The Lonely Wife

by Val Wood

  This is our special time together; in a few minutes the midwife will open the door, go downstairs and announce to Charles and my mother that Mrs Dawley has been delivered of a healthy boy.

  Mother will hold back, I know she will, allowing Charles the privilege of being the first to see his son. He’ll be pleased. This has been his great desire and I have fulfilled it. How would I have felt if the child had been a girl? A little afraid of his reaction, no matter how sweet and lovely she might have been. He doesn’t want a child to play with, to be proud of, or to love for itself.

  Ouch! How strong his jaws were! The midwife looked up as Beatrix drew in her breath and came to her side. ‘We’ll put him to the other side now, ma’am. We don’t want him to make a meal of it, only to show him where lunch will be available.’

  Beatrix smiled, and wondered how often the midwife had spouted the jest to other new mothers.

  ‘For a brief while only, ma’am. Then cover yourself and let Nurse put him in his cot whilst I fetch your husband to take a look at him. It’s a proud day for any father.’

  Cover myself! Does she not realize how babies are conceived? Beatrix took a deep breath. Should I simply tell him that it has been very difficult and that I am very tired, and not mention that in fact I couldn’t help but think about Edward’s dog Nellie giving birth to her pups and barely making a sound but just getting on with it, as Edward would have said?

  The midwife told me I had been very good in not making a fuss, and I felt as if she were praising me for my achievement. I’m becoming cynical; I wonder why.

  Charles came in quietly, almost reluctantly. He’s scared, she thought; he’s expecting – what? A dishevelled wife, a squalling babe, whereas everything has been tidied away. Soiled sheets rolled up in a corner, the baby with his clean sponged face to show to the world, and here I am waiting for a cup of sweet tea to revive me.

  ‘Hello, darling wife.’ Charles bent to kiss her cheek. ‘How are you feeling?’

  She quashed the desire to say I’m deliriously happy and very well, and said softly, ‘A little tired if I’m honest, Charles. But it will pass.’ She raised a limp hand towards the crib. ‘Take a look at our fine son.’

  He walked round her bed to look into the crib. ‘I can’t see him,’ he complained. ‘He’s covered up so closely.’

  ‘Mrs Beddows, will you lift the baby out so that my husband might hold him?’

  ‘Oh, no, I don’t want to hold him!’ Charles stammered. ‘He’s too small. I might drop him. I just want to see his face.’

  The midwife lifted the child from the crib and removed the shawl from his face and head so that Charles might see him.

  ‘Ah!’ he murmured. ‘Hmm. Not much hair. Does he have a look of either of us, do you think?’ He directed the question to Beatrix.

  ‘Why yes!’ she exclaimed. ‘He definitely has a look of you, quite clearly, but perhaps it’s not possible to see oneself. But it’s most certainly there; do you see the likeness, Mrs Beddows?’

  ‘Irrefutably.’ The midwife raised her eyebrows as if she was quite used to pandering to bewildered husbands. ‘The absolute image.’

  Mrs Beddows and the nurse went out of the room after Charles, who was going downstairs to open a bottle of champagne, and Beatrix’s mother came in to take their place. She had different ideas about likenesses.

  ‘He looks just the same as you did, Beatrix,’ she murmured as she leaned over the crib. ‘Your nose, your colouring,’

  she continued, ignoring the fact that Charles was fair-haired too, even fairer than Beatrix whose hair was a shade of reddish-gold. ‘He’s so sweet,’ she went on. ‘I must telegraph your father; he will be thrilled.’ She paused. ‘And Thomas too. He will be pleased to hear the news, but—’

  ‘We can’t tell him yet, Mama; not until he writes.’

  She had told her parents only a month before of Thomas’s departure and his plans to be married, when she knew he and his wife-to-be would be safely on the high seas heading for America. She didn’t tell them that the couple might then travel north. That they were gone, she thought, would be enough for them to bear for the time being. Now she knew that the blow would be softened by the arrival of a new baby to indulge.

