His mind dwelt briefly on Kitty, and Amy-Joanne. They seemed to belong to another lifetime, to have been part of someone else’s past, not his own. He rarely thought of either of them, these days. Though it was true that every now and again he recalled Kitty’s last words to him, and her letter, and was smitten by the realisation that, somewhere out there in this big, wide world was a child who was part of him. His child. His and Kitty’s. But then he would push this unwelcome notion from his mind and forget it. There was no point in dwelling on what was, after all, an unfortunate occurrence. He should have been more careful. Kitty should have been more careful.
In any case, he needn’t worry. They were unlikely to ever be able to track him down and anyway there didn’t seem to have been any attempts to find him. It had been impossible to discover how his death had been reported, as news of such limited significance outside his own small circle was never going to make it to these parts. So, he just had to assume that they all believed him drowned, exactly as he had planned. That, unable to bear the shame of his company’s collapse, he had taken his own life.
‘How’s business?’ asked Mac, jolting Mayhew back to the present. His tone was laconic, but Mayhew spotted the shrewd look in his eye. Nothing was ever idle conversation with Mac.
‘Good,’ he replied. ‘Can’t complain.’ There was more he could add but wasn’t sure that he would. Or should. He drank a slug of champagne and decided to, after all.
‘Just a shame my poor sister did not know enough to dispute your fees before they were signed and sealed.’
It was a challenge and both men knew it. In the silence that followed the phonograph played out, scratchily, a Richard Strauss melody. The Brazilian girls were gathering on the stage, dripping tassels and raw sexuality, preparing for the dancing to begin. The opportunity for business talk was limited.
‘She’s a hard nut to crack, your sister,’ responded Mac, which was not really an answer.
The fair European girl arrived with refills of champagne. Mayhew ran his finger along her thigh as she passed by. She smiled at him and he mouthed at her, ‘Later.’
‘When I… when those savages came out of the forest to attack Norwood, I – most people – thought that would be the end of her.’ Mac drew on his cigar, forehead creased in thought. ‘But she’s clearly made of sterner stuff. I can’t imagine many women sticking it out in the Amazon, alone.’
The record changed to something more stirring. Mayhew knew nothing about music but had to concede that this modern invention was marvellous.
‘If, that is, she can be called alone any more.’ Mac’s voice was level and even, without emotion.
Mayhew snorted into his champagne glass. The bubbles went up his nose and he shook his head in annoyance.
‘What do you mean? She’s as alone as any widow could be. She’s hardly going to settle down with one of the forest folk, is she? They’re half her size, for one thing.’ Mayhew chortled to himself at the mental image he’d created of his tall, milk-white sister with a diminutive bronzed Indian, preposterous as it was.
‘She has a sentimental edge, under her veneer of calm respectability and reliability.’
Mayhew frowned. Mac was speaking in riddles this evening. It must be the drink.
‘That ridiculous duck she befriended,’ continued Mac, staring at his glass of champagne with glazed eyes. ‘Gave it a quaint name, Po-Po, as I recall. She really loved it. It was very touching.’ He seemed to be talking to himself or to the wine as much as to Mayhew, who had no idea what he was referring to.
‘That poor boy of hers,’ Mac burbled on, ‘being brought up amongst the savages. It’s not right, so it isn’t.’
Mayhew’s interest was suddenly piqued. He’d had to concede a reluctant admiration for Katharine during his time at Norwood, though he’d been only too happy to leave and return to somewhere more to his sybaritic tastes. And for Antonio he had developed a genuine fondness. He might even go so far as to say he missed the child – though of course what he also missed was someone who looked up to and idolised him so unquestioningly. Sometimes, it even crossed his mind that his baby might have been a boy, that Kitty might have given birth to his son… But no. Such ruminations were pointless and must be strongly discouraged.
The music paused and the silence filled with the noises of the river, the churning engines, the performers’ high-heeled shoes clacking on the decking in readiness to tantalise.
