Consequences

by Nancy Carson

  ‘Somebody by the name of Lissimore…Looking for you.’

  ‘Lissimore?’ Algie said. He gulped and a look of alarm crossed his face. So that was it. Perhaps Lissimore had revealed the nature of his visit.

  ‘Yes, Lissimore. Funny, but the same chap came to Aurelia’s when I was there earlier. He handed her some papers and it seemed to upset her, but she didn’t offer to tell me what it was all about, except to say it was summat to do with Benjamin. But I think it was summat to do with her. Now I see as it’s summat to do with you as well, Algie. Anyway, when he came here your mother told this Mr Lissimore that he’d have to go to your works if he wanted you…Did he go to the works?’

  Algie nodded, but could not look Marigold in the eye. ‘Yes,’ he replied, speaking to his plate. ‘He came to the works.’

  ‘But you ain’t mentioned it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not? Are you and Benjamin mixed up in some sort of bother you ain’t told me about? I know you hate each other’s guts.’

  It was obvious she did not know about the divorce, and was under the impression it was some intrigue with Benjamin.

  ‘I’ll tell you later,’ he said, glancing this time at his mother, who avoided his eyes still.

  ‘So what’s going on?’ Marigold persisted.

  ‘I’ll tell you later,’ he repeated. ‘When we’ve finished eating.’

  ‘I’ve finished eating,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t eat another thing.’

  ‘No, neither can I,’ he admitted, and pushed his plate away disconsolately.

  ‘So tell me.’

  Algie sighed, a profound sigh. He wiped his mouth on his napkin. ‘Mother, will you just keep an eye on our Rose, while Marigold and me go into the garden?’

  ‘Course I will,’ Clara replied, fearful of the outcome.

  They both got up from the table, and he followed her outside. Once in the garden, he found himself stepping on her shifting elongated shadow, cast by the sinking sun that was lending a tinge of gold to everything it touched. As they had done many times before, they sat on the old wooden bench at the furthest distance from the house.

  ‘So what’s going on?’ Marigold asked again, her back erect, her hands demurely in her lap. ‘I’m not daft. I know when there’s summat amiss.’

  The gravity of revealing details of this awful crisis triggered the recognition of just how much he loved her, how deeply he felt for her, how utterly he regretted causing her upset and worry that she did not deserve. He took her hand, leaning towards her, and aptly fondled her wedding ring. Then he looked earnestly into her eyes.

  ‘Before I tell you, you have to know and understand how much I love you,’ he began. ‘I love you with all my heart and soul.’

  ‘All right.’ She nodded with a faint smile, confirming that she was aware of his feelings. Yet his confession only induced greater angst. ‘So what’s amiss?’

  He breathed deeply. ‘Benjamin is divorcing Aurelia.’

  ‘What? So, is that what the papers were that that chap Lissimore delivered, when I was there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So why is he divorcing her? She should be divorcing him, the way he’s been carrying on.’

  ‘He’s divorcing her for her adultery.’

  ‘Her adultery? Crikey, he’s got a nerve. So why did that chap Lissimore come to see you? What’s that got to do with you?’

  ‘Because…Oh, Marigold, can’t you work it out?’ He put his head in his hands.

  In about three seconds it dawned on her. ‘Oh no. You don’t mean you, do you?…She committed adultery with you?’ Her pretty face at once became an icon of misery. ‘No,’ she wailed. ‘Not you and Aurelia?’

  ‘You’d already run off and left me,’ he said sombrely. ‘Remember? You disappeared off the face of the earth, never to be seen again, or so I believed. I was on the rebound. That’s when it happened.’

  It was Marigold’s turn to put her head in her hands, clearly disturbed. When she looked up again her eyes were wet with tears. ‘You and Aurelia…’ She shook her head, as if trying to shake free the unpalatable possibility. ‘But she’s my sister, Algie.’

  ‘But I didn’t know that at the time – and nor did she. How could we?’

  ‘Oh, God!’ Her head was in her hands again. ‘So how long did it go on, this…this thing?’

  ‘Not that long. It ended when she went to live with your Aunt Edith and found you there.’

