by Erica Brown
The curtains in Sears’s room had been drawn right back and were billowing into the room. He found it chilly, and wondered if Sears felt the same.
Her face was as white as her pillow, her hair pushed out of sight beneath an old-fashioned mob-cap. Her hands were folded over her meagre breasts and her nightgown was buttoned up to her chin.
Instinctively aware that someone was present, she opened her eyes. ‘I hoped you would come,’ she said, her voice as thin as a reed.
He wondered if she could see him clearly, or whether she thought he was someone else. ‘I thought I should,’ he said softly.
At the sound of his voice, she raised a thin hand. Her skin hung loose on her bones and was speckled with brown spots. ‘You have to know,’ she said between shallow breaths. ‘You have to know, if I’m to die in grace.’
Thinking she wasn’t in her right mind, and feeling he should do his best to reassure her, he took hold her hand. ‘Of course you will die in grace. You’re a good woman. Why shouldn’t you?’
Not having had much to do with her over the years, he wasn’t sure whether she was a good woman or not.
‘I never understood…’ she began, her eyes fixed on him, ‘I couldn’t believe the baby died. He was too healthy, you see. I used to hear him crying… he was loud.’
Tom felt his blood turning cold. Isaiah. ‘You should rest,’ he said, laying her hand down and patting it.
‘I thought about the Post Office… Just after he died, she went to the Post Office all by herself to post the letter to you. You were in Barbados at the time, you see…’
Her voice drifted off.
Tom frowned. He’d never received a letter from Horatia telling him about the baby’s death. He’d had a letter to tell him of the birth, but none after because they were already sailing for home. Horatia knew that.
‘I think she was upset. That’s why she went alone, why she wouldn’t let me come with her.’
It was a small thing, but strange. Letters were taken to the Post Office by servants. Why had Horatia taken this particular one herself? And why not take Sears with her?
On leaving the room, he pondered on what he had heard. The woman’s dying, he told himself. Her mind’s not quite what it was. And what was really so odd about Horatia going to the Post Office and posting a letter by herself? There’s nothing in it, he told himself.
By the time he was sitting in a first class carriage on his way to Bath, he’d pushed the matter from his mind. Hearing what Blanche had to say was far more important than the ramblings of a dying woman. Had she found his son?
* * *
In a bid to avoid attracting suspicion, Blanche had suggested in her note that they meet in North Parade Gardens. There were plenty of trees and people to hide among.
There had been a shower that morning, but by mid-afternoon the rain had been blown away by a sprightly breeze. Fluffy clouds gambolled in a blue sky, and spears of golden rod swayed drunkenly in the breeze.
They met by a fountain. Goldfish slid through the green water, and a solitary frog clung to the leg of a Grecian statue.
Tom knew the moment he saw Blanche’s face that the news was not good. His body felt numb and there was a buzzing in his ears. Only Blanche’s voice was at all distinct as she told him the probable shortness of his son’s life. All the other sounds of the world were like so many insects, a drone of noise in a seething hive.
After she’d told everything she believed had happened, even her voice seemed to blend with the rest of the noise. The truth was unbearable. There never had been anything warm or soft about Horatia, but this, this was downright cruel, and he couldn’t believe he’d married a woman who could be that callous.
Blanche touched his hand. ‘I’m so sorry, Tom.’
Her touch brought him round. He blinked as if he had just woken from his worst nightmare, though in truth he was still in it.
The sight of his suffering stabbed at her heart. She trapped a tear with her finger and felt her own eyes turning moist.
‘Do you know where he’s buried?’
Blanche thought of the lidded beds and the pauper mother being carted off to the medical school. The thought of the babies ending up on the dissecting table appalled her. Yet she could easily believe it, though nothing, nothing at all, could persuade her to tell Tom. He was suffering enough already.
She shook her head and clasped his hand with both of hers. ‘Come along, Tom. We’ll go back to the hotel and have tea.’
She resigned herself that if anyone saw them together and jumped to a conclusion, then so be it. Tom needed her. She had to be there for him.
They walked close together along the path, winding through the throngs of people coming the other way. She hugged his arm to her side, her fingers clasped in his.
‘I still can’t believe Horatia could have done this,’ he murmured.
Blanche was having the same problem. How could any mother see her child placed in a Workhouse where its chances of survival were less than bleak? Horatia was hard-headed, a tough woman who had always been determined to make her mark in a man’s world. But even so, surely she possessed the same compassion as any other mother, despite the child’s shortfalls?
Absorbed in their own worlds, neither Tom nor Blanche noticed the tall man with the jet-black eyes.
Darius Clarke-Fisher had still not forgiven Blanche for leading him up the garden path, or at least, that was the way he had interpreted her behaviour. He’d sincerely thought he’d been doing her a favour in offering to marry her. After all, she was past the first flush of youth and did have a touch of the darkie about her.
The fact that she’d turned him down irritated him beyond belief. He didn’t like being made a fool of, and he considered that was exactly what she had done. Those who slighted Darius Clarke-Fisher usually lived to regret it. He never forgave, and always took it upon himself to impart some act of revenge.