‘You know there are whispers about her on the river?’ Mac seemed suddenly more focused, his blue eyes restored to their normal acuity. ‘Katharine, that is. Your sister.’
Mayhew bridled. What the hell was Mac on about?
‘What do you mean?’ he demanded for the second time that evening, his voice coming out in a high-pitched, strangulated tone. He was infuriated, could sense the flush mounting in his cheeks, the blood pumping faster. If anyone was going to spread rumours about a member of his own family, it should be him.
‘Not a savage, good lord no.’ Mac seemed to be harking back to Mayhew’s earlier comment. He was definitely the worse for wear, but then Mayhew was starting to feel a little tipsy himself. ‘You’re right, that would be nonsensical.’ Mac stubbed out his cigar and waved for another one. Mayhew reflected that he couldn’t match him in smoking, even if he could in drinking. ‘No, it’s that Black man you took to Norwood. I think he’s ended up becoming more a part of the clan than you intended.’
Mayhew stared at Mac, open-mouthed. Was he suggesting what Mayhew thought he was suggesting?
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he expostulated, coldly, quick to protest his sister’s innocence. Mac’s accusation was outrageous. ‘And I think it would behove you to hold your tongue. Idle gossip helps no one.’
But despite what he said, he remembered. Remembered the looks, the smiles, the eager conversations. The evenings the pair of them spent on the dock, talking. Could it always have been about the estradas? He felt anger rise within him, as well as bile at the thought of something so disgusting. Bloody hell, what had he done, delivering that man to his sister?
Mac leant back on the cushions, puffing intently. Shrouded in a pall of grey smoke, the outline of his face was hazy. But Mayhew could tell he was smiling. Smiling at his sister, his flesh and blood, his kith and kin. Such things had never mattered to him before. But, given that his fortunes these days were so closely bound up with Katharine’s, they did now.
He looked towards the stage where the dance continued, the troupe of exotic girls like colourful caged birds, nimbly and erotically performing bodily feats of great agility. A Brazilian beauty came over to where he and Mac sat, all French perfume and nipple tassels and a feather boa that stirred up some quite exquisite emotions within Mayhew, not felt since Kitty Little’s silken caresses. Distracted, he stuffed some notes inside her garter. He could spend what he liked. Norwood was making good money now, thanks to him.
Thanks also to Smart. He had turned out to be a good manager, Smart by name and Smart by nature and – smart enough to beguile his lustful sister with his dark arts.
Mayhew felt his face flush several stages redder as anger subsumed him while he contemplated Katharine – that pale white woman – bedding that coal-black man. What about her child, Antonio, to whom Mayhew had dedicated so much time and attention, trying to civilise him in the barbarian jungle? The boy must be saved from the ignominy of a mother who went with a Black man. She hadn’t even gone native; it was far worse than that. But she seemed to value savages more than her own kind. What about the pathetic slave girl she’d bought? What was wrong with the woman? With women generally?
The dancing performance over, he hauled himself up from the sofa and stomped furiously down the stairs to the lower deck. Mac’s revelations had thoroughly unnerved him, setting him on edge and ruining the mellifluous ambience. He thought he might explode with rage and mortification. Did Katharine want to be the laughing stock of all Brazil?
But then he saw the Europe
an girl, waiting by one of the cabin doors and his thunderous mood lifted. He followed her over the threshold and into the sumptuously appointed room. Almost immediately, wonderful things started happening and Mayhew dismissed all thoughts of anything but the here and now. It was a remarkable facility he had that made life so much easier than for those who had that pesky attribute called a conscience.
As for Katharine – he decided he could do no more, he could not save her from herself. As long as she stayed in the jungle, it was clear that the habits of the jungle would stay with her.
