The Cuckoo's Child

by Marjorie Eccles

  ‘Well, you can stop here as long as it takes, you and the lass. She seems happy enough here,’ Mr Beaumont said, dealing cards. He enjoys a game of cards, especially if he wins, and I like the companionship playing with him brings, though I sorely miss the stimulation of conversing with Mr Havergill. Mr Beaumont is commonsensical and not averse to an argument but he has no leanings towards discussion and debate for its own sake.

  ‘Then I hope it doesn’t take long, sir. I don’t know how I can ever repay you for what you’ve done as it is. If it hadn’t been for you picking us up, we’d have been dead now, Lucie and me both.’

  ‘And what else should I have done then, left you there to freeze to death? Nay, I’m not that heartless! I couldn’t hardly leave you lying in the snow, but I’m not a charity, neither. Happen we can find clerking or summat of that sort for you down at Cross Ings, till you see your way forrard.’ As usual, he covered his kindness by brusqueness. ‘But frame yourself and get set up as soon as you can, think on? It’s not right you being on your own up here all day with these women.’

  What did he mean by that? Did he think I had designs on the servants? There wasn’t one of them under forty, even the nursemaid who had up to then been looking after young Mrs Beaumont’s twins. Surely not Mrs Beaumont herself?

  I should not like him to think that of me, but he need have no fear. The idea of me and Amelia Beaumont is laughable. Theo, his son, is welcome to her. She is a loud, coarse woman, with a tendency to veer from one mood to the other, as different from Theo as he is different from his father. The nurse, before she left, was a gossip and told me Theo’s mother, Charlotte Tyas, came from the local gentry while she, Amelia, was the daughter of a publican. Theo is a pretty-boy kind of fellow, likeable enough, but he looks down on the mill, where he’s forced to earn his livelihood with his father – a painful parallel with my own situation, although since he is of age he could do something about it, if he so wished. But then, he would not be cushioned by his father’s money, which is evidently important to him.

  Ainsley has only ever had a son, and has been without a wife for many a year, and maybe that is why he is so taken with Lucie. His eyes light up when he speaks of her. ‘She must stop here,’ he said last week. ‘Happen she can make herself useful, looking after the bairns, now that nursery maid of theirs has taken the huff and gone.’

  And who could blame Lucie for accepting the offer? Unlike the nursemaid, she takes no offence at Amelia’s moods and is very good with the babies, and in return Amelia professes to make a pet of her and has even passed on some of her dresses, which are not suitable and make her look too much older than her years for my liking. But Lucie is happy and that must be all that matters.

  All the same, Ainsley Beaumont is deluding himself. Lucie will no more stay here for long than she would have stayed at North Brow. For one thing, to the other folk who live here, even to young Mrs Beaumont, she is as alien a being as her mother was at North Brow. There is no doubt some jealousy among the maids of her beauty, suspicions of her cleverness and the Frenchified ways her mother taught her. But Ainsley Beaumont doesn’t see that, or that Lucie is young and her head soon turned.

  I should have foreseen what would happen. There is now only one thing for me. Benjamin Kindersley . . .

  Laura turned over this, the last page, but the other side was blank. The last two words on the previous page were not meant to be the beginning of a new sentence. The narrative had run right down to the foot of the page and evidently not wishing to leave his signature isolated on the back of the page, he had squashed it in at the end of the line. There was nothing more.

  Her curiosity had been thoroughly aroused and she was disappointed that the story had ended in that abrupt way, with no satisfactory ending. She hoped she might find more, the rest of it, as she worked, though that was probably unlikely, and maybe just as well – she thought it quite possible she had stumbled across secrets the family would not wish to be made public. Until she decided whether or not to speak of what she’d found, she rolled it up and retied the black silk ribbon, put it back where she had found it and went on with what she was doing.

  She had not been at work more than ten minutes when Tom Illingworth arrived.

