by Pat Herbert
Daydreams were all very well, of course. Wandsworth was also convenient in other ways, particularly as a pecuniary consideration. When she had explained to Richard that she was in no position to afford somewhere else to live, he had coughed up. But it hadn’t been enough, at least not for what she saw as her right.
“That is all you can have from me, Olivia,” he had told her. “You must cut your coat according to your cloth from now on.”
Her little flat was in no wise as pleasant as her previous home, but it just needed a woman’s touch, that was all. Or at least that was what she told herself as she stared around its bare four walls. The view from the living room looked out over the Common, which was useful. It meant that if she saw Richard approaching, she had enough time to prepare herself to meet him halfway. He need never be aware that she had been standing behind the curtain waiting for him.
A little cry brought her back to the present. She looked at the restless child in the crib and tried rocking it. It only made the child cry the louder. He was obviously missing Alice who, she supposed, was being fitted for her wedding gown at that very moment. How selfish some people were, she thought. There was only one thing left to do.
Wrapping the crying child in a blanket, she set off across the Common, unaware that Richard Latimer was at that moment making his way to her new address. Stopping on the corner of the street, he was in time to see her strike out across the Common and saw the writhing bundle in her arms. What was she up to, he wondered. Where was the perambulator he had bought her? Alice had always taken Humphrey’s child out in it, so why wasn’t Olivia making use of it? He began to be concerned.
He was in two minds whether to follow her. The last thing he wanted was for her to catch sight of him. She might jump to the wrong conclusion that he still cared for her. Or was it the right one? But there was no time to analyse that question; he had to move fast. It was a pity he had dispensed with Jonah’s services, but what was done was done. He would have to be his own detective now. So, keeping at a safe distance, he began to follow her.
Chapter Seventeen
May 1895
Hannah Downing listened to her husband’s mutterings for as long as she could stand it. “What is the matter, Humphrey?” she demanded, “are you going to grumble all day? If she won’t give up her baby to us, what else can we do?”
Hannah Downing had accepted the fact that Olivia hadn’t been prepared to give up her baby to them, but her husband had not.
“But it’s my baby!” was his anguished cry. “Mine!”
“Yes, dear, you do not need to drum it in. It is all your fault. You and your peccadilloes. I have been patient; you cannot say I haven’t.”
Humphrey, who had been pacing up and down the parlour in anger, stopped mid-pace. It was so unjust, so unjust. He was the baby’s natural father, and he had a right to adopt it. All right, so his wife was in her rights to condemn him for fathering a child in an adulterous relationship, but he knew, deep down she wanted the baby just as much as he did.
He remembered how she had cried when she told him about her visit to Olivia at the end of last year. The baby had still to be born, but Hannah had been sure she could persuade Olivia to give it up. But she had been wrong. Olivia had told her in no uncertain terms that if she ever did give up the child, the last person she would give it up to was the wife of her lover. And certainly not to the father himself. She would rather drown it in the Thames.
Now, so many months later, they were still arguing about the child, which they knew was a boy, courtesy of Richard. From what he had told them, Olivia was no natural mother, leaving the looking after to her maidservant. That had been too much.
“Surely we can find a way of getting custody of the child now?” said Humphrey. “She cares nothing for the poor mite. Not according to your brother.”
Hannah sighed. “Look, dear,” she said patiently, “we must wait and see what happens. All may be well yet. Now that this maidservant has left her to get married, Olivia will have the looking after of the child herself, and I can’t see her being happy to do that. You wait and see, Humphrey. Just wait and see.”
He was about to reply when Richard Latimer entered their parlour unannounced. They could see at once that something was very wrong.
“What is it, Richard?” asked Hannah, alarmed. “You look worried.”
“I am worried – very worried,” he replied. “I bring you some important news regarding the child.”
“Yes?” said Humphrey eagerly. “Tell us.”
“She’s taken him to the orphanage in Priory Road.”
There was a stunned silence.
“That cannot be true!” Hannah declared, breaking it. “She wouldn’t have done that. Not to an orphanage when he has his own natural father ready and willing to take him! How could she?”
Richard sighed. “Oh, she could, Hannah, dear. That woman is capable of anything. You should know that.” He stared meaningfully at his brother-in-law before continuing. “I saw her with my own eyes leave the poor thing at the door of the orphanage.”
“Then why didn’t you pick it up and bring him here?” demanded Humphrey.
Richard sighed again. “I was about to do just that, but I had to wait until Olivia was out of sight. And by the time she had disappeared around the corner, some woman had taken him inside. I’m sorry.”
Hannah suddenly smiled. “There is no need to be sorry, Richard. This is the best news we could have. All we need to do is go to the orphanage and offer to adopt it. They can hardly refuse a respectable couple like ourselves, especially as Humphrey is the natural father anyway. We will go straightaway. When did she leave the child?”
“This morning. I came straight here to tell you.”
“Very well. Then let us lose no time.”
“I wasn’t on duty this morning. It must have been Miss Drew.”
Hannah and Humphrey, accompanied by Richard, stood at the door of the orphanage at two o’clock that same afternoon.