Chapter Thirty-Two
London, 1901
Mabel cried herself to sleep the night of the master’s assault. She longed for her mother, her sister, even her noisy, rowdy, boisterous brothers. Disgust enveloped her, for what the master had done and because she hadn’t stopped it. Surely she could have thrown him off, if she’d fought harder? But she hadn’t had the strength, had been weakened by terror and shock, and by the total surprise of it all. And he was huge, his girth and weight far greater than hers. Plus it had been so unexpected, so completely out of the blue – though as she went over and over it in her mind, she realised that it had actually been anything but. Those had not been chance encounters with the master in corridors and passageways; all had been deliberate, leading to this. How stupid she had been not to understand. How pathetic her situation that she wouldn’t have been able to prevent it, even if she had understood.
She ran her hands over her stomach and hips to see if anything was broken or damaged, and then snatched them away, as if they were straying into forbidden territory just like the master’s had. She felt dirty and cheap, aware that she had failed in some gargantuan way.
She chewed at the lump in her cheek until it became a mountain.
Mabel did not go to the park the next Thursday, nor to Clerkenwell the week after. She wrote to her mother to say she was not well and wanted to rest. Kirsty, whom she had no way to contact, would just have to wait for her in vain. Even if she ever saw her again, Mabel knew she would never tell Kirsty what had happened. She would never tell anyone.
The only thing she could do to try to expiate the horror was chronicle it in her diary. But, having done so, she spent fearful hours worrying that the mistress would find her journal, read it, and thus discover what had happened. Employers could do that if they wanted to, could enter your private room and go through your private things. They would reason that it was their house and everything in it belonged to them so they could do what they liked.
Mabel considered tearing the pages out and burning them. Indeed, she nearly did so. But then, in a sudden act of rebellion, she decided not to. Instead, she hid the notebook under her mattress. It wasn’t the safest hiding place in the world but if the mistress were so nosy as to look there and to read it, at least she would know what sort of a man she was married to. If she didn’t already.
Cook noticed her mood, and her lack of appetite.
‘What’s wrong, girl?’ she asked. She was brusque and could be harsh and punitive. But she had a kind heart underneath, Mabel thought. She was just like everyone else: terrified of losing her job, of falling out of favour with those of higher status who controlled the lives of everyone beneath them.
Mabel shrugged and shook her head. ‘Just feeling a little under the weather, that’s all.’ She could barely get her voice above the volume of a whisper these days.
Cook looked at her sharply. She pursed her lips and scrutinised Mabel before speaking. ‘You’re not…? Tell me you’ve not got yourself in trouble? I warned you about followers, didn’t I? Please tell me you’ve not gone and done something stupid.’
Mabel’s face blanched. Her stomach churned and bile rose in her throat. Cook knew. Cook knew what Mabel and the master had done. And she knew it was Mabel’s fault.
‘N-no,’ she stuttered, and then hurriedly stood up, grabbing her wooden cleaning box and fleeing the kitchen. She didn’t even know what she was saying ‘no’ about.
Over the next days and weeks, Mabel lived on her nerves, constantly on edge, her body always tense and waiting for the unexpected, for someone to creep up behind her in the darkness. The master went away for a while, but even then, she couldn’t relax. She dreaded going into the housemaid’s closet where it had happened. Even just passing near to it made her head spin, and her guts wrench in anguish.
One day, Cook told her she had to clean the closet out, sort all the equipment and give the walls and floors a good scrubbing. Dragging her feet, clutching her cleaning box in sweat-dampened hands, she made it to the room. Her knees trembled; her legs shook as if they could no longer support her weight. She was suddenly incredibly thirsty, as if she’d die of thirst. Desperately, she gathered saliva in her mouth and swallowed it down, trying to quench the dryness.
Wedging the door open with a bucket of water, she made sure that she was always facing it as she worked. For some reason, there was a picture on the wall even here, of a dour-looking man behind whom a three-masted schooner rocked on a dark and stormy sea. The man’s eyes followed Mabel as she worked, assessing her, judging her. It was as if the master was watching her, undressing her with his eyes.
Somehow, she got the job done, and immediately on finishing, rushed to the privy and threw up. She was sure Cook heard her. Now she’d be even more convinced that Mabel was pregnant. But could you get pregnant from what the master had done? Mabel didn’t think so but there was no one to ask. Anyway, she thought, looking down at her bony hips and hollowed out stomach, she certainly didn’t look pregnant. Her loss of appetite and constant state of stress meant she was skinnier than she’d ever been.
