The Harrogate Secret (aka The Secret)

by Catherine Cookson

  It came to her that she couldn’t go across the water because she hadn’t any money with her. Maggie made her an allowance all the years she was at school. And from the time she had come home she had given her one pound a month to spend on trifles; and, too, she had only to ask if she wanted more. Nor had she ever had to buy anything for herself in the way of clothes.

  But now Marcel hadn’t even mentioned a dress allowance. She had thought about it yesterday when they were in Newcastle because there were one or two things she had seen in the shops that she would like to have purchased. So she had made up her mind that she was going to put it to him.

  She thought it must be miles from here to the ferry, and then she would have to hire a boat to get across the river. But what was she thinking about? Even if she could get over there alone he would certainly follow her and raise a scene; and oh, she didn’t want that. She didn’t want to have to prove to Freddie that he was right.

  She swung round from the window. Had Freddie been right? Had his instincts been more clear than her own reasoning? She must get outside and walk. Not horse-riding. Oh no, she didn’t like horse-riding and never would.

  She walked for an hour or more, and when she returned to the house he was waiting for her. She was crossing the hall towards the stairs when he appeared and beckoned her imperiously towards him. And she followed him down the corridor and into the library, where he had a desk and did whatever business he might have to do.

  He was well into the room when he turned to her and said, ‘You have upset Grandmama.’

  ‘Your grandmama upset me.’

  ‘Can’t you understand’—he took two steps towards her but halted—‘she is an old lady; and, what is more, she is a grand lady, and she has run her own establishments since before she was your age and is not used to being contradicted and bullied.’

  ‘Nor am I used to being bullied. Her manner towards me was outrageous.’

  ‘Look…look, Belle’—his voice had dropped back into his throat and each word was weighed now—‘she is in a position to be as outrageous as she likes. You are not. It is a wonder she has received you into this house at all, let me tell you. It was only my affection for you and her affection for me that outweighed her first judgement, so, as long as you are in this house…and you are going to be a long time in this house, Belle, you will be subservient to her. You understand?’

  She understood. Fearfully she understood. But she cried out against it, saying, ‘I shan’t! As your wife I demand my rights.’

  ‘Demand. Demand.’ His tone was scornful. ‘You can demand nothing. Anyway, what are you? You are a bastard. You realise that? You are a bastard…Oh my God!’ He put his hand to his head and flung round from her. ‘You’re upsetting me.’ As quickly as he had turned from her he was facing her again, once more his hands outstretched: ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. But you make me say these things; and you never exasperated me like this before, you were so docile.’

  ‘I have never been docile. I’m not a docile person.’

  ‘Well, you were different when you were over there. You have changed.’

  ‘Me! Changed? Have you seen yourself?’

  A silence came between them; it fell like a heavy veil over them, and it seemed to emanate from his face. It was a figure of speech to say a person had a dark expression, but she saw that her husband’s countenance was definitely dark. Yet there was a white line circling his mouth. For a moment his face appeared like that of a dark devil. Then he was gone from her, the heavy mahogany door crashing behind him.

  She literally groped her way to his desk and dropped into the swivel chair. Then, putting her forearms on the big leather blotting pad, she was about to drop her face onto her hands when the movement of the chair caused her elbow to slip on the pad and knock against the brass inkstand and cause it to slide an inch or so on the polished surface.

  The well must have been freshly filled for some of the ink slopped onto the desk. So, grabbing at a small rocker blotter, she dabbed at the spilt ink; but this wasn’t quite enough to sop it all up.

  Quickly but carefully now, she lifted a sheet of blotting paper from the slots in the pad and used one edge to deal with the few remaining drops. This done, she was about to replace it when she noticed that there were at least two more sheets beneath, this to form a softer base on which to write; she did this with her own writing pad. Her hand paused and she put her head to one side as part of a name caught her eye on the lower blotter. It was, naturally, back to front but EVAR stood out in a large scrawling hand, then a squiggle, and the letters GSUM were quite plain.

