She certainly didn’t care one way or the other what either Fletcher thought of her. It would be fun though, she thought to herself, to see the surprise and admiration in Joe’s eyes when he noticed that she looked, in her natural state, less like a rural housekeeper or woman on the run than a creature of style whose worldly air sat more comfortably on her. She didn’t imagine he’d be especially impressed by a worldly air. But he had a way of studying her as if she were someone with notions above her station, and that amused her. She’d show him. She knew she could.
‘Are the Fletchers from around here?’ she asked idly.
‘From Goulburn, I think. I’ve never shown that much interest.’
‘But only one brother went to war?’
‘No, both. Someone said Joe Fletcher was in Palestine. He doesn’t talk about it. He doesn’t talk about anything so who knows?’
At the sound of a horse galloping fast behind them they turned. ‘Talk of the devil,’ Adelaide said. ‘This has to be him, doesn’t it?’ And it was, summoned by Pearl’s thinking, which she told herself later was certainly not wishful.
He slowed as he grew closer and when he was alongside he stopped and tipped his hat. ‘Miss McCleary,’ he said.
‘You know Mrs Nightingale,’ Pearl reminded him.
‘Of course.’ He tipped his hat again. ‘Enjoying the sunset?’
‘Hope you don’t mind,’ Adelaide said. ‘It’s such a lovely time of day.’
‘Don’t mind at all. Pleased to see you back safe and sound, Miss McCleary.’
‘Quite safe and sound thank you, Mr Fletcher,’ said Pearl, explaining to Adelaide, ‘I met Mr Fletcher at the railway. He was visiting his brother.’
‘I thought your brother was still in the Army,’ said Adelaide.
‘He is. On special duties.’
‘At the railway,’ Pearl confirmed.
Joe Fletcher nodded. ‘He took off just after you left, chasing someone or other he’s been after for a while. Nothing to worry about but all the same, good to see you in one piece.’
‘What someone or other?’ Adelaide asked.
‘Just a report. Better get cracking.’ And with a brisk nudge of his horse, he did.
‘See what I mean? Gruff,’ said Adelaide without rancour. ‘We’d better head back or Marcus will think we’ve been kidnapped.’
It took seconds for her to realise her husband was thinking no such thing. Pearl, lifting the sleeping baby from his pram, heard her cry from the kitchen. ‘Oh no! Oh Marcus, no!’ and as she put the baby into his cot and tucked him in, she waited. When there was no sound of angry footsteps or doors banging or anything crashing in the kitchen, she emerged to find Adelaide with her hand to her face from which all joy had fled and a note in her hand, which she passed to Pearl to read.
I can’t go on, Adelaide, it said. I need to think. Nothing is right. I’m making everyone miserable. You’re better off without me.
‘I thought he’d turned a corner,’ Adelaide whispered. ‘He seemed so much better this morning.’
‘Should we try to find him?’ asked Pearl already deciding the quickest way would be to get the Fletcher brothers on his tracks. ‘He can’t have gone far.’
Adelaide rubbed her brow and took a long, quavering breath. She looked out into the kitchen garden for the briefest of minutes and then turned to Pearl with tightened lips and hardened eyes. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t help him. He needs to help himself.’
This is how tough a heart can become when it’s broken and healed, then broken and healed then broken.
Chapter Forty-one
Louisa, it would be easy to argue, had been born with a toughened heart, but that wouldn’t be fair. She’d have been born with the same capacity for tenderness as the next baby, but there’s no doubt that she had acquired toughness earlier than most, that she’d developed more than the usual amount of mental sinew and gristle along the way because when the knocks came in adulthood, she braced. No amount of bracing comforted her next morning, however.
Martin Duffy hadn’t required dinner the night before. He’d come home well after dark and gone straight to his room saying he’d had a long hard day and needed sleep. It was just as well. Had they sat together in perfect ease, she might have been inclined to tell him what she’d done and she was as sure as she could be that he wouldn’t find it funny, whatever jokes she made about Marcus, morning sickness and insipid Adelaide.