  ‘Ask Aaron to go to the Brough telegraph office,’ Beatrix said. ‘Unless Charles is going to send news to his parents.’ Though I doubt if he will be in a hurry to do that, she thought. He’ll make them wait. ‘Tell Papa his name, won’t you? Laurence Charles Thomas. I think it has a nice ring to it, don’t you, Mama? Laurence Charles Thomas Dawley.’

  ‘Yes, I do. Did you choose the names?’

  ‘Two of them,’ she said. ‘Laurence was my choice and Thomas of course, but Charles insisted his name should be included.’ She shrugged. ‘Proof that he is his son.’ She gazed at her mother. ‘As if proof should be needed.’

  ‘What is happening to you, Beatrix?’ her mother asked softly. ‘Are you becoming a sceptic?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Mama. But I’m growing up and seeing things differently.’

  Her mother frowned. ‘Charles is not doubting his son, surely?’

  ‘No, and there is no need for him to do so. He knows I was a virgin when we married,’ she said frankly, knowing that she could now speak openly to her mother if she wished. ‘But he still questions me, asks me who I see, where I have been. As if I could have gone anywhere during the last few weeks.’ I wonder, though, she thought, if it is the kettle calling the pot black.

  They heard footsteps outside the door and changed the subject as Charles came into the room with a bottle of opened champagne, followed by Dora with a tray of glasses which she placed on a side table. Mrs Beddows and the nurse slipped back in behind them.

  ‘Congratulations, ma’am,’ Dora said, ‘and sir. May I take a look at the baby?’

  ‘Of course you can, Dora.’ Beatrix smiled at the girl, who was clearly thrilled to see the infant. ‘Move his shawl a little to see him properly. Don’t you think he’s wonderful?’

  ‘He is, ma’am, and has a look of both of you.’ She turned to Charles. ‘Don’t you think so, sir?’

  ‘Mm?’ Charles was handing Mrs Fawcett a glass of champagne. ‘Well, yes, I should hope so. A small glass for you, my dear?’ he asked Beatrix, who nodded, and then turned to offer one to Mrs Beddows, although he ignored the nurse and Dora. The latter dipped her knee and departed, but turned at the door and asked Beatrix by a hand sign behind Charles’s back if she would like a pot of tea, and Beatrix gave an imperceptible nod.

  Charles raised his glass. ‘Well, shall we drink good health and wealth to my son, Charles Laurence Dawley? May he thrive!’

  ‘Indeed,’ Beatrix murmured and took a small sip. But he is to be Laurence Charles Thomas Dawley, she amended silently, not the other way round, and he is my son too.

  After a while everyone went downstairs to let Beatrix rest, with the nurse in the room next door in case she needed anything. The following day, a newly engaged nursemaid would arrive. Dora knocked quietly and came in with a tray of tea and biscuits.

  ‘Are you feeling all right, ma’am?’ she asked.

  ‘I am, Dora,’ Beatrix said honestly. ‘It wasn’t quite as difficult as I’d expected, just tiring. How would your mother have been after childbirth?’

  ‘Oh, she’d have been up and scrubbing potatoes for the next meal, I suppose.’ Dora laughed. ‘But maybe not with the first one, but then I wouldn’t know about that. I reckon she’d have been proud of you though; most ladies like you would’ve made a fuss, I reckon.’

  Beatrix closed her eyes and rested against the pillow once she’d drunk her tea and nibbled on a biscuit still warm from the oven. Mother asked if I were becoming a sceptic. I don’t think I am, but I’m not a naive gullible young girl either, which I probably was a year ago.

  It was early May, just over a month after their first wedding anniversary, and she thought that Charles would be pleased that she had so swiftly fulfilled her obligation to provide him
with a son and heir. Incredible that I was caught so quickly, she considered, seeing that he has spent so little time here. But now I think I know why, and I must accept it.

  She had often wondered where Charles’s London house was situated and he had vaguely explained it, but had never given the address as she had asked, saying always that she should contact the bank if ever she needed to send him an urgent message.

  ‘I’m always at the bank,’ he’d said. ‘I spend very little time at the town house; I bed down there and eat breakfast, and have supper at a local restaurant. I don’t need a housekeeper; I employ a woman once a week to clean up after me and use the Chinese laundry for my personal linen.’

