by Maggie Hope
‘Of course you can,’ murmured Lottie. She glanced out into the street before closing the door. Dolly, the old pony who pulled Eliza’s trap as she visited her patients, was chewing contentedly on the contents of a nosebag. Eliza was intending to stay a while then.
‘It’s nice to see you, Eliza,’ said Lottie, as she followed her friend into the kitchen. ‘I’ll put the kettle on, we’ll have a cup of tea.’
‘Only if you have the time,’ Eliza replied. ‘I know you must be busy. It’s such a long time since you came to see me.’
Lottie blushed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know it’s true. But I have been busy.’
‘Too busy for your old friends, eh?’
‘I was planning to come this next weekend,’ Lottie murmured. She made up the fire and settled the kettle on top of it, then got out cups and saucers.
‘You don’t look very well, Lottie. Is something the matter?’ Eliza gazed at the younger girl. Lottie was pale, and behind her spectacles her eyes were dull and there were dark rings around them. ‘Your eyes look sore,’ she went on. ‘You must be straining them, Lottie. You should be careful. You know your eyes are weak.’
‘No, I’m fine, really,’ Lottie protested. ‘Maybe I’ve just sat too long at the typewriter, that’s all.’
‘No you’re not,’ Eliza declared. ‘Are your menses all right?’
‘I-I don’t know …’ Lottie faltered. She had not even thought about her monthly periods. Maybe they were late, now that she did, but she had often been irregular.
‘I bet you’re not eating properly,’ said Eliza. ‘Don’t be daft, Lottie, you cannot neglect yourself like this. Sit down and have your tea. I’ve brought some of my own gingerbread, that’ll do you good. You’re thin as a lathe, lass.’
Lottie obediently drank her tea and ate a piece of Yorkshire parkin. ‘How is the family?’ she asked. ‘Peter and little Anne?’ She paused before adding, ‘Have you heard from Thomas? How is he getting on?’
‘Oh, I don’t hear much from him, he’s so busy, you know. Just like you, when I think of it.’ Eliza favoured Lottie with a direct stare. ‘You have to make time for your friends, Lottie. Otherwise you’ll find yourself without any.’
Suddenly Lottie felt sick. Mumbling something, she fled out into the yard and vomited into the drain that ran down the centre. Panting, she slowly stood up straight and wiped her mouth with her handkerchief.
‘Now then, Lottie, howay in and sit yourself down. I think you have some explaining to do.’
Eliza was standing in the doorway. Lottie hesitated for a moment and then walked towards her, feeling a bit dizzy.
‘I must have eaten something that disagreed with me,’ she said.
‘I don’t think so, Lottie, my girl,’ Eliza replied.
They went into the kitchen and Lottie sank down on a chair. Her friend followed and sat down opposite her.
‘Who was it?’ Eliza asked. ‘By, there’s always some swine willing to take a lass down, there is an’ all.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Lottie.
‘Come on, you’re not the young lass brought to me by Bertha all those years ago. You know very well what I mean. How long since you had a period?’
Lottie stared at Eliza as she realized what her friend was implying. She had been completely gormless if it was true. How long was it since her last monthly? She counted up in her head, making a mistake and starting again. Eliza watched her as the knowledge dawned on her that it was more than a month, more than two months. The remaining colour left her face.
‘I’m never regular,’ she faltered.
‘How long?’
‘Ten weeks, I think.’
It had been a couple of weeks before Thomas. Thinking of it, Lottie felt a different kind of sickness. She stared at the floor, avoiding Eliza’s gaze.
‘Now then, Lottie, tell me who it was. He’ll have to wed you, whoever it is. Do you love him? If you do and he loves you, then you can get wed as soon as maybe. Mind, I didn’t know you were courting even, is that why you haven’t been to see us much?
‘We cannot get wed. I’ll bring the baby up on my own.’
‘On your own? Nay, pet, you cannot make a bastard of it, you cannot. It’s not the bairn’s fault. No, he’ll have to face up to it, whoever he is. You can get wed and make the best of it. Or … He’s not married already is he? Don’t say that, please!’
