Beyond the Veil of Tears

by Rita Bradshaw

  ‘You remember me brother, sir? Toby by name, but of course you wouldn’t know his name. We’re not even human beings to you, are we? But you might recall what you did to him, even if you don’t remember his name, cos you took his eye out with your whip. Handsome fella he was, our Toby, and just sixteen years old when you maimed him for life. Walking out with a lass from the village, he was, but she couldn’t stomach how he looked after, and upped and married someone else. Hard for the lad to take.’

  ‘Shut up about your damned brother and help me.’ Oswald was wheezing now, a note of panic in his voice.

  ‘I don’t think I will, sir, if it’s all the same to you. In fact, I think you’re exactly where it’s fitting for you to meet your end, covered in filth and human muck. You’ve dished enough of the same out in your time, haven’t you?’

  There was a horrible gurgle as Oswald must have swallowed some of the putrid sludge, and then a mad thrashing and animal whimpering.

  The smell was making Randall gag and he moved away from the edge of the pit, walking back a few yards and listening to the cries and strangled pleas and curses, as he shut his eyes and lifted up his face to the sun. After a while the sounds became weaker. And eventually there was a silence, broken only by the cooing of wood pigeons in the distance.

  Randall waited for another thirty minutes because, although he did not regret what he had done, he couldn’t stomach looking down into the bowels of the pit once more to make sure the master was dead. Then he slowly bent down and reached for the guns and walked back the way he had come, breaking into a run as he neared the back of the house. Bursting into the kitchen, he frightened the cook and kitchen maids witless, shouting frantically, ‘Help! Get help! The master’s fallen into one of the cesspits!’

  The news report about the landowner, Mr Oswald Golding, who had drowned ‘monstrously in the household’s excrement’ was talked about for weeks, until another, more worthy news item took its place in local gossip. The inquiry into the tragic accident ascertained that a number of events had led up to the incident. The deceased had been drinking heavily in the hours before the accident occurred – a local barmaid testifying that Mr Golding had consumed a whole bottle of whisky in the public house in which she worked, and had been unsteady on his feet when he left the premises. On arriving home, he had apparently insisted that his coachman – rather than his gamekeeper, who knew every inch of the estate and would most certainly have directed Mr Golding away from the area of the cesspits – accompany him on a shooting exercise. The cesspit into which the unfortunate Mr Golding fell had a decaying wooden top through which he had dropped and, being twenty feet or so down, he had had no chance of climbing out without assistance. By the time the coachman had run to the house to fetch help, the deceased had breathed his last, suffocated by the fumes. A ladder had been hidden in overgrown grass and nettles, which the coachman had not seen, although the inquiry stressed that no blame could be attached to the man because of this. Indeed, the amount of alcohol Mr Golding had imbibed was most likely the prime cause of the accident, making him careless and unwary, and possibly more easily overcome, once he had fallen. Here the coroner had remarked in an aside that he certainly hoped this was the case anyway; the thought of a man thrashing about and slowly suffocating in such foul conditions was the stuff of which nightmares were made. Such a grisly end one wouldn’t wish on one’s worst enemy . . .

  Angeline heard the news the day after it had happened, when the police traced her through Mr Havelock and came to the house early in the morning, accompanied by the solicitor, who had insisted that he come along, and Jack. Sickened and appalled, she had sat with Mr Havelock and Jack on either side of her and struggled to take in the horror of what she was hearing. For anyone – even Oswald – to die in such a macabre way was unthinkable. But it had happened, and once the shock had worn off, it began to dawn on her that she was free. Free in a way she could never have been if Oswald was alive. And then she felt terribly guilty for thinking in such selfish terms.

  After going through a whole sequence of emotions over a period of days, she made her peace with herself and God, and allowed herself to look to the future. A future that had been made miraculously free of the dark shadow of Oswald Golding. Not that she would have wished him to die in such a way – not even him, evil and manipulative as he was. But neither was she going to be hypocritical and pretend that she would have wished him back, if she could.

  Shocking though most people would have found it, Jack proposed to her once he could see that she had worked through her feelings. He had been her rock and support since the court case, but he hadn’t rushed her, knowing it was important that she came to a place where she had fully let go of the past, especially now that Oswald had met the end he had.

  So it was that, on a long hot June day, with towering elms and oaks casting heavy shadows over leaf-bound lanes, they cycled out to their favourite meadow once again for a Sunday spent together, away from the rest of the world. They found the meadow without any trouble, clover and bird’s-foot trefoil and forget-me-nots starring the thick green grass, and clusters of creamy-white bloom covering the dogwood and elder at the edges of their little retreat. And it was here, after a picnic lunch filled with soft murmurings and laughter and whispered words of love, that Jack took her hands in his.

  Gazing into his clear green eyes, Angeline knew what he was going to say, and she trembled at the wonder of it. ‘Marry me, my darling?’ he asked softly. ‘Be my wife, the mother of my children? Grow old with me while we love each other and make every day better than the one before it? I love you with all my heart, and I swear I will make you happier than any woman has ever been before.’