“Then fetch her at once,” demanded Richard. “She will tell you that a baby boy was left here earlier today, and this gentleman here is the child’s natural father. He has come to claim him.”
“She’s gone home,” said the woman who had answered their ring.
Hannah stared at her and felt immediately sorry for the little ones under her care. She looked like every child’s nightmare vision of the wicked witch in ‘Snow White’.
“Where does she live?”
“I can’t tell you that,” snapped the woman. She jangled the bunch of keys that hung from her ample waist. “But I can tell you that I have full authority when she is absent.” She folded her arms under her ample bosom and seemed to grow a few more inches so that she almost loomed over them. “The child is in my care, and it is up to me whether or not I let you take it.”
It occurred to all three of them at this point that they had better try being nicer to this horrible woman. With one accord, they faced her with beaming smiles. Their smiles were not returned.
“So, what do you want?” asked the woman, jangling her keys once more, for all the world like an ominous jailer ready to take the prisoner to the scaffold.
Humphrey swallowed hard. “Er, miss, would it be possible to see the child? I am its rightful father, and I would like to take it home.”
The woman stared at him as if she suspected him of murdering children as a side-line. Hannah interposed. “I’m his wife. We are Mr and Mrs Downing, and this is my brother Richard Latimer. We are respectable people. We would like the baby to be delivered into our care, if you please.”
The woman turned her baleful stare on Hannah. It mellowed slightly as she said, “It’s no skin off my nose. It’ll be one less mouth to feed at any rate. You’d better come in.”
Chapter Eighteen
May 1895
“I followed her again, Sister,” said Richard the day after Hannah and Humphrey brought the baby home from the orphanage. They had spent most
of the previous afternoon thinking of a name for him and had finally settled on Ernest.
“He looks so earnest,” Humphrey had said, “his little face all screwed up and intent, looking at us like that.”
The name had suited him from the first. James or John wouldn’t have done at all.
“My little Ernest,” Hannah had cooed.
“You followed who again?” Hannah was only half listening. She was still cooing over baby Ernest. “Isn’t he beautiful?”
“Yes, yes,” said Richard dismissively.
Privately, he thought the baby was the plainest he had ever seen, although his experience of babies was fairly limited, with only his own child for comparison. In his eyes, Aubrey was far bonnier than this hefty Ernest. But, he supposed, he’d grow out of it.
Hannah looked up at her brother. “This is what I’ve always wanted, Richard. You know that, don’t you? A baby of my own. We’ll need a nanny now, of course.”
Richard chucked the child under the chin just to please his sister, then began again. “As I was saying, I followed her again.”
“But why did you do that, Richard?”
Richard tried to keep his patience. “Because – well, I thought she might have thought better of what she had done.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look, Hannah, I’m sorry, I can’t really explain, but I suppose I wanted to know why she had abandoned this poor creature.”
“Oh, never mind her motives,” said Hannah. “We have what we want and she, no doubt, has got what she wants: her freedom. Let us leave it at that.”
“I disapprove of her strongly,” he said, not wanting to let the matter drop. “How could she abandon her baby like that? You had offered to take it off her hands and she refused. I can’t forgive her for that.”
“If I can forgive her, then so can you,” said Hannah mildly. “I’ve got the baby at last; that’s all that matters. Doesn’t it, Ernest?”
The baby looked, for all the world, like he wanted to answer her but only managed a gurgle instead.
“So, let me ask you again, why did you follow that woman?” Hannah laid the baby in the wicker basket that provisionally served as a cot. Humphrey, meanwhile, was out buying a proper one.
“I told you,” he said crossly, “to see what she would do next.”
“And what did she do next?” she asked, rocking the basket gently.
“She went to the fair as if she didn’t have a care in the world,” he said. “The woman’s inhuman. She had just left her child to the tender mercies of that awful institution and was off flaunting herself at the fair!”
“So, Brother, she’s gone to the fair, so what?” If he’d told her she’d flown to the moon, she couldn’t have been less interested.
“I don’t like it, that’s all. It doesn’t seem right.”
“I suppose not. But we both know Olivia hasn’t got a maternal bone in her body. So, let her go her way and we can all go ours. Baby Ernest is safe with Humphrey and me, and that’s what is important.”
“Yes, I know, but she could have given you the baby of her own free will. She is a vindictive woman, as well as a wicked one. All right, so you have the baby now, but if it had been up to her, you wouldn’t. If I hadn’t followed her yesterday, we would never have known what she’d done with the child, and you wouldn’t have him now. Don’t you want to get your revenge by telling her to her face that you have her baby?”
Hannah mulled this over. “Well, Richard, it’s a thought and one I am not against in principle. But is it really worth it? Anyway, we know where she lives, so I can always go and confront her when I’m ready. If I can be bothered.”
Richard was deflated. He wanted an excuse to talk to Olivia again, even though he wasn’t sure why, and a day out at the fair with his sister and the baby would be very enjoyable. But Hannah seemed happier at home.
“Besides,” he tried again, “do you think she has the right to be enjoying herself? I mean, after what she’s put us all through?”
