A Complicated Woman
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
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Copyright
A Complicated Woman
Sheelagh Kelly
With thanks to Kate Graham for her invaluable help
1
13 November 1918
Tension threatened to ruin what should have been a joyful reunion for two of the people in the ornate Yorkshire parlour; a mood dictated by the third, an attractive young woman. The middle-aged lovers shared a helpless quizzical glance. How long could this discord between father and daughter prevail? Why couldn’t she be happy that her parents had found each other again after all these years? The hostilities were over. Outside, a state of jubilation reigned, but in here the tick of the mantel clock marked an air of cool antipathy.
The war might be over, but for Oriel Maguire the enemy remained in their midst: the man who had deserted them. Oriel allowed him only a cursory glance from beneath her black fringe as, with awkward excuse, he rose and left the room to answer the call of nature.
Even in his absence she felt unable to relax. A war still raged within her, pitting head against heart, compassion against bitter memory. Such irony that, with thousands of bereaved women keening for the menfolk they would never see again, she was wishing hers elsewhere. Inherent kindness dictated that she should forgive him – she had forgiven him two days ago, until she had learned that he was intent on dragging her beloved mother away from her, twelve thousand miles to Australia. Then all the bile she had stored during his twenty-two-year absence had been regurgitated.
Oh, he had asked her to come too, but she knew that it was only said out of duty. He did not really want her along to sour his plans. Yet if she did not go, how would she survive the loneliness? There had only ever been the two of them in this family: mother and daughter. Before Oriel had swapped her cloistered education within these walls for the more gregarious life of a secretarial college she had rarely even played with girls her own age, apart from the brief encounters during the Sunday walks to church. True, she had friends now but none of them close. That was not Mother’s doing. Bright Maguire had been just as much a prisoner of her past as had Oriel – more so, for as the mother of this illegitimate daughter she had lived in constant fear of the workhouse. Until this moment Oriel had always felt it her job to protect this dear woman, and now here was her wretch of a father trying to usurp that role. She hoped her attitude had let him know just how much she resented this intrusion.
In the whitewashed quiet of the outside closet Nathaniel Prince lowered his buttocks gingerly on to the cold seat. He might have known that Oriel would not make it easy for him, sitting there all through dinner with her maungy face. Sighing, he hunched over, nursing his wound, a wound ironically not meted during the hostilities but in the throes of peace celebrations. A few hours ago this dark, introspective man had been in hospital, until his dearest Bright had fetched him to her home for the midday meal that they had just eaten. How conspicuous he had felt sitting up to that pristine tablecloth in this bloodstained attire, but his hostess had maintained a lack of concern about his appearance, happy only to have him here. It did not escape his notice that Oriel offered no such palliative.
Tugging the chain, he returned to the warmth of Bright’s narrow scullery, glancing around him as he went. Built during the long reign of Queen Victoria the house and its clutter represented that era and all that was bad about it. Nat would have felt rather hemmed in here had he not had Oriel’s open hostility to distract him.
A mahogany-framed glass reflected his pallor; it was immediately obvious that he had only been released from gaol two days ago, the sentence meted out for the crime of grievous bodily harm. Since then he had not had the chance to attend to his usual scrupulous toilet before this latest mishap had occurred. Thank goodness he had managed to procure a razor in the hospital or he would have looked a complete tramp. Yet, he remained ill at ease as he re-entered the front parlour with its elegant occupants in their smart woollen costumes, the gleam on their shoes competing with the highly polished fender whilst his own had seen only a cursory rub with a handkerchief this morning. Nat had always detested slovenliness, never more so than now at this most important of reunions.
Still trying to acclimatize himself to being his own master again he dithered between the jambs, waiting for some higher authority to command his next movement. Bright helped his decision by patting the sofa. In the same instant that he flopped back on to the cushions beside the love of his life the younger woman jumped up and moved to leave the room. Nat appeared alarmed and blurted in his Yorkshire accent, ‘Where you off?’
Oriel gave him a deliberate stare. Though she too had been born in York her speech was less accented than his. ‘Well, I’m sure you two have plenty to discuss so I’m going for a bicycle ride – with your permission, of course.’
Nat looked at first chastened, then rather offended. Anyone witnessing the exchange would not believe that they were father and daughter the way she treated him – the way he allowed her to do so.
‘Ye don’t have to go on our account.’ Bright’s own accent emerged as a hybrid mix. Born in York of Irish parentage, she had adopted idiosyncrasies of both influences. Her overt cheerfulness was just slightly manufactured, an attempt to keep the peace between the two most important people in her life.
‘I know I don’t have to.’ Oriel finished buttoning her coat and drew on a plum velvet beret over her glossy bob. ‘I’m only going to escape the washing up.’
Her father was an instant volunteer.
‘It was a joke.’ The young woman’s face with its luminous blue eyes, domed white cheeks and full lips had the appearance of a benevolent moonbeam, until it looked upon him; now its expression was withering. The wretch had only been here a few hours and already he had got his feet under the table.
