The progress up the numerous steps and into the porchway of the church was slow. But Jim, so strong and patient, was not even breathing heavily when they reached the top. Elizabeth and Dr. Porter, who had agreed at Elizabeth’s request to give the bride away awaited them in the porch. Elizabeth smiled her welcome and squeezed Katharine’s hand and Dr. Porter shook hands with Jim and smiled benignly down at Katharine, his white moustache quivering.
The muted tones of the organ drifted from the dim interior and as Jim opened the heavy door and wheeled Katharine into the church, she smelt the polish of the pews, the mustiness of old prayer books and the scent of flowers, dying now since the previous Sunday.
The vicar moved forward to meet them. As they reached the steps, he stooped down and took Katharine’s hands in his.
‘My dear child,’ was all he said, but Katharine could read the meaning in his kindly tone. She glanced up at her groom. Tall and proud he stood beside her, his hand still on the back of her chair, protectively.
She looked towards the altar and saw the small ivory carving of Christ on the cross. It was exquisite and, if she half-closed her eyes, almost life-like, though so small.
I should be making thanks with all my heart for my good fortune in the love of this man, she thought, suddenly filled with guilt. And yet, still she could feel nothing. Her heart was cold as stone.
The service began, the vicar reading the solemn words carefully and lovingly. Jim, clasping her hand, made his response firmly, his bass tone ringing through the empty church. On the other side of her stood Dr. Porter with Elizabeth behind them. Dr. Porter had been the doctor with whom Katharine had worked closely and whom she had been assisting when she had collapsed. Though she owed him a great deal for his kindness, Katharine still could not help but envy him, for he was still practising medicine and she …
‘Repeat after me,’ the vicar was saying. Katharine brought her wandering thoughts back to the present. She made her responses in low, flat tones, wishing with every word that she could put more feeling into her voice. But she had never been any good at acting, at pretending something she did not, and could not, feel.
The vicar had taken care of all the formalities as regards witnesses and his sympathetic handling of the occasion would long be remembered by Katharine with gratitude. She felt nothing in the way of acute embarrassment, as she had feared, as a bathchair bride. Soon they were leaving the church. The vicar followed them to the door wishing them happiness and pressing them to come and see him again should they ever be in the vicinity.
‘And you must come and visit us at Brackenbeck, if you ever come to Yorkshire. You would be most welcome,’ said Jim.
‘I might at that, young man,’ said the elderly man, nodding his silvery head. ‘My parents came from Yorkshire. I may well take advantage of your invitation.’
As they came down the church steps again, Katharine noticed the flower-seller was no longer there.
‘I’m sorry, but I must leave you now,’ Dr. Porter was saying. And he shook Jim’s hand again. ‘Good luck to you both and come and see us again. Goodbye, Dr. Harvey, it’s been a pleasure to know you.’
‘Goodbye,’ Katharine said quietly.
‘Thank you for coming, Dr. Porter,’ Jim put in courteously.
So it was over, Katharine mused. This was goodbye to London, to the hospital, to the medical profession.
‘And I must dash too,’ Elizabeth interrupted her thoughts. ‘I’m on duty again in half-an-hour, I had to get special permission to come.’
‘Elizabeth, don’t …’ Katharine was about to say ‘don’t go’, but realising swiftly how it would seem to those about her, especially to Jim, she altered her words quickly. ‘Don’t forget to write and to come and see us soon, very soon.’
‘Yes, please do, Elizabeth,’ Jim added.
Elizabeth smiled at them.
‘I should love to come. I’ve never been to Yorkshire.’
‘Then you must come,’ laughed Jim in mock scandalised tones.
Elizabeth laughed too, but Katharine found it an effort to smile.
Then, with further promises and good wishes, Elizabeth left them.
‘Shall we walk back again, Katharine?’ Jim asked. ‘ It’s not far. Will you be warm enough?’
‘Yes, of course. But I hate being pushed along the street. It’s so humiliating.’
‘But Katharine, my love, you must accept it. How are we to get about at home?’
‘I shan’t want to get about. I shall be quite content to stay at home.’