  Ten

  ‘Come out for a walk,’ Tom said as he came in. ‘I’ve had business in London for the last week, tiresome business – after which, I need some fresh air to get buildings, traffic and all that out of my head.’ He paused. ‘I’m afraid, last time I called to make your acquaintance again, I walked into all that sorry business . . . Come on, with all that’s happening, you need to get out of this house. A good blow will do you good as well.’

  It sounded very much like an order, but the rain of yesterday had ceased, the sky was bright and the idea of some fresh air was appealing. ‘All right.’

  He set a punishing pace towards the tops, along the ancient stones of a road where once, he told her, Roman legions had marched across the treacherous Pennine passes from Chester to York – the same track, long afterwards, that was used by packhorse trains with their panniers of wool from the scattered outlying sheep farms and weavers’ cottages. Up here, there was a bird’s eye view of the world, with glimpses of shining silver below that were distant reservoirs. Further still above them, on the high passes, snow still lay. The silence was complete, apart from the occasional bleat of a sheep and the sad cry of a curlew. Once they disturbed a dark shape, flying up out of the heather at their feet, startling them with its hoarse kok-kok-kok, but it was only a moorcock.

  The wind carried their words away as they walked and, tired of trying to hold on to her hat, Laura took it off and let the wind blow through her hair as it would. Presently, dropping down a little below the brow, they found a sheltered spot where they could sit for a breather on a rocky outcrop that made a natural seat. They sat in silence, looking out over the wide view beyond, over the flat plains of the red rose county, the old enemy, Lancashire.

  After a while, he said, ‘This was one of Ainsley’s favourite spots.’

  ‘You were fond of him, I think?’

  ‘We all were, perhaps more than we knew. He was good to me as a boy, and he’s been like a father to the twins. His only son, Theo, was lost in that fire, you know. They were barely two years old.’

  She had not known this, no one mentioned the fire, the cause of that blackened ruin, whose shadow she still tried to avoid seeing when she drew her curtains at night. Perhaps because it was a constant reminder – to Ainsley Beaumont of the loss of his only son, to the twins for a father they were never to know, and most of all, perhaps, for Amelia Beaumont, losing her husband and the father of her babies so tragically. ‘That’s – awful, dreadful. How did it happen?’

  ‘An accident with a lamp, I’m told.’

  ‘And Theo died? How terrible. Was anyone else hurt?’

  ‘The rest of the family were saved.’

  It was not altogether satisfactory as an answer. The fire had happened twenty years ago, about the time the account Ben Kindersley had been writing had stopped. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell Tom about finding those hidden papers and the abrupt way in which the story had ended, to ask him if Ben and the girl, Lucie, had also been victims, but she was not sure she wanted to know that they had perished so horribly.

  Before she could make up her mind to ask, he said: ‘It’s hard to believe he’s dead. He took a fancy to me when I was a boy, lent me money to get educated, to “better myself” as he put it – though I don’t think becoming an engineer and going off to South Africa was quite what he had in mind! I was a disappointment to him. It seemed he expected a better return from his money.’ He laughed shortly, then broke off a wiry stem of grass and twisted it tightly round his finger, staring into the distance. ‘The reason I’ve been up and down to London – one of the reasons – was to see about another position, a railway venture in South America.’

  ‘South America?’

  ‘It’s unlikely I shall take the of
fer. For one thing, they want me to put money into it – the sort I don’t have. But neither shall I do what Ainsley wanted of me.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Oh, some bee he had in his bonnet, involvement with the mill.’

  ‘Maybe you were not a disappointment to him, after all, if he thought enough of you to offer that.’

  It was some time before he answered. ‘More a matter of conscience, I think. My mother and he—’ He threw her a quick look. ‘She was one of his mill girls, you see, but . . . well, let’s just say they go back a long way.’

  Laura wondered if she did see. What was he trying to tell her, that he was more to Ainsley than just a young man in whom he had taken an interest? It was hardly a thing she felt one could ask. ‘Well, I don’t suppose I should care to be offered a job just to appease someone’s conscience, either.’

