Chaff upon the Wind

by Margaret Dickinson

  Angrily, he turned away from her and wrenched open the back door of the house. ‘Oh you do what you like. But I won’t be going to no wedding at the Manor and that’s final.’

  The door slammed and the two women looked at each other.

  ‘Oh Mam, I’m so sorry.’

  To her surprise, Betsy was smiling. ‘I’ve wanted to get that off me chest for years, lass. You’ve done me a favour.’ She took hold of Kitty’s hands and looked deep into her eyes. ‘Just remember, Kitty, that we’re each responsible for what we do in life. Not anyone else. What I did all those years ago was my own doing, my choice. Henry didn’t force himself on me, or seduce me. I knew what I was doing. I loved him, and, though I’m sorry that it caused such trouble, I’m not sorry for loving the man. What you did with Jack Thorndyke, you did because you loved him. Yes, you’ve had a child out of wedlock, but you’ve borne what others call shame with pride and stood tall. It isn’t your fault that Jack’s the way he is, that he won’t marry you. But now you have a second chance. Take it, Kitty, and be happy, because if ever I saw a man in love with a girl, then that’s Edward Franklin with you.’

  ‘I know.’ Kitty’s voice was choked. ‘I know, Mam. But what about me dad?’

  ‘He’ll calm down. We’ll rub along together just as we always have done. I’m very fond of him, you know, and I think he is of me.’

  ‘Very fond’, Kitty thought sadly, wasn’t the description she would want to use for the foundation of a marriage. Not when, each day, she found she loved Edward more and more.

  ‘So, will you,’ she asked her mother hesitantly, ‘come to the wedding?’

  ‘Try keeping me away,’ Betsy laughed and hugged her daughter.

  It had been a surprise to Kitty that the only objection to their marriage had come from her family and not from the Franklins or Sir Ralph.

  ‘You really mean,’ she asked Edward for the tenth time, ‘that your mother and your father really – well – approve?’

  ‘If this war’s done nothing else,’ Edward said, ‘it has helped to sweep away the – what shall we call it – the gulf between the classes?’ His smile widened. ‘Besides, Mother’s very fond of you, you know. And not only because she has good reason to be grateful to you.’

  ‘Yes, but that still doesn’t explain . . .’

  ‘Well,’ he said, feigning a modesty he was obviously not feeling, ‘maybe I had a little to do with it. I told them all, quite plainly, that I was marrying you whether they liked it or not, so there!’

  She put her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. He, of all of them, had never, ever treated her as a servant.

  ‘Teddy, oh Teddy,’ she whispered against his ear. ‘I do love you so.’

  They were married quietly in the small church on Sir Ralph’s estate with only their immediate families present. Sir Ralph generously held a reception at the Hall where no one seemed entirely at ease. Kitty’s family stood awkwardly, almost afraid to touch the delicate china as guests, yet as servants in such a house they would not have thought twice about serving their betters with it. Sir Ralph moved among his guests with courteous ease and Miriam too, smiling, handed round the plates of sandwiches and cakes herself while the dreaded Mrs Bembridge stood beside the butler near the door, her mouth tight with disapproval.

  Kitty saw Sir Ralph at last come to stand before Mrs Franklin. She saw the tilt of his head towards her and saw the way Amelia Franklin looked up into his eyes. If ever there were two people who should have been married to each other, Kitty thought suddenly, it was Sir Ralph and Amelia Franklin.

  ‘Penny for them,’ a voice said softly at her side and, startled, Kitty gave a swift, almost guilty laugh.

  ‘I was just being foolish.’ She looked into the eyes of the man who had been her husband for just over an hour and said, ‘I’m so happy today, Teddy, that I suppose I want everyone else to be too.’

  His glance went across the room. ‘My mother, you mean,’ he murmured. ‘And Sir Ralph.’

  ‘Oh no,’ she began quickly, confused and embarrassed. ‘I didn’t mean . . .’

  Edward took her hand in his. ‘My darling, it’s no secret. It’s been the talk of the county for years. In circles where, years ago, suitable marriages were arranged by parents, such liaisons, once a son and heir had been produced, were quite acceptable.’

  Kitty gasped. ‘You don’t mean that she – he – they . . .?’