Lottie shook her head. ‘He’s not married. Only he doesn’t live here any more.’
‘Well, we must find him. Now, do you know where he is?’
‘I don’t know.’
Eliza was running out of patience. She rose to her feet and adjusted her nurse’s bonnet. ‘Now look here, Charlotte Lonsdale. I’m telling you now, you’ll have to find him. He’s been where he shouldn’t have been and he’ll have to pay the consequences. Is he chapel? If he is, the minister will make him do what’s right.’ She pulled on her gloves and fastened the buttons at the wrists. Eliza was angry. Angry with Lottie for getting herself into this situation and angry at her apparent stubbornness.
‘I have to go now, I still have half my rounds to do, but I want you to come home with me tonight while we thrash this out. It’s all right, Peter is away at a meeting, something about the National Union of Mineworkers. We’ll have the house to ourselves after little Anne is in bed. Now, be ready. I’ll be back for you about six o’clock.’
‘I have to work,’ said Lottie.
‘Be ready.’
After Eliza had gone – sweeping out of the door, removing Dolly’s nosebag and climbing into the trap, then clicking her tongue at the Galloway and sending her trotting off along the street and all in a minute or two – Lottie sat down again, her mind in a whirl.
‘I am expecting a bairn,’ she said aloud but she found it hard to believe. What would she do? She panicked for a moment but then, as her chaotic thoughts quietened, she began to make plans. She was luckier than most in that she had a profession now and it was work she could carry on with, even with a baby to look after. Surely Jeremiah wouldn’t turn her off because of her disgrace, would he? And if her books, the one going into print at this very moment and the one she was writing, made any money, she would manage a lot better than some poor lasses, turned off by their employers for their sins.
It was all ‘ifs’, though. What if her books flopped, and Jeremiah did refuse to take any more ‘Home Notes’ from her? In some agitation, Lottie got to her feet and began tidying the place: scrubbing the kitchen table, black-leading the range and polishing the brass fender and handles of the fire irons.
That took all of half an hour, for they had already been cleaned the day before. Changing tack, she washed and changed into her best dress and pretty jacket, which was fitted at the waist and flared out slightly over a small bustle at the back. She tidied her hair and put on a little hat with flowers on the brim and which tilted over one eye. Then she picked up her reticule, checked that she had clean handkerchiefs and her purse with enough money for a train to Newcastle, and left the house.
‘Lottie! How lovely to see you. What are you doing in the big city? But come in, come in do,’ said Thomas. He happened to be in the ornate entrance hall of Brownlow, Brownlow and Snape, in Potter’s Yard, a small close where most of the old houses were taken up with law firms’ chambers. He was wearing a black suit with a frock coat and a shirt with a high collar and necktie, which made him look very important and came up to the base of his ears. He was carrying a sheaf of important-looking papers under his arm. Oh yes, thought Lottie, important was the word for him, and she was intimidated slightly. Nevertheless, she walked into the hall and smiled bravely up at him.
‘I came to see you,’ she said and he smiled.
‘Come into my room. I will order tea.’
The room he led her into was not large, but the window was tall and swathed in red velvet. Outside, the light was beginning to fade, for it was six o’clock in the evening and the end of September. T
he train from Durham was faster than it had used to be but still took almost two hours. She had found the chambers by the simple expedient of taking a cab.
All the way up from Durham, Lottie had been rehearsing in her mind what she was going to say to him. She would wait until there was no one else there, she had thought, picturing it in her mind. She would not embarrass him before his workmates, no she would not. Colleagues, not workmates, she reminded herself. She would put the situation to him calmly and reasonably. She pictured him sitting at a high wooden desk such as that used by Bob Cratchett in A Christmas Carol. A desk in a room with grimy windows letting in little light. Well, the windows let in little light but that was because there was little to let in, it being evening. But there was a good oil lamp on the desk and an opulent leather sofa by the wall.
‘You’re lucky to catch me here, everyone else has gone home,’ said Thomas. ‘I’m so pleased to see you, Lottie, come and sit down and I’ll order tea. Do you know, I was thinking of writing to you tonight to explain why I had to leave so suddenly.’