  ‘If my mother didn’t resent it – and she didn’t – why should I? All the same, I’m sorry we parted in anger over that, as we did.’ There was still a slightly bitter edge to his tone, and he fell silent, but after a few moments he sprang suddenly to his feet. ‘Oh, forget all that. Dark thoughts for a lovely day. Don’t let’s waste it.’

  Winter up here would be as treacherous as the bleak environment Ben Kindersley had so vividly painted, but today the sky was blue and the hills on the opposite side of the valley even bluer, soft and hazy, and in the pretty copses and cloughs further down the valley where the trees grew, spring could be seen in the greening of the branches; the wind had blown the dust of the library from her mind.

  His sombre mood seemed to have been cast off and he smiled as he looked down at her, saying, ‘I’ve told my mother about you and I said we’d drop in for a cup of tea – is that all right?’

  That sounded like another fait accompli, but she smiled. ‘Yes, I’d love to meet her.’ She let him pull her to her feet.

  They turned back the way they had come, and then, she couldn’t help it, she’d picked up her hampering skirts and was running as fast as she could over the tussocky grass, the wind in her hair, until at last she was out of breath and had to stop and lean, panting, against a large boulder. Tom caught up with her easily, and stood in front of her, leaning in with his hands stretched out, imprisoning her between his arms against the rock. ‘My, Miss Harcourt, that was a turn of speed!’ His eyes danced.

  ‘Childish of me, but I’ve wanted to do that,’ she panted, ‘from the first day here. And now I have a stitch.’

  ‘Breathe deeply and it will soon go.’

  He didn’t move away, but stood where he was, looking down into her flushed face, still amused.

  He was laughing at her and she didn’t mind. Laura knew she looked like a gypsy but she didn’t care. She held her side, until at last the stitch went, and then she broke away.

  Presently, they struck a downward track, beside a trickle of clear brown water singing over pebbles and then joining a beck flowing strongly between a ferny cleft in the rocks before disappearing from sight. The beck lent its name to the track that became Syke Beck Lane, which was the road leading into the town. As dizzy as the drop appeared from the top, it was nothing compared to when you were walking it. Laura, more than once, had need of Tom’s hand on her elbow as the unmade road twisted and turned between houses built wherever there was space enough to tuck in a small row of two or three, with little back lanes between. Lower down came one or two small shops, wedged in between the houses: a fish and chip shop, a small front-room establishment selling knitting wool, and next to that, a wooden building that sold newspapers, sweets and tobacco. The name above the door was W. Thwaite. Jessie’s father, Tom said. It was a lifeline, set up for him by some fund from his chapel, since he’d been forced to give up work at the mill.

  Directly opposite the shop, a snicket in the low walls led to a pathway sloping towards the sprawl of Cross Ings. Its dam gleamed, oily and now sinister. It might be some time before that path was regularly used again, Laura thought with a shiver, and was relieved when Tom, without giving this obvious short cut a glance, kept to the road, which eventually brought them to the main gates of the mill.

  ‘When I first arrived here, I thought this was Farr Clough, where the Beaumonts lived,’ she said as they approached the house in the mill yard.

  ‘They did live here, once. It was the family home, right up until Ainsley had married and moved into the Tyas residence.’

  It was tucked into a corner, with one wall adjacent to the mill – no Farr Clough, but a good house, with nothing to say against it, except that where once its windows had offered a view across the Neller valley, this was now obscured by the erection of newer buildings as the business had grown.

  ‘Mother, I’d like you to meet Miss Harcourt . . . Laura.’

  ‘It’s good to meet you, Laura.’ Sarah Illingworth was small and quietly spoken, but for all that there was a strength and calmness about her that immediately reminded Laura of Ruth Paston. ‘Though I wish it had been in better circumstances.’ A momentary shadow crossed her face. ‘Well, never mind that for now, come and sit yourself down.’