  Edward shrugged. ‘I’ve never been quite sure. If there has been anything more than a close friendship, then they have been very discreet.’

  Kitty sighed. ‘It’s sad, isn’t it? And for your father too. I mean . . .’ she hesitated and then whispered, ‘do – do you know, about when my mother worked at the Manor?’

  He nodded. ‘I knew a little, but recently I had to find out more.’ He squeezed her hand and leaned towards her to whisper impishly, ‘I couldn’t risk us being brother and sister, now could I?’

  Kitty gave a low chuckle and blushed. ‘No, oh no.’

  She looked around the room but could see neither her own mother nor Henry Franklin. As if reading her thoughts, Edward said, ‘I think they’ve slipped away to the library, just to talk and catch up on all the years, you know. Don’t begrudge them a little time together.’

  ‘I don’t. Oh I don’t,’ she said swiftly. ‘It’s just that I’ve been feeling so guilty about my mother – believing Johnnie is her grandson.’

  ‘Don’t tell her yet, especially not today. Maybe when we have presented her with a child of our own, a child who will be truly her grandchild, perhaps then, eh?’

  Kitty nodded, feeling a lump in her throat. ‘You’re right.’

  ‘Of course I am.’ He kissed her and she drew back.

  ‘People will see . . .’

  ‘I want them to see, Mrs Edward Franklin, just how very much I love you. Come . . .’ He took the plate she was holding and set it down on a small side table and then tucked her hand through his arm. ‘It’s time we were on our way to start our honeymoon.’

  They moved through the guests saying goodbye, until they came to Miriam.

  By her side, carefully carrying a plate piled high with sandwiches, was Johnnie.

  ‘Johnnie . . .’ Kitty bent towards him, ‘we’re leaving now. You go home with Grannie Clegg and be a good boy. We won’t be away long and then . . .’

  ‘I’ll be fine, Mam.’ His piping voice carried clearly around the room. ‘Mrs Harding says I may stay here, with her, if you’ll let me. She says she’ll teach me to ride a pony. Do say you’ll let me, Mam.’

  Miriam rested her hands lightly on the boy’s shoulders. Kitty felt Miriam watching her face. Softly, she said, ‘Please say yes, Kitty. It would mean a great deal to me.’

  There was nothing Kitty could do, today of all days, except nod her agreement but the look of adoration on Johnnie’s young face as he gazed up at Miriam turned Kitty’s blood to ice.

  Fifty-Six

  She was happy, Kitty told herself a dozen times a day. She had a wonderful husband who adored her. They lived in a small house on Sir Ralph’s estate and Edward was now his estate manager. And wonder of wonders, she even had a small staff of servants so that if she wished she could be idle from morning till night and not feel guilty about it. Johnnie was growing into a fine young man. Edward treated him as his own son and, in turn, Johnnie now seemed to think of him as his father.

  They never spoke of his real father, for Jack Thorndyke had disappeared from the district taking his threshing set and Milly Clegg with him.

  Her father, John Clegg, had struck the entry of Milly’s birth from the frontispiece in the family Bible and had decreed that her name should never again be mentioned in his hearing. Kitty, it seemed, had been forgiven. Now that she was Mrs Edward Franklin, her father strutted about his station platform, his chest puffed out like a pouter pigeon, telling anyone who would listen about his daughter who was married into the Franklin family and connected to Sir Ralph at Nunsthorpe Hall.
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  Two years after their marriage, Kitty presented Edward with a son, Joe. The following year their daughter, Amy, arrived and then another son, whom they named Harry after Edward’s father.

  She had wondered, a little fearfully, whether when she held her own child in her arms, she would feel any differently towards Johnnie. She need not have worried. Her love for the boy was deep-rooted and he could not be supplanted by any new arrival, not even her own flesh and blood.

  Kitty had everything she had ever dreamed of, so why did she still not dare to let herself be completely happy?

  She knew why. She knew very well why. There was still a niggling doubt, a tiny cloud that refused to go away. For every time Miriam visited their house, or Johnnie went to the Hall to ride the pony, which Kitty suspected was kept entirely for him, the cloud grew darker and more ominous.