  Marigold sighed, then remained quiet for a minute or so, calmly mulling over these distressing facts as she wiped her eyes. Her relatively mute response thus far relieved him, yet he was still apprehensive. At some point she must explode, like an overheated boiler once the relief valve could withstand the internal pressure no more.

  ‘So how did it all start?’ she asked at length.

  ‘The day after you disappeared, my father died,’ he proceeded to explain, as calmly as he could. ‘With you and him gone, I was in a state of shock – despair. I was working for Benjamin Sampson at the time, as you know, and I had to let him know I wouldn’t be at work the next day, because of the arrangements I’d have to make, letting people know my dad had died, organising his funeral, comforting my mother – all that malarkey. Benjamin was out when I called, so Aurelia was good enough to see me. I’d met her before when he invited us to dinner – you couldn’t go ’cause you weren’t around, if you remember. Anyway, she was so kind and sympathetic. As we talked she made it plain that she herself was unhappy, and I just put two and two together and realised it must be because of Benjamin. I’d noticed that they didn’t speak to each other when I’d been with them earlier. Some weeks later on, when we were moving house, I had to go there again and I saw her once more. We talked for quite a while – personal things. I was taken with her, I admit, and I think she could tell, but I had no business telling her as much, she being a married woman. So I left. When I left work on the Saturday dinner time she was there waiting for me, and that was when I began to realise she was taken with me. I think she was so brassed off with her husband, she just wanted somebody to love and to love her. And that’s when it all began.’

  ‘And are you still taken with her?’ Marigold’s eyes were still moist, glistening in the deepening glow of the sun.

  ‘I said at the outset that I love you, flower,’ he answered. ‘And I do.’

  ‘You haven’t answered my question, Algie.’

  ‘I like her, course I do. I respect her…I imagine I’ll always have a soft spot for her. What happened happened, and can’t be changed.’

  ‘You must’ve fancied her rotten. Do you still fancy her?’

  ‘Oh, Marigold, what do you expect me to say? That I don’t?’

  ‘I want you to tell me the truth. I want to know where I stand.’

  He went to take her hand, but she pulled away from him.

  ‘You stand where you’ve always stood…Let me put it this way, I’m just a man, just an ordinary bloke, with an ordinary bloke’s weaknesses. I’m no saint, my flower, and she’s a lovely-looking woman, even you have to admit. Every man alive is going to fancy her.’

  ‘So I have to compete with my own sister?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, sweetheart, you don’t. Of course you don’t. I’m married to you, not her. And I’m married to you out of choice. I’ve been faithful to you all the time we’ve been wed, and I’ll always be faithful…’

  One further relevant issue was still lying heavy on his conscience, however; he was mentally debating whether to overlook the issue of Christina at that moment, to save adding to Marigold’s pain, but when it eventually came to light, as it must, then he would be castigated for not mentioning it sooner. So he decided to confess all, there and then. Get it over and done with.

  ‘There’s one more thing, sweetheart.’

  ‘What?’ she queried apprehensively.

  ‘Christina…’

  ‘What about Christina?’

  ‘It seems Christina is my child…I only f
ound out the other day. You can’t imagine the shock.’

  ‘Oh, God, no…’ she groaned, and in her turmoil stood up agitatedly. ‘I was afeared that’s what you were about to say…Oh, dear God…What a mess, Algie. I can scarcely believe it.’

  ‘Please sit down, Marigold,’ he begged humbly.

  She duly sat beside him again, but clearly troubled.

  ‘I thought you’d be angrier,’ he said. ‘I could hardly blame you.’

  ‘I’m not angry, Algie,’ she answered, her voice thin with emotion. ‘Yes, I am angry, but…I’m…I’m…’ She struggled to find the right word. ‘I don’t know what I am…I’m just…flummoxed.’

  ‘I thought you’d be jealous. I thought you’d go off in a huff and leave me, like you did when you believed I was seeing Harriet behind your back.’

  Tears were rolling down her cheeks again with a renewed vigour. ‘I hope I’ve grown up since then, Algie…but I still might. Who knows?’

