mother sardonically.
“And did she really never tell him?”
“Tell him?”
“Who he was? Or at least, who he was not?”
“Never. She thought it would be bad for him,” said my mother simply. “She told nobody until she lay on her deathbed—she lived long after him, you know. Actors lead such rackety lives and he was always delicate. But at the end she seemed as if she couldn’t hold it in any longer, and she told me. I was always her favourite niece.”
I reflected.
“Don’t you think she regretted her silence all her life?” I said.
“I don’t know,” said my mother thoughtfully. “It’s difficult to say. If she had told James she might have regretted it more. She might have despised herself. But whether she was a fool, or whether she was a saint, a heroine, really I don’t know.”
“Neither do I,” I said with a sigh.
A Question of Background
1930
I wanted you to be the first to hear about it, Gladys; because it’s all due to you, really, that it came about. If it hadn’t been for you suddenly giving me backword, and going off to Blackpool with Jack Hepworth and his sister, instead of coming to the Isle of Man with me as we’d arranged, I should never have met him. Or if I had, I shouldn’t have—well, never mind; I’ll begin at the beginning.
You know, I always hated Hudley, Gladys. I hated the West Riding altogether; the towns so dark and dreary; the great bocks of dingy mills; the steep, narrow, dirty streets; the foundry furnaces and the mill chimneys; the noisy trams and buzzers; and the great smoke cloud over all. I hated the lorries always thundering about, because they never seemed to carry anything thrilling or romantic, like ivory or apes or peacocks; they always carried something textile. Dirty fleeces; or those yarn tops whose coils look so nice and white but are so greasy to touch; or pieces of cloth, flopping about on their way to the dyers; or something dull like that. I always hated the mills, and made up my mind I’d never have anything to do with them, and so I worked hard at school, and got a scholarship to the technical college, and worked hard there and got very good certificates for shorthand and book-keeping and typing, and meant to go away and work at some interesting, romantic place. And then poor old dad went and asked Mr. Sykes if there was a place for me in the office at Haighroyd Mills, and Mr. Sykes said there was, and I had to go or break dad’s heart, and so of course I went.
But I grew to hate everything to do with cloth more and more, because things were always going wrong. Mr. Robert or Mr. John was always rushing into the office wanting to know where piece 85431 or something was, because some customer wanted it urgently, or the customer himself came on the telephone in a rage; and then someone was always shouting at me: “Bessie! Just ’phone round and see if you can find piece 85431,” and there I was at the house-’phone half the morning, arguing with the foremen of the departments about a missing piece. At first I used to be timid about it, and the piece never turned up because they didn’t bother to look, and Mr. Robert used to fly into a fury and rush off down into the mill and blow up everybody he met till the whole place seethed with irritation—yes, the whole fifteen acres of it. But after a while I hardened my heart and stood no nonsense from any of them; no, not from my father himself in the warehouse, nor that cheeky fellow on the big tentering machine, nor that tiresome, slow man in the press-shop, nor any of them. I knew all their names and how best to stir them up, though I wouldn’t demean myself by knowing any of them personally, except dad, of course. Not that it was much good when I did find the piece Mr. Robert was after; there was usually something wrong with it: the finish wasn’t right, or the length was wrong, or it had got damaged in the weave, or something. Oh, yes, I simply hated everything to do with textiles.
And that was why I was so determined not to go for the Wakes to Douglas or Blackpool, where everybody from Hudley goes; I wanted to go to a nice quiet place where I should meet some fresh people. I wanted to go down south really, but mother wouldn’t let me go alone, and when you said you’d go to Port Erin and showed me those picture postcards—however, you know all about that. And then you gave me backword and we arranged I should go alone and not tell mother.
