The Cuckoo's Child

by Marjorie Eccles

  He leaned back in his chair, thinking, watching the play of firelight on the long case clock in the corner. Lovely old moonphase clock it was, with its rich walnut case and a brass face. Just as he was sitting here, so had Ainsley Beaumont sat, in this comfortable, slightly shabby room, concocting his schemes while it steadily ticked the minutes and hours away.

  By then Rawlinson had come to the end of the only folder in the concertina wallet Gideon had presented to them. ‘Before we jump to conclusions, I think you should read this.’ He passed it over. ‘Seems to be in date order, starting at the back.’

  The binder had a spring spine which nipped the contents together. Letters. Dozens of letters, written over many years, which had passed between Ainsley Beaumont and the same firm of London solicitors, Carfax, Arroway and Carfax, who had drawn up the will, some of them dating back nearly twenty years. Duplicates had been kept, painstakingly copied by the sender, of each of the original letters to the firm, along with their replies; together they provided the answer to the question of who Laura Harcourt was, which was not the one which had first sprung to mind. Amongst the early letters to Mr William Carfax, nearly twenty years previously, was the request to find adoptive parents for an eighteen-month-old child, a little girl named Laura, and from Mr Carfax were regular reports charting her progress and well being, right up to a more recent letter that Ainsley had written, presenting Mr Carfax with a decidedly odd request: that he should endeavour to persuade Miss Laura Harcourt to accept a paid position to sort out his library, putting it before her in such a way that she should not suspect she had been specially earmarked for this task.

  Not a London mistress, then, but almost certainly a child whom Ainsley Beaumont could not, or would not, acknowledge. The letters showed that over the years, he had evidently been at some pains to ensure that the relationship which existed between them was concealed from her, but – probably because he had discovered he was a mortally sick man – he had decided he now wanted see her and make amends: hence the request about the library – and the new will. Was Miss Harcourt, the one who’d evidently been working on the books in the library, still here at Farr Clough House? If so, they would need to speak to her. It would also be interesting to see what the members of the family thought about that bequest and what, if anything, they had known about her. And if any of them, perhaps especially Laura Harcourt herself, had known about the will before Ainsley met his death.

  As Rawlinson pushed the file back into the wallet, something prevented it from going in easily. Fumbling inside, he withdrew a little brass key, too small for a door, the kind which might fit a drawer or maybe a document case, and small enough to have been dropped into the file accidentally and never found. He shrugged and dropped it into the desk drawer alongside all the other unidentified ones.

  At the same moment, a maid came in with a tray, not Jessie this time, but a very young girl with fair hair and a quick blush, shyly saying that Mrs Beaumont thought they might like a sandwich while they worked. There had been plenty of beef left on the joint – none of the family had eaten anything much. And would they like some tea, or a glass of beer to wash it down?

  Neither man had eaten anything since breakfast, apart from a couple of Ada Crawshaw’s ginger biscuits, and the smell of roast beef had been tormenting Rawlinson for an hour. His opinion of Mrs Beaumont went up a notch at the offer of this hospitality.

  For that first journey Laura had made to Huddersfield, George Imrie had booked her a first class ticket in a Ladies Only compartment, but she had been in too much of a hurry on her way back down to London to think about such niceties and had booked her fare, uncaring that she had been given second class. Tom was fortunately also travelling second. At King’s Cross, they found an empty compartment, where they sat on facing seats, watching the other passengers embark and hoping for the privacy which first class might have helped to ensure.

  Laura wore black borrowed from Lillian, since she had none of her own to wear in a house of mourning. Because the clothes had belonged to Lillian they were inevitably elegant and modish, and at least lighter than the stuffy, and by now despised, saxe blue tweed, but black was not a colour Laura ever wore and in it she felt sallow and unattractive. She rested her head on the back of the seat, elbow on the window sill, a hand shading her eyes. The whistle blew, and with a jerk the journey began; she closed her eyes, trying to obliterate the nightmares of the previous night. But sleep would not come, it was as elusive as it had been last night. Between periods of snatched, troubled dozing, she had lain awake, worries chasing each other, hardly knowing where dreams ended and coherent thought began. And now they moved behind her eyes again: images of Ainsley Beaumont and the horrible way he had chosen to die, as awful in its own way as the way in which his son had lost his life; flashes of the house, Farr Clough, and the fire that had left that stark ruin; Amelia’s unconcealed animosity towards her . . . and Tom. Oh yes, Tom.