  ‘I’ve been dreading telling you.’ He cupped his hands around her clasped hands and squeezed them. This time she allowed it.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I ain’t exactly thrilled to bits, I can tell you. You can’t expect me to be either. Jesus, my own sister…You and my sister! Things’ll never be the same again between her and me. And o’ course, she never let on to me – ever.’

  ‘Well, why would she?’ he suggested softly. ‘She wouldn’t want to upset you. She thinks the world of you. You’re the only true friend she’s got.’

  ‘Oh, so you’ve talked about me then.’ It was an accusation, not a question, delivered with acid resentment.

  ‘I had to see her, as soon as Benjamin let me know he was about to cite me as co-respondent in their divorce.’

  ‘And yet you said nothing to me.’

  ‘Because I wanted to protect you from it – for as long as I could. Especially now we’ve got another baby on the way.’

  ‘But now it’s all come to light anyway. Aurelia must’ve known it would come to light sooner or later.’

  ‘No, I don’t think she did,’ he conjectured. ‘It’s certainly come as a shock to me, this divorce. I didn’t imagine for a minute that Benjamin knew anything about Aurelia and me. Nor did she.’

  ‘Well, he must have found out one road or another. Unless Aurelia confessed.’

  He shrugged. Aurelia had not confessed. Benjamin had tricked him into a confession, but this did not seem an appropriate moment to let Marigold know as much. He felt guilty enough, without her presuming he had brought it all on himself by his own gullibility.

  ‘Maybe he just put two and two together,’ Algie suggested. ‘Maybe somebody told him. I don’t know. Anyway, all this dirty linen will be washed in the divorce courts. The papers will have a field day, and so will all the local gossips. You’ll have to be prepared for that. I’ll have to see a solicitor to help sort things out. But Lord knows what’ll happen to Aurelia once it’s over.’

  Suddenly Marigold felt anxiety for Aurelia piling up on top of the anxiety for herself, for Algie and for their future. ‘What do you mean, Algie?’

  ‘Like I say, she’s got nobody, except for a sister living in India who’ll be no use at all from that distance…And you, o’ course. What’s going to happen to her?’

  * * *

  Back inside, Marigold went upstairs, closed the bedroom door behind her and lay on the bed. She had some serious thinking to do, to unravel what it all meant and how it would affect her. Algie’s confession had come as a complete shock, and she began to realise how cocooned she had been up to this point as his wife. Now, she feared that the eyes of the world would soon be upon her, some mocking, many scandalised, and yet some sympathetic perhaps. What on earth would Harriet Meese – sorry, Froggatt – and her sister Priss have to say about it once it became common knowledge?

  One thing was certain, this thing – this fling between Algie and Aurelia – had happened. It was a historical fact. Christina, apparently, was the living proof. They could not erase Christina from their lives, nor could they ignore her, they would have to consider the poor child, for it was not the child’s fault. Somehow, they would all have to cope with the situation. She – Marigold – would have more trouble coping with it, but cope with it she must.

  * * *

  While Marigold was grappling with the unanticipated knowledge of this catastrophe, Algie decided to come clean and enlighten his mother. He went to the kitchen where she was stacking crockery into a cupboard, the place spick and span after the accumulated debris of their mealtime.

  ‘That chap Lissimore,’ he began.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Clara replied, thus economically declaring an interest in learning more, and so resolving the mystery of his visit.

  ‘He was from Benjamin Sampson’s solicitor.’

  ‘I wondered.’

  ‘He and Aurelia are getting a divorce because of her adultery, and I’m being cited as co-respondent.’

  Clara nodded, her face glum. ‘I feared as much. I told you at the time – play with fire.’

  ‘I know, Mother. But what’s done’s done. Whether or no, Marigold knows everything now.’

  Clara nodded again sagely. ‘How’s she taken it?’

  ‘Better than I ever imagined she would – so far.’

  ‘Ah, well. At least it’s all out in the open. But she’ll need your support more than ever, especially now she’s carrying another bab.’

  ‘I know, and she’ll get it. I’ll need her support too, Mother. Things ain’t going to be easy.’

