‘I’d rather imagine him and my father in the sea,’ she said. ‘But I suppose it’s good he’s with his grandfather.’
‘Shall we go now?’ Thomas asked, once she’d tidied up the dead flowers and pulled up a few weeds. ‘It’s going to be a long journey.’
The journey was over ninety miles, but despite the distance it was a lovely ride through beautiful countryside. The leaves on the trees were just beginning to take on their autumn colouring, a reminder that the summer was fading fast. It was good to just be alone with Thomas, knowing they had everything ahead of them. Every now and then, Thomas would tell her something that had happened while she’d been gone.
‘Clara told me she thought you ought to move into the guest room, that after a winter out in the little cottage, without Carsten to look after the stove for you, you’ll be really cold. I told her if I had my way, she’d have to find a new companion soon.’
‘Thomas!’ Mabel said indignantly. ‘That was very naughty of you to blurt it out like that. But tell me how it’s going with Michael and Harriet?’
‘A spring wedding, I’m told. Michael is going to get a new house built – he bought the land just a few weeks ago. Harriet is an odd girl. Michael was trying to get her to tell him what special things she’d like. All she could say was, “I’ll like whatever you decide on.” How feeble is that?’
‘You won’t have that problem with me. I’ll be so bossy you’ll have no choice on furnishings!’
‘I will bow to your excellent taste,’ he said with a smile. ‘In point of fact, I never met a man who had any idea of how to furnish or decorate a house.’
It was nearly seven in the evening, and chilly now the sun had gone down, when they got to Willow Cottage.
‘I won’t come in,’ he said, taking her into his arms. ‘You look very tired, and I know you and Clara will have a lot to talk about.’ He kissed her, and then leapt out of the Wolseley to come round and open her door.
‘Tomorrow night?’ he said.
Mabel smiled. She knew it would be safer to say, ‘Not until a ring is on my finger’. But she’d never been one for ‘safe’.
24
‘So much excitement!’ Clara exclaimed as Mabel got to the end of her story about the trial, and then the shock of discovering that Thomas had been there all along. ‘I don’t know which woman was the more remarkable – Agnes for admitting she pushed Martin over the edge, or you for going to see her afterwards to tell her you’d forgiven her!’
‘I think you would’ve done the same. Besides, I can afford to be generous, I’ve got a good life now.’
‘You didn’t know you’d got Thomas then,’ Clara reminded her.
‘I would still have had you, Clara,’ she said. ‘I’ve been so happy here – well, except when Carsten was killed.’
‘And now it looks like you’re going to leave me!’
‘I’m not going far. And anyway, you’ll always be a big part of my life, even after Thomas and I marry.’
Clara lifted a handkerchief to her eyes and pretended to cry. ‘Until a baby comes along! Then I’ll be cast aside like an old wash rag.’
Mabel laughed. ‘Where I come from, we keep old wash rags. Now don’t be a silly goose. But you could make life a little easier for yourself by moving into the town. You could have electricity, and it would be easier to get help in the house and garden without so far for people to come.’
‘I might even do that and move right next door to you, so I can pester you,’ Clara said, pulling a silly face. ‘But then I expect you know what’s going to happen to both of us, with your psychic powers.’
‘You know perfectly well that those so-called powers don’t run to fortune-telling. But speaking of those powers, I’m worried about them. I don’t want them any more. Do you think there’s any way I could stop it happening?’
Clara shrugged. ‘You could go back to see Coral in Bath. She seemed very genuine. But maybe it just won’t happen again. It could have started because of Carsten, or anxiety about your past coming out. That’s over now.’
‘Should I try again, just to see?’
‘Go on, then. Shall I get some objects from different people? And maybe put my father’s pen amongst them too?’
Mabel nodded; she didn’t really want to do it, but if it didn’t work, she’d feel a lot easier.
Clara collected a few small items from around the sitting room – a silver thimble, a small china owl, her father’s pen, an old prayer book. And she removed a small cameo brooch from the neck of her blouse, then put them all on a small tray and handed it to Mabel.