  It was not until the train had gathered speed and left the northern suburbs of London well behind, when they were steaming north and safe from any other passengers showing a desire to share their compartment, that she felt a light touch on her arm and opened her eyes with a start to see him leaning towards her. She must have dozed, after all. ‘I’m sorry, did I wake you? I didn’t realize you were asleep.’

  ‘I wasn’t.’ She shook herself thoroughly awake. ‘Just dozing.’

  ‘What’s all this, Laura?’ He sounded cool, different. ‘I thought we were friends.’

  ‘Of course we’re friends.’

  ‘Then you and I must have different perceptions of friendship. If that frozen politeness you’ve been showing is evidence of it. All this “Mr Illingworth”! Something is wrong, what is it?’ She tried to speak but could find no way to begin. He gazed sternly at her, but as he saw her difficulty he relaxed a little. ‘Something you found out yesterday, was it?’

  The train swayed jaggedly over a set of points and she put a hand on the window sill to steady herself. It left a greasy grey smudge on her black glove which she tried to rub off, only making it worse, but it gave her time to collect her thoughts. ‘I still don’t know why I was sent to Yorkshire on a fool’s errand. But I am beginning to have my suspicions. It seems that not only did Mr Beaumont leave me that money, but it was he who arranged for my adoption as well.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Tom. She had rushed off in such a hurry, before she’d had time to cool off, and he was very sorry indeed that he had allowed himself to be dismissed so easily. He admired her spirit but he was sorry she could believe he had made a fool of her. ‘Leaving you that money matters so much?’

  ‘Why does everyone ask that? Strangely enough, it does, to me! If – if I am a child of his, some illegitimate offspring, if he had a conscience about me—’ She stopped herself in time. She had been going to say, ‘As he had about your mother.’ And that brought back the worst of last night’s nightmares, the question about Tom’s birth, which she had no right to ask. She wanted to shut the answer out, not to have to acknowledge what might be true.

  ‘So that’s it,’ he said softly. ‘What a terrible girl you are for jumping to conclusions! My dear Laura, Ainsley was not your father, any more than he was mine.’

  She stared at him blankly.

  ‘And hear this . . . yes, he let my mother down, and after that she swore she would never marry, but then she met Henry Illingworth and fell in love again, long after she had thought she might never have a child. But she did, she had me. Henry Illingworth was my father, don’t imagine anything else.’

  The foolish, though agonizing, thoughts that had tormented her fell away, as if cobwebs had been swept from her brain. ‘Ainsley was not your father. He was not mine. Then who—?’ she began urgently.

  At this inauspicious moment, the train hissed and steamed into Peterborough. The platform was crowded, and they sat tensely as people began to get in and move down the corridor. One or two looked into the compartment but didn’t pause, until at last someone put a
hand on the door. Perhaps it was Tom’s scowl which made him move away. He obviously wanted their privacy invading as little as she did. But when the man had gone and others were still glancing into the compartment, he suddenly crossed to her side, drew her into his arms and bent his head towards her. The shock left her breathless, and it was instinctive to struggle, but he held her tight against his chest and hissed in her ear, ‘Don’t pull away. This way, we’ll be left alone.’

  He was only just in time. An elderly lady half-opened the door, saw them and with an outraged exclamation withdrew. The train started up again, the corridor became clear and Laura, shaken, pulled away – though he did not allow it instantly – her face flushed. ‘That’s enough fooling,’ she said sharply.

  But one look at him convinced her that he was not fooling now, that she had imagined the glint of laughter in his eyes. He sat back on his own seat with his arms tightly folded, his brows drawn together in a dark frown, and for a moment she wondered if what he had just done had been to prevent further questions. He did not seem to like himself at all today – after all, how well had she come to know him in such a short acquaintance? Perhaps not as well as she had thought. He looked dangerously near, just feet away from her in the carriage, and her cheeks still burned.

