A Mother's Gift

by Maggie Hope

  ‘I won’t be a moment, Dorothy will be busy upstairs I think,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  In the kitchen she saw that Dorothy had put on the coffee pot and laid a tray so it was but a minute’s work to finish it off. Kate got out the biscuit tin and laid a selection on a plate; Matthew was usually hungry after sex. She thought of slipping upstairs to look in on Georgie, make sure for herself that she was all right but decided against it. Matthew would get restless if she was very long away and Dorothy was there with Georgie.

  ‘I have decided that Georgie must go to school,’ said Matthew. He spooned sugar into his black coffee and took a sip.

  ‘School? But I thought you didn’t want her to go to school. That’s why Miss Whitfield comes isn’t it?’

  Miss Whitfield was a quiet middle-aged lady who came three times a week to teach Georgie her letters and numbers. She came promptly at nine o’clock and went away again at twelve, refusing all overtures of friendship from her or Dorothy and evading any questions about her life and family. All Kate knew of her was that she lived in another isolated cottage somewhere on the moors. Matthew had hired her when Georgina was five for he was against her going to the village school three miles away.

  ‘How will she get there?’ asked Kate, accepting his decision as she did all his decisions, until his next words, that is.

  ‘She will board,’ said Matthew and Kate gasped.

  ‘No!’

  Matthew looked at her as she sank down into the chair opposite him. He sighed and said nothing for a moment or two as he marshalled his thoughts.

  ‘There is a small private school in Guisborough which is ideal for her,’ he said. ‘She will mix with other children and have a proper education.’

  ‘She can read well, and write an’ all. And she is good at arithmetic, she can say her seven times tables. That’s very good for her age. And I don’t want her to go.’ The flat vowels of her youth came to the fore in her agitation.

  Kate was frantically trying to think of reasons why Georgie should stay at home. She had always thought that Matthew didn’t want the world to even know she was there and this decision had taken her completely by surprise. What would she do on her own in this house on the moor with only Dorothy for company? She would go mad, that’s what.

  ‘Really, Kate you should not be selfish about this,’ Matthew said smoothly. He was well aware that he would get his own way in this for what could Kate do? ‘Georgina must be educated; I want her to be a proper young lady. I want her to speak properly,’ he said pointedly and Kate was acutely aware that she had slipped back into a ‘pitmatic’ colloquialism with ’an’ all’ and forgotten to modulate her accent.

  ‘I will arrange with the school that she comes home every other Sunday and of course for the holidays,’ said Matthew. He finished his coffee and placed the cup and saucer on the tray.

  ‘Why not every Sunday? Matthew I will miss her so much!’ said Kate.

  ‘It will be too unsettling for her to come every Sunday,’ said Matthew. ‘Come now, Kate, many of my friends and their sons went away to school at six years old, a whole year younger than Georgina. And if you are lonely, well I will contrive to be here more often. I will come for a few hours on Sunday afternoons, won’t you like that?’

  He said it with an air of bestowing a great gift, she thought and he was right. She knew herself; she would look for him eagerly, almost as eagerly as she would look for Georgie’s visits. She loved him and he left her with no will at all. Sometimes she wondered at what she had been like in the old days, the days when it had all happened. But her mind soon shied away from that. He was her life now, him and Georgina.

  ‘Come on then we will tell her she is going to school. I’m sure she will be really excited. She’ll love it, making new friends, learning new things.’

  Matthew put an arm around her and drew her to the door. He looked down at her tenderly, oh, he loved her. He was surprised that he did, he hadn’t expected it to last this long but it had. His days of visiting certain houses in Middlesbrough were over, at least for the foreseeable future. He was besotted with Kate, couldn’t keep his hands off her. And she loved him, he knew that. He hadn’t meant to hurt her earlier on. He would take her to bed after lunch and make love properly to her, he decided. Georgina wasn’t allowed in their bedroom so they would be completely private. And soon she wouldn’t be much of a problem at all. Not that he didn’t love Georgina, of course he did but she was not to be allowed to get in the way of his time with Kate. And school would do her good. The school in Guisborough was small and insignificant and the head mistress discreet. There would be no breath of scandal getting back north of the Tees.