A few nights later, Mabel woke abruptly in the night. It was almost midnight and at first, she could not work out what had disturbed her. Then she heard the unfamiliar sound of footsteps on the rickety steps that led to her attic room. No one else slept up here. Joe had his room on the half-landing and Cook, as the senior servant, had much larger and nicer accommodation on the floor below.
Mabel’s heart stopped. Who could be coming up here at this time of night? A burglar? A ghost? Oh, please God not the master. If she lay in bed, covers over her head, perhaps whoever it was would think there was no one there and go away. But she couldn’t move, just sat there, upright, wide eyes staring at the door. Tiny sobs rose in her throat, whimpers that she tried to suppress for fear of whoever or whatever it was hearing her. She willed, with all the force of her mind, the door not to open.
Creaking on its ancient hinges, the door slowly opened.
In Mabel’s heightened state of awareness, every nerve on edge, she was sure she would snap or crack or break apart if she moved. She should have put a chair under the door handle or pulled her chest of drawers across it. Why hadn’t she done that? She couldn’t think now, just that it had never occurred to her that anyone would venture up to her hovel under the eaves.
If it was the master, what was he planning to do to her? She quivered in the darkness, heart full of dread.
The door was open wide now. A shadowy figure hove into view. Involuntarily, Mabel shrank back, pressing herself painfully against the metal bed head, and emitted a strained, strangled mewl.
There was a desperate, pregnant pause that seemed to last a lifetime. And then a familiar voice sounded out into the emptiness.
‘It’s all right, miss,’ said the voice. ‘It’s only me, Joe. I ain’t going to hurt you.’
The fear turned to fury in an instant.
‘Joe!’ Mabel’s cry was a whispered shriek. ‘What are you doing? You’re not supposed to come here.’
Joe slunk into the room and shut the door quietly behind him but did not come any closer. The room was so small that he was only the length of the bed away from Mabel.
‘I need to tell you something. And I can’t do it during the day because Cook’s always there with her pricked ears and eyes in the back of her head.’
Mabel nodded, mutely. Now the terror had abated a wave of exhaustion swept
over her, leaving her almost too weary to speak.
‘It’s the master. And the mistress. They’ve been arguing about you.’
‘About me?’ questioned Mabel, faintly. She couldn’t believe she was important enough to either of them to cause an argument. She assumed employers never thought about their servants – out of sight, out of mind.
‘Yes,’ Joe continued. ‘I don’t know exactly what’s gone on. But the mistress thinks – well, she thinks that you’ve been making eyes at the master. And that he’s got a soft spot for you.’
‘How… how do you know?’
‘I heard them, didn’t I? They talk in front of us as if we don’t have ears or can’t understand. She was right cross with him, telling him to leave you alone,’ Joe explained, his voice getting louder as he warmed to his subject.
‘Shush,’ hissed Mabel. ‘Someone will hear.’ She couldn’t imagine how much trouble she’d be in if anyone caught Joe in her room. The disgrace that would entail was unimaginable.
She was silent for a moment, her mind working overtime, her thoughts flitting all over the place, trying to figure out what were the consequences of what Joe was saying, what might happen next.
Joe provided the answer.
‘I think she’s going get rid of you,’ he hissed, in a stage whisper. ‘That’s what I wanted to tell you. Coz you’ll need another job and I don’t reckon on her giving you a reference.’
Mabel’s mouth fell open. Shock surged through her body. She was going to lose her job. Get the sack. Be let go. However, you put it, it was a disaster. Her reputation would be tainted, her ability to get more work greatly diminished. And she had no idea what she could say to account for her dismissal, or how she would get another job without references. Though Katharine, still ignorant as to their father’s accident, was helping her parents financially, Mabel still needed to work. She could not afford to be idle and unemployed, nor did she want to be. She took pride in earning her own keep.
Along the Endless River Page 22