Once Clara had sat down, Mabel rested her hands on all the items, then one by one she picked them up and held them for a couple of minutes each. Nothing happened, not even a faint sense of anything unusual. Without speaking to Clara, she began again, taking her time with each one, concentrating on the object in her hand and thinking about what it looked like, how old it was, anything that might help.
But there was nothing.
She didn’t know whether to be delighted or a bit sad. Clara looked disappointed.
‘Don’t look so glum,’ Mabel said to her. ‘It’s what I wanted.’
‘I know, but the cameo was my grandmother’s, and it would’ve been good to get a message from her. The china owl is nothing, just a little present from a friend who stayed here once. The old prayer book was my mother’s, and the thimble is mine.’
‘At least it proves I can’t do it to order, so it’s just as well I wasn’t planning to make a business from it.’
‘My grandmother died so suddenly I didn’t get to say goodbye,’ Clara said. ‘I was close to her, possibly because Mother was so chilly. She used to paint too – it was always said that I got my talent from her.’
‘Maybe that’s all the message you need? To inherit looks or skills from someone must, in its way, mean you keep a connection with them. I’ve got my mother’s red hair and green eyes, so when I look in the mirror, I’m often reminded of her,’ Mabel said. ‘But we ought to go to bed now, it’s getting late.’
‘I put a hot-water bottle in your bed earlier, just to make it cosier. But really, Mabel, I think you should move back into the house.’
‘Thomas told me you’d said that. It would be nice, once it gets colder, but for now I’d like to stay over there in the cottage.’
‘You mean you want a few nights of passion away from me?’ Clara said.
Mabel just laughed. And Clara could make what she liked of that.
Once tucked up in bed in the little cottage, sleep didn’t come to Mabel as easily as she’d expected. She kept rerunning all the events of the previous day and seeing Agnes’s face as she said goodbye to her, down in the cells beneath the court.
Then her mind moved on to the future with Thomas, and instead of just imagining and planning their wedding and their shared home, as she wanted to do, niggling doubts began to appear.
While there were no legal obstacles to her marrying Thomas now, she couldn’t erase her upbringing and background. She imagined Thomas’s Aunt Leticia saying, ‘Oh, Mabel, you didn’t let on your father was a fisherman. How quaint!’
While she knew perfectly well that Aunt Leticia’s good breeding would prevent her from voicing any such thing, she’d be thinking it.
Then there were the many people who would rejoice in discovering her humble beginnings. They wouldn’t be coy in gossiping about it.
Despite her disturbed night of anxiety, Mabel was back in Clara’s house the next morning at seven thirty, like always, raking the stove, getting it going again, and lighting the fire under the boiler to do some washing.
Clara came down at nine, still in her dressing gown. She looked astonished to see the table laid for breakfast, and eggs boiling on the stove.
‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked.
‘Because it’s my job,’ Mabel replied, wondering why she would ask such a silly question.
‘But surely now that you are going to m
arry Thomas you know you can’t be my housekeeper? I mean, what would people say?’
Mabel tried to make a joke of it and looked out of the window. ‘I don’t see hordes of people out there checking to see what I’m doing,’ she said lightly. ‘Stop paying me if that makes you feel I’m no longer an employee, but I’ll still do all the jobs I’ve always done.’
Clara sat down at the table, looking very worried. ‘We need to talk this through,’ she insisted. ‘Try and see it through everyone else’s eyes, Mabel. Thomas is a lawyer, and they’ll be expecting him to marry someone of his class.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ Mabel said impatiently. ‘You’ve very kindly implied to people that I’m your companion, rather than saying I’m your housekeeper. But I really don’t see what the difference between them is. Surely a companion is allowed to lift a poker and a coal scuttle? Even do a bit of washing and cook the dinner?’
