It had been already arranged that Jack should take her home on Sunday afternoon, but Molly could not deny her pleasure when Harry had announced firmly his intention of accompanying them. So these two escorted her to Linsey Grove, where Molly felt a mild lift of affection at the sight of Sam’s quiet pleasure at her homecoming, and a much stronger feeling of amusement to see that even Ellen Alden was susceptible to Harry’s charm. Sam hovered, fidgeting, in the background, his presence overshadowed both by Jack’s solid strength and by Harry’s slighter grace. To Molly he looked thinner and more awkwardly angular than before, and she sympathetically attempted to draw him into the conversation, but his stuttered monosyllables and obvious, painful shyness defeated the attempt and before long he excused himself and left them.
Later, when Jack and Harry had gone, and Molly, a little tiredly, climbed the stairs to her room, it was to find the fire ready-lit and, on the red-clothed table, a tiny vase of snowdrops from the garden; heralds of spring and as kind a welcome home as any words, stuttered or no.
Chapter Eleven
As the lowering, ash-grey skies of winter lifted and the buds of spring hazed green about the bare, pen-drawn line of twig and branch, Molly felt herself improving with every day. The brightness had returned to her face, her step was brisk again. She went back to Richmond and Co. and was greeted with pleasant fussiness by Mr Vassal and a cool lack of enthusiasm by Owen Jenkins, whose attitude conveyed with no doubt whatsoever that her weakness in falling prey to illness simply confirmed his original poor opinion of her.
But not even Owen Jenkins could depress her now. The weeks flew by, the year advanced, the sun rose higher and days lengthened. No longer did she leave home in bleak darkness and return long after night had again closed in on the world; spring drew fresh green from the earth, painted a high, pale sky. And for Molly, a country child who had seen the blazing beauty of every season many times over in the bright hills and soft valleys of Ireland, no season had ever seemed as lovely as this city spring which in truth barely changed the physical face of the world in which she now lived, but which for her sang in the air and in her own blood with equal vigour. She felt herself alive and happy, as if she had emerged herself from the earth into sunshine, as had the spring flowers.
Sundays lit the week like a beacon; and after the first few weeks she was too honest to try to pretend that it was simply her delight in the company of the whole Benton clan that made these days so precious. It was the possibility of seeing Harry, of being near him, watching him, arguing, laughing. Not that she did not love them all. Her affection for Sarah would never waver, she looked on her as a mother; Nancy was a friend whose companionship she cherished; Edward with his cherub’s face and mischief of the devil in his eyes she loved dearly. Charley treated her as he did Nancy, with a warm and sometimes patronizing brotherliness – he was courting now and his attention was for the moment concentrated wholly upon a young lady who did not, unfortunately, appear to be over-impressed by it. Only Jack seemed a little reserved with her, and Molly found herself wondering if he approved of her as wholeheartedly as the rest of the family seemed to; for though his quiet smile and few words were never less than civil, of all of them he was the only one in whose company she sometimes felt a little awkward and ill-at-ease, an outsider again, although she was certain this was never his intention. Catching the intense blue of his eyes upon her she once or twice wondered if Harry had spoken of what she had told him of Danny and Sean, if, perhaps, Jack misunderstood and in his capacity as head of the family he saw in her a threat. She hoped not.
She never mentioned her family at all, and no one questioned her; in fact as week followed week the thought of them dimmed and she discovered that even the aching memory of Sean was easing, as the bright colour fades from a pressed flower. She felt it happening, and after a while understood why; Harry again. She faced the thought squarely and finally on a Sunday morning in April when she had arrived at the Bentons’ to discover that Harry had stayed with a friend overnight and would not be coming home at all that day. She was totally unprepared for the way in which the light seemed to seep from the day at the thought of the long hours without him. There had been other times when he had been out, and when he was at home he did not always spend his time with her; but on those other occasions that he had been expected home she had, half-unconsciously, been able to listen for his returning step, his lifted, laughing voice, and then simply to know that he was there had been enough. To discover his absence unexpectedly and to endure it for the whole day was like a physical blow; a complete week, a lifetime to wait before she would see him again. The strength of her own disappointment astonished her.