  * * *

  Things were not easy for the next few days. Marigold held herself aloof from Algie, while he was anxious to please her in any small way possible, in futile efforts to make amends and prove that his love for her had not diminished. He understood why she was shocked, but not just shocked; she was hurt, cut to the quick. He understood too how this must inevitably affect her relationship with Aurelia, whom she had come to adore and admire. She even modelled herself on Aurelia to some extent.

  In bed he tried to tempt her into lovemaking, for which she was normally enthusiastically amenable.

  ‘Get off, Algie,’ she retorted. ‘Don’t touch me,’ and abruptly turned her back on him.

  He sighed, the hopeless sigh of a convicted felon with no redress, and turned over so they were lying back to back. He tried to sleep, as did she. But sleep did not come easily to either, and when it did it was fitful.

  During the day when he was home and in the evening when he returned from work, they did not speak. She made no answer when he spoke to her. He tried all sorts of things to please her, but she remained unmoved.

  It pained him to witness how much she had been hurt, how much she was suffering, and he wished he could get closer to her so they could talk it through. She remained unapproachable, however.

  Was this how it would be from now on?

  Was this the future?

  Was this the portent that the end of their marriage was inevitable and imminent?

  He was desperate to save his marriage, but the whole situation was one they would have to ride out until the sting of deep emotional wounds yielded to the healing properties of time, or till some sort of reason prevailed. But how much time? And what reasoning currently made any sense?

  He was aware that Marigold had so far avoided Aurelia, for he felt sure she would have mentioned it if she had seen her. That was no surprise, however. For both women would relish some period of grace without contact, he imagined, to allow the dust to settle. Eventually, though, they must come to some consensus, when there would be either forgiveness or blame, continuing friendship or estrangement and animosity. And Algie was not blessed with the foresight to know which would surface as the winner.

  * * *

  During those sleepless hours Marigold began to ponder the sequence of events that had precipitated Algie’s affair with Aurelia. ‘You’d already run off and left me,’ Algie had said. ‘You disappeared off the face of the earth, never to be seen again.�
�� That was true, so maybe she ought to take some of the blame herself, for vanishing so impulsively that fateful night, under the mistaken belief he had been seeing Harriet Meese behind her back. What a silly, stupid fool she had been. What agonies she had put herself through as a result. What agonies, she now realised, she had put Algie through. If she had not run away, his troubling affair with Aurelia would never have happened.

  From the beginning, she had adored Aurelia. Aurelia became her best friend. Until now at least. She recalled how first they had met, at their Aunt Edith’s home in Oldswinford, and the more she pondered it the more its significance stood out like a beacon. It took quite some fathoming out, but once she had mentally sifted the probabilities from the possibilities, the force of realisation began to dawn on her, and she made up her mind exactly what she had to do…

  * * *

  Gradually, Algie noticed that Marigold’s hardened attitude seemed to soften. She began conversing with him about everyday things. They were lying in bed, each on their side, facing each other. A solitary candle was burning on the bedside table at Algie’s side, its flame a beady yellow eye. His face was in shadow, but the candle’s flame that danced in the wafting air from the open window illuminated Marigold’s. Downstairs the doors were locked and bolted, the curtains drawn, Rose had been asleep for hours and Clara had gone to bed early.

  ‘Algie, I’ve been thinking about you and Aurelia and her divorce for days and nights on end,’ Marigold said softly. ‘I’ve thought of nothing else.’

  ‘I know, my flower, and I’m not surprised,’ he murmured, stumped for any other response.

  ‘Well, I’ve decided something.’

  ‘What, sweetheart?’

  ‘I have to forgive you.’

  He breathed a sigh of relief, but guilt prompted him to say, ‘Maybe you forgive too easily, Marigold.’

  ‘Maybe I do, but there’s no alternative, is there? Besides, I have to accept me own share o’ the blame—’

  ‘What blame?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t interrupt me, Algie’ she pleaded. ‘I’ve thought about all this till I’m blue in the face, so let me get it off me chest.’ She propped her head up on her elbow, her expression intense. ‘If I hadn’t run off and left you the night of that play, none of this would’ve happened. I’m right, ain’t I? What I mean is, you would’ve been faithful to me if I’d still been around, wouldn’t you?’