by Maggie Hope
‘Yes, sir,’ said Lottie and turned for the door.
‘I will let you know what my father and I decide about payment for your stories. If we decide they are good enough to publish, that is. Oh, and the writing machine – the typewriter it is called – will be delivered today. You will be required to stay back to familiarize yourself with it.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Lottie repeated and went out. By, he was a lovely man, a grand man, Mr Jeremiah, she thought again. He was a good master, straight-talking, but kind and understanding. And when she looked into his eyes it made her feel funny: warm but strange. Aye, a lovely man indeed. Lottie ran down the stairs to the reporters’ room, where George and Edward Dixon worked when they were indoors. Edward was out on a call with his camera. His photographs were beginning to be used in the paper but his camera was bulky and unwieldy and useless indoors without flares.
She was looking forward to trying the writing machine. Oh, she was so lucky to be working here on the Post instead of doing someone else’s washing or brushing a stair carpet down. The future beckoned brightly. Lottie hadn’t given a thought to Tot Mitchell-Howe all morning. She could manage fine on her own without a sweetheart.
As for Mr Jeremiah, it did not occur to her to consider him in such a light. But he did have nice eyes. When he looked at her she felt warm all over.
‘Lottie? About time an’ all,’ said George. ‘I would have had these notes all finished if I’d been on my own but the boss says I have to go through them with you, so come on in and we’ll begin. Where have you been, any road?’
‘I had to see Mr Jeremiah,’ she replied as she sat down on a stool by his side. As she went over the events of the morning with him, comparing her notes with Mr Jeremiah’s, she had to admit that she had a lot to learn; she had omitted so much. But when she had mastered Mr Pitman’s shorthand she would do better. She would start that very evening, if she could keep his copy of Mr Pitman’s book. Right after she had mastered the writing machine.
Chapter Sixteen
1885
Lottie pulled the last page of her article from the typewriter and put it together with half a dozen others on the left of her desk. There, that was her ‘Home Notes’ for this week for the Durham Post. She rubbed her forehead to ease the incipient headache she could feel hovering above her eyes and put on her spectacles, or glasses as they were often called now.
She stood and stretched her arms above her head, then rubbed the back of her neck before moving to the window and staring out at the driving rain. In the garden, the roses were being dashed about by the wind and snails were crawling along the path. Above the hedge, she could see the trees waving their branches, and a woman was hurrying along the path beneath them, her hand holding her hat on and her skirt swirling out behind her, wet and bedraggled.
It was June and so far it did not promise to be a good summer. Lottie had hoped to take a walk in the park before having a sandwich and a cup of tea and then settling down for the afternoon to work on her current novel. She might still do that, raining or not.
As she walked along the path edging North Road, wrapped in an oilskin over her jacket and with her umbrella rolled, for the wind was far too gusty to risk putting it up, she went over her morning’s work in her mind. There were several small paragraphs and items concerning subjects that were of interest to women, the latest fashions in the shops being the most important. The narrower skirts appearing in the window of H and J Ferens, and the cotton jackets in Johnston and Coxon in Silver Street had taken up a few lines in this latest article. But really, she found this sort of thing of little interest.
What she did find interesting, she reflected as she climbed the hill into Wharton Park, were the human interest stories she found all around her in the busy little city, and these she used as the basis for her short stories. Jeremiah Scott published them in the Durham Post and she made a fair living from them and her articles. Oh, Jeremiah had been good to her. And when he had married a girl from the Surtees family, a gentlewoman, she had felt pangs of jealousy even though she knew she herself came from too humble a background altogether to even think he might consider her in that way. She was a colleague; maybe not even that, but an underling. Still, she had dreamed.
Her feelings had been all mixed up, she told herself. She had been silly. She wanted nothing to do with marrying anyone; she had her career to think of. Hadn’t she already got one novel accepted by Bloom Bros, a publishing company in York?