‘Well, I shan’t.’
‘Then you must go out on your own.’
‘Katharine, I love the countryside around Brackenbeck. The moors, the becks and hills. I want to share them with you. Don’t you understand? I don’t want to go out on my own any more, I don’t want to be alone and lonely any longer.’
Katharine was silent.
‘We’ll go and collect your things and then go on to the hotel,’ Jim said.
‘The hotel?’
‘Why, yes. I’ve booked a room for us there.’
‘No, Jim. I’d rather stay at my lodgings.’
‘But I can’t stay …’ He stopped and then added, ‘ Why don’t you want to come to the hotel, Katharine?’
‘Jim, I shall feel so awkward at such a place in this dreadful chair. Please, try to understand. Please, let me stay at my lodgings – just tonight?’
Jim sighed.
‘Very well, my dear.’
And so Katharine spent one more night in her dismal room and Jim returned to his hotel. The first night of their marriage they spent two miles apart.
The next morning Katharine had only just finished dressing when Jim arrived.
‘Good morning, Mrs. Kendrick,’ he teased and even raised a smile from her.
Jim saw the landlady and paid the rent Katharine owed, whilst she sat in her chair feeling useless and helpless. Jim was cheerful, but rather quiet, saying little after his first gay greeting. She could not read his expression nor guess his thoughts. Was he, even now, she wondered, realising what a task he had undertaken?
The journey to Yorkshire was long and tedious, made more so by Katharine’s awkwardness. She felt a burden to Jim. If she felt this now, on the first day as his wife, what could she expect to feel in the years ahead? She should have spoken out against Jim, she told herself, against their marriage before it was too late.
But she voiced none of these misgivings to her husband. She sat, instead, huddled in her chair on the draughty stations where they had to change trains, or leaning back in the carriage gazing out at the flashing scenery, silent and remote. Jim, too, seemed occupied with his own thoughts and this made Katharine all the more depressed.
Their arrival at the station near Brackenbeck was unheralded and therefore unexpected. There was no welcome, no pony and trap. Not even Jim’s famous motor car, for no doubt no one but he knew how to drive it, or, for that matter, dare to do so.
This meant a long, tiring walk for Jim.
‘Can you not find a trap, Jim?’ Katharine asked, raising herself from her thoughts.
‘I shall enjoy it, Katharine my love. You’ll not be cold though?’
‘No, only it’s such a long way, all of four miles and pushing me up the hills and …’
‘You’re as light as a feather, lass.’
She looked up at him. ‘You said that to me once before.’
‘Ay, I remember. Katharine, it’s grand to be back home and with you here,’ he added impulsively, bending down in front of her. ‘Say you’re glad to be here.’
‘I am glad – but I’m frightened.’
‘Frightened? Whatever for?’
She shrugged and fingered the rug which wrapped her legs warmly.
‘Oh, of meeting everyone again and – and them seeing me like this.’
‘And how do you think they’re going to feel when they remember why you are like this?’
Katharine looked up sharply.
<
br /> ‘I don’t want pity, not from them or – or you.’
‘Katharine, Katharine, be generous. People give you pity only when they care about you. So many people shy from receiving pity but sincere pity is given mingled with love. Don’t try to shut everyone from your life, my love. Let people help you when they want to.’
Again she felt ashamed and yet there was still the nagging doubt that Jim had married her out of pity and a sense of guilt.
They said no more, but started off over the moors. It seemed a long road, far longer than when she had travelled it herself on foot on her visit to Brackenbeck, and again when leaving, every step taking her away from the valley and away from Jim.
And now, five years later, she was returning, with Jim as her husband. But her return was not in the style she would have wished.
Grey clouds scudded across the sky and a sharp breeze whipped across the moors reminding her of the bleakness of this part of the world.
But to Jim this was home. This was where he belonged.
‘We haven’t time to linger today, Katharine, but there’s so much hidden beauty on these moors. See over there?’
Jim pointed and Katharine followed the line of his finger.
‘The top of that sycamore?’
‘Yes, I see.’