‘You are missing the point,’ Clara said impatiently. ‘It’s not about you doing a few chores here for me, it’s where you fit in the social structure. I meant to talk to you about this as soon as you got home yesterday, but I couldn’t. You were so happy, everything had turned out well. So I put it off.’
‘Put what off, Clara?’
‘I was invited to lunch at Lily Hargreaves’s house while you were away. She told me people in town were talking about you and Thomas. Of course they don’t know about the murder trial, or indeed anything about your past, thank goodness, but Lily said there’s talk of you being a servant.’
‘So I am, what’s wrong with that?’ Mabel poured boiling water into the teapot and put it on the table.
‘To me and Thomas, nothing, but once you are married, you might find some of these people won’t invite you and Thomas to dinners and parties.’
Mabel put her hands on her hips and glared at Clara. ‘I wouldn’t want to be invited if they were like that.’
Clara sighed. ‘I suspected you’d take it like this. But before you get on your high horse, think, Mabel. How will Thomas increase his clients in Dorchester if people disapprove of you as a couple for flouting social rules?’
‘Have we gone back into Victorian times? Are you trying to tell me one of these silly women wouldn’t let her husband hire Thomas because his wife doesn’t measure up to their standards?’ Mabel’s voice rose in anger.
‘That’s about the size of it. Why do you think Michael is marrying simpering little Harriet? I assure you, it isn’t for her scintillating conversation, or even her homemaking skills. She’s out of the top drawer, that’s why. Everyone approves of her.’
‘So we live in a town where people would rather see a brave man like Michael, who nearly died for his country, live in purgatory with a drippy wife he can’t even hold a real conversation with, because she’s the right sort?’
‘That’s just the way it is, Mabel.’
‘Then I’m not sure I want to live in this town.’
Clara sighed, and poured tea into both of their cups. ‘You are so stubborn sometimes. I want to explain how we can get around this, but I sense you don’t want to listen.’
‘I am listening,’ Mabel said, folding her arms and looking insolently at the ceiling.
Clara sighed. ‘Remember, Mabel, I am on your side. I want you and Thomas to be happy, and everyone in this town to like you as much as I do. We can get around this ridiculous prejudice by showing people we are friends, not mistress and servant. We go to town together, arm in arm like we are sisters. Help each other shop for hats, gloves, whatever. We can also invite people here for tea or dinner, and maybe get a girl to act as our maid. Dorchester people know I’m a bit eccentric, so they won’t expect a lot of fuss. But we play the game their way, and they’ll come around. In no time at all they’ll forget they once heard you were a servant.’
That word ‘servant’ seared through Mabel’s brain. All at once, she saw that the fears she’d had at the back of her mind – namely that she wasn’t good enough for Thomas – were not just fears, but reality.
Back in Hallsands she would never have thought it possible to self-educate herself to go on to better things. Yet when she joined Mrs Gladsworthy’s staff in Bristol, something woke up inside her and told her this was a golden opportunity. So she had watched and listened, learning how to speak and behave. She managed to modulate her Devon accent and learned, amongst other things, the right cutlery to use, how to lay a table, how to address people and when to stay silent and be almost invisible.
But now it dawned on her that these were skills for a better position in service; they didn’t equip her for marriage to a lawyer in the way an immaculate pedigree would. She had foolishly imagined that her new name, Mabel Brook, wiped out Betty Wellows, and all that went with her.
‘I’ll have to think on this. Am I allowed to dish out your breakfast and be your housekeeper for the rest of the day?’
‘Mabel!’ Clara said reproachfully. ‘I’m really sorry I had to be the one to tell you all this. It must sound to you as if I’m purposely trying to derail your intended marriage, especially as I’ve never said anything along these lines before. But in my defence, I’m a bit of a bohemian, and I’ve never conformed, so I didn’t anticipate you and Thomas being a problem to anyone.’
‘Thomas didn’t seem to think I was a problem, and he knows everything about me,’ Mabel said defiantly.