  ‘I apologize for my uncouth northern manners, but at least we can now continue our conversation uninterrupted. Where were we?’

  Aware that she was twisting her gloved hands together so tightly her fingers hurt, she took a deep, steadying breath. ‘Who, Tom? Who is my father?’

  ‘What difference would it make if you knew?’

  ‘Unless you’ve never known who you are, where you come from, you’ll never know how much! But since all this seems to be no secret to you,’ she accused, ‘why have you never told me?’

  ‘It wasn’t my secret to tell, and I didn’t even know you would want to know. You seemed happy enough, the way you talked about your aunt and uncle—’

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with it! I love them dearly, they’ve been everything to me, and still are, but . . . oh, don’t you see?’

  There was a measurable pause. ‘Of course, I do see, Laura,’ he said at last. ‘Very well, then, Ainsley Beaumont was not your father. You were in fact his granddaughter. Your father was his son, Theo.’

  Theo. Ainsley’s unmentioned son.

  ‘And my mother?’ she whispered. Please God, not Amelia, who couldn’t even bring herself to use Laura’s given name. Her thoughts raced. If she was Theo’s daughter, by someone other than his wife, then of course it would explain Amelia’s animosity . . . and why she had been given away for adoption. A woman such as Amelia would never have accepted her husband’s illegitimate child. But . . . ‘Who was my mother?’

  After a while he said, ‘She was a young girl, a very lovely girl, called Lucie.’

  Laura stared out, unseeing, while the uninspiring Midlands landscape sped by. ‘Lucie Picard,’ she said eventually.

  It was Tom, now, who was at a loss. ‘How did you know about Lucie Picard?’

  After a moment, in a voice that trembled, she told him in as few words as possible how she had found the account Ben Kindersley had left hidden behind the books in the library. She skipped over the details. That was not what she wanted to talk about. ‘The fire . . . did she . . . did she die in the fire, too?’

  ‘No.’ At least Lucie – her mother – had been spared that. Was she – could she still be alive? The hope died before it was born, when he said gently, ‘She died several months later, within a day or two of your birth.’

  Laura fought back an almost unbearable sense of disappointment. ‘How did the fire start?’

  ‘I don’t remember the details, if I ever heard them, I was too young. I believe a lamp was accidentally knocked over, some curtains caught fire and by the time the fire brigade could get up to Farr Clough – it’s a bad road for horses at the best of times – it was too late to save the wing. I suppose it was miraculous that the whole house didn’t go up, but you must have seen the hoses they keep by the fish pond and the well in the backyard. And the pump.’

  Yes, Laura had seen all that, and appreciated the reason for it. No owner of a woollen mill could be unaware of the terrifying prospect of fire and its dangers, to life as well as to property.

  ‘What I do know is that Theo – your father – was a hero. They say he ran up a blazing staircase to the room where the twins were sleeping and threw them from the window to those waiting below, before he was overcome by the smoke.’

  This, too, her father’s death, was a horror she would have to face, perhaps one she had always in some inexplicable way sensed, right from the very first sight of the ruined wing. He was a hero, then, but she understood now that her own birth was the reason his name was never spoken. ‘What about Amelia?’

  ‘Already safe, outside. The fire had started downstairs. My uncle – Whiteley Hirst – was at Farr Clough that night, playing cards with Ainsley. It was he who got Amelia outside while Theo was fighting his way upstairs.’

  ‘And Ben Kindersley?’

  He frowned. ‘I don’t know anything about this Ben Kindersley. I’d never even heard of him until you spoke his name. Remember, I was only a little boy at the time. In fact, I knew nothing of Lucie’s existence, either, until after the fire, when Ainsley brought her down to live with us, me and my mother – and my father, who was still alive then.’

  She absorbed this in silence. ‘Ainsley took Lucie to live with your mother? How could he have asked such a thing of her? After what happened between them?’

  ‘She’s the last person to harbour a grudge forever, nor was Ainsley, come to that. I suspect he might have regretted what happened between them, but . . . well it was all water under the bridge, and after a while they managed to become friends again. Knowing her, I’m sure he believed she was the one person he could turn to when he found himself in a dilemma: he was responsible for Lucie, who was alone, expecting his son’s child, but she couldn’t in the circumstances have stayed at Farr Clough.’