‘I’m expecting a babby,’ said Lottie. She hadn’t meant it to come out like that, it just did. Thomas halted with his hand half-lifted to pull the bell. Lottie, fearing her legs might give way at any moment, sank into the soft velvet cushions of the sofa.
‘What did you say?’
‘A babby, a bairn. I’ve fallen wrong.’
‘Who was it, Lottie? I’ll find him and make him marry you, I swear I will!’
Lottie shrank inside. How could he ask her who was the father? The look on her face gave him pause.
‘Is it mine? It cannot be, we were only together the once!’ Thomas stared at her in disbelief.
‘It only takes the once,’ said Lottie, as though explaining to a child.
‘Yes. Only – does my mother know? Did she say you had to tell me?’
‘She doesn’t know. Well, she knows I’m expecting but she doesn’t know about you.’
Thomas suddenly no longer felt like an up-and-coming lawyer in the big city showing off to a pretty girl. His mam would kill him, and his stepfather wouldn’t be very happy either. They were a chapel family and they would expect him to do what was right by a lass in Lottie’s situation. The veneer he had acquired in his posh school and university was melting away. He was a lad from Durham; the mining communities of Durham at that.
‘I’m not a whore,’ said Lottie. She was beginning to get angry; he had been silent too long. She rose to her feet and walked to the door. ‘I’ll find a place to stay the night and catch the train home come the morn. I just thought you should know, it was only right. But don’t you worry about me, I’m not destitute. I can look after myself and a bairn.’
She swept out of the room, her head held high, though her spectacles were becoming misty so that she could hardly see. Thomas stared after her, before jumping into action and hurrying after her.
‘Lottie! Lottie! Come on back here, I didn’t mean …’
Lottie walked on around the corner into Northumberland Street. She had no idea where to find lodgings, but she could always go back to the station and there would be a train home eventually. Thomas caught up with her and grabbed her upper arm.
‘Lottie, I didn’t mean anything; it was just a shock, that’s all. Come on, I’ll stand by you, I will, I promise.’
Lottie stopped walking and turned to him. She took off her glasses and peered up into his face under the light of a street lamp. His eyes looked practically navy blue, she thought distractedly.
‘Well?’
Thomas swallowed hard, his mind racing. ‘Come back to my lodging,’ he said, then seeing her expression, ‘No, I don’t mean my rooms. The landlady will look after you, give you a room for the night. She is a friend of mine. Come on, Lottie. You cannot be wandering about Newcastle at this time of night. We can talk about this, what we are going to do.’
What we are going to do, thought Lottie. Was he going to marry her? Did she want him to marry her? If she was honest, she did.
Chapter Nineteen
Thomas hired a chase and they travelled to Gretna Green to be married.
‘This is a dream,’ she whispered to herself. ‘It isn’t happening. I’ll wake up in a minute.’ Only it was happening and it was no dream. But how had it happened? She sat up in bed on the morning after her marriage (a hurried affair conducted by a Presbyterian minister who had just finished marrying a couple from Kent and had two other couples waiting after Lottie and Thomas). She gazed at the thin gold band on the third finger of her left hand, bought at the shop next door to the church, for they had decided against a wedding over the anvil at the blacksmith’s shop.
‘We are Christians after all,’ Thomas had said.
She looked down at his head on the pillow next to hers. He was still fast asleep after his exertions of the night before. His hair was dark against the white of the pillowslip and dark lashes fanned his cheek. Oh, he was a bonnie lad, even with his deep, blue eyes closed, he was an’ all. He was her husband, though, and she had planned that she would not get wed until she had made a name for herself as an author. She would not be dependent on a man, she had always told herself, and here she was caught in the same silly trap that caught all silly young lasses.
Carefully, Lottie turned back the bedclothes and got out of bed. It was a fairly small room and the bed was but a step away from the window. She stood looking out on a yard not dissimilar to the backyards in a colliery village or even her own in Durham. It had been hard getting a room at all; Gretna Green was full of people, mostly young couples. The sky was overcast and rain splattered the windowpanes.