  Marcel had only ever written her one letter and the writing was small and neat. When he signed his name in the register his signature had been small; and the letter he had written to Aunt Maggie had been in a small hand. But of course, you would change your style of writing when you wrote an anonymous letter, wouldn’t you?

  She stared at the letters; then turning her head sharply, she looked back down the room before she pulled out the blotter, folded it in four, and pushed it into the pocket of her dust-coat. Then, her whole body shivering as if from ague, she made her way back upstairs to her room. But she did not open up the blotter and look at it right away; she hung her coat in the wardrobe, went out of the room again and along the corridor and onto the gallery that overlooked the stable yard. And there he was, mounted, ready for a gallop. Hurrying back to her room again, she now took the blotter from her pocket, smoothed it out, then held it up to the mirror. And there she saw the word ‘Musgrave’, and before that she could make out the word ‘Frederick’, although it had other words blotted over it. Further up the blotter she made out the word, ‘Information’, then what she took to be ‘authentic statement’.

  Of a sudden she dropped the blotter onto the dressing table and, turning from it, she began to pace the length of the room. How right Freddie had been. How right Maggie had been. And how mad she had been. What had she done? What kind of a man had she married? One minute like a child, the next like a fiend. And those letters to the police. He had wanted Freddie out of the way. She must get across to Freddie. She must go home. But she hadn’t any money. It seemed impossible, but she hadn’t any money. And she had no-one to ask. That nice maid, Mary. Yes, yes, that’s whom she would ask. She rushed now to the dressing table, grabbed up the blotter, folded it into a small square, and put it in the bottom of her dressing case. And her hand was actually on the knob of the door when she heard her husband’s voice from the far end of the corridor, calling ‘Grant! Grant!’

  She was standing at the window looking out when the door opened and immediately his voice came at her, saying, ‘You’re coming riding.’

  She turned slowly and looked at him. ‘I am not up to riding. I don’t feel at all well. What is more I don’t like riding.’

  ‘You’re coming riding.’ He was striding towards her. ‘Do you want me to drag you out?’

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ She pressed herself back against the stanchion of the window.

  ‘Don’t dare what? Tell me what I mustn’t dare now. You have two choices: one, to come quietly downstairs and get on the horse, or, I drag you down by the scruff of the neck.’

  She watched him straighten himself up, push his shoulders back and say, ‘Do you know who I am, or don’t you know who I am? I’m somebody who must be obeyed. I am your husband. Now I shall count five, just five, in which time you will make up your mind.’

  ‘Oh dear God! Dear Father in Heaven!’ She found she was praying. At school, when she had been forced to attend certain services it had been, ‘Dear Father, keep me a good girl. Don’t let me hate Miss Rington. Oh, please Father, let me finish school this year. Persuade Aunt Maggie not to send me back.’ But now she was beseeching Him: ‘Oh, Lord, help me. Help me.’

  Slowly she walked past her husband to the wardrobe, and there she took down a coat and a form of bonnet with straps which she could tie under her chin, and with trembling hands put them on. Then, still without lo
oking at him directly, she went before him out of the room, across the landing, down the stairs, through the hall and into the lobby, and so out onto the drive where the breeze cooled the sweat that was running down both sides of her face; in fact, her body was running with sweat bred by her fear.

  It was Billy Martin the groom who helped her up into the saddle and put her foot into the stirrup before leading her horse forward until it was level with her husband’s mount. Then at a word from him the horses moved forward and they walked down the drive and onto a bridle path. They walked thus for almost a quarter of an hour, and he hadn’t spoken. Now he said, ‘Trot!’ and when he put his horse into a trot hers followed.

  He led the way through a narrow gap in a hedge and there, before them, was a wide hilly field, and perhaps because the horses were used to a routine once in the field they began to gallop.

  She didn’t cry out, but she hung on for dear life to the front of the saddle and was amazed when they reached the brow of the hill that she was still on the horse’s back.

  And apparently he was amazed too, for he said, ‘See what you can do when you try? Now if you do that every day for the next month you’ll be a horsewoman.’