Chapter Seventeen
Max tried to tell Magdalene that he couldn’t possibly marry her, but no matter how hard he tried, the right words never seemed to find their way to his tongue. One look at her cocky smile, and he resigned himself to the inevitable. He was hopelessly in love with her, and he didn’t give a fig what anyone else might think.
It was a Tuesday morning when they met at a little coffee house he knew in Trenchard Street, just a few doors down from a black-and-white timbered tavern and at the back of the towering warehouse where Harveys stored their wines and sherries.
‘You’re going to have to marry me,’ Magdalene exclaimed, taking him completely off guard.
He dabbed his handkerchief at the coffee he’d spilt on his jacket, aware that his face was reddening. He was panic-stricken in case someone had heard and presumed she was referring to a very delicate condition. He asked her nervously what she meant.
Both hands holding her cup, and a mischievous smile playing around her pink lips, she held her head to one side, an endearing action that he loved as much as her sparkling eyes and her wild, dark hair.
‘Because you love me,’ she said with the self-assurance of a woman who knows her man and knows what she wants. ‘There’s no denying it, and there’s no getting rid of me, and there’s also no taking advantage of my loving nature.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of taking advantage of you.’
In all honesty, the thought of making love to her haunted his dreams, but he liked her as much as loved her. And he knew without the slightest doubt that she was speaking the truth. He would marry her. He had to marry her and couldn’t stand the thought that someone else might ask before he did. All that worried him now was how to break the news to his mother.
‘So will you?’ she asked pertly.
‘Of course I will.’ He sounded as if he were suffering from wounded pride. She’d put him on the spot, half-hinted that perhaps he would let her down. He hadn’t.
‘Then that’s settled.’
She’s right, he thought, and smiled, resigned that he could not
refuse her.
Swinging his walking stick around in a circle as he bounced along, he whistled all the way back to his carriage. Magdalene had gone back to Madame Mabel’s, and he was on his way to the refinery where a stack of paperwork and a problem with the sugar separators awaited his attention.
When he got there, he found he had a visitor, a man he’d never seen before. His hair was oiled flat on his head and his moustache was of the foreign sort, curly at the ends and waxed flat on his face.
Clarke-Fisher had already written to Horatia Strong and sowed the seeds of Tom Strong’s undoing. Now it was Max’s turn, though his intention with Blanche Heinkel’s son was to sow a different field.
He began by introducing himself, stating his background and business interests, and mentioning meeting Blanche, Max’s mother, in Clevedon.
He had no intention of blackening Blanche’s name; on the contrary, he still wanted her as a wife, and that was exactly what he told Max, that he would like to call on his mother, but felt it only polite that he should report his intentions to Max first.
‘Did she not tell you of our meeting in the hotel in Clevedon?’
Max eyed the pale face, the dark hair and the continental moustache. ‘Are you implying that you and my mother are close?’
Clarke-Fisher used his hands to express himself. ‘A lady alone in a seaside hotel; fresh air, good food, wine and company…’ He smiled at his own cleverness. No family liked to have its reputation ruined by gossip. They’d persuade her to accept his suit rather than face that particular prospect.
Max took his business card, but although he listened courteously, he couldn’t imagine his mother being attracted to this man.
‘I’ll mention you called,’ he said in an amiable manner.
‘Your father died a while ago?’
‘Yes. Just over two years now.’
‘And you are now a man of business, I see, a man well thought of among the merchants in this city. I have heard much of you as a man to watch for the future. Aim for the sky,’ he said, the tip of his walking stick pointing at the ceiling. ‘It’s not enough to end up sitting on the roof, I’m sure you’ll agree.’
‘No,’ said Max, his amiability faltering as he tried to work out what this man was getting at.
‘Women, including mothers, should be well settled and provided for, leaving men to rule the world, don’t you think?’
‘My mother does not interfere with the family business. Her family has always come first.’
Clarke-Fisher ran a polished nail over his fastidiously groomed moustache. ‘Commendable, very commendable. And thus our “dalliance” in Clevedon might come as a surprise to both your family and, of course, to your associates. I have asked your mother to marry me, but I think she feels it to be disloyal to your father. Perhaps that is why she has not mentioned it to you, feeling it might upset you.’
Taken aback, Max considered this. Was it likely she thought he would disapprove of her having a relationship with another man? On careful consideration, he decided it possible. Like the refinery, his mother had been part of his father’s life. Out of loyalty to his father, he was loath to have things change. But it was wrong. He could see that now.
The two men shook hands.
‘I will speak with my mother.’ He glanced at the address on the business card and noted Clarke-Fisher’s address as being just off Park Street. ‘Perhaps I could send you an invitation to dine – with my mother’s agreement, of course?’
‘That would be very agreeable.’
He paused before taking his leave, tapping the head of his cane against his teeth as though he’d had a secondary thought that he might, or might not mention.
‘I think I would make a very good husband for your mother. A very good catch, considering her pedigree.’
Max wasn’t sure whether that was a smile on his face or a sneer. He tried to maintain an inscrutable expression. ‘You wouldn’t be insulting my mother’s good name, would you, sir?’