‘He should have considered it. He was brought up in a conventional manner, educated at the right school, taught to make the right friends, and duty came before everything. The law firm he’s joined is a prestigious one, their clients are some of the wealthiest and most influential in Dorset. When he came here that night after you’d left for Kingsbridge, he kept on and on at me until he wore me down to tell him the truth.’
‘So, you told him why I had to go?’
‘Yes. I didn’t want to. It wasn’t my story to tell. At that point I expected him to back away. But he surprised me in that he was far more concerned for you than for how it might affect him if it all became public. I saw then how much he loves you.’
‘Isn’t that enough?’ Mabel asked. Despite trying not to cry, her eyes filled up and the tears spilled over.
‘It isn’t for families like his,’ Clara said sadly. ‘They put upholding the family name before everything. I’ve no doubt that even if the whole story was printed in the papers, naming you, he would still go ahead and marry you, he’s brave and noble enough for that. Thankfully, that hasn’t happened. But it could in the future – secrets have a way of getting out. How would you feel, a few years down the line, if he has to resign from that law firm and has no choice but to take any job he can get? He’s not his father’s heir, remember – the bulk of the family fortune will go to Michael. How would you feel if he had to work as a schoolmaster, or a clerk?’
‘I’d be happy with him, even if we had to live in a barn,’ Mabel said defiantly. ‘I never thought of him as being a good catch, or any of the other callous phrases women like Harriet or Lily would use. I love him for himself.’ She put Clara’s boiled egg in front of her. ‘I’ll go upstairs and change the sheets on your bed while you eat your breakfast.’
‘Don’t run away from me, stay here and we’ll plan ways of showing Dorchester society that I am firmly behind you. Leticia will support us too, she says you are a breath of fresh air. Together we can show these stuffy, small-minded people that you are a force to be reckoned with.’
Mabel didn’t choose to sit down with Clara and talk. She felt bruised and disappointed, and she needed to keep herself busy.
While she’d been away, Clara hadn’t cleaned or tidied anything. But as Mabel made everything straight, put bed linen in the boiler, took the rugs outside to shake, her mind was whirling.
Deep down inside her, she knew Clara was right. If she married Thomas, she would be his downfall. He would never understand that now, but in the future, when doors didn’t open for him, eventually he would become bitter at losing opportunities, and he would bl
ame her.
She had to leave.
If she stayed, Clara would come up with a plan that would never work. It was preposterous to imagine that the pair of them going shopping together in town and inviting people here to tea was going to stop the gossip and convince everyone she was a gentlewoman.
Thomas would insist that her lowly birth and past didn’t matter, and she would inevitably let them both convince her to stay. But the things that had been said today couldn’t be unsaid. She would always be waiting for trouble, just as she’d always been waiting to be caught out at living a lie for nearly three years.
It seemed so cowardly to run away, and this time she didn’t even have a nasty mother-in-law to justify her flight. Clara loved her, she knew that; she hadn’t said these things from spite, her fears came from her heart. Thomas was blinded by love, and unable to use his head. So, she had to be the one to sort out the problem.
Putting bread and cheese on the table for Clara’s lunch, she then called up the stairs that she’d made soup, which was on the stove, and she was going into town to get some groceries.
Going first to her cottage, she packed her bag, making sure she had the bear from Carsten and her mother’s green beads. She tucked her savings into the pocket on the inside of her skirt waistband, put on her black coat, black straw hat and good shoes, and left. She was a real widow now, and she might as well look like one. Her cottage and the little path out on to the riverbank were only visible from the guest room, and it was unlikely Clara would look out of that window.
Walking as fast as she could, she made her way to the station. She didn’t look back.
25
On the walk to the station Mabel told herself she would get on whichever train was due in first. She had no intention of going to Bristol to stay with Joan; Clara knew that address and would give it to Thomas. Maybe Exeter would be a good place to go to, or Southampton. Both big enough cities to hide away and lick her wounds. That was just how she felt, like a wounded dog in need of shelter. She would find a cheap guest house and then look around for work.
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