Miss Martha Mary Crawford

by Catherine Cookson (Catherine Marchant)

  The mention of her father’s christian name, the manner, the voice which had a high artificial ring to it as if its owner were imitating someone, the look on the face which was now screwed up in disbelief, caused Martha’s whole body to stiffen. It was as if she had been suddenly frozen.

  ‘But he can’t be, he was hale and hearty…’ She now tossed her head to one side. Then swinging about, she walked to the end of the room, and there stood looking out of the window onto what was evidently a long back garden.

  It was a full minute before she again turned, and as she walked rapidly towards Martha she said, ‘Did he leave me any message…a letter? What did he say?’

  Her heart thumping against her ribs in agitation, Martha was unable to speak, she could only stare wide-eyed at the woman before her until the woman once again demanded, ‘Well! What did he say?’ and then she replied flatly, ‘He left you no letter. He said nothing about you except to give me your name, and—’ Swallowing deeply she added now, ‘Swear me to secrecy concerning you. At the time I was at a loss to know why, but now I’m no longer at a loss.’

  ‘Oh, don’t take that attitude with me, young woman.’

  Perhaps it was the tone, perhaps it was the look of the woman that made Martha rear, for now she cried back at her, ‘And don’t you dare speak to me in that manner! It is very plain to me what you are; that girl, your maid, said my great uncle has been dead for four years. May I ask how you came into possession of this house?’

  ‘You may ask but I’ll please myself whether I tell you or not…But on second thoughts, aye, yes, I’ll tell you, it’ll take some of the starch out of you. Your father bought it for me. No, no, that isn’t quite right, it was left to him and he passed it on to me as a deed of gift…Satisfied? This house is mine and all in it…Oh, don’t faint.’ There was a deep note of derision in the last words.

  ‘I have no intention of fainting and I’ll tell you this, you’re a bad woman, an evil woman. My father has ruined himself and his family because of you.’

  ‘Now you look here!’

  It was noticeable that the person’s voice was becoming coarser, almost like Peg’s. ‘Whatever your father gave me he got well paid for. By, he did!…I couldn’t move, mustn’t have friends case he popped in, and …’

  ‘Be quiet!’

  ‘You don’t tell me to be quiet. Who d’you think you are?’

  The white plump hand was extended towards her, one finger wagging, and Martha’s eyes concentrated on it and the ring it held. It was her mother’s ring, the ring which she herself was to have on her twenty-first birthday. Her voice had an ominous quiet to it now as she said, ‘That ring, that ring you’re wearing.’

  ‘Yes, what about it?’ The woman turned her hand and looked at it.

  ‘That was my mother’s and should have been mine at my coming of age.’

  ‘Huh! At your coming of age! Well now, isn’t that a pity he should think better of it and give it to me! And he did give it to me, for me birthday.’

  Martha felt she was about to collapse, not because her sensibilities had been shocked, but from a swift rush of anger such as she had never before experienced in her life. She actually spluttered as she cried, ‘And pearls and…and a locket…?’

  ‘Aye, yes, an’ pearls and a locket.’ The plump chin was up now, the head wagging and the voice had lost its refined twang altogether. ‘They were all presents from your father in exchange for years of me young life. And what you seem to forget, miss, is that they were his to give…’

  ‘They weren’t…They were left in keeping for us, my sisters and me.’

  ‘Well, it’s just too bad on the lot of you, isn’t it, that he found a better use for them?’

  Now Martha was being possessed of another strange emotion. She had never hated anything or anyone, but at this moment she became so afraid of the intensity of the feeling that was causing sweat to open her pores that she dropped her gaze from the young woman and stood looking down at her own tightly clasped black-gloved hands that were gripping each other so that her knuckles showed like points through the material.

