A Mother's Gift

by Maggie Hope

  This was her life now, she told herself. She had made her bed and now she must lie on it. That had been one of Gran’s favourite sayings. She loved Matthew, she told herself as she did so often these days. But she felt she had come out of a fog which had enclosed her ever since the pit disaster when Billy and Grandda had died. She was ready to assert herself; Matthew had had it his way for far too long.

  ‘I will work on weekdays only,’ Kate continued in her round, unformed handwriting. ‘I will be at home at the weekends when Georgina comes from school.’ She paused for a moment, she never knew quite how to sign her letters to Matthew. Then she wrote, ‘Your ever loving Kate.’

  She put the letter in an envelope and addressed it then took it downstairs to the kitchen where Dorothy was making Woolton pie with vegetables from the garden. She was a bit short of lard for the pastry so she had added a bit of hard margarine and was having a difficult time kneading it in.

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on in a minute,’ she said to Kate and wiped a floury hand across her cheek leaving a white, dusty trail.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Kate. ‘Then I’ll go to the post box on the road.’

  Dorothy started to mix the pastry with water ready to roll out for the top of the pie. She knew who the letter was for of course, who else could it be? And she had her doubts as to whether the master would let the lass go to a school in Saltburn; it was too near the industrial centre of Cleveland for him.

  Dorothy had been with Kate for long enough to find out the whole story, even if it had been in bits and snippets. And she had her own opinions about it all. One of her opinions was that Kate was wasting her life in this cottage in the back of beyond. It was all right for her, Dorothy, she’d had her life and she had her memories. But Kate hadn’t lived when Hamilton snatched her up. She’d only been a slip of a lass. She was still a slip of a lass, Dorothy reckoned, slim and a proper treat to look at with those marvellous eyes and translucent skin though Kate didn’t seem to realise it herself.

  Dorothy was tired. She knew that but for the fact that Kate did a lot of the work she wouldn’t be able to manage. Anyway, if she retired she would miss Kate and Georgie almost as much as she missed Prue. Kate was like an adopted daughter to her.

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘YOU WILL GIVE in your notice at once,’ said Matthew. ‘I don’t want you to go back to the hospital.’ He didn’t raise his voice; simply spoke in the assured tone he used when he was absolutely sure his wishes would be paramount. Lately, instead of making Kate give in immediately, his attitude merely irritated her. More than irritated her, in fact, for she had become used to making her own decisions while he had been away.

  ‘I cannot.’ Kate was equally as certain.

  Matthew gazed sternly at her. He was tired, these last few weeks in London working with the government had been hard, he was beginning to feel his age, he reflected. It was late in the evening after a particularly hard day. Travelling up from King’s Cross even in First Class was an ordeal in wartime, the train being so packed with soldiers that the corridors were impossible to negotiate. Even the seats in his carriage were all taken by officers, tanned dark brown by the North African sun, who lounged about with their legs sprawled in front of them so that it was even more difficult to get out into the corridor. Worse, in one corner an officer had given up his seat to a young woman with a crying infant that refused to stop its caterwauling. They had reached Darlington before it fell into a snuffling sleep and he got out at Darlington in any case.

  Thank God, he had thought as he strode up the platform breathing in the cold, sooty air. And thank God Lawson was meeting him with the car. He couldn’t have borne the slow local train to Middlesbrough and then finding a taxi to the works.

  Lawson had been classed as C3 when he went for his medical for the army in 1940 and so had remained in Matthew’s service at the Hall. He was general handyman as well as chauffeur nowadays; it was so difficult to get servants of either gender.

  The Hamilton Ironworks were going flat out as were all the steelworks on Teesside. But Matthew knew the war would end sometime and he also knew the political situation was most likely to change too. There were rumours of nationalisation in the air, not now of course as all efforts went towards winning this war. But later, maybe, should Labour get in. Now was the time to plan ahead or, if not that exactly, then the time to consider his options and be prepared.