  It needed no thought. ‘Yes, please,’ she said softly, before surprising him as she flung herself into his arms, causing them both to overbalance and fall back into the lush carpet of flowers at their feet. ‘Yes, yes, yes – forever yes.’

  There was no need for further words, for the language of love said it all.

  Chapter Thirty

  The wedding took place at the tiny parish church a short walk away from Garden Street the week before Christmas. It was a very quiet occasion, with just Myrtle and Albert and their children, May and Howard and their bouncing twin baby girls, and Mr Havelock and his wife attending. The couple had wanted it that way. After the short ceremony, when everyone said how lovely Angeline looked in a dress of ivory lace, they all went back to Garden Street, where Angeline had prepared a lavish wedding breakfast.

  It was a happy day, a day full of laughter and joy, and little children squealing as they played. And afterwards, once everyone had gone, Jack held her in their big, soft bed and took her to heaven and back. For the first time Angeline understood how wonderful a man’s lovemaking could be, and that night healed so many wounds that she cried happy tears in Jack’s arms.

  Jack moved into the house in Garden Street on the day of the wedding, and they enjoyed several joy-filled weeks before Angeline received an official-looking letter from the Golding solicitors. It stated that the estate and the London property had now been sold and, after Oswald’s massive debts were settled, she was entitled to several hundred pounds, as the sole beneficiary of the will that Mr Appleby had insisted be made, upon her marriage to Oswald years before.

  Amazed and pleased, they decided to invest the money in a small property in the heart of Newcastle, which would serve both as a family home and an office, where Jack could at long last set up as a solicitor among the people he had always dreamed of helping. They would work together, with Angeline employing her shorthand and typing skills and Jack his law degree, taking enough cases on behalf of clients who could afford to pay for their services to finance those who hadn’t two farthings to rub together, but who desperately needed their help.

  They didn’t expect to become rich, but neither of them desired that. It was enough to be together, joined in heart and purpose among the rough, salt-of-the-earth folk they admired and respected. There were so m
any women and children ill-used by the system and by their menfolk – the silent ones who were at their wits’ end: wives who were regularly used as punch-bags, whose youth and looks had fled before they were thirty; children who were prostituted or made to work in the factories or rope works, and other such places, when they should have been at school; men who received a pittance for the long, hard work they did and were treated no better than dogs by their employers. The list was endless, and Jack and Angeline knew they couldn’t help them all, but in their small corner of the world they might be able to make a difference. If nothing else, they had to try.

  Mr Havelock, purely with their best interests at heart, told them they were setting themselves up for disappointment and heartache. He was right about the heartache. To see folk struggling with the unending cycle of poverty was both humbling and depressing for Angeline. The stillbirths and attempts at back-street abortions; the suicides that were never reported because no one cared enough; the unemployment and total monopoly of power by those in any kind of authority – these were real and harsh. And the fear, not so much of death, but of the stigma of the workhouse. Originally intended as a deterrent, the workhouses had been only too successful in that role. Working people would accept almost any privation rather than enter that dreaded place. This made them vulnerable to exploitation, and the mine and factory owners, the landed gentry and the wealthy and influential made full use of the fact.

  Angeline’s eyes were opened to much in the first year of working with Jack in their new home and, but for his reassurance that the processes of change were happening, albeit slowly, she might well have lost heart. But she didn’t. Instead she developed a passion for the folk around them that was every bit as fierce as her husband’s. While the Boer War raged and Britain, the Western European states, the United States of America and even Japan divided up a large part of the world between themselves as colonies, Angeline and Jack fought their own war against blind acceptance of injustice and pauperism.

  Jack began to win most of his cases for the underdog, and Angeline pioneered a scheme whereby a large group of women in the surrounding area, whose husbands were in prison, unemployed, too ill to work or had simply deserted their families, nominated one of their members to stay at home and take care of everyone’s children, while the rest of them worked, free of worry about their offspring. This took a while to put into action, partly because of the widely held view that a woman’s place was in the home and her duty was to look after her own children – even if it meant the family starving – and because many of the women had no confidence or belief in their own worth. But at the end of their first year of marriage, both Angeline and Jack had had it confirmed in a hundred different ways that they were exactly where they should be, doing exactly what they should be doing.

  On the evening of their anniversary Angeline cooked a special meal for the two of them in her little kitchen, and Jack closed the office – which was the front room of the house – early. He was in a buoyant mood as he came through to the back of the house and saw Angeline stirring something at the range. He looked at her, so beautiful and warm and sweet, and then his gaze moved around his home. Everything looked shining and mellow in the light from the oil lamps and the glow from the range. Angeline had sewn bright yellow-and-blue curtains for the window, full and generous, and they matched the blue willow-patterned china on the oak dresser and the huge shop-bought rug that covered half of the stone slabs. Even their two comfy easy chairs set at an angle to the range blended in, Angeline having made loose covers for them with the same material she had used for the curtains. He loved this room, and he loved his wife. His smile widened as she turned and noticed him, giving a little start as she scolded, ‘You made me jump – creeping up like that.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He crossed the room and lifted her off the floor with his hug, kissing her until she was breathless and laughing. ‘What’s for dinner, wench? Something smells good.’