  She had ceased to see the person before her, for her gaze had turned inwards and she was seeing herself. It was as if she were witnessing the birth of a new creature, someone being born out of these frightening emotions. The urge that was rising in her was horrifying, for all she wanted to do was to take her hand and strike the creature across the face, not once but again and again. She wanted to see her fall to the floor, she wanted to stamp on her, hard, hard …

  Oh, dear God, get me out of here! Like a child now she asked this, and as if her prayer had been heard she turned about and walked towards the door, but so blindly that she stumbled against a chair and put her hand out and gripped the handle on a tall ebony cupboard, thinking it was the door.

  As the bell tinkled behind her she turned again and almost instantly the door opened as if the maid had been standing on the other side waiting for the summons, and she heard the woman’s voice, with the high-faluting note to it once more, saying, ‘Show this lady out, Alice.’

  The maid stood aside and Martha walked stiffly into the hall, and as the door closed behind her she put her hand to her throat and a wave of blackness assailed her. The young girl, now taking hold of her arm, said kindly, ‘You feelin’ faint, miss?’

  When she did not answer the maid looked back towards the drawing room door, and as she did so the front doorbell rang and she murmured in agitation, ‘Oh dear me!’ Then almost pulling Martha along the hall to where a chair stood in a shallow alcove, she said, ‘Sit yersel down there a minute an’ get your breath.’

  As Martha closed her eyes and lay back she heard the maid open the door, then exclaim, ‘Oh. Eeh! Eeh! You, Mr Fuller?’

  ‘Yes, me, Alice.’

  It was the voice that roused Martha and brought her head to the side. She had heard it before, that voice, gruff, aggressive, even when it was making a simple statement like, ‘He’s asking you if you want a return ticket.’

  She now saw the face. It was the man who had stood behind her at the booking office, and he was making for the drawing room door as if he were familiar with the house.

  Oh, that woman…that creature. Not satisfied with ruining her father…But no, she hadn’t ruined her father. She herself had some rethinking to do here, fresh thinking, truthful thinking. But…but that man, he must be another of…of her… . She couldn’t place on him a name such as fancy man, for then she would be putting her father in the same category…Well, wasn’t he? And this man, too, was from Hexham.

  He had entered the room and closed the door behind him, but she could hear his voice, loud with what might be a threatening note to it. She looked to where the maid was beckoning her to the door and she rose unsteadily and walked along the passage, and it was as she passed the drawing room door that she heard the man crying, ‘You! You little bitch! Do that just once more and you know what I’ll do?’

  And the woman answered, ‘As usual you’ll just talk an’ talk. Aw’ shut up! I’ve got enough to think about the day…’

  Whether she had unconsciously slowed in her walk she didn’t know but when the maid, hurrying from the front door, went to grab at her arm she turned on her a look that said clearly, ‘Don’t touch me!’ Then she was walking down the steps into the frosty grey stillness of the street.

  Automatically she turned in the direction from which the cab had come. She was walking like one in a dream now. When she reached the end of the street she hesitated, not knowing which way to go. She turned right and after walking through a number of side streets she same into Shields Street, then into a thoroughfare that was broader still; this was Portland Road, and in it, among the traffic, she espied a cab.

  Like the cab driver at the station, this one too seemed to sense that she needed to be driven somewhere, and he drew up by the side of the kerb and when she looked up at him and said, ‘Drive me to the station, please,’ he merely nodded, and did not, like his counterpa
rt, ask if she wanted to go by the shortest or longest route, for now she no longer looked, or sounded, like a country kitten come to town …

  It wasn’t until she had almost reached Hexham that the anger in her began to subside, and like a mist clearing from before her eyes she looked through it and back onto the situation. But as she did so a sickness assailed her, for she knew that no matter how she came to view her father’s liaison with that woman there would remain in her a hate of him until the day she died. And in a way she realised now it was he whom she was hating when she faced the woman. It was he whom she had wanted to strike for it was he who had duped her…and them all, but mostly he had duped her.