  Then there had been the meeting with Mary Anne. It had been four o’clock when he reached the Hall and Mary Anne was just finishing up a meeting of her Women’s Committee for supplying comforts to the troops in Italy. The meeting had ended rather sooner than expected when Matthew came home and the ladies had filed out, glancing sideways at Matthew as they did so and murmuring to each other that Mr Hamilton was still a handsome man; he was indeed, with his dark hair tinged witty silver and his dark eyes and air of authority. He was distinguished looking and his figure was so trim with no sign as yet of a paunch. Mary Anne was a lucky woman though there had been whispers about him at one time. He was not the man to let go to London on his own for weeks at a time. After all, there were a lot of young widows about nowadays.

  Matthew did not miss the interest the ladies had in him; he smiled inwardly and looked them over openly to let them see he could have an interest in one of them but it was only a game he played, couldn’t help playing. When they had gone he dropped his slightly flirtatious attitude as he shed his coat and hat.

  Mary Anne was on her feet by the drawing-room door and Maisie stood a little behind her. Each woman offered her cheek for his kiss.

  ‘I’ll send for more tea, Matthew,’ said Mary Anne. ‘Did you have a good journey?’

  ‘Don’t talk rubbish woman,’ said Matthew and strode towards the window and flung it open. Though there was a chill breeze outside the sun was shining on the summer flowers in the garden. The room smelled heavily of lavender water and attar of roses. The breeze was better. ‘Train journeys are hell and have been since the beginning of the war.’ He turned round to face them. Maisie was fast becoming a replica of her mother, he thought. Though she was only twenty-two she was already the archetypal middle-aged spinster. Mouse-like too, with quick nervous gestures. She had been practically engaged once at the beginning of the war to a man as colourless as she was herself, at least in Matthew’s opinion. He had been killed at Dunkirk and she looked set on mourning him for the rest of her life.

  ‘I have to go out again, Mary Anne,’ he said. He had been going to stay at home tonight and to see Kate tomorrow but suddenly he couldn’t bear to wait.

  ‘Matthew! You’ve just arrived and we haven’t seen you in so long!’

  ‘There is a war on, you know,’ he snapped. ‘Anyway, where is that tea? A man could die of thirst in this house.’

  ‘I can’t get out of it now anyway,’ said Kate, ending his reverie. ‘I’m on the register for work. Besides, I enjoy it.’

  Matthew turned over on to his back, away from her. They had just made love and the old magic was as strong as it had ever been but now it was satisfied for the moment, he could think more objectively.

  ‘You know I can’t afford to have our relationship made public. You are running the risk of doing just that,’ he said.

  ‘No, I’m not.’ She was doing the work she had always wanted to do, nursing. Only as an assistant nurse but there was a shortage of trained nurses and she often had quite responsible jobs to do. Sister trusted her, even relied on her. She did not want to give it up. In fact, if she did another year’s training she could take the examinations and become a State Registered Nurse.

  ‘I am known as Nurse Benfield, no one is going to associate me with you. No one has in all these years,’ she said. ‘I’m on the register for work, I told you, I can’t get off anyway. Matthew, I want to do this. I feel I’m wasting my life.’

  ‘On me, do you mean?’

  ‘No not on you. But there is a war on …’

  That was the second time that phrase h
ad been used today, thought Matthew. He turned his head on the pillow and looked at her. Hell’s bells, he loved her, every bit of her. But he couldn’t let her break up his marriage; the effect on his business would be catastrophic. It was essential that the Richards business which had come with his wife should remain with the Hamilton firm at least until after the war. Then Robert would be home from the army and he was at least titular head of the Richards side but nationalisation was a threat on the distant horizon. Matthew sighed. He was tired and sleepy as he always was after sex as he got older.

  ‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow,’ he said and closed his eyes. Within a few minutes he was asleep and snoring gently. Kate lay awake for a long time, her anxious thoughts flitting back and forth from her own problem to Georgina’s.