  ‘Do you think that’s why Ben Kindersley left?’ Laura said slowly. If he had known what was going on between Lucie and Theo, it might account for the abrupt way that manuscript of his had ended. ‘Did he leave before, or after the fire?’

  ‘I don’t know, but if it was after, it looks very much as though he abandoned Lucie.’

  That did not sound to her like the Ben Kindersley of the manuscript, the boy who had carried Lucie in the snow across the moor, who had loved her so dearly. ‘What was she like?’

  His face at last relaxed into a smile. ‘Look in the mirror.’

  ‘I don’t mean that.’ It gave her a small spurt of pleasure to hear that she resembled her lost mother but – ‘What was she like, as a person? She must have been very sad at that time, unhappy.’

  ‘Perhaps so. To me, she was just someone the grown-ups had decided would live with us, someone who was there when I came home from school, helping my mother in the house. I never quite understood why she was there, but ten-year-old lads aren’t curious about those sort of things. And it wasn’t for long, after all. She only lived three days after you were born.’

  Three days. Poor Lucie.

  He said, ‘I do remember you, though, a little. You stayed with us until Ainsley took you away. My mother was heartbroken. She had always wanted another child, and she had come to love you very much.’

  Laura liked that. But Ainsley – her grandfather, as she must now think of him – how could she ever forgive him? ‘That’s what all that charade with the library was about, wasn’t it? He wanted to look me over, to make sure I was fitted to inherit some of his money, though he could surely have arranged to meet me in some other way. All that time—’ She choked a little.

  ‘Try not to judge him too hardly, Laura. He had his reasons.’

  ‘How else can I feel? The best thing I can do now is to collect my things and leave Farr Clough. Amelia has made no secret of the fact that she doesn�
�t like me and I can understand why. She is probably afraid for her children’s inheritance. Well, I don’t intend giving it back! I don’t want that money for myself, but I happen to know where it can do some good.’ A thought struck her. ‘Do they know who I am, too, the twins, I mean?’

  ‘No – unless Amelia has told them, which I doubt.’

  This story, so important to her, could well be one the family might regard as a disgrace, a blot on the Beaumont name, and she had no wish to reopen old wounds. ‘They might well not accept me, but take their mother’s side. She dislikes me – but all the same, I think it’s time to clear the air with her,’ she said with some spirit.

  ‘Don’t confront her with it, Laura. Be warned. She can be . . . unpredictable, at times.’ He paused. ‘She was the reason you were sent away from Wainthorpe in the first place.’

  ‘But I wasn’t living at Farr Clough – your mother was looking after me.’

  The train was steaming to a halt, and he stood up, reaching into the rack for his overnight bag before turning to face her. ‘You were sent away because Amelia tried – unsuccessfully – to snatch you away from my mother.’

  ‘What?’

  Perhaps Amelia was mad, after all. Laura said slowly, ‘She knew who I was, of course, immediately I arrived at Farr Clough. As your mother did when she met me, didn’t she? And you, Tom? How long have you known that I was Lucie’s daughter?’

  He saw the colour rising to her cheeks. ‘Dear Laura, I think I knew the moment I set eyes on you. As I told you, you are the image of your mother.’

  But that wasn’t why he had fallen in love with her.

  Fourteen

  Mrs Macready was in the kitchen, beating eggs and sugar together for a cake, with the yellow earthenware bowl crooked in her arm, when the policemen came in. She was sitting down to do it, an old woman who looked frail as a withered leaf, but who still regarded the kitchen as hers, as it had been in her glory days, when she had been cook for the Tyas family. She waved them away with a skinny hand when they came in. ‘Away with ye. What would I know about poor Mr Beaumont dying?’ Her Scottish accent, thick as porridge, she clung to as a matter of pride, though she hadn’t been back to her native land since she’d crossed the border to work as a tweeny in England when she was thirteen. ‘The grave claims us all, sooner or later. I’ll not be long afore I follow the master.’