Lottie shivered. Maybe she had done the wrong thing, after all. She could have gone away from Durham, had the baby on her own. Writing was a craft that could be followed anywhere. She could have pretended to be a widow. That might have worked decades ago, but now that all births had to be registered by law her baby would be branded a bastard.
Lottie put a hand over her belly; she had to protect her baby. She knew that in her mind, though not yet in her emotions. Apart from the physical symptoms, she would not be aware that there was anything different. Should she feel different? The questions ran endlessly through her thoughts. Behind her, Thomas turned over in bed.
Why had he married her, any road? He was way above her station now, a professional man. He did not need a lass from the workhouse dragging him down.
He had risen without her noticing and her doubts melted away as she felt his arms go around her waist as he pulled her body against his, and it was warm and exciting against hers.
‘Come on back to bed,’ he said in her ear and nibbled at the ear lobe.
She forgot everything but him.
‘Please don’t be angry with us,’ wrote Lottie in the note she had sent to Eliza just before leaving Newcastle. ‘We love each other; I think we always have done.’
They stayed in Scotland for one night only, a Saturday, and travelled home to Durham on the train. After all, Thomas had to attend court on Monday morning. And Brownlow, Brownlow and Snape knew nothing of his sudden entry into matrimony. The journey took hours and they had to change at Carlisle and Newcastle but Lottie didn’t care. She was only sorry when at last they alighted on to the platform at Durham. The time had come to face Eliza. Would she still be her friend as well as her mother-in-law?
‘A fine way to go on,’ said an unsmiling Eliza in greeting. ‘It’s a scandal all right. I’m disappointed in you both.’
Nevertheless, she came forward to meet them as they entered the house and kissed Lottie on the cheek, before turning to Thomas.
‘You should have told us, you really should have,’ she said, looking hurt.
‘Did you think I would stop you?’ She paused and gazed at them both. ‘You are truly wed, aren’t you?’
‘We are. I’m sorry, Mam,’ he replied, his cheeks reddening like those of a schoolboy caught in some minor misdemeanour. ‘I mean for doing it this way.’
‘Ay
e, well, it’s not the first time you’ve run off, is it?’ Eliza said tartly, but her expression was softening.
Lottie realized she was referring to the time when he was ten years old and had run off to his father’s family in Alnwick. She relaxed a little; it was going to be all right. Though Eliza had not yet spoken to her directly.
It was not until Thomas had returned to Newcastle on the eight o’clock train that the two women talked. Thomas had wanted to see Lottie safely home in North End first, but there was simply not enough time.
‘Lottie will sleep here, she can go home tomorrow,’ Eliza decreed.
‘Will you be all right?’ Thomas asked, as he kissed Lottie goodbye.
It was as if getting wed was already eating away at her independence, she thought, but still, she nodded. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ she replied.
‘I’ll come back for you at the weekend.’
She watched the cab disappear into the distance before coming back into the house and facing Eliza.
‘Now, lady, you kept very quiet about this,’ said Eliza as Lottie returned to the kitchen. ‘How far are you gone?’
‘I don’t know, mebbe eight weeks?’
‘It’s eight weeks since Thomas went to Newcastle.’
‘I know. We only did it the once, Eliza.’
Eliza looked sceptical. ‘Dr Gray always said it didn’t happen the first time.’
‘Eliza, I’m telling the truth. Thomas is the only man I’ve been with and that nobbut the once!’ The image of Alf Green rose to plague her. She lowered her gaze.
Eliza gazed hard at Lottie then sighed. The younger woman’s face was white and strained as she insisted on her truthfulness.
‘Aye well, what’s done cannot be undone. Sit down and we’ll have a cup of cocoa before we go to bed. By, but I didn’t want my Tot to be saddled with a wife and bairn so early in his career.’
‘I can keep myself and the baby,’ Lottie declared, showing some spirit.
‘Don’t be soft! An’ make my lad something less than a man?’ Eliza retorted.
They sank into silence. Lottie drank her cocoa as quickly as she could, though it was piping hot, before going up to the little room that had been Thomas’s and preparing for bed. She drew the curtains back before climbing into bed and lying on her back, staring out at the scudding clouds above the city.