That afternoon as she walked with Nancy through the April gardens of West Ham Park she was singularly quiet, but as it happened, the customarily observant Nancy noticed nothing. Nor for her part did the quite frequently unobservant Molly notice that her friend had little to say – although later, when the time came for Molly to walk to the bus stop to catch the evening bus home she was startled from her own preoccupation when Nancy excused herself from walking with her, as was their habit, on the grounds that she was going to church. Molly opened her mouth to question this unusual circumstance, then noticing Sarah’s raised and expressive eyebrows and Charley’s smothered grin, to say nothing of the defensive colour that had risen in Nancy’s fine-boned face, she shut it again, unwilling to embarrass the other girl.
That evening Molly sat for a long time in her bow window watching the sun as it dropped in a glow of apricot from the sky and she admitted at last to herself that her feelings for Harry were neither purely friendly nor in the least brotherly. As the short evening spent its light and darkness shadowed the streets below she tried to bring to sensible order emotions that were an absurd tangle of elation and desperate misgiving. She could no longer deny the enormous physical attraction that Harry exerted upon her. She could call to mind now, as clearly as if he were in the room, the texture of his skin and hair, which always made her want to reach and touch it, the set of his head on the wide, strong column of his neck, the strength of sweeping bone beneath the dark skin, the bright arrogant blue of his eyes within the shadowed, almost girlish lashes. Even his flaws for her simply enhanced his attraction; his mouth, a little too hard, a little too selfish, the sudden, flaring temper that reminded her so much of her own father – as did the occasional self-centred blindness that made him seemingly unaware of the feelings of others. What mattered beyond the warmth of his smile, the light-muscled strength of his body? She was surprised at how much she knew of him; the way he moved, the way he sat, the various tones of his voice, all were stored in some mysterious memory of which until now she had been hardly aware herself. Above all she was astonished at her own reactions to the thought of him, at the restless stirring of her nerves, the until-now unknown feeling of physical weakness that swept her. Nothing she had felt for Sean had been like this; his presence had been a comfort, a reassurance and a promise for the future; there had been no spark of danger, no hurt, no threat of harm as somehow she sensed in Harry. In him was a restlessness that would not be stilled by love; of all things, Molly was certain of that As night slipped unnoticed through the window and filled the room about her with shifting dark, Molly brooded upon the almost obsessive excitement in Harry’s voice when he had spoken of his friend the Fenian; she remembered the usually shaded and often lazy eyes wide and lit with intolerable excitement in that split moment before her own distress had reached him as she spoke of the deaths of Danny and Sean. She could have found Harry’s like at any clandestine meeting of her father’s. Not so beautiful, perhaps, and hardened by vastly different circumstance, but the same, and she knew it. She pulled a wry face at the irony, and shifted in her chair, suddenly aware of stiffening muscles and a chill in the air. It was full dark now, and becoming cold; her fire had died to glowing embers.
She drew the curtains, pulled back the bedclothes and began to step from her clothes, folding them carefully as she a
lways did, shivering as the cold air crept to her skin. Down to her drawers and corset she reached for her voluminous nightdress. The flash of her movement in the mirror caught her eye; she stood for a moment, the nightdress in her hand. Faintly she could see her own reflection, white skin, white clothes, wide eyes silvered by the dying fireglow. Almost without volition she dropped the nightgown back onto the bed and walked without taking her eyes from her reflection to the long mirror, where, slowly and deliberately, she unlaced the corset, stepped out of the drawers and stood naked in the dim light, staring at herself, a fierce excitement rising in her, warming her chilled skin as she stared at the stranger in the bloodily fire-lit glass.
The stranger stared defiantly back.
For moments she stood so before, shivering and with sudden angry movements, she dragged her nightdress over her head and hurried into the cold bed.
* * *
It was a couple of weeks later, during the planning of the promised outing to Epping Forest, that Nancy’s secret came out.