In the cold light of the following day, the last thing she was finding it was funny. She was staring disaster in the face. How could she have been so foolish? How could she have taken such a stupid step against a neighbour who was famed for her goodness? It could only rebound on her, she realised, as dreadful clarity descended on her, and the only way out was to claim insanity brought on by pregnancy, panic and Marcus declaring his love for her.
She’d known for weeks that she was pregnant, for many more weeks than had elapsed since the night she’d suggested Marcus had made her so. It had been madness to imagine she could insist he was the father and to expect him not only to believe her but to leave his wife for her. Even if his wildest dream was to abandon Adelaide and his son for his more attractive and enticing neighbour, nothing on earth would have persuaded him to do such a terrible thing.
This truth was so unsettling it allowed her no rest. She jumped out of bed, she washed, she was sick in the basin, she washed again and she dressed. She would walk to clear her head and then she would call on Marcus and throw herself on his mercy. He would understand insanity, she told herself. Many men had come home from the war unhinged, everyone knew it, just as many women went mad with worry in the face of a disgraceful unplanned pregnancy. He would help her.
She let herself quietly from the house, pausing at her gate to look up and down the street in case anyone else was in it and saw, to her profound annoyance and horror, that Maisie Jenkins already was, hovering by the Arch, watching her. Spying. How dare she spy!
Louisa didn’t walk to clear her head and calm her brain. She hurried, head down, straight across the road to bang on her neighbour’s door, which was opened almost at once by Pearl McCleary, who said, ‘Mrs Worthington, what’s wrong? It’s so early. Are you ill again?’
‘Mrs Jenkins is hiding in the Arch watching me,’ Louisa said, scurrying into the house and away from the hideous gaze. ‘What’s she doing? She’s always here, prowling up and down. Why are you dressed like that? Are you leaving?’
Pearl was indeed oddly dressed for a housekeeper who should have been going about her chores. She was wearing deep blue silk, off the shoulder and tight at the waist. While Adelaide and the baby slept, she’d fished out the single possible dress that might be suitable for a Candlelight for Peace Garden Party.
‘Just seeing if this still fits,’ she explained. ‘Were you wanting to see Mrs Nightingale? She’s had a difficult night. Or did you just come in here to hide?’
‘I came to see Captain Nightingale but I expect he’s asleep as well.’
‘It is early,’ Pearl agreed. ‘If you give me a minute, I’ll make you a cup of tea. Sit down. Will you be comfortable in the kitchen?’
It was ludicrous. There could be no comfort for Louisa anywhere in that house at that minute but there was even less outside. She sat in the kitchen uncomfortably and waited, praying that Adelaide wouldn’t wake before her husband and that her husband, when he did wake up, would be kind and thoughtful and prepared to accept her heartfelt apology.
Pearl had no idea what explanation she could offer for Captain Nightingale’s absence. She wasn’t even sure she should admit he was absent. It seemed very odd that Louisa should be seeking him out at this time of the morning. ‘Now, would you like breakfast or just tea?’ she asked as she bustled back into the kitchen in clothes that made sense.
‘No food. Definitely no food, thank you,’ Louisa said. ‘When does everyone get up around here? How long do you think I should wait? I probably should go because they won’t be expecting me and i
t will be awkward.’
‘You could leave a note. Why don’t you write a note and if I give you a small covered basket to take home, Mrs Jenkins will think you just popped across to borrow something for breakfast. Poor thing must be bored to sobs to make us her hobby.’ It was an excellent suggestion for which Louisa was grateful. Pearl showed her into the office and left her to it.
Any other day Louisa might have poked around looking for evidence of the life she thought she wanted, but not this morning. This morning she had to compose something that let everyone off the hook. She wrote, Dear Marcus. Please put aside last night’s conversation. The more I think about it, the more I realise I made a mistake and that you are in no way concerned in the matter. Please come and see me when you can so I can explain further. Affectionately, Louisa.