  ‘Daddy! Am I really to go to school? Really and truly? Oh, thank you, Daddy, thank you, thank you,’ cried Georgina and jumped on him so that his arms went round her instinctively.

  ‘Mam, did you hear Daddy say I’m to go to school? Isn’t it grand?’

  ‘What did you call your mother, Georgina?’ her father asked but not sternly so that she wasn’t abashed.

  ‘I meant Mummy,’ she replied. ‘I’m sorry, Father.’

  Matthew looked over her head to Kate. ‘You see why she should go to school now, before she learns any other bad habits.’

  From me, thought Kate. He means calling me Mam is common.

  Chapter Nineteen

  GEORGINA SAT AND stared at Miss High dumbly. Oh, she hated school and she hated the teacher and she hated the other girls who were sitting sniggering at her.

  ‘She doesn’t even know which is the capital of England,’ Susan Jones whispered loudly. Susan Jones was the bane of Georgie’s life. She always knew the answer to any of Miss High’s questions.

  ‘Stop that talking, girls!’ snapped the teacher and Susan subsided into a giggling which enraged Georgina. She turned in her seat and glared at Susan; forgetting all about Miss High, she shouted at the girl.

  ‘I do! I do!’

  ‘What is it then?’ Susan grinned. She was the daughter of a prosperous grocer in the town and had a group of friends always around her while Georgina was usually alone.

  ‘York!’ cried Georgina and the class erupted into laughter.

  ‘Girls! Girls!’

  Miss High raised her voice and cast a quelling glance around the class. ‘Susan, Georgina, go and stand outside in the hall at once. I will not have such behaviour in my class.’

  Georgina walked out to the front of the class and across, feeling every eye on her and her cheeks burned though she held her head high. Susan followed and they stood outside, one on either side of the door. They could still hear the teacher’s voice.

  ‘Now who knows the capital of England?’

  ‘I do! I do!’ There was a chorus from the children. ‘London!’

  ‘I knew that,’ said Georgina.

  ‘You’re telling lies,’ scoffed Susan. ‘You don’t know anything.’

  ‘I do, I do!’

  Georgina was so enraged she launched herself at her tormentor and the surprise of it pushed Susan to the ground with Georgina on top of her pummelling at her chest. All the frustrations of the first week at the school, all the loneliness and all the longing for her mother and home came out and Susan began to scream with fright.

  Next minute Georgina felt herself hauled to her feet and shaken until she was breathless by the headmistress, Miss Nelson, who had come out of her office to see what all the commotion was about. Susan had subsided into the occasional sob, obviously her feelings hurt more than her body.

  ‘Georgina, you will sit in my office and not move or make a sound until I tell you to,’ decreed Miss Nelson. Georgina found herself sitting at a corner of the desk in the headmistress’s study, adding up columns of figures then subtracting one answer from the other. She did this in record time and perfect silence, forgetting all about the tribulations of the morning. Georgina was fascinated by figures, their relation to each other and the satisfaction of coming up with the right answer to a
sum.

  Miss Nelson watched her then marked her work; Georgina scored full marks. A fluke, maybe? Miss Nelson gave her more sums, more suitable for a nine-year-old and Georgina went through them smoothly, pausing only to lick her pencil once. Again her work was faultless. Miss Nelson gave her more, the work usually done by eleven-year-olds, the top class in the school. Georgina sucked her pencil a few more times and frowned but then her brow cleared and she came up with the correct answers.

  When the bell rang for lunch Miss Nelson was convinced she had a mathematical genius on her hands. Of course, Georgina was abysmally ignorant about some things but with a mind such as hers she would soon catch up with her age group. Why, thought the headmistress, her school could one day be famous as the school that gave Georgina Hamilton her grounding in the mathematical sciences.

  ‘You can go to lunch now, dear,’ she told the girl. ‘Afterwards tell Miss High that I want you back here with me for the first period.’ She had it in mind that she would test her in other subjects.