  She heard his voice saying, ‘I’m sorry I can’t afford new gowns for you this year, but there are your mother’s trunks in the attic; why don’t you put the dresses to use, you are so good with your needle my dear. But leave one trunk, the one with her wedding and party gowns in it. I would like to keep them for remembrance.’ And all the while he had been showering his money and her mother’s jewellery on that person. And…the house.

  The house! He had passed Great-Uncle James’ house on to that woman as a deed of gift. Whatever that might mean, it must have been legal. And he had sold the mill and his shares in the other firms. And all during the past four years to keep that creature in opulence, and such opulence. For now she could see what had escaped her in those moments of stress, the house had been beautifully decorated and refurnished. It was what one would call modern, and not what an old man, like Great-Uncle James, would have lived with.

  Again she heard her father’s voice coming over the distance of two years saying, ‘Nick will have to carry on alone. He’s a lazy beggar anyway, I can’t afford to keep two on any longer, and Ned will be expecting a man’s wage this year.’

  Nick Bailey was in some ways defective but he was not so stupid as to try to do two men’s work, as the deterioration of the place showed.

  Now like pus spurting from a boil, there came flooding her mind his constant jocular chastisement of her over petty misdemeanours concerning the table or his personal linen: should she omit to roll his breakfast bun in a napkin to keep it hot, should the white of his fried egg not be crisped brown while the yokes remained soft, he would bestow on her a pained glance. Even on that very morning he paid his last visit to Newcastle he had remarked on the crease in the back of his shirt just below his collar. No, he had admitted, she was right, it couldn’t be seen; nevertheless he was aware of it being there. And he’d also remarked on the ironing of his handkerchiefs. ‘Speak to Dilly,’ he had said. ‘She should after all be able to do such simple work as ironing a handkerchief straight without even thinking about it.’

  She found her hands gripping the edge of the seat, and the action did not go unnoticed by the two women opposite her, and when one of them, smiling, said kindly, ‘Don’t worry, it’s quite safe,’ she merely nodded at her, loosened her fingers from the seat and joined her hands on her lap.

  She was surprised that it was just turned two o’clock when she alighted at Hexham, and as she walked from the station she dwelt on the change in herself between the time she had begun the journey and when it ended. A bolt of lightning from heaven, had it struck her, could not, she considered, have done more harm to her personality than that journey. Unreasonably she thought now, she would always hate trains.

  On her way to the chandler’s she stopped and stood looking into a shop window, asking herself what she must do now. She could not immediately return home in this state, she must have help. Mr Paine, he must have known what her father was doing with the money. He must have known about Great-Uncle James as well. Why hadn’t he told her, given her some inkling before she went to that house? She now recalled his choking attack when she had put the question to him about appealing to Great-Uncle James.

  When she reached Mr Paine’s office his clerk asked her to take a seat, Mr Paine had only that moment come in. He would see if he was not engaged.

  Mr Paine came to the intersecting doors and looked at her for a moment before coming across the dusty office and taking her hand and saying, ‘How are you, my dear?’

  ‘I…I haven’t made an appointment, is it possible to talk with you?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. Come along in.’ He led her as if she were an invalid into the inner office, which, in contrast to the outer, was very comfortable and warm, and after she was seated in a leather chair opposite his desk and he himself was seated facing her, he said, ‘What can I do for you, my dear?’

  ‘I have just returned from Newcastle, Mr Paine. I went to see Great-Uncle James and beg his assistance.’

  They stared at each other and it was Mr Paine whose gaze dropped first. Taking up a pen now, he tapped the nib against the inkwell as he said, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you before, but it was very difficult on the day of the funeral, yet if I had spoken, what could I have said? You see—’ he now looked fully at her—‘I knew nothing whatever about your Great-Uncle James dying or the transfer of the house to a certain person, for almost a year after the event took place. Your father did not engage me in the transaction, and I only came to hear of it in quite a roundabout way…But what could I do? It was none of my business. But it proved to be the reason for your father’s lack of money, or I should say the quarter in which his money was being used, for after your mother died there was no lack of money, and although the businesses were such that they would never have made fortunes, they should nevertheless have kept you all very comfortable for the remainder of your lives.’