Clarke-Fisher’s side-whiskers were thick and curly. At times, and in a certain light, they seemed to have a life of their own, as though they had a secret to tell and would willingly give the same away. ‘I would not dream of that, sir. But let’s face it, Mr Heinkel, how many people from the sugar islands have not got a dash of African blood in their veins?’
After he’d left, Max sat alone with his thoughts. His mother had told him of Spanish blood and a sea captain. The fact that she might have some Negro blood in her veins was of little importance. Clarke-Fisher had spoken the truth; there were indeed a lot of sugar planters, refiners and shipping families with more than a dose of foreign blood. It did not concern him, though it might of course concern his mother, and he would not have her hurt.
Deep down, he did not much care for Clarke-Fisher. He’d left a nasty taste in his mouth, and the more he thought about the man, the more he marvelled at his own self-control. In other circumstances, perhaps after a few brandies, he might have hit him to the ground.
But his mother wished to marry him. Again he wondered at the match – though what could he do? It was her choice, just as he’d made his choice to marry Magdalene Cherry, come hell or high water.
It was hard not to feel protective of his father’s memory and he had certainly shown it of late. No wonder his mother had not seen fit to tell him she had an admirer. He felt guilty about that, guilty and selfish. He thought of Magdalene, her warm eyes, soft hands and rounded figure. Everyone needs someone, he decided, and determined to be agreeable.
* * *
Horatia Strong acted with far less amiability to the letter from Mr Clarke-Fisher than Max had to his visit. Knuckles white with tension, she called for a carriage and went into Bristol. Silently, she observed the view from her carriage window, the mowing of hay, the lowing of cattle calling for their calves, but she saw nothing. Her husband in the company of Blanche Heinkel at a Bath hotel was etched in her mind, just like those photographs that were becoming all the rage. The main difference was that photographs were developed in subtle tones of sepia; her vision of Blanche with her husband was richly coloured with jealous outrage.
Throwing her head back against the leather upholstery, she closed her eyes and saw only a burning, red fury. The Ambassador Hotel!
Of all the hotels to be seen in! But then, they didn’t know. They couldn’t know, could they?
Concern at their reasons for being in the hotel was obliterated by jealousy. She imagined them looking into each other’s eyes, holding hands, embracing in public as if they had every right in the world to do so. But they didn’t. And she would make that clear, by heaven, she would!
Mr Darius Clarke-Fisher had done a very good job of stirring her jealousy. He had introduced himself as a great admirer of hers, not that she cared a jot about his reasons for telling her what Tom had been up to. She’d considered facing Tom with the letter, but had decided against it. Their marriage hung on a precarious thread, and a woman needed a spouse. Married women had prestige; they could go where the unattached could not and received respect where a woman alone would only invite intrigue and gossip.
No. She would not throw the facts at her husband. There were other ways to clean out the pond without making too many ripples.
On her journey to the offices of Septimus Monk, she decided she would ruin Blanche Heinkel’s reputation and hurt both of them in a way they would never forget.
‘I wasn’t expecting you,’ Monk said when she swept into the room. A questioning look turned one eyebrow downwards as though he disapproved of her arriving unannounced.
‘What does that damn well matter? I pay you,’ she snapped, uncaring of whether his schedule was upset or his feelings hurt.
Monk was unmoved. ‘But you don’t own me.’
It seemed she hadn’t heard what he’d said. She sat there, staring at one spot on the wall, her body stiff.
He sighed and decided to take a different tack. ‘The transfer of the hotel will be completed next week
. I don’t think there are any more papers to sign, but I will check if you wish.’
She nodded, just once, as though it was only as she had expected.
Monk rested his elbows on his desk, his smooth, beautiful hands clasped before him. It had been ten years since Horatia Strong first called at his office. She had engaged him back then to work on getting her husband out of prison. The poor man had come back from Boston and had been promptly arrested for a murder committed some years before. It was obvious the man had had enemies. Monk’s agents, some of whom were the most dreadful, the most frightening criminals in the whole of Bristol, had got to the bottom of the matter. Horatia had appreciated his working methods and the fact that he could keep a secret.
He sat back in his chair now. In her own good time, she would tell him what she had come for. He didn’t have long to wait.
‘I want you to forge a legacy.’
Monk’s expression was inscrutable. He’d been asked to do worse things in his time. ‘I see.’ He picked up a quill pen and unrolled a fresh folio of paper. ‘And this legacy, I take it, is or was part of a Will. Whose Will am I to forge?’
‘The Will of my brother, Nelson Strong.’
Her gaze remained fixed on the same spot on the wall. The coldness in her eyes was enough to make him shiver. Horatia Strong was a formidable woman. It was a foolish man who crossed her.
The pen nib made a scratching sound as he scribbled a note on the paper. ‘And when was this Will made?’
‘Ten years ago, just before his death. I want you to implement a codicil in which it is implied that my brother did not wish the contents to be known until now.’
Without making comment, Monk continued to scribble. ‘And who is the beneficiary?’
He saw her swallow. ‘Mr Maximillian Heinkel.’
‘Might I point out that if the legality of this is to stand, there must actually be a sum of money available to bequeath. Where is that money to come from?’
‘I will provide it.’
‘And how much will it be?’