  ‘Thank you Miss Nelson,’ said Georgie. She slipped off her chair then hesitated, she hadn’t been punished yet.

  ‘Run along then, Georgina.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Nelson.’

  Georgina’s smile lit up her face and her eyes sparkled. It wasn’t so bad here after all. And she was going home on Sunday.

  In the dining-room Susan, sitting with a group of her friends, smirked when Georgie came in. ‘Here comes the dafty,’ she said jeeringly to the girl next to her. ‘Doesn’t know anything.’ But Georgie wasn’t caring much, she hardly heard her. It was Friday and she hadn’t to go back into class this afternoon, she was going to see Miss Nelson. And she liked Miss Nelson, she was lovely. And on Sunday she was going home and her man would be there (her mummy she had to remember to call her Mummy or Father would be cross again). He might be there too and it would be lovely. He loved her, she knew he did and he only got cross when he was disappointed in her. That was what Mam said. So she had to try her best not to disappoint him, she told herself. She would be good all day.

  Sunday came at last and Georgie was on her way home. The school hired a bus to take the girls to their homes, a twenty-four-seater Dennis and Georgie sat at the front and waited impatiently as one girl after another was put down and she was the last one left on the bus as it climbed up from the village of Roseley to the point where the road met the track over the moors which led to the cottage.

  ‘Isn’t someone meeting you?’ the driver asked as he opened the door for her. He was supposed to hand the girls over to someone and not let them out on their own. He gazed along the track but it disappeared in the bends and folds of the moor. He was impatient to get back home to his dinner for he reckoned Yorkshire pudding and onion gravy spoiled for the keeping too long and bringing this kid up on on to this god-forsaken part of the moor had taken up more time than he expected.

  ‘I think so,’ said Georgie. ‘But I’ll be all right, it’s not far, I just go along this path.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said the driver. But he couldn’t take the bus along the track for in places it was little more than a sheep trail and narrow. But it was well defined and surely she couldn’t get lost, she lived here, didn’t she? ‘Go on then, I’ll watch you to the bend,’ he said and Georgie skipped along the track, breathing deeply of the cold air. It was different from the air in Guisborough, she decided, it tasted nicer.

  She took off her velour hat with the school badge on the front of the band and swung it by the elastic in one hand and her school satchel in the other. Though she was only here for the day she meant to find some time to read up on the capitals of the world and what’s more, find out what an igloo was. Miss High had said they were to build an igloo next week and learn about the people who lived in them. And she wasn’t going to be caught out letting everyone know she didn’t know what the teacher was talking about again. Especially that Susan Jones.

  At the bend in the road she turned and waved to the bus driver and when she turned back there was Dorothy, puffing and blowing her way up the bank to her. And it was grand to see her; she felt a wave of love for the old woman wash over her. Dropping her satchel she flung her arms around her.

  ‘Hey, now, man, what’s all this?’ Dorothy demanded breathlessly but she smiled and kissed Georgie and picked up the bag and they went hand in hand down the track to the cottage.

  The poor little lass was too young to be away from home all week, that was Dorothy’s opinion. It wasn’t normal. But then there was a lot about this family that wasn’t normal, she reckoned. It was a good job she had come to them when she did. Kate and the little lass were so isolated here and completely under Hamilton’s thumb. They hardly dared move without his permission. Mind, Kate hadn’t been herself, anyone could see that. She had a lost look somehow. At least she was better now. One of these days she would tell Hamilton to go to hell and Dorothy was looking forward to that. Only the lass loved him, just like all children loved their fathers no matter what they were like. Dorothy sighed.

  ‘I’ve made a batch of Yorkshire parkin,’ she said. ‘You can have some with your milk, it’s still warm.’