  She made no response; and again they were trotting. When the horses went into another gallop she still hung on.

  They must have been out almost two hours, and when they returned to the yard she actually fell into the groom’s arms when he went to assist her out of the saddle. And she had to lean on his arm for support for a moment before she could make her hips move.

  She did not know how she managed the stairs, and her husband offered her no assistance; in fact he went before her and straight into his dressing room where his man was waiting for him with a hot tub ready as if he had timed his return.

  In her own room, she made straight for the bed feeling she must collapse onto it when Mary Chambers appeared at the dressing-room door. Her sleeves were rolled up and she had a large towel over an arm and, her voice different, she said, ‘When you were so long out, madam, I…we thought you might like a warm tub. It is ready at your pleasure.’

  Instead of throwing herself on the bed face forward, she slowly lowered herself down and, holding on to the bottom draped rail, she let out a long slow breath, then said, ‘Thank you, Mary. That will be very welcome.’

  A few minutes later, when she was partly undressed, Mary said, ‘You could sit in with your pantaloons and your camisole, madam, and I could massage your back.’

  ‘That…that is very kind of you, Mary, but…but I can manage.’

  The maid looked at her pityingly for a moment; then turning away, she said, ‘I hate horses, smelly things.’

  As Belle lowered herself into the long zinc bath she said almost aloud, ‘I don’t hate horses…it isn’t horses I hate.’

  She had made herself go down to dinner where she hardly touched any plate that was put before her. The first was a clear soup. She took three spoonfuls of it. Next, there followed rolled sole in sauce. She nibbled at this. But when there was placed before her a plate on which a small complete bird with a white frill around its stumped neck sat as if deep in a nest of varied vegetables, she felt she would vomit. She didn’t know whether it was pigeon, grouse, pheasant or wild fowl. She only knew she was disgusted by the sight of it and so pushed her plate away. But she had hardly done so when her husband startled even Benedict, who was pouring him wine, by bawling, ‘What is it, woman? Not to your taste?’

  She glanced from Benedict who was now approaching her, to Linda Everton who was at the sideboard and whose duty it was to help Benedict in the dining room, and the woman had turned and was looking at her. And when she forced herself to say, ‘I am not at all hungry,’ Linda hurried to the table and removed the plate, only to hear her master command, ‘Put that back!’

  The maid put the plate back and retreated to the sideboard. And now Marcel was yelling at Benedict, ‘Inform the cook that my wife doesn’t like her cooking. It’s inferior stuff, not what she’s been used to across the water.’

  She didn’t recognise her own voice for it was loud and harsh as she cried down the table, ‘Sir! Please conduct yourself.’

  It was hard to say who was the most startled in the room. Then, a most surprising thing happened. She watched her husband slowly rise from the table and as slowly walk down the dining room and go out.

  Benedict was now pouring wine into her glass and in a low voice he said, ‘The master is not well at the moment, madam. It will pass. Do try to eat a little. The pudding is light; it’s sponge.’

  ‘No thank you, Benedict. I want nothing more; but…I will drink a little wine.’

  She wasn’t fond of wine, but she drained the glass, telling herself she must be fortified in some way to help her through this day, for tomorrow, by whatever means, she would be gone. Oh yes, she was determined on that. As soon as he should leave the house, and a day never passed, she imagined, but he rode his horse, she would go, even if she had to walk all the way to the boat landing and then beg a keelman to take her across. She was sure most of them would know her, for had she not just recently made news in the newspapers?

  The meal over, she did not return upstairs because she was afraid to be alone in her room with him; instead, she went to the drawing room where she took up her embroidery frame and forced herself to sew.

  For two hours she sat, and no-one came near her, except Benedict who came in to see to the fire. But he himself did not build it up, he called Mary Chambers to bring in more coal and to blaze it with the ornamental blazer.

  She had been expecting a summons from the lady of the house but none had come. Supper was to be at seven-thirty, and so, some time before, she went upstairs, washed her hands and face, changed her dress, as was the custom, and returned downstairs to find herself the only one in the dining room.