Hannah eyed him knowingly. “Come, Richard, aren’t you being a little hypocritical? You enjoyed yourself with her, I have no doubt.”
“What do you mean?” He looked flustered now.
“You know,” she said, her eyes firmly on the child she was rocking. “I don’t suppose you paid for her upkeep purely out of the goodness of your heart. And no doubt she was suitably grateful.”
He was about to say something, but she didn’t give him the chance. “Just be grateful that Beatrice hasn’t found out.”
“There’s nothing for her to find out,” he protested weakly.
“If you say so, Richard. If you say so.”
Just then, the baby began to howl, and Hannah called out for her maid. Relieved of the baby, she thought that maybe the idea of a walk to the fair wasn’t such a bad idea after all. And the sun was shining outside.
Five minutes later, she was accompanying her brother across the Common, heading towards the spring fair which they could see was in full swing.
“Shall we amuse ourselves at the coconut shy?” she said, as they entered the crowded fair.
“No, no, let’s see if we can find Olivia first.”
“It won’t be easy among all these people,” Hannah pointed out. “Besides, she will keep for another day, surely? I’m not in the mood for a confrontation, even if you are. Look around you at all these interesting booths and swings and things. Oh, and I’d like some candy floss.”
“Very well, but why not use this opportunity to talk to her? Then we can relax and enjoy ourselves.”
“Oh, Richard, let’s not bother with her. The sun is shining, and I want to forget her, at least for a while.” She stared at the great laughing effigy inside the glass case. “Look, if you put a farthing in the slot, he will dole out some sweets. Isn’t that fun?”
“But should she be enjoying herself at my expense?” Richard seemed oblivious to all the fun going on around him and didn’t seem to have heard his sister’s words.
“Oh, so that’s it! You can’t bear the thought of her spending money on this sort of frippery when it is coming out of your pocket. It was you who agreed to give her the money to set herself up in that flat. I suppose you knew she’d settle close to you, didn’t you?” Hannah was losing her patience.
“No, I didn’t know she would come here. I just want to talk to her, that’s all. Point out the error of her ways...”
“Oh, my, you are on a crusade,” she said resignedly. She took his arm and hitched up her skirt, noticing the ground was still muddy from last night’s rain. “Very well, let us find her then.”
They wandered through the crowds in search of the elusive beauty and were finally rewarded with the sight of her climbing into a carriage on the big wheel. Without a moment’s hesitation, Richard paid for two tickets and climbed into the carriage immediately behind Olivia, pulling his sister after him, ignoring her protests that she was afraid of heights. Soon they were up in the air looking down on the milling throng below.
“I am going to get even with that woman if it’s the last thing I do,” he muttered through gritted teeth.
“But how? What are you going to do, Richard?” Hannah stared down at the crowds below, now looking like so many beetles on the ground.
“She needs to be taught a lesson, that’s all. See, there she is in the carriage in front of us.”
As she stared at the back of Olivia’s elegant head, Hannah was suddenly filled with revulsion. Her brother was right. How could she abandon her child and go to the fair without a second thought? Suddenly, Olivia turned her head to look at them. It was a look of triumph as if she had just won a major prize. She was even more beautiful today with her cheeks flushed by the sun and the fresh air.
It was too much. How could they bear it? How could she bear it?
PART TWO
After
Chapter Nineteen
January 1959
Reverend Bernard Paltoquet
, the vicar of St Stephen’s parish in the borough of Wandsworth, was sitting at breakfast, his latest sermon propped up against the sauce bottle, when Mrs Harper, his formidable housekeeper, announced that the boiler had ‘packed up again’.
“Oh dear,” he sighed. “No hot water again, Mrs Aitch? I won’t be able to have my bath, will I?”
“Not unless you’d like me to break the ice on top of it,” declared Mrs Harper. “That plumber’s a waste of time if you ask me. It’s the second time ’e’s come and fixed it, or so ’e said. Keeps telling me we need a new one, but I told ’im that wasn’t going to ’appen. Not on a vicar’s stipend it wasn’t.”
“Well, no, Mrs Aitch, we don’t have that kind of money,” agreed Bernard worriedly. “But we need heating and hot water, so we must have something done.” He shivered. “It’s the middle of winter,” he added unnecessarily.
He was already feeling the cold even though the boiler had only just stopped working. The radiators were still giving out some heat although, to be fair, they were giving out more noise than heat.
“Well, what do you suggest?” enquired Mrs Harper frostily.
“We must ask the plumber to do what he can,” said Bernard, “just to get it working again. Then we’ll have to look into how much it would cost to get a new one.”
Mrs Harper sniffed. “Very well, Vicar, whatever you say. But I don’t think ’e knows what ’e’s doing.”
“I’m sure he knows enough, Mrs Aitch,” said Bernard, “more than you or I do, anyway.”
Nancy Harper sniffed again, making a clatter as she cleared away the breakfast things. “Oh, by the way,” she said, looking Bernard straight in the eyes as she prepared to return to her kitchen domain with the dirty plates, “will you keep that blasted cat of yours out of my kitchen? I ’ad to throw away a perfectly good batch of scones the other day because ’e’d walked all over them with ’is muddy paws.”