  She still hadn’t told him about Georgina’s scholarship to Towers School at Saltburn-by-the-Sea. Oh, why couldn’t she have had a normal family? she agonised. With a normal husband and father who would take pride in his daughter’s achievements. One who didn’t insist that they hide away on the moor like this? She thought about Mary Anne at home there in her big house and with her three children one of them born within a month or two of Georgina.

  By, that had been a body blow to her, when she found out about Bertram. She had thought that he no longer slept with Mary Anne; she knew he did not love her. But then there was Bertram and Matthew hadn’t even felt the need to explain him. Even brought the subject of his son up when he talked to her, comparing his progress with Georgina’s. Well, Bertram was not so clever as Georgina, she knew that.

  Kate turned over once again and Matthew stirred in his sleep, disturbed. She lay rigid until his breathing became deep and regular again.

  She just had to go on, she thought. For Georgina’s sake. But if it came to the stage where Georgina’s future was suffering, well then …

  ‘I have won a scholarship to the Towers School, Father,’ said Georgina, making her mother’s heart beat faster. The look Kate gave her daughter said plainly, ‘I was going to tell him!’

  ‘Have you indeed?’

  Matthew buttered a piece of toast and spooned on marmalade. ‘The Towers School? Where is that?’

  ‘Saltburn, Father, you must know of it.’

  ‘Oh yes. A pity.’

  ‘Why? Why is it a pity?’ Georgina’s voice reflected her strained anxiety.

  ‘Well, you can’t go there, can you? It’s too near the coast. It’s dangerous.’

  ‘There is no bombing now, Father. It’s not dangerous in the least. In any case, Saltburn hasn’t been bombed, has it?’

  ‘Yes it has.’

  ‘Well, at the beginning of the war maybe—’

  Kate butted in at this point. ‘I think she should go, Matthew. She is a very clever girl, you know she is. She deserves her chance. Miss Nelson says there is no reason why she shouldn’t go to Durham University, or York. Even Cambridge or Oxford.’

  ‘So, you are both determined, are you?’

  Kate swallowed and she and Georgina glanced at each other. They nodded. ‘We are,’ said Kate.

  Matthew got to his feet. ‘Well, I can’t discuss it now, I have to go.’ He walked to the door before turning and smiling at his daughter. ‘Em, well done Georgina,’ he said and she was filled with delight at the scant praise. He did not say when he would be back and they knew it could be that night or next week or next month. They would just have to wait for his decision.

  He walked to his car, a small Austin saloon, black and non-descript with a battered nearside wing where he had bumped into a lamppost one evening in the blackout. It was not so noticeable as the Bentley in spite of the battered wing. He had parked it off the road on the side of a dip but still had to walk a fair way to it.

  She was clever all right, his daughter, he thought as he walked. A pity it wasn’t Bertram who had the good mind. It was just his luck that his legitimate son should have Mary Anne’s brain while the daughter born the wrong side of the blanket should have his. He found his car and got in. This fine weather it started straight away and he drove off the moor towards the South Durham coalfield.

  Today he wanted to check on his mining holdings. He had the balance sheets and they made good reading but he liked to see for himself, judge the atmosphere. And it didn’t hurt to drop in on the managers as well as his agent. He might pick up an Auckland Chronicle for Kate. She would like that.

  Aw, he might as well let the! girl go to The Towers School. No one of his acquaintance ever went near Saltburn he didn’t think, not during the war. You couldn’t go on the beach for one thing. And the alternative was to send the girl away, far away to a school in a part of the world where the Hamiltons were unknown. He had been thinking of an academy for young ladies in Edinburgh. But that would break Kate’s heart.

  The problem of Kate was different. He wouldn’t have her working, especially not as an assistant nurse, she was too good for that. Well, he would have to see to it at once.

  Later that day he made a discreet call to the Ministry of Labour office in Stockton and had a few words with the manager. It was a question of the lady’s health, he was sure the manager would understand. Kate was duly taken off the work register.