She placed the note in an envelope and she sealed it. Had she known she had frightened him so profoundly that he’d departed the house and the neighbourhood for possibly ever, she’d never have left it. But the note was left and an hour later Adelaide opened it. She passed it to Pearl, saying, ‘We’ll go and see her together.’
It was innocent enough in itself. It might have been referring to a game of cards, or a lost hanky or gossip Louisa had passed on that she now regretted. But nothing about Louisa was innocent in Adelaide’s eyes. Had the note not been penned at dawn the day after her husband had taken fright then flight, she might have viewed it more kindly. But there was steel in her heart as she confronted her nauseated neighbour, and even though Louisa attempted to smile through her illness and unease, nothing of the sort was returned. Not even from the housekeeper.
‘Where’s Martin?’ Adelaide asked.
‘Asleep,’ Louisa assured her.
‘Good,’ said Adelaide. That was by way of greeting. She led the way to the dining room and when the three of them and the pram were comfortably arranged, she shut the door. She held out the note. ‘What’s this about?’ she asked.
‘It’s between Marcus and me,’ Louisa said.
‘No it isn’t, Louisa. Nothing is between you and Marcus. How dare you even suggest to me, his wife, that anything might be. I’m sick to death of you. You’ve treated me abominably before and I’ve forgiven you. But even now, when we both know each other’s difficulties and agreed to face them together, you have met my husband in secret and conducted secret business with him. Well you might like to know, he’s left the house and as far as I know he won’t be coming back.’
‘Oh God. Adelaide, what have you done?’ gasped Louisa.
Adelaide laughed drily. ‘No, Louisa, what have you done?’
‘I’m pregnant,’ admitted the woman who couldn’t have looked more fallen, even if fallen is not how anyone with an ounce of compassion in their bones would have described her. She looked shrivelled and collapsed, tiny and unprotected, alone and unwanted. Unwanted and unneeded by anyone other than the tiny life inside her.
‘Is Marcus the father?’ Adelaide asked harshly. Louisa shook her head. ‘Then who is?’
‘I can’t say.’
‘Can’t say or won’t say?’
Louisa began to whimper.
Pearl said, ‘Does he know you are having his baby and will he marry you?’
Louisa shook her head.
‘It is Marcus, isn’t it?’ said Adelaide, cold and calm.
‘No, it isn’t, Adelaide, I promise. But I let him believe I thought he was even though we both know he can’t be.’
‘Why? Why would you do such a thing?’
Louisa shook her head again. ‘Because I’m a bad person. I’m very sorry, Adelaide, I am so very, very sorry.’ She was weeping copious sorry tears. ‘I came to tell Marcus I was very sorry. Does he know that I’m sorry?’ She sobbed into her hands but no one comforted her. ‘This baby needs a father. I need a husband and I need one quickly.’
‘Well you can’t steal mine.’ Adelaide stood and took the pram. ‘Come on, Miss McCleary, I can’t stay here a minute longer. Please don’t try to pretend we are friends again, Louisa. We never were and we never will be.’
‘No. Adelaide, please. I know it was bad. I know I’m bad but it was a moment of madness. I felt so desperate.’ She was shouting.
Pearl said briskly, ‘You must talk to the father of the child.’
‘I can’t,’ Louisa called after them but the ladies’ backs were already turned against her.
She’d have gone to her room and thrown herself onto her bed to die of misery and shame had Martin Duffy not emerged from his room asking if he were missing out on some fun. ‘Just Adelaide and Miss McCleary,’ said Louisa dully, gathering her composure so she sounded subdued rather than deranged. ‘Being bossy. You need breakfast.’ She smiled wanly as if there were no misery and shame. She offered eggs and ham and she prepared them as if they were married, this was their usual morning routine and the routine always included heaving at the sight of eggs.
It was a kind of miracle really. By taking deep breaths and indulging in the possibility, she suddenly saw the probability. The blissful, simple, natural solution to her terrible, terrible difficulty was staring her in the face and had been for weeks over so many happy drinks and meals. Oh God, the relief! She had been stupid but it would be all right. The idiots from over the road could all take a running jump.