It was early May. The weather had warmed and settled and Charley announced triumphantly that he had arranged with a friend to borrow a horse and cart that would carry all of them and a picnic to the glades of Epping the following Sunday.
“The Forest!” Edward’s eyes looked as if he had seen a vision of heaven. “All day?”
“That’s right, our kid,” Charley said, swinging him round with easy strength. “Coming?”
“Mind the lamp, Charley,” said his mother mildly. “You’ll brain the child. And how many mouths am I supposed to be feeding on this famous day out?”
Charley sat Edward on the table, perched beside him, counting off on his fingers.
“Well, there’s you and our kid, Nancy and Molly, Jack and Harry, me, Bill’ll have to come of course, since it’s his cart and—” he paused.
“And?” his mother asked, smiling.
“Well, I did wonder if Annie’d like to come—” Charley’s patient courtship of Annie Melhurst had over the past couple of weeks finally shown some signs of success. His not altogether altruistic motives for organizing a day in the wilds of Epping Forest dawned on them all at about the same moment and there were several broad grins in evidence.
“Not that you’ve asked her yet?” asked Sarah, straightfaced and innocent.
“As a matter of fact – I did – well, mention it to her—”
“And?”
He grinned. “Count her in. Wait till you meet her, Mam, you’ll love her.”
“So that’s—” Sarah counted “—nine?”
“That’s right.”
“I hope it’s a big cart.”
“Big enough to take another half a dozen. Anyone want to invite anyone else?” The question was casual.
“I might.” Nancy’s voice, very small, drew every eye in the room to its bright-faced owner. “That is, I don’t know if he’ll—”
“He?” Harry was staring at her in astonishment. “He who?”
“He who she’s been going to church with every Sunday, thickhead,” Charley was shouting with laughter. “Hell, Harry, you’re blind as a bat sometimes. He who walks her home from work and leaves her at the corner so that he doesn’t have to face her wild brothers. He who—”
“Charley, that’ll do.” Sarah’s eyes were sympathetic upon her daughter’s unusually rosy face. “I don’t hear anyone tormenting you about your Annie. What do you think, Nance? Would he like to come?”
“He might. I’d like to ask him. I’ve been meaning to bring him home, but it’s difficult; he’s rather shy, and—” She looked at Charley, who snorted and was silenced by a glance from his mother.
“Well, I think you’re right, this seems as good a chance as any for him to meet us all, if he can stand it. So that’s ten, with Nancy’s young man. Let’s hope the sun shines.”
Molly smiled absently, her eyes upon Harry as he leaned forward teasingly to his sister. A day, a whole day in the forest. What did it matter if the sun shone or not?
* * *
As it happened the sun did shine, spasmodically, but enough to deck the day in brightness and to further lift spirits that were already flying like kites in a spring wind. They gathered at the door, waiting for the cart: Molly, Sarah, Edward, Jack, Harry, Nancy and her young man, two enormous picnic baskets and a pile of cushions and blankets. Charley had already left to collect the cart, his friend Bill and his even more important friend Annie. Edward was beside himself with excitement; he talked incessantly of Charley’s promise that he should ride on the driver’s bench with Bill, dashed backwards and forwards from the doorway getting under everyone’s feet, waving enough of an assortment of bats and balls to stock a shop. Molly smiled at him, herself aglow with happy excitement. She had lived on penny pies for a week and on the proceeds had bought herself a new straw boater decorated with a wide scarlet band and a bunch of shining cherries, and the unrestrained approval of the assembled Bentons – especially Harry’s – as she had walked through the door with the early summer sunshine had given this special day the right start. Nancy too had a boater, hers garlanded with marguerites, the same flower that she wore in the lapel of her dark blue jacket She looked more soft and feminine than Molly had ever seen her; she had done her often somewhat severe hair differently and her cheeks were flushed becomingly. As they stood at the door Molly took the chance covertly to study the young man who was the obvious cause of her friend’s transformation. Joe Taylor had surprised Molly when she had first met him; the immediate impression he gave was of cold and rather humourless severity. He was slight-built and had a thin, regularly featured, rather handsome face. He rarely spoke, had a somewhat forbidding smile, and Molly could not rid herself of the feeling that although he was with the excited group in no way was he a part of it, that he viewed the proceedings as frivolous and lacking in dignity. Then she shrugged her hasty judgement aside. It was hardly fair to jump to such conclusions; the Bentons could be a little overwhelming under calmer circumstances than these.