  The supper consisted of hot broth, followed by a soufflé and a choice of cold meats, cold pie and cheeses.

  As Benedict placed the broth before her, he said quietly, ‘The master asks to be excused. He is eating with the mistress tonight.’

  She inclined her head towards him; then, as much to please him and the cook, she endeavoured to eat some of the meal; and she found it easier, with her husband being absent from the table.

  It was half past eight when she went up to her bedroom. The lamps were lit all over the house. She should have been saying to herself, ‘Doesn’t it look beautiful,’ but the whole place was now appearing to her like a decorated cage from which she knew she must escape, or her reason, too, would become affected…

  Was his reason affected, or was his change of character just temper, like that of a spoilt child? And he had been a spoilt child. She knew that now. That old woman must have indulged him from the day he came into her care.

  What she did when she reached her bedroom, and made sure by listening that he was not in his dressing room, was to put a few of her valuables she had brought with her into the dressing case. On top of these she placed a dress and some underwear, for that was all the case would hold. But she did not get undressed, for she did not want to take her things off and get into that bed; she would not be able to tolerate a repeat of last night.

  So it was that she was still fully dressed at half past nine when he entered the bedroom from his dressing room. She had heard him there for the last quarter of an hour or more, and so she had sat near the side table where the lamp was and pretended to read.

  He did not speak immediately he entered the room, but he stared at her till she raised her eyes and met his hard gaze.

  ‘You are not undressed.’

  ‘I…I don’t feel tired.’

  ‘It is time for bed…I am ready for bed’—he swept his hand down his dressing gown—‘so, undress.’

  She rose from the chair, slowly laid the book by the side of the lamp, then looking at him and in a quiet, even placating, tone, she said, ‘I was unwell this morning; the horse ride did not help. I…I would feel obliged if you would allow me to
sleep alone tonight. There is the couch in your bedroom…’

  So quickly did his hand come out and grab the front of her dress that she had no time to step back from him. And now he was actually shaking her as he said, ‘You telling me where to sleep! My wife telling me to get out of my own bed! We have scarcely been married a number of days. Get those clothes off, woman!’ The last words were uttered as he thrust her back towards the bed, and as she fell onto her elbow she turned and cried at him, ‘No! No! I won’t.’

  What happened next brought a loud cry from her, for he was actually tearing her dress from the neck downwards, ripping it from her body. It was belted at the waist, and he wrenched the buckle away from the band, and all the while she cried at him, ‘Stop it! Don’t! Leave me be! Please! Please!’

  She was swung round and thrown on her face. And now he was ripping the laces from the back of her corsets, and when she kicked out backwards he brought the side of his hand across the back of her knees and caused her to bury her face into the bedcover as she screamed.

  By the time he had her naked she was too exhausted to resist him further, but not too exhausted to cry at him, ‘You’re a fiend! I am leaving you. I am going home to Freddie tomorrow.’

  When his fists caught her one after the other between the eyes she screamed and fell back onto the bed. And then he was gone. She knew he had rushed from the room, but before she could pull herself upwards he was back standing over her, something in his hand, and through her blurred and tear-filled vision, she recognised that he was holding a razor strop. Freddie had one like that; it hung on a hook to the side of the fireplace and there was a little mirror above it. She could see him stropping the razor backwards and forwards; then his name was shouted down into her face, ‘Freddie! Freddie! You are going back to Freddie, are you? Not if I know it, madam, you’re not. Never. Never. Do you hear me? I’ll kill you first. You’re a slut. That’s what you are, a slut.’ When the strop caught her across her breast her screams mingled with his yelling: ‘Freddie! Freddie! Lusting after you and you throwing yourself at him. Don’t want to take your clothes off for your husband? But what did you take off for him?’ Again the strop descended; and now she flung herself onto her face and went to crawl over the bed, but one hand came on her neck almost pressing her face into the counterpane so that she could hardly breathe. But when a lash caught her across the shoulders her body jerked and she let out a higher scream and then another and another as the leather strop or the buckle tore at her flesh.