  He now leant forward and said softly, ‘I did try to speak to your father on more than one occasion but he had a disarming way, as you know only too well, of putting one off. There was always tomorrow.’

  ‘Can…can nothing be done against this person?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, my dear.’

  ‘She…she has all my mother’s jewellery too. You know, Mr Paine, my mother had quite a lot of nice pieces; they were her mother’s and her grandmother’s. They might have been old-fashioned but…but they were of value.’

  ‘And this person has them too?’ His eyebrows were raised high now.

  ‘Yes. My father told me they were in the bank; he…he took them some time ago and said he would keep them there, until we all came of age.’

  ‘Oh, my dear Miss Crawford.’ Mr Paine was now shaking his head. ‘It’s a sad, sad affair. I don’t know when I’ve dealt with a worse, and I don’t know how I can help you. You see, as your affairs stand—by the way I say your affairs when it should be Master Roland who should be here now bearing the burden, not you. I understand he has gone back to school.’

  ‘Yes, yes, we thought it wise, at least I persuaded him because my—’ she could hardly make herself say the name now—‘my father made me promise I would not divulge anything to Roland. I promised but I did not know what I was promising.’

  ‘Then I think you should forget your promise; he should know the situation and why it has arisen.’

  ‘My mind is in a most chaotic state at the moment, Mr Paine, I am sure you will understand this, so if I could think about that part of the matter for a time.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. But to come back to what I was saying. There is no money whatever except the weekly returns from the two shops. Now the profits, even jointly, will barely meet the mortgage on the properties, by these I mean your home and the shops themselves. If you are asking my advice I would say, as I’ve said before, sell the chandler’s because that after all is the biggest mortgage. Your home being so far out of town and in such an isolated spot is not worth so much in the property market; and then again, I think it is your desire to stay there.’

  ‘Yes, yes, it is.’ Her voice was merely a whisper now; her eyes were wide; she was gulping audibly in her throat, when Mr Paine rose and came round the desk and, taking her hand, said, ‘There, there. There, there. Don’t upset yourself, my dear.’

  He was right. She mustn’t distress herself. She mustn�
��t give way to tears, at least not here; she must wait until she reached home. And not even then, not in front of the others.

  What would she tell the others?…That would have to wait. Mr Paine had just said they could keep their home.

  She looked up at him, her eyes blinking away the burning sensation under her lids as she said, ‘I’ll…I’ll do anything that you suggest, Mr Paine, as long as we can keep The Habitation.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ He patted her hand; then nodded at her, walked round the desk again, sat down, took up his pen once more and studied it before saying, ‘I’m sure there’s no way you can cut down on household expenses, but you could economise just the smallest bit by letting one of your sisters take up a position in the bookshop. How much do you pay the female who is already there?’

  How strange he should make the same suggestion as Roland. It seemed inevitable that Mildred should work in the shop. She said on a sigh, ‘Five shillings a week.’

  ‘Well, well.’ He looked to the side, arranged some loose sheets of paper on his desk and tapped the pen once more on the inkwell before he continued, ‘Five shillings is five shillings. And then there’s the manager. Ducat, isn’t it? Yes, yes, I know the gentleman.’ He nodded his head. ‘Very well read man from what I gather from our conversations in the shop. Of course, there’s no possibility of dispensing with his services…What is his wage?’

  ‘Fourteen shillings a week.’

  ‘H’m! h’m! Fourteen shillings. That doesn’t allow for a reduction, not when everyone is crying out to have their wages raised.’ He nodded towards her now and added in a conversational tone. ‘They all tell you that prices have risen over the past year as if the rise in prices didn’t affect oneself. Oh, I have my own experience of this.’ He glanced towards the door and the outer office, then said, ‘Well now, what you have to do, my dear Miss Crawford, is to go home and talk this matter over with the family. I think Master Roland should be advised of the situation. Could he possibly come home for a time?’