Well, Port Erin is the loveliest, most romantic place I’ve ever been in. There’s a little bay, sheltered on one side by some low cliffs and on the other by Bradda Head. Bradda Head is simply glorious! At the top it’s all purple heather, with sheep grazing, though the sides are so steep you’d think they’d roll off; then there are huge rugged black rocks going sheer down into the sea, where the seagulls live. Those gulls! I could watch them for hours. They’re always swirling and swooping up and down, except on hot afternoons, when they stand very still and dig into their feathers with their curved beaks. The sea at Port Erin is very, very clear, and beautifully blue; on a sunny morning it sparkles so you can hardly see it for light. The houses are coloured pink and white, the shore is nice firm honey-coloured sand, and there’s a little harbour, with a few fishing-smacks, and lots of little rowing-boats, brown and white, tied to each other in long strings or dotted about the bay.
But the best part of Port Erin is the breakwater. It seems that they built it out at the wrong angle from the land, and the first storm that came, wrecked it. So now it looks like a pier only for a few yards, and then turns into a jumble of concrete blocks, as if a child had upset a box of bricks. There’s all kinds of seaweed—ribbed and flat and curly and some like rope—gently swaying about there in the tide; and there are fat, red anemones, like velvet, and round, prickly sea-urchins, all lovely pinks and purples, clinging to the rocks below, and the water’s so clear that you can see them, oh! ever so far down; and in some of the shallow places there are tiny darting fish and little green crabs and lobsters, all transparent, waving their pretty little feelers. Oh, it’s a lovely place; I used to spend hours there, just looking about and feeling happy, and thinking how different it was from Hudley and how glad I was to be there.
It was there I met him. I had scrambled out to one of the blocks and was sitting there, looking about and thinking, like I said, when suddenly I heard a voice saying: “Excuse me.”
I looked round, and there was a young man in a rowing boat, quite near my rock. He looked a nice, decent sort of fellow, not the kind who go about picking up strange girls, but all the same I gave him rather a haughty stare, being alone.
“Get in,” he said, and drew his boat up close to me.
I thought this was rude, so I scrambled up, meaning to go back to land and leave him, when I saw that I was quite cut off by the tide. Between my rock and the next there was a stretch of deep water, full of floating seaweed, with no safe footholds to be seen, and as I stood gazing the water swirled …
I felt so dizzy and queer, I gave a scream; and of course I slipped, and my arms and legs flew in all directions, you know how they do, and there was an awful moment when I didn’t know whether I was in the sea or out, and suddenly I found myself in the boat, qu
ite safe except for bruises on my arm where he’d clutched me, and he was looking at me in a concerned way, and some people on the land were shouting and laughing. I felt ashamed of myself for being so silly and causing such a fuss, and I hoped he wouldn’t put me ashore where all the people were; and without my saying a word he understood, and turned the boat round very cleverly, and rowed away down the middle of the bay.
Well, it’s no use going into what I said to him and what he said to me. Not that he said much; looking back, I see it was me did all the talking. You either like a person or you don’t, and you can never make somebody else understand why. He was tall, and broad, and strong, and dark, and rather dreamy, quiet and serious, you know, not always making silly jokes like fellows in the West Riding; he could row and swim and walk, champion, and we liked the same things, always.
It was the Wednesday of Wakes week I met him, and after that we were together all the time. We rowed all round Bradda Head and into the caves, that afternoon, and I said it was grand, and very different from Hudley, and he said there were caves like that in Cornwall, and I thought how grand it would be to live in Cornwall. Next day it was rough in the morning and we stood on the breakwater and watched the waves; how huge they were, and green, and my word, the white spray! You don’t see anything like that in Hudley. In the afternoon, as it was too rough for boating, we went for a walk; there were little white cottages, and fuchsias by the door, and fields of golden barley all rustling, and poppies, and cliffs, and an old castle; and I said how different it was from Hudley, and how I liked it. The next day it was calm and fine again, and we rowed out to the Calf of Man! Yes, we did really, and it was lovely. Heather and rocks and a wide, clear sky. Very different from Hudley, as I said. That night we went down to the breakwater together, and the moon was out; everything was black and silver, very lovely and romantic, and I couldn’t bear to think that next day I had to go back to Hudley, and never see him again. He’d never asked my name, and so I didn’t like to ask his; to myself I called him Gerald, because that was always my favourite name for a man, so refined and romantic. But if you don’t know a person’s real name, you never see them again, do you? So it was rather sadly that I said, as we were walking back:
Tales of the West Riding Page 9