The Clouds Stood Still was the story of a girl, a middle-class girl, fighting to be allowed to study to become a lawyer at university. An idealistic girl who dreamed of fighting in the courts for the rights of the oppressed. She won through in the end against all odds, but of course it was a fairy story. It just couldn’t happen. She would not have got into university, she would not even have been taken on as an apprentice by any law firm and she most certainly would have been laughed out of court if she did. Yet Mr Bloom, when Lottie had gone to see him in York, had liked her novel, and she had been filled with elation. It was scheduled to be published in November and she could hardly wait. If only it had decent reviews! If only it were reviewed at all, she told herself as she began the descent down the other side of the hill.
‘Lottie? Lottie Lonsdale! Goodness, I haven’t seen you for such a long time, how are you?’
Lottie had been oblivious of the people walking past her, she was so deep in her own thoughts. She looked up as a man stopped in front of her, blocking her path. It was indeed a long time since she had seen him, for he had been away in Oxford, pursuing a degree; afterwards staying on with a rich friend, according to Eliza. He had grown into a man, a man as handsome as he had been as a boy. It was Eliza’s son, Thomas, or Tot, as he had called himself. Lottie stared up at him, speechless for a moment. For he was good-looking indeed, with a shock of dark hair and violet eyes with long lashes any girl would die for. He stood there, looking down on her and smiling, and her heartbeat quickened. She blushed like a sixteen-year-old might.
‘Grand. I am well,’ she managed to stutter and his smile widened.
‘Mother said you were a lady reporter. You’ve done so well, Lottie!’
‘Thank you, Tot,’ she said demurely. The rain had stopped and the sun was coming out. She unfastened her oilskin jacket and let it hang open, for suddenly she felt too warm.
‘I call myself Thomas now. Tot was a babyish name,’ he said. ‘Are you going somewhere? If you have the time, I thought we could sit on a bench and talk a while.’
‘I was just in need of fresh air and exercise,’ said Lottie. ‘I worked all morning on my article for the paper. I intended going back to work on my new novel but I can spare some time. After all, it is ages since I saw you, though I do hear about you from your mother. She is so proud of you, Tot – I mean Thomas.’
‘Well then, that’s fine. We’ll walk, shall we?’ Thomas offered her his arm and they continued along the path, but the first bench they came to was far too wet to sit on and so were the others. In the end they continued on into the city and Thomas bought bottles of dandelion and burdock from a street vendor and penny dips from a butcher in Silver Street, as they had years ago when she was the housemaid and he still a schoolboy.
They laughed together as they at last found a bench that had dried out in the sun, down by the river with the castle towering above them. And Lottie lost some of her shyness and was charmed by him just as she had been when a young girl. After they had eaten, they dipped their handkerchiefs in the river by the weir to wipe their fingers and had to hold on to each other as they did so, for the Wear was swollen with peaty water coming down from the dale after the heavy rainfall of the last few days. Today droplets from the water coming over the weir were sparkling in sun, in tune with Lottie’s happy feelings.
Eventually they walked on along the riverside and now as she placed her fingers on his arm, she was very conscious of his other hand covering them. Still, as they drew nearer to Elvet Bridge, she knew the afternoon with
him was drawing to a close. Oh, but it had been grand, it had indeed. She gazed at the river for a few moments. She had told him something about her career and he had seemed truly interested and congratulated her on her book. Yet she knew he was more interested in her than her work and with anyone else this would have annoyed her, yet with him it did not matter, she was glad. She was captivated completely and utterly and Thomas was all she could think about. Oh, she knew it was too quick but she couldn’t help herself.
They had been holding hands on the riverbank, but when they came to the bridge they moved apart slightly and she put the gloved tips of her fingers on his arm and yet she was supremely conscious of the warm flesh through the material of his coat and the cotton of her gloves. They wandered up into the marketplace and on to North Road. It was a fair distance to walk and the day was quite advanced as they passed by Wharton Park, but all too soon they arrived at the small house, which Lottie had rented after her success with her articles and which gave her the solitude she needed for her work.