  Tea was set in the best room, and Mrs Illingworth had been baking. The warm smell of it pervaded the house and the results were spread on the table, plus a tea service patterned with violets, all daintily set out on a hand-embroidered cloth with a crocheted lace edge.

  ‘What must you think of me?’ Laura cried suddenly, catching a glimpse of herself in the big mirror attached to the sideboard. ‘I couldn’t keep my hat on in the wind, Mrs Illingworth.’

  She had no comb and had lost most of her hairpins, but Sarah was able to oblige. ‘Such bonny hair.’ She reached out to touch one of the wayward curls as Laura smoothed and patted and managed to pin it up somehow. She glanced at Tom, and something seemed to pass between them. She had nice hair herself, Tom’s mother, thick and wavy, with no grey as yet in its brown.

  There were framed studio photographs on the sideboard: on the one side Tom as a small boy, standing to attention, spruced up for the photograph; on the other his father, Henry Illingworth, sitting stiffly self-conscious in a wing collar and bow tie, his hair plastered down and parted in the middle, his moustache turned up and waxed at the ends, while Sarah, in a dark stuff dress and a little velvet hat, was standing with one hand on his shoulder, the other resting in a velvet muff, across which a spray of flowers was pinned.

  Sarah noticed her interest. ‘My wedding photograph. Tom’s father had the same job my little brother Whiteley has now.’ She laughed. ‘Silly, but that’s how I still think of him – we were a big family and there’s twenty years and more between us.’

  After tea, they sat by the fire in the cast-iron fireplace, a ginger cat snoozing on the soft wool rug. It was peaceful, in spite of the incidental noises from the mill yard, and a low and continuous humming noise, a slight throbbing from behind the wall against which the sideboard stood, causing a tiny vibration of the stand on which a painted ostrich egg reposed, presumably one brought from South Africa by Tom. The sound was, of course, the pulse of machinery from the mill to which the house was attached. Neither Tom nor his mother appeared to think it worthy of mention, obviously too used to it to notice.

  ‘I like your house, Mrs Illingworth.’

  ‘It’s not a bad little place, but they’ll pull it down, now Ainsley’s gone. They want the space.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to stop being so stubborn and let me provide you with something better,’ Tom said. ‘But I think you underestimate Gideon, Mother.’

  ‘It wasn’t Gideon that promised I could go on living here as long as I wanted after your father died, it was his granddad!’ she reminded him. ‘Ainsley Beaumont and I have known each other many years, Laura, that’s why he’s let me stay on here.’ For a moment, there was a faraway look in her eyes.

  ‘And so he should have, when you think of what you did for him!’

  ‘Well, Tom, it didn’t turn out so badly, it seems.’

  She said no more, and picked u
p a piece of crochet work. The shadows gathered as they talked, the lamp was lit, and the complicated pattern of the circle she was working grew under her quick fingers, but now and again it seemed to Laura that the look she gave her son was uncertain.

  At length, he pushed his chair back. ‘I’ll walk you back, Laura, but we’d best be off before the light goes. That road’s not the easiest in the dark.’

  ‘Mrs Illingworth, thank you so much for the tea. Will you let me come and see you again before I leave?’

  ‘It’ll be a pleasure. I’m only sorry you can’t stay up here longer.’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘How are you getting on with Amelia Beaumont?’

  Laura made a rueful face. ‘I’m afraid she hasn’t exactly made me welcome.’

  ‘Aye, well—’

  ‘Mother, I don’t think—’.

  But Sarah went on quietly, ‘Don’t take too much notice of her, Laura, she’s not a happy woman. She should have married my brother, but Theo Beaumont was a better proposition, I reckon – not that it’s ever made any difference to Whiteley. He’s been devoted to her for over twenty years. All right, Tom, I’ll say no more. It’s been grand seeing you, love,’ she said, kissing Laura’s cheek. ‘I never thought—’