  It was on Johnnie’s fifteenth birthday that Edward came into the sitting room and closed the door so that no one else might overhear their conversation. As he came slowly towards her, his face sombre and his eyes troubled, Kitty knew that the storm had broken and the heavens were about to open and sweep her away.

  ‘My darling . . .’ He took her hands in his. ‘Miriam has asked me to talk to you.’

  She pulled away from him and stepped back, putting her hands over her ears. ‘No, no,’ she cried. ‘I don’t want to hear it. I won’t listen. She’s not having him. Not after all these years. He’s mine. Just because we’ve children of our own now, nothing has changed. He’s still my boy. He still doesn’t know. Think what it could do to him.’

  Edward put his arms about her, but she resisted, keeping herself stiff and unyielding in his embrace.

  ‘Dearest, just listen. He will have to be told some day and the longer we leave it, the harder it becomes. Besides, Miriam doesn’t want to take him away from you. At least . . .’ Here even Edward hesitated, for the truth was that Miriam wanted to acknowledge the boy as her son and openly take him to live with her at the Hall. He had known how desperately hurt Kitty would be, for he now knew, better than anyone else other than Jack Thorndyke and Kitty herself, just how much she had suffered all these years right from the moment she had first taken Miriam’s newborn baby into her arms. Whatever mistakes she had made, his darling Kitty had paid a thousandfold since. And through it all, her love for the boy had been the bedrock of all her actions.

  And now Johnnie’s real mother wanted to claim him.

  ‘Come and sit down, Kitty.’

  ‘No, no,’ she struggled against him. ‘No, I don’t want to listen.’

  But at last he calmed her enough to have her sit beside him. With his arm about her and her head resting against his shoulder, Edward talked quietly to her, all the while feeling her whole body trembling against him.

  ‘Miriam has changed. Guy’s death – and her part in it – affected her deeply. She wants to do something with her life. She found some sort of solace in her efforts during the war, but that was over long ago. She cannot,’ he gave a wry smile, ‘even return to her Votes for Women campaign for it seems that particular war is won too. She’s very lonely and feels there’s no purpose to her life.’

  Kitty hiccuped miserably, but said nothing. Edward’s arm tightened about her. ‘She has told Sir Ralph everything and he . . .’ Here Edward paused momentarily and his voice dropped a tone as if becoming deeper with emotion. ‘He being the wonderful man he is, has been very understanding and has said that he’s willing to treat the boy as his own grandson – the grandson he can never have now.’

  Slowly Kitty raised her swollen face to look into Edward’s eyes. After a long silence she said flatly, ‘That’s it, then.’ And she added with bitterness, ‘I can’t fight Sir Ralph and all his money.’

  ‘Kitty, Kitty,’ Edward remonstrated gently, ‘that’s not like you. Besides,’ he said, forcing a lighter, teasing note into his voice, ‘money doesn’t come into it, for don’t you know that I intend to be a millionaire one day and dress you in diamonds from head to toe?’

  Kitty tried to smile. She knew Edward would do just that, if he could. She knew that he would do anything in the world to make her happy and yet here he was, asking her to do the very thing that would bring her utter desolation.

  She sniffed and a sob welled in her throat. He held out a clean white handkerchief.

  ‘Johnnie will hate me, despise me for what I did. He’ll think – like Jack did – that I used him, a tiny baby, to make Jack marry me. And I didn’t, I didn’t.’ Fresh tears spurted, then she added with supreme honesty, ‘Well, not entirely.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t,’ Edward soothed and secretly cursed the very name of Jack Thorndyke yet again.

  ‘We’ll have to explain everything very carefully to Johnnie. Will you entrust that to me, my dearest, because I think . . .’ Even as he spoke, a noise sounded outside and they heard Johnnie’s voice.

  ‘Please come in. She’ll be in the sitting room. She won’t mind, honest . . .’

  The door opened and the youth, who was almost a young man now, stood there. ‘Mam, Mrs Harding’s here. We’ve been riding – right up through the woods and . . .’ He stopped as he became aware of the scene before his eyes, of Edward’s arm about his mother’s shoulder, of her swollen and red-eyed face. ‘Why, Mam, what’s the matter? Whatever’s wrong? It’s not one of the young ’uns, is it?’