‘May I come in?’ Thomas asked her. Lottie had been in a slight panic that he would leave her at the door and she would not see him again for months. After all, she did not know if he felt as she did herself. She knew nothing of his life, really. She hadn’t even seen him for years. She did not see so much of Eliza and Peter nowadays. They were all so busy with their own lives: Peter with the union, which was growing from strength to strength, and Eliza with her work as a district nurse. Was Thomas just being polite, walking his mother’s former servant home? She looked up at him for a moment without speaking. Did he think she was fast, letting him hold her hand?
‘I have a fair walk home,’ he coaxed. ‘A cup of tea would be very welcome. If you’re worried about what the neighbours might say, well, I am an old friend, am I not?’ The lace was twitching in the front room window next door; Lottie saw it out of the corner of her eye. It wasn’t important, let the neighbours gossip, she didn’t care.
‘Of course. Come in,’ she said and led the way.
‘Show me where you work,’ said Thomas, as she placed the kettle on the gas ring, which stood to one side of the fireplace on a metal tripod where one day she meant to install one of the new gas cookers. ‘I want to know everything about you.’ The room was upstairs and at the front of the house so that she could see out over the city and hills beyond. Why not? she thought. It wasn’t her bedroom, for she slept in the front room downstairs. Once again she led the way.
Standing by her desk, she looked down at the old typewriter she had bought second-hand from Mr Scott when it was replaced by a newer model. There was a small pile of foolscap to one side and her shorthand notebook. Nervously, she fiddled with them, setting them square to each other.
Thomas came up behind her and put his arms around her and she stiffened for a moment, then relaxed against him. Whether he felt as she did or did not, it didn’t seem to matter now, he wanted her and she wanted him.
Lottie was naive and innocent – despite Alf Green – when Thomas Mitchell-Howe took her, there on the couch that stood in her workroom, and afterwards she felt a sense of fulfilment; that this was what life was all about. But most of all, she was filled with joy and happiness. Surely he must feel the same? She gazed up into his face and was convinced she saw her own feelings reflected in his eyes as he smiled down at her. It was as though the wound that Alf Green had inflicted on her was healed.
Thomas was happy too. Lottie was such a sweet, attractive little thing and he had wanted her for so long, ever since he was a schoolboy. He thought of other girls he had known: the sisters of his friends for the most part, or the servant girls who lived and worked at the university in Oxford. His friends’ sisters were not averse to a little flirting but they were strictly chaperoned and certainly not for anything more. The servants were fair game so long as he was discreet. After all, they were in the university but not of it.
Earlier in the morning, Thomas had asked his mother, Eliza, how Lottie was getting along. He still had sweet memories of her from when he and she had dallied by the Wear when they were young. He had been fond of her and now he realized he still was.
‘How is your old maid, Lottie getting along? I suppose she is married now with half a dozen children?’ he had asked Eliza.
‘Indeed no,’ his mother replied, frowning slightly at his description of Lottie as ‘her old maid’. ‘Lottie is my friend, rather than a servant, Thomas, and she is an independent woman. She has her own house and writes a column for the Durham Post. And she is a fully-fledged novelist, with a book coming out later in the year, I believe.’
‘Her own house?’
‘Yes, she has. It is over by North End, past Wharton Park.’
‘Wharton Park? Isn’t that the one where the Miners’ Gala is held? I remember it.’
Thomas remembered going there as a boy with his mother and stepfather, and it had been a great time with colliery bands playing and roundabouts and games for the children. Of course, the speeches from the platform had been tedious but the boys had enjoyed themselves anyway.
He folded his paper and got to his feet. ‘I think I’ll take a walk, Mother,’ he said.
‘In this rain?’
‘I feel like some exercise. A walk will do me good.’
‘Well, don’t stay out too long and catch a cold. I have enough to do with Anne.’
Eliza watched him as he opened the front door and stepped out. Oh, he was a lovely lad, she thought proudly, as she so often did. She worried that he was bored back home here in Durham. There was no denying the place was quieter than Oxford or London, where some of his friends lived. Just at the moment he had little to do but wait to take up the position with Brownlow, Brownlow and Snape, Barristers at Law, whose chambers were in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. But that would only be a couple of months, thank goodness; he would join them in September.