  She had accepted this. Why would she not? It was how he had always lived since leaving his parents’ house, or so he said, until one morning in early February, after he had left to catch the London train, when she had wandered into his room to find the housemaid gathering up his laundry: the bedsheets and towels, his undergarments, and the shirts he had worn during the two days he had been at Old Stone Hall.

  Beatrix had looked out from his window; a rime of frost covered the front lawn and she’d thought that it looked like a skating rink. She’d turned and decided that she would go back to bed for an hour; it was not quite seven o’clock.

  Something white had dropped out of the laundry bundle and she bent to pick it up. A handkerchief, but not one belonging to Charles. This was fine lawn, smaller than the kind a gentleman would use, but not one of hers either. It was richly embroidered with a red flower in one corner.

  Instinctively she put it to her nose. A faint but exotic perfume sprang from it, making her catch her breath. She looked at it again. It had been beautifully ironed, each corner neat and straight and making a perfect square. It hadn’t been used.

  She heard the girl coming back upstairs and slipped it into her dressing gown pocket.

  ‘Beg pardon, ma’am.’ The girl dipped her knee. ‘I was going to pull ’blankets back to air. Shall I leave them for now?’

  ‘No,’ she’d said. ‘Carry on with what you were doing. I’m going back to bed for an hour. Tell Cook I’ll have breakfast upstairs this morning so you can clear the breakfast room.’

  She’d pulled out the handkerchief from her pocket and climbed back into bed. Again she put it to her nose. She tried to imagine the kind of woman who might wear perfume such as this; not anyone like her. Someone sure of herself, unafraid of turned heads; exotic, like the perfume that was drifting towards her.

  Not a woman of the streets, she’d thought; not that she knew what they were like, but she imagined they wouldn’t be able to afford such a fragrance as this; this was expensive.

  How did the handkerchief come to be tangled up with Charles’s shirts and pillowcases? It must have fallen out of his trouser pocket, but what was it doing there? Had it been slipped in deliberately so that it could be found? To torment me?

  The answer had come swiftly into her head leaving no room for doubt. Charles has a mistress. She was the reason he spent so little time with his wife and wouldn’t give her his London address. Did she live with him? Was she feeling neglected, as Beatrix herself did? Did she feel jealous? Did she even know he was married? Or had she slipped the handkerchief into his pocket to remind him of her?

  Now, three months later, she lay perfectly still on her pillow, yet inwardly she was shaking. I have fulfilled my obligation; my role was always to be a wife and bearer of sons. I can accept that now. The other woman must be very special to him but for some reason not suitable for the role that I accepted.

  If this woman cares for Charles, then I’m truly sorry for her. She turned her head to look at her newborn son, who lay in such sweet repose that tears of joy slipped from her eyes. I, she thought, am the favoured one. My role cannot be taken from me. Can it? Can I be sure?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Beatrix had never confronted Charles over the question of the handkerchief or how it had come to be in his room, for what was the use? He would be angry if she asked him; he would probably deny it, too, and he would, she had no doubt, make her pay for the accusation of unfaithfulness.

  When Laurence was baptized Beatrix made sure that the vicar had the names written down in the right sequence. Her father stood in for her brother Thomas as one of the godfathers and Charles’s best man Paul was the other; for a godmother she asked Sophia Hartley, who travelled down with Beatrix’s parents. She had toyed with the thought of asking Charles’s sister Anne, but Charles had pooh-poohed the idea, saying she wouldn’t want to be involved in the least, and indeed she did not accompany her parents on the occasion even though she had been invited.

  ‘What we will have,’ Charles announced the next day, when he came across Beatrix alone and bent over the sleeping Laurence in his cot, ‘is a party to celebrate. Not immediately, but soon.’

  Beatrix’s heart sank. ‘What kind of party?’ she asked. ‘We had a celebratory lunch yesterday. Could we wait until I’m fully recovered?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said smoothly. ‘I was thinking of midsummer when we can eat and drink outside. Perhaps use Little Stone House as a place for the guests to stay?’