  His immediate concern for his younger brothers and sister touched her and she put out a trembling hand towards him. He covered the space between them and dropped to his knees in front of her, his guest forgotten. But Kitty glanced beyond him to see Miriam standing there in the doorway. Their eyes met and all that had happened since the day that Kitty had become Miss Miriam Franklin’s maid was between them in that instant.

  ‘I . . .’ Miriam began and made as if to turn away. ‘I won’t stay. I – I’ll go . . .’

  Edward stood up. ‘No, Miriam, come in. Perhaps it would be better if you were here.’

  He turned to look down at Kitty, the question obvious in his eyes, seeking her permission to tell the boy here and now while they were all present.

  It had come so fast, this moment she had dreaded, and she wasn’t ready. She needed more time. Desperately she scrabbled through her mind for some excuse, any excuse to put off the awful moment.

  Yet there was none. She had known, deep in her heart, that this day would come. She could no longer hold back the inevitable.

  She nodded and bent her head, twisting the white handkerchief in her hands. A little embarrassed now, Johnnie was patting her hand, not knowing quite what to say, while Edward ushered Miriam to a chair beside the fire and called for the little parlourmaid to bring some tea for them all.

  When they were all seated, Edward began with great gentleness. ‘Johnnie, you are on the threshold of manhood and there are things you should know before – before perhaps you hear something from the wrong people. Country folk have long memories . . .’ He paused and cleared his throat, while Johnnie stared at him with his dark blue eyes, eyes that were so like Jack Thorndyke’s. And yet the boy was not like his father in character. There was a gentleness and a maturity about him that had never been evident in Threshing Jack’s fickle nature.

  ‘I don’t want to speak ill of anyone, Johnnie, for as you grow you will learn that love, infatuation – call it what you will – in the young can bring both great pleasure and, sometimes, enormous heartache. Your father . . .’ They all heard the hesitation and Kitty, and no doubt Miriam too, knew just how much Edward struggled to be fair in his telling of the story. ‘In his youth your father was a very handsome chap and, before his accident, a fun-loving man who – whom the girls all loved.’

  Johnnie, seeing how Edward was having difficulty, smiled and said, ‘Oh I know. A lad at school once told me that his older sister was probably my half-sister. “I suppose,” he said, “she’s half-sister to both of us ain’t she, ’cos my dad’s not her real dad, yours is.” ’

  The three adults in the room
glanced at each other, and Kitty whispered, ‘When was this, Johnnie? You never told me.’

  ‘Oh years ago, Mam, not long after you got married. You know what kids are, and of course I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want you to be hurt.’

  Kitty felt tears prickle her eyelids yet again and she brushed them aside. Really, she thought, impatient with herself, I don’t seem to be able to do anything but cry.

  Johnnie was looking towards Edward again, waiting.

  ‘Well, you see, your mother – um . . .’ Here the story was getting very difficult, very delicate. Edward gestured with his hand towards Kitty, for at this moment, to Johnnie, she was his mother. ‘Fell in love with Jack Thorndyke, but . . . but she was not the only one.’ His glance went across the small space to his sister. ‘You see, Johnnie, so did Miriam – Mrs Harding.’

  There was silence in the room and Kitty watched as the boy’s glance went from first one to the other. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said at last. ‘What are you trying to tell me?’

  Miriam leaned forward and said softly, ‘Johnnie – I’m your mother – your real mother.’

  The boy’s eyes widened and his lips parted a little.

  ‘I too thought I was in love with Jack Thorndyke and I – I became pregnant by him. I was sent away. No one knew, not my father, not even Edward then. Only my own mother and – and my maid, Kitty, knew. We – Kitty and I, that is – stayed away until after you were born and then, when we returned, everyone thought you were Kitty’s.’

  They could all see that the boy was struggling to understand, to take in and to come to terms with what he was being told.

  Gently, trying to make it less painful, Edward said, ‘Try to imagine how it was for a young girl like Miriam. Our father – you know what he’s like . . .’

  The boy nodded.

  ‘Then you can guess how he would have – well – I don’t quite know what he would have done.’ Here brother and sister exchanged an understanding look.