‘Well, I wasn’t joking.’ Nat fidgeted self-consciously with the blood-daubed rent in his jacket where the knife had penetrated. ‘I don’t mind doing ’em. It were a grand meal.’
‘Don’t waste your compliment on me, Mother cooked it.’ On this abrupt note Oriel departed.
‘Watch the road!’ warned Bright. ‘It’s slippy out there.’
‘And try not to mow down any innocent bystanders,’ Nat muttered as his daughter left.
Upon hearing the back door close he explained, ‘I weren’t trying to play the heavy-handed father. It’s just—’ He broke off with an embarrassed grimace. ‘I thought she was off to the closet an’ I’ve made the most horrendous stink out there. It must be summat I ate in that blasted hospital.’
Bright threw back her head and laughed; displaying the mole beneath her chin that had fascinated Nat as a child. ‘If that’s the best ye can do in the way of romantic conversation after twenty years!’
All apologies, he grabbed her hand and squeezed it, trying to ignore the jolt to his bandaged breast. The knife had incised only muscle but was nevertheless incredibly painful. She returned the fond squeeze of his hand. Then both fell silent, content in each other’s company. They had waited for this moment for over two decades – had not expected it ever to happen. Here they were, together at last.
In the small rear garden Oriel, hearing her mother’s laughte
r, had the suspicion that her father had made some clever comment at her expense. Her breath emerged in angry little gasps on the damp November air as she struggled with her bicycle to the gate and into the lane, bashing her shin and getting oil on her stocking in the process. With a curse she mounted and, forcing all her anger and self-pity into her actions, pedalled off without knowing where.
Fulford Road was greasy with fallen leaves, but pink of cheek and oblivious to skidding tyres, Oriel forged on towards a city emblazoned in a triumphant flutter of Union Jacks, its streets alive with children who had been granted a holiday from school to mark the Armistice: little girls with red-white-and-blue ribbons in their plaits, boys marching in proud imitation of their soldier fathers who would soon be home, and hundred upon hundred of gaunt-faced women who would never see their menfolk again.
She pedalled across an elaborate iron bridge, towards Knavesmire and open countryside where, eventually, exhaustion forced her to turn back. Cycling more casually now, she returned to the city boundary and there dismounted to rest a while upon a stone bench, pondering on what course her life would take hereafter. Her anger dissipated by the action of pedalling, she scolded herself for such childish behaviour. Was not this what she had always longed for? To be like normal people with two parents. Alas, the fact that her father had been reunited with her mother did not really alter things for Oriel, whose illegitimacy would remain a constant slur.
Had she possessed an ounce of objectivity Oriel would have recognized that her life had been privileged in comparison to her mother’s. The only detriment she had suffered, if that were not too strong a word, was to be rejected by the nursing profession. But utmost in her mind was that telling omission on her birth certificate: the column reserved for the name of the child’s father bore only a dash. This could never be remedied, and the anticipated embarrassment it would cause in years to come was what made it so hard to forgive.
She tilted her face up towards the sky and the welter of bare branches overhead. The last of the damp brown leaves floated down to add to the soggy mattress on the verge around her. Oriel closed her eyes and breathed deeply, inhaling this much-loved scent of late autumn. If she decided to accompany her parents to Australia there were many things like this she would miss. As if to compensate, she filled her lungs to bursting.
‘Caught you!’
Oriel jumped and exhaled noisily, her whole skin prickling, as a Union Jack was fluttered under her nose and a familiar grinning face intruded upon her meditation.
The young woman laughed apologetically and, gesturing for her companions to go on without her, perched on the edge of the bench. ‘I didn’t mean to make you wet your knickers.’
Oriel laughed with relief and dealt a playful shove to her erstwhile college friend. ‘Angela Bell, I almost had kittens – oh, it’s lovely to see you! I tried to get in touch when it was my twenty-first but no one knew where you were.’
‘No, I’ve moved. My, you’re looking wonderful – but then you always did put the rest of us in the shade.’
Oriel gave a self-deprecatory laugh and changed the subject to the Armistice. ‘Can you believe this war’s really over after all these years?’
The other beamed and fluttered the Union Jack again. ‘Marvellous, isn’t it? I dare say there’ll be a huge party when all this rationing is over – oh, you and I will have to meet and arrange something, all the old college friends.’
‘I’d love to but I might not be here much longer.’ When the other’s face turned quizzical, Oriel added, ‘I might be in Australia.’ She regretted saying it almost immediately.
‘Goodness! But what, I mean, who – but why? I presume it’s your mother’s idea. You obviously can’t be going alone – unless you’ve found a husband, of course!’ Angela’s face lit up in expectation.
Feeling cornered Oriel shook her head with an awkward laugh. How could she say: no, actually my father has returned to marry my mother? She had always allowed the girls at college to believe her father was dead. ‘Nothing’s definite,’ she blurted, but this did not deter the grilling from Angela, who asked when she had decided. ‘I haven’t actually decided—’
‘I mean, it’ll be awfully sad to leave the rest of your family.’