  ‘Stuffed roast breast of lamb, and Durham pudding with cream to follow,’ Angeline said, extricating herself from his arms, ‘and this gravy will burn, if I don’t stir it.’

  ‘Blow the gravy!’ He whisked the pan off the stove and put it on the steel shelf at the side of the range to keep warm, ignoring her protests. ‘Come and sit down a minute, I’ve got some good news on our anniversary.’

  Her eyes bright, Angeline sat down at the kitchen table, which was already set for their evening meal, the blue-bordered cloth and plump red earthenware pot holding four hyacinths, which were just coming into bloom, satisfying her home-making instincts. She didn’t think she had ever felt as happy as she did this night. So happy that she could burst with the joy of it.

  Jack sat down on a chair beside her, taking her hands in his. ‘I’ve done the accounts for the last little while, Mrs Connor,’ he said, a lilt in his voice, ‘and you know how we said we’d be thrilled if we even broke even, in the beginning?’

  Angeline nodded. They had kept a little money by, after buying the house and setting up the business, knowing that it would take a while for Jack to build up his reputation and recognizing that, with their desire to take as many non-paying clients as paying ones, money would be tight.

  ‘Well, my love, we’ve made a profit. A small one, admittedly, and it wouldn’t have been enough to live on, but the good news is that the profit’s all been made in the last three months, which means we’re on the up and up. I’ve a big case for Foster’s, the butchers, in January, and that will mean a very nice deposit into our bank account to start the new year. What do you think of that? I never expected things to be this good so early on. We’re going to make a go of this, my sweet; the writing’s on the wall – or in black-and-white in the accounts, which is even better. You’re looking at a successful solicitor.’

  ‘I’m looking at more than that.’ Angeline had some news of her own, which she had known for some days, but had wanted to keep for their anniversary.

  Jack smiled at the excitement in her voice, but his eyes were puzzled. ‘Come again?’

  ‘I’m looking at a father.’ And when he stared at her blankly, she giggled. ‘I’m expecting a baby. You’re going to be a fa—’

  She didn’t get any further. Jack gave a whoop of elation, whisking her up and dancing her round the kitchen until she was giddy and begging him to stop. Then he pulled her close, smothering her face in kisses as he murmured over and over again, ‘A bairn. Oh, lass, lass – a bairn. Just when I thought life couldn’t get any better. I’m going to be a da. A da. Can you believe that?’

  Angeline smiled, her face alight at his reaction. It was everything she had dreamed of and more. She reached up and cradled his dear face in her hands. ‘Yes, I can believe it, Jack Connor,’ she whispered tenderly. ‘And you’re going to be the best da in the world.’

  ‘I love you, lass.’

  ‘And I love you, so very much.’

  The veil of tears that had shrouded her for so long had been ripped in two, and beyond it lay a bright future filled with love. It was a new beginning.

  Beyond the Veil of Tears

  Rita Bradshaw was born in Northamptonshire, where she lives today. At the age of sixteen she met her husband – whom she considers her soul mate – and they have two daughters and a son and several grandchildren. To her delight, Rita’s first novel was accepted for publication and she has gone on to write many more successful novels since then.

  As a committed Christian and passionate animal lover, her life is full, but she loves walking her dogs, reading, eating out and visiting the cinema and theatre, as well as being involved in her church and in animal welfare.

  BY RITA BRADSHAW

  Alone Beneath the Heaven

  Reach for Tomorrow

  Ragamuffin Angel

  The Stony Path

  The Urchin’s Song

  Candles in the Storm

  The Most Precious Thing

  Always I’ll Remember

  The Rainbow Years

  Skylarks at Sun
set

  Above the Harvest Moon

  Eve and Her Sisters

  Gilding the Lily

  Born to Trouble

  Forever Yours

  Break of Dawn

  Dancing in the Moonlight

  Beyond the Veil of Tears

  While researching this book I soon discovered how little I knew about ‘Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England’.

  I drew material from many sources, but special thanks must go to Cara Sunderland, MA, Museum Curator of the Fieldhead Hospital in West Yorkshire, and to Dr Michael Finn, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science, University of Leeds. As always, huge thanks to my lovely husband, Clive, for gathering reams from the Internet, too!

  Books that deserve a mention for their wonderful content are: Inconvenient People by Sarah Wise, and Stanley Royd Hospital, Wakefield, One Hundred And Fifty Years: A History by A.L. Ashworth, AHA.

  First published 2014 by Macmillan

  This electronic edition published 2014 by Pan Books

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Basingstoke and Oxford

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  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-0-230-76622-8

  Copyright © Rita Bradshaw 2014

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  Model © Gordon Crabb

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  Photograph Archive / Alamy

  The right of Rita Bradshaw to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.