  ‘Is my father here?’ Georgie asked looking up eagerly at the old woman.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Dorothy and the eager look slipped from Georgie’s face. Bloody man, Dorothy said to herself. He’s not human, that’s what, letting the bairn down like this. ‘Your mother would have come but she’s expecting him any minute.’ And I wouldn’t put any fellow before my bairn, she told herself. Not that Kate usually did, she had to admit. Her thoughts strayed to her own daughter, in Australia. In a way Kate and Georgina had taken the place of Prue, for she had been feeling lonely and bereft at the time.

  ‘You can come with us,’ Prue had said but Dorothy knew her too well. Prue was asking but hoping her mother wouldn’t take her up on it.

  ‘No, I won’t leave the old country, not at my time of life,’ she had replied and turned away in case Prue saw the anguish in her eyes. The truth was, Tom, her son-in-law, was jealous of any feeling Prue might have for her; he wanted it all for himself.

  Ah well, she thought as she took hold of Georgie’s hand, didn’t it just show that there was a purpose mapped out for her? Here she was with this little family she had made her own. And there was Prue in Australia with two little boys she had never seen. Though maybe one day – Dorothy sighed, breaking off her chain of thought as it was so depressing. After all, she had a lot to be thankful for.

  It had been a lovely day, Georgina thought as she lay in her own bed that night. For Father had been in a good mood and when he was happy everyone was happy. He had been home when she and Dorothy got there and had lifted her up in his arms and swung her round and asked what she had learned at school and she even told him about the capitals and how she had to learn them all before she went back. And what was an igloo?

  ‘You see?’ said Father, looking at her mother and Mam had nodded. ‘Yes, I see Matthew.’

  Matthew was in a good mood because he had just landed a lucrative contract with the government to supply steel to the naval yards. War with Germany had the country limbering up to full production and steel works were important again.

  Kate peeped in to say goodnight and she sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed Georgie’s hair back from her forehead.

  ‘I’ve missed you so much,’ she whispered.

  ‘Me too, Mammy,’ said Georgie and then, without much hope, ‘do I have to go back tomorrow?’

  ‘You know you do, petal,’ said Kate and bent to kiss her. ‘Now go to sleep, you have to he up early to catch the bus.’

  Georgie lay in bed, listening to the muffled sounds from her parents’ room, the murmur of voices. Well, she decided, if she had to go to school then she would make herself like it. What’s more, she would do her absolute best to be the cleverest in the school, she would show that Susan Jones she was not to be laughed at, ever again.

  The war was almost four years old when Georgin
a won a scholarship to The Towers School at Saltburn. The girls at the school didn’t see much of the war apart from the fact that a lot of their fathers were away in the forces. They had to carry gas masks around with them in a box slung around their shoulders and they had air-raid warning drill once a week. Sometimes they heard planes flying overhead and tried to guess what they were and where they were going. And sometimes a girl was called out of class to go to the headmistress’s study. They all knew what that meant, her father was killed or ‘missing presumed killed’.

  ‘They say she has a fine mathematical brain,’ wrote Kate in a letter to Matthew in the summer of 1943. Her letters went to a Post Office box, he wouldn’t have them sent to his home or works or even his flat in London.

  He was away more than ever nowadays, but then a great many men were away in the armed forces. Some of them were away for years at a time and Kate knew she couldn’t grumble if Matthew didn’t come home for months at a time.

  He was in London a lot, working with the government though what he did she hadn’t the vaguest idea. But it was some comfort to her to think that he must see almost as little of his other family as he did of herself and her daughter. She tried not to think of Maty Anne and his other family; liked to pretend they didn’t exist.

  ‘I have taken a job as a nursing assistant at the cottage hospital,’ she wrote then nibbled her pen, wondering how he would take it. Why shouldn’t she though? She had actually applied and been accepted and worked at the hospital for more than a year and this was the first time she had told Matthew. She knew she would have to tell him when he came home and found her going off to work but somehow that never happened.

  Kate was beginning to think more and more of her old life and ambitions. She had written to her mother without telling Matthew and received a very brief letter back from Hannah, giving only some stark facts of her grandmother’s death and not asking after Kate or giving any other word about the family. Kate had wept buckets in the privacy of her room and come out with a hard knot in her stomach that never really went away.