  Beatrix felt protective of the little house; she had taken great care in choosing the right colours for the walls, comfy squashy sofas, beautiful curtains and a long mahogany table and chairs in the dining room. She was especially pleased with the excellent paintings of Yorkshire landscapes and local shipping scenes she had managed to find for the walls.

  Before she had given birth to Laurence she had travelled into Hull by train with Dora and had discovered that the town had galleries with wonderful pieces of local art, and good shops where furniture could be made to her own specification and she could see patterns of the very best Axminster carpets for her approval.

  ‘We’d have to move the good furniture,’ Charles went on. ‘Some of the people I know don’t have your restraint or good taste, Beatrix.’ He ran his hands around her waist and down to her hips. ‘How long will it be – before …?’ He whispered into her ear. ‘You are looking particularly seductive.’

  She gave a breathy sound. ‘Not just yet, Charles,’ she murmured. ‘Perhaps a month?’

  ‘A month!’ he muttered, drawing away from her. ‘As long as that? Are you afraid of getting caught again?’

  ‘Oh!’ she said, trying not to show alarm. ‘That wouldn’t be good for me or the child, would it? I’m sure the doctor would say it isn’t advisable, but I will ask him when I next see him, so that we can be ready. Now what about this party?’ She changed the subject. ‘Who would we invite?’

  But he had become annoyed at his perceived dismissal and left the room to join the family downstairs; she sat on the edge of the bed looking down at the sleeping Laurence. Perhaps it would be good to have people to stay, she considered. Perhaps I’m becoming a stick-in-the-mud because I’m alone so often.

  I could ask Sophia if she would come, and perhaps she might find a husband from the gentlemen Charles knows. I will invite Rosie and Mrs Stokes, she giggled to herself: they would liven up the stiff London shirts with their eccentricities. Yes, I’ll tell Charles that I’m quite agreeable, and once we have a date we’ll take the good paintings down and replace them with reproductions, and do the same with the Axminster carpets and Aubusson rugs; I’d hate to have wine spilled over them. But perhaps I’m being unkind. Most of our guests will be used to quality furnishings, and in any case I’m being fussy over objects that don’t really matter. Besides, it will be rather nice to show how lovely the house is.

  We could have it in July, on my birthday; that would remind Charles of the date, for he completely forgot last year. It was inevitable, I suppose, for we still barely knew each other. This year I will still only be twenty, not even of age yet. But does it matter, I wonder, once a woman is married and under her husband’s dominance?

  But when, later, she suggested July, Charles said that the weather in July was unpredictable and he would prefer Augu
st. Beatrix said nothing, but she knew that she would be thinking more about bringing in the harvest by then. It would be their first, and their farm manager, Simon Hallam, had said it was promising to be a good one.

  Simon Hallam had come to them at the recommendation of Edward Newby. He was twenty-five, and although he and Edward hadn’t been particular friends at farming college they had known each other well: after finishing his education he had gone abroad to discover what other countries did to improve their farming culture.

  He was very knowledgeable, and Beatrix blessed the day when he arrived for an interview and didn’t appear to be at all perturbed to discover that his prospective employer, though willing and eager to learn, was a young woman brought up in the city of London.

  ‘Let’s start small, Mrs Dawley,’ he’d advised. ‘Farming can be a tricky and expensive business, and we are also at the mercy of the weather. I propose we take on a foreman and two horse lads to begin with, and hire local labourers for the rest.’

  Once the position had been offered and accepted, he’d gone with her and Edward to look over the land and earmarked the buildings where the foreman and horse lads would live once they began hiring, the fields to be planted with wheat as their first crop and the ones they would use for livestock. On Edward’s suggestion she also asked him to choose a pair of Shire horses for working the land and to look at the old equipment in the barns to assess what was workable and what would be required. She’d breathed a huge sigh of relief, for although she could look after the accounts she wouldn’t have known where to start on any kind of farming schedule.

  ‘Well done, Beatrix,’ Edward had murmured as they walked back to the house, and Simon Hallam had gone off to draw up a programme so that she would know what to expect and could give her approval or voice her queries.