“They’re here! Here they are.” Edward’s shriek echoed and re-echoed down a street lit with scudding sunlight and drifting cloud-shadow. Around the corner plodded a great black-and-white carthorse with enormous silk-fringed hooves and a mane gaily plaited with ribbons exactly the colour of the cherries on Molly’s new hat. Behind him rolled the cart, a wide farm wagon brightly painted with fruit and vegetables, the flat platform sides overhanging the wheels, the driver’s bench high in the front over the body of the cart. Three grinning figures were perched on the bench: the driver – who could only be Bill, an enormous figure in flat cloth cap and a jacket of the loudest check Molly had ever seen – and Charley, who had his arm around the waist of a girl as tall and thin as a bean stick and who had a face like a flower and a mop of bright red hair.
“Well, well,” Harry said softly, admiration in his voice and in his eyes as he looked at Annie Melhurst. “Looks as if our Charley’s done it this time. That ’un’ll keep him in order right enough.”
When the cart had rolled to a halt outside the door, there was a flurry of introductions and squeals of excitement. Charley swung tall Annie as if she had been a child down from the driving bench and sat her in the corner of one of the two long benches that had been set along the sides of the cart, then vaulted down to join her. He reached a huge hand and hauled Nancy up beside him, nodded in friendly fashion to Joe, who with neat and economical movements swung himself over the tail of the wagon and settled himself straight-backed next to Nancy on the end of the bench. Jack had already set Edward beside the driver and before he climbed up beside the child he lifted Molly onto the other bench in the corner opposite Annie and helped Harry to steady Sarah as she climbed a little stiffly into the cart. Then up came the baskets, the blankets and the cushions which were distributed amongst the passengers to stuff down between themselves and the hard wooden sides of the cart. Harry was the last to swing aboard, pulling up and fastening the tail of the cart behind him before he settled him
self next to Molly. He wriggled for a moment, as if in discomfort, put his hand behind him and with apparently enormous effort brought out a huge turnip which he looked at with comically astonished eyes.
“Tell you what, Bill—” Harry said to the driver, who turned, grinning, “—I’m damned glad you’re not a fishmonger.”
The roars of laughter that greeted this were out of all proportion to the joke. Jack, smiling, turned from his perch on the driving bench, counted heads and baskets, asked “All set?” then waved a hand. “Off we go.”
As the cart jerked into motion Harry reached a casual, steadying arm around Molly’s shoulders. Ignoring Nancy’s knowing, happy eyes, Molly smiled.
The day stretched ahead of them like a promise.
They rode laughing through the streets to London’s forest, following unknowing in the wake of lords and ladies, kings and queens, huntsmen of bygone days; and no company before them could have been gayer. Talking, laughing, even sometimes singing, they made their swaying way through streets that became less familiar as they moved further from home, their merriment drawing smiling glances from passers-by. Even Joe Taylor unbent enough, Molly noticed, to pass a civil word with Harry; and as for Charley’s Annie, by the time they had gone a mile they all felt as if they had known her all their lives. She had the readiest tongue that Molly had ever heard, and a down-to-earth wit and infectious laugh that was impossible to resist. Charley beamed, obviously gratified, his arm around Annie’s shoulders, unable to get a word in edgewise and loving every moment of it.
When they finally reached Epping there was a lively argument as to how far into the forest they should venture, and where to stop. In the end Bill guided the creaking wagon down a rutted track and a little way into the woodlands before rolling to a halt in a fair-sized glade unoccupied by any other Sunday picnickers.
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