Still, Thomas was a grand lad, he was indeed. There had been a time when she had thought he would rebel and insist on following his father’s trade and become a carpenter. He certainly had his father’s hands, square, strong and capable-looking.
That time he had run away from home and tried to join his father’s family in Northumberland was still the stuff of nightmares to her. Now, though, he seemed to have forgotten his dreams of being a carpenter. He was a gentleman; a proper gentleman as his forefathers had been before gambling took hold of them.
As Eliza ran upstairs in response to a call from Anne, who was in bed with a feverish cold, she still felt that old fear at the back of her mind. Please God, she prayed, don’t let Thomas get the gambling fever as his father had done. Such misery it had caused the family! But he would not, she told herself. He had as much of her in him as he had of his father. He would be careful and not be taken in by the promise of a big win, he would not.
She attended to the little girl, making her a warm drink of blackcurrant tea sweetened with honey and hushed her off to sleep afterwards, but all the time she couldn’t get her anxious thoughts away from Thomas. She lay on the bed with Anne still cuddled in her arms and uncharacteristically fell asleep herself, only to be plagued by nightmares in which Thomas was inextricably intertwined with Jack, his father. They were standing on the top of a cliff and then they were both falling towards the sea below. Thomas was crying for her and she struggled to reach him before waking to find herself clutching at little Anne. It was Anne who was calling,
‘Too tight, Mammy, too tight!’
Eliza soothed her and tiptoed out of the room, feeling groggy and with a headache. She was worrying about nothing, she told herself. Thomas was not a gambler, indeed he was not. He was a lawyer and as such had a brilliant future ahead of him with Brownlow, Brownlow and Snape. He would have enough to occupy his mind without gambling.
Thomas, sitting on the couch with his arm around Lottie in the little house in North End, was quiet, happy to sit there all evening, it seemed. Lottie, looking up at him, tried to guess his feelings. Did he despise her now for giving in
so easily to him? He looked down at her with a depth of feeling in his eyes and smiled, and she was reassured. But she was coming down to earth, aware of the world as it was. They could not stay as they were, hidden from disapproving eyes for ever, and besides she had work to do. And there was Eliza. It would hurt Eliza, who had been so good to her. Even though they were such good friends, Lottie knew Eliza wanted someone better than a workhouse skivvy for her son. And that, she reminded herself, was exactly what she was.
She sat up, away from the feel of his arm around her shoulders, his body against hers, then got to her feet and straightened her dress.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Thomas. ‘Come back here.’ He held out his arms and smiled, his dark eyes crinkling at the corners and bewitching her. She made herself resist.
‘I must work and you must go. Your mother will wonder where you are,’ she said softly.
Thomas dropped his arm and sighed. It was true. They could not go against all the rules and social mores of small town society. Reluctantly, he too stood up and started to take her in his arms again but she backed away.
‘Thomas, please. You can return tomorrow. You must get back – look, it is almost dark outside. It might be dangerous crossing the park. I’ve heard there are footpads there after dark.’
He laughed. ‘You are worried about me? You are so sweet, Lottie. But don’t worry, I will be fine, I can look after myself.’ He leaned forward and kissed her with his hands behind his back, being careful not to touch her otherwise. ‘I’m going. See, I’ll always do as you say. I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t come downstairs, I’ll let myself out.’
He ran down the stairs and she could hear the sound of his footsteps fading as he went down the street towards the city.
Lottie stood where she was for a few moments, her arms crossed over her breasts, which were aching and slightly sore from his attentions. She was a wanton and abandoned woman, she thought dreamily, and she should be thoroughly ashamed of herself. But strangely, she was not. Eliza would not stand in their way, surely? Not when they truly loved each other. In any case, she was not a skivvy from the workhouse now. She was a writer, a fully-fledged author and she was going to be famous one day soon.