Oriel, thinking of the Maguires, shrugged. ‘We haven’t any real family.’
‘What about your grandparents? Aunts, uncles even?’ Angela realized that she knew little of the other’s background, but then why should she? They were only acquainted through college, and all their other friends agreed that Oriel had always been somewhat of an enigmatic creature, not one ready to share real intimacies – though they all liked her.
Face thoughtful, Oriel shook her head. ‘I’ve only ever met one of my mother’s relatives and I’ve no wish to meet the rest. There was a family disagreement years ago and it left a lot of bad feeling. So, there’s no one really to miss.’ Catching the look of intrigue on Angela’s face, the question forming on her lips, she rushed to forestall it. ‘My father was an orphan so there never was any family on his side.’
This appeared to suffice. ‘Well, I’m sure we’ll all miss you if you decide to go but I wish you good luck and you must promise to get in touch before you leave.’ Glancing over her shoulder Angela saw that her family had put quite a distance between them. ‘I’d better be going myself. Don’t sit too long on that cold slab, you’ll get—’
‘Piles!’ Oriel beamed. ‘I know, my mother says that too. I’ve never found out what they are. When I asked she’d only say, “Well, if you keep sitting on that cold step you’re sure to find out.”’
Angela frowned. ‘I never found out either – I’ll go and demand to be told immediately. Tootle-oo!’
‘Pip, pip!’ Oriel watched the flag-bearer perform a hurried skitter along the greasy pavement to catch up with her family, and decided that it was time for her to do the same. Yet reluctant to go home and play gooseberry, she browsed for a while on the previous dialogue. The lack of kin had never unduly concerned her before and, as had been uttered truthfully to Angela, she had no wish to meet them now. Though she had experienced curiosity over her paternal forebears there was never any sense of being deprived – but now, upon her contemplated departure to an unknown country from which there might be no return, she underwent a change of opinion, was prodded by a desire to know her background.
Once planted, the idea had to be acted upon, for Oriel had never been one to wait until the morrow. Where did she begin? At birth, of course. A child’s birth certificate said everything about one. She of all people should know that. It crossed her mind as odd that during all her previous ferreting amongst her father’s private documents she had never once bothered to search for his birth certificate – did not even know if he had one – but she would find out now.
Checking that she had brought her keys, she remounted her bicycle and instead of going home headed through town towards the quiet Georgian terrace where her father lived. She could, of course, have asked her mother and had the information readily supplied, but Bright would relay the request to him and then he might get it into his head that Oriel was interested when she wasn’t in the least. All she wanted to know was where she really came from.
With the twist of a key and a cast-iron knob beneath an elegant fanlight, she was inside his house. The search was easier than she had anticipated. The copy of her father’s birth certificate over which she pored now was dated quite recently – he must have had to acquire it for some official reason. However, Oriel was unconcerned about that, her eyes going directly to the column reserved for the name of the father. It was entered with a dash, the same as her own. This was a bit of a letdown but no surprise. He had flung evidence of his own illegitimacy at her in an argument. Starting at the beginning of the certificate she read that the child had been born in York Workhouse. His name was Nathaniel and his mother’s name was Maria Smellie. Oriel touched her lips in sympathy. Poor little child, to be saddled with that! Occupation of the father was, of cou
rse, again vacant. The informant had been the Master of the Workhouse. And that was the sum of the information.
Disappointed, she ruminated for a while over Maria Smellie. There must be some other way to find out about her. All she knew was that Nat’s mother had abandoned him when he was about eleven years old. Her own mother had told her this. What sort of woman looked after a child for that long and then abandoned him? Oriel could not help but be intrigued. After all, this was her grandmother, whose blood ran through her own veins. Perhaps the workhouse records might shed light on the matter. Her curiosity demanded instant action. She consulted her watch to find that the afternoon was still young. Locking the door of her father’s house behind her she pedalled off, undeterred at having no idea where the workhouse was.
Eventually locating the building, Oriel postponed her entrance for a moment, daunted by the greyness of it all. If she, as a mere visitor, experienced such apprehension how must it feel for those who were forced to enter by dire need? She who had never wanted in her life now began to understand her mother’s fear of the place. Checking that her skirts were not rucked up, she went up the path where an elderly man was occupied in clearing leaves. He stood aside in an attitude of subservience and waited for her to pass. She thanked him, went on to the entrance and, assuming a look of confidence, approached the desk. During her journey she had concocted a variety of pretences as to why she might want to consult the workhouse records, but in the end had decided to keep as near to the truth as possible. Her first story about Maria benefiting from a will might have all sorts of repercussions – York was a small place, perhaps her grandmother might hear of the fictitious bequest and come to claim it! Oriel could not have that. She addressed the rumpled-looking individual in his mid-fifties who sat behind the desk and now looked up in startlement.
‘Excuse me, I wonder if you might help me? I’m trying to assist my employer in the search for his mother, who I’m given to understand was once an inmate of your establishment. I have the details from a birth certificate. It’s almost forty years ago, I know it will be extremely difficult, but I’d be awfully grateful.’
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