Chapter Forty-two
Over the road, Adelaide threw off her hat and coat and slumped into a chair while Pearl put the baby into his cot with a rattle and a teething ring, which was all the company he was going to get until his mother could relieve the agony in her heart. ‘Do you believe her? She’s such a liar, she could be making it all up. She needs a husband, so she pretends she’s pregnant.’
Pearl, putting the kettle on, sought only to soothe, not to delude. She agreed Mrs Worthington was unreliable but she believed she was telling the truth. She was pregnant so she needed a husband. The signs had been there for at least a month. ‘So who could the father be?’ Adelaide wanted to know. ‘Who? Who has she seen and why won’t she say? He’s either married or won’t have her, or both.’ Pearl didn’t know. ‘I can’t blame anyone for not taking her on. Why would anyone take on a tramp? She doesn’t care what she does or says, provided it’s in her interests. Other people’s interests can go to hell. It’s how she’s been as long as I’ve known her. I’ve got some sympathy for whoever’s sending her those horses. She’ll have driven them to it. I’ve a good mind to send her some myself.’ Adelaide railed and ranted and accused until she’d run out of insults and the baby was crying so hard and furiously that there was no going on.
Pearl suggested she have a lie down while she took the baby for a walk, and Adelaide agreed even though she said, ‘Don’t patronise me, Miss McCleary. I’m not an invalid. I’m a woman who’s been betrayed by a friend and abandoned by a husband.’
When she had the house to herself, Adelaide did not take to her bed. She squared her shoulders and took up a thinking position in the office, bolt upright at the desk staring at the blotting paper stony-faced. Now she’d had her say, she was less angry and she could be rational.
Had Marcus not been involved, she was persuading herself, she might have been more tolerant of Louisa’s predicament. She wasn’t the first woman in wartime to find herself pregnant to a man not her husband. There was the woman in Cooma who ended up living with the Chinese cook. But she was the first woman in wartime to decide the solution to her problem was to steal Marcus in order to stay respectable. She might not have succeeded, but one way or another she had deprived Adelaide of the man she had married for better and or worse. He’d taken off under the strain of it and she wasn’t sure she wanted him back.
The man she had married until death parted them had come back from war a drunken bully who showed her little respect. She was no longer prepared to sweep under the carpet the assignations with Louisa he’d said were none of her business. They were and had always been her business and now she knew where she stood. She was as unprotected as Louisa and Maggie. He might e
ven be dead. Perhaps he’d already killed himself. She told herself he wouldn’t kill himself. But then she thought he might. Then she thought that if he did she would be free to marry again, and once that possibility occurred to her it took just the smallest tilt to the light to become something blissful. She saw clear as day a life with Martin Duffy, who was so at ease with himself, so honest and true, so kind and affectionate, so supportive and brave as well as handsome.
Pearl, striding along the river pathway even though the lane had tempted her, entertained no thoughts of marriage to anyone. She was thinking only of her own mother, newly arrived from Ireland who’d fallen for a man who’d turned his back on her, and her heart was breaking. Tears rolled down her face unchecked for her girl of a mother, for herself and for Louisa. She wanted to tell Louisa not to despair, to have her baby, to love her baby and if she couldn’t raise it herself, to part with it with love. She would stand by her even if it meant not standing by Mrs Nightingale.
She carried this thought for the best part of a hundred yards and then realised she couldn’t abandon Mrs Nightingale just when she’d been abandoned by her husband. Her position was in so many ways worse than Mrs Worthington’s, whose plight could be tackled head on. If Mrs Worthington wasn’t prepared to tackle it on her own account, Pearl would tackle it head on for her to honour her own mother, wherever she was. She formed a plan within seconds.
Annie McGuire would take in the abandoned widow until her baby was born and found a home. She would support her out of her own wage. In the meantime, she’d keep an eye on Mrs Nightingale until the storm blew over, which would surely not be long.
Four Respectable Ladies Seek Part-time Husband Page 23