‘Do you see it’s the only one around here? It’s too bleak for many trees, but that tree grows from a steep little dell where there’s a spring of running water. It’s shady too. Almost like an oasis in a desert.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Katharine said, willing herself to interest and enthusiasm. ‘Those trees up there on the skyline, they look so stark, somehow.’
‘They have a job to survive or grow at all in the weather we get up on these moors.’
Katharine shivered.
‘Are you cold, my dear?’
‘No – no, not really. But it’s so lonely up here. So bleak and cold.’
Jim laughed.
‘I love these moors, I always have done. And I never found them lonely until …’ his tone sobered, ‘ until you left, Katharine. Since then, these last five years, I’ve found them very lonely. But then, I would have been lonely anywhere.’
Then as they capped the hill leading down into the dale of Brackenbeck all the memories of her previous visit came flooding back to her.
And as they neared Kendrick House.
‘Jim, what a difference you’ve made to the road to Kendrick House.’
She was remembering the neglected, overgrown pathway, which had now been cleared and a proper road led up to the gate.
Here, the moss had been removed from the wall and the nameplate was clearly visible. The wrought-iron gates were no longer rusty but painted black and as Jim pushed her chair through, she saw the gardens were neat and cared-for. The house too had been painted and lights shone from every downstairs window for it was already dusk.
Now the house seemed to say to her ‘Look, here I am, look how different I am now someone cares for me’.
The front door opened and a woman came running down the steps to meet them.
‘Mr. Kendrick, you’ve brought her back to us, sir.’
‘Yes, Mrs. Johnson. Katharine, you remember Mrs. Johnson? She’s my housekeeper now.’
‘Of course,’ and Katharine held out her hand to the woman who bobbed an embarrassed curtsy. It had been Mrs. Johnson who had comforted Mary at the quarry on the day of the accident, Katharine recalled.
‘Mrs. Johnson,’ Jim was saying, ‘ you shall be the first to know. This is Mrs. Kendrick.’
Katharine watched the woman’s reactions carefully. Mrs. Johnson’s surprise was genuine and the smile faded a little as her mouth dropped open. She glanced swiftly at the invalid chair and back again to Jim’s smiling face. Katharine saw the visible change in the woman’s expression. As if reading the happiness in Jim’s face – a look she had rarely seen and never of late, Katharine guessed – Mrs. Johnson broke into ecstasies of delight, clapping her hands and ‘oh’ing and ‘ah’ing.
‘Oh, come in, madam, oh dear, I’m reet flustered. Dear, dear, what surprises tha does spring on us, Mr. Kendrick. Well, I never did!’
The rotund form of the bustling Mrs. Johnson preceded them up the steps and she turned to watch at the top as Jim turned the chair round and carefully manoeuvred it up the steps. Katharine felt a rush of embarrassment and knew how often she would have to face the same feeling.
‘Come in, come in, I’ve got a good fire going in the drawing-room, sir.’
‘Thank you, Mrs. Johnson.’
‘Is there anything else I can do, ma’am?’
‘No – no, thank you, Mrs. Johnson,’ Katharine faltered. She was unused to servants for although her parents had had a maid, it was so long ago, and so much seemed to have happened since that time that Katharine had forgotten.
‘Dinner will be a little late, sir, about an hour.’
‘That’ll be all right, Mrs. Johnson.’
‘How many servants have you got, Jim?’ Katharine asked when Mrs. Johnson had left the room.
‘Mrs. Johnson as housekeeper, cook – that’s Mrs. Manners. Arthur, the man-servant-cum-butler, and Lucy, the maid,’ replied Jim.
‘Good gracious! I never imagined you as having servants at all, let alone so many.’
Jim laughed.
‘Times have changed since you were here.’
‘They certainly have.’
‘Mrs. Johnson and a girl from the village used to come in daily at the cottage, but no one lived in. Mrs. Johnson’s husband was Simon Johnson, the man who owned Brackenbeck quarry before me. I bought it from her when he died. I think things were still a bit hard for her, besides being lonely. So when I offered her a permanent post and a home here, she jumped at the chance.’