  Kate was aware that he had struck a bargain with her without saying a word. There was nothing she could do, for she was determined that Georgina should have the chance she had missed. One day Georgina would take her proper place in the world as Matthew’s daughter she was entitled to it. She herself would just have to get used to the loneliness of living on the isolated moor again. But Georgina would not; she would have a life away from here. She need never come back, not if she went to Oxford or one of those other universities. In any case, she herself had Dorothy, she wasn’t completely alone. And Matthew of course. She was bound to see more of Matthew when the war was over. Kate went down to the kitchen for her mid-morning tea.

  ‘Is it eleven already?’ asked Dorothy in surprise. ‘I haven’t set it out yet. Never mind, I made a cold tea cake from one of those Woolton recipes. I just couldn’t get hold of any ginger in the village. And anyway, there wasn’t any syrup for parkin either. The kettle is on the boil; it won’t take but a minute. Georgina went out first thing, going to get heather to put in that brass vase in the hall, she said.’

  Kate wasn’t sure just when the mist came down, she had been making panacklty for their dinner. She liked to make it herself and Dorothy pretended she didn’t know how to though she had watched Kate do it often enough. Kate loved panacklty, it reminded her of Winton and her gran and after all these years the hurt was blunted a little. She sliced potatoes and onions and cut up half the bacon ration with a reminiscent smile.

  ‘By, many’s the time I came in from school and could smell it as soon as I came in the door,’ she said to Dorothy. She arranged the food in an oven tin and brought the jug of stock from the pantry to pour over it. Dorothy watched and wondered yet again where it was exactly. Oh, she could tell by now it must have been a mining area in Durham but she had never asked questions about Kate’s past and never would. She believed in minding her own business and Kate had never talked about it. Some things, of course, she let slip and Dorothy had pieced together a fairly accurate picture of Kate’s story but she would have had her tongue cut out before she repeated it, she would indeed.

  ‘I wonder where the lass is?’ Dorothy said suddenly. ‘I hope she’s not gone very far, do you see the mist coming in?’

  Kate had been putting the dish in the oven but now she straightened up, forgetting all about it. She had been living on the moor long enough to know the mists could be lethal, if anyone was lost in one.

  ‘Georgina wouldn’t go far,’ she said uncertainly.

  ‘I’ll put the storm lanterns out though, just in case.’

  Dorothy brought the lanterns from where they stood in a row by the door. She could hardly see the path as she carried one to the roadside and placed it on a flat stone in the low-lying wall. She stood there for a few minutes and ca
lled, ‘Georgie! Georgie! Halloo!’ But all they could hear was the bleating of sheep and a moorhen clicking softly. Dorothy went back to the house, still calling.

  Soon they had a row of lights leading from the road to the house and one at each bedroom window. Now all they could do was wait and pray, it was no good going out on to the moor to get lost themselves.

  Georgina wandered across the moor to an old abandoned smallholding she had discovered only a year before. There was a rowan tree growing by the broken-down gate to the farmyard; it was laden with fruit, which was not quite ripe and bent to one side a little with the prevailing wind, but it was a sturdy tree with the roots firmly embedded in the rock beneath the thin covering of poor soil. It would have been planted there to guard the place, keep away evil spirits.

  It was a warm day even on the high moor and she was glad to sit down on a grassy patch in the shade of the tree and lean her back against the trunk. She gazed at the little farm, thinking of the families that must have lived there over the years. The father a lead miner perhaps, coming home only at weekends to help out on the farm, the mother would look after the animals all week and children would play under the rowan tree, stringing the red berries together to make necklaces. She wished the family had still been there, she would have had other children to play with then. Now she had no one.

  Georgina smiled, she was being fanciful, and she had no idea what the people would have been like. Rough and ready, she supposed, the parents going to an early grave worn out by work; the father probably suffering from lead poisoning. Or they would have had to leave the moor when the lead mining gave out and the father would get a job in a coal mine. They had learned all about how most of the people had had to go away to work from Miss High last year.

  Idly Georgina began to calculate how many stones had gone into building the cottage, you would have to allow for the different sizes in the stones but it was possible if you remembered there were two sides to the walls and only rubble in between …