‘I expect she’s not very pleased to see me arrive as mistress of the house. I shall usurp her position.’
Jim chuckled.
‘Mrs. Johnson hardly enjoyed the same position as you, my love.’
And Katharine smiled slightly.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Jim said, ‘although it’s rather late, I think I ought to fetch Anthony to have dinner with us. Would you mind, Katharine? After all, he should learn our news from us, and if I know my staff, somehow the news will be all round the village before nightfall. I think we owe it to him, seeing as he brought us together again.’
Katharine thought fleetingly of Anthony’s vague proposal and wondered whether he would be pleased or sorry at their news.
‘Of course,’ was all she replied to her husband.
Jim disappeared down the drive in his motor car, Katharine watching its progress with a half-hearted interest. The machine was certainly something out of the ordinary.
She had to remain where Jim had left her, sitting in a wing armchair between the fire and the long drawing-room window, which faced out over the valley of Brackenbeck. He had positioned the chair with thought, so that she not only felt the warmth of the fire, but could also take full advantage of the view from the window.
Katharine, left alone, looked about her. The room was long and narrow. The carpet and furniture were fairly new, having been bought, she supposed, when Jim took up residence here. The overall colour scheme was royal blue, with curtains and upholstery matching. The effect was neither pretentious nor too-luxurious, but comfortable and well-planned. Katharine wondered how much had been Jim’s personal choice and how much Mrs. Johnson’s hand.
She wished she could get to her bedroom and freshen up before dinner, but short of asking Mrs. Johnson there was no means of doing so until Jim returned. And then Anthony would be with him.
But at that moment Mrs. Johnson returned.
‘Madam, I was wondering, that is, were you awanting to go upstairs?’
The woman was obviously ill-at-ease, and Katharine forgot her own embarrassment in trying to eradicate Mrs. Johnson’s.
‘I would rather like to go to my room, but you cannot possibly carry me upstairs – I’m a
fraid that is the only way I could get there. I wouldn’t dream of letting you try.’
‘But Arthur could, ma’am. If you’d let him, that is.’
Katharine hesitated. Then she took a deep breath. She would have to accept help from others. Jim would not always be available to move her about.
‘Very well, Mrs. Johnson,’ she said resignedly.
The journey upstairs was accomplished with patient care by Arthur, a middle-aged man with a pleasant, impassive face, and, much to Katharine’s surprise, with comfort. It seemed she was no great burden to him.
‘Thank you, Arthur,’ she was able to say warmly when they reached the bedroom and he set her carefully in a chair at the dressing-table. Arthur inclined his head slightly in a respectful bow but said nothing, although she read the sympathy, kindly meant, in his eyes.
This was the principal bedroom, light and airy.
‘Er, I don’t rightly know how to say this, madam, and begging your pardon, but …’
‘Yes, Mrs. Johnson.’
‘Well, Mr. Kendrick hasn’t employed a personal maid for you as yet, and in the meantime, if there’s anything I can do for you, madam, well, you’ve only got to say.’
Katharine smiled and much of her embarrassment slipped away. The woman was obviously trying to offer her help and yet felt awkward at doing so, not wishing to give offence. Jim had been right. People did genuinely want to help her.
‘I can see you’re going to be a great ally, Mrs. Johnson. And I regret to have to say that I shall probably often need your help,’ Katharine added ruefully.
‘Well, don’t tha be shy to say whenever tha wants me, ma’am.’
Mrs. Johnson was obviously the motherly type, but for this Katharine was grateful. She could not help but compare the difference between Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Rigby. She shuddered to think that it might have been the latter here instead of this kindly person.
By the time Jim and Anthony returned, Katharine had not only freshened up her travel-stained appearance, but had also, with both Arthur’s and Mrs. Johnson’s help, been on a fully conducted tour of the house, and was once more installed in the drawing-room.
‘Well, well, well,’ Anthony came in rubbing his hands. ‘Good to see you again, Kate. Back where you belong. Where are you staying?’
Brackenbeck Page 11