‘Oh, God, no. I’d be delighted,’ he insisted. ‘What about you? How would you feel?’ It was something which they had never discussed. Lucy and she were always bemoaning the fact that they neither of them had siblings and, in the past, had both said how they had wished at various points in their childhoods that that had not been the case.
Juliette shrugged. ‘Yeah. I’d like more, if it happens. I’m not in a mad rush, though. I’m enjoying us and Grace for now.’
‘Me too,’ he said. ‘I’ll get you that water.’ He kissed her on the lips and returned to the kitchen to get her drink.
‘Can I be cheeky and ask for a cup of tea?’
Morton turned to see Madge loitering tentatively in the doorway, almost as though she might not be welcome in the kitchen. ‘Of course—come in.’
She took a seat at the table and smiled. ‘I’m not a big alcohol-drinker, plus I’ve got to drive home later. This looks a lovely spread,’ she said, nodding to the food in front of her. ‘You have gone to a lot of trouble.’ She looked up at him. ‘Thank you for inviting me—it means a lot.’
‘You’re very welcome,’ he answered, feeling another pang of guilt about how he had almost not invited her. ‘You’re part of the family,’ he found himself saying cheerily, as he made the tea.
‘A much bigger family, so I gather from talking to Laura and Margaret.’
Morton stopped what he was doing. ‘What do you think my dad would have thought about it?’ The moment that the question had passed his lips, he regretted having asked it.
Time hung the question in the air for several seconds, neither of them speaking. ‘He found it difficult at first; I won’t lie. Do you remember that awful meal where you and Juliette came over and I got you into researching that old painting of Eliza Lovekin?’ Morton nodded at the memory. ‘He was just terrible to live with for days after that.’ Madge sighed. ‘Initially, when I asked what the problem was, he’d snap at me that it wasn’t right, what you were doing, but I kept telling him that it was perfectly right and inevitable that you should want to know your past. I felt like there was something more to it and, despite his fiery temper, I kept pushing. Eventually, after he’d returned from the club a little the worse for wear, he told me that it was guilt that he was feeling.’
‘Guilt for what?’ Morton said, ready to jump in and defend him against any self-imposed culpability.
‘He and your mum moved into their own home when you were born, but he went back to visit his own father, Alfred, from time to time—because you remember he was a widower. Once when he was round there—I don’t know how—but he found a letter from Jack to Margaret and it terrified him.’
‘What do you mean?’ Morton asked.
‘He thought that if Jack found out that he had a son, then he and your mother would lose you.’
‘God, really?’ Morton muttered.
‘So, he showed the letter to his father, who I gather was quite a strict, harsh man and together they agreed to intercept any further letters from America. I really think they thought that it was in everyone’s best interests…’
‘Wow…’ Morton said, trying to process the range of emotions that rose and fell on hearing this new information. On one level, he could understand how the possibility of further letters might have caused massive disruption to the family, but on another, the interference and invasiveness into Jack and Margaret’s privacy shocked him.
‘They wanted you so desperately,’ Madge added, ‘and couldn’t bear the idea of anyone taking you away. You’re a father now. Can you imagine someone walking in and taking Grace from you?’
He shook his head, all the while not appreciating the clumsy comparison that she was trying to make.
‘He was very proud of you, you know,’ she said, the second person to tell him as much in as many days.
‘He didn’t show it,’ Morton said glibly.
Madge shrugged. ‘He wasn’t that kind of a man, Morton—as you know.’
A small silence was invaded by a sudden procession of people, led by Juliette. ‘Come on, tuck in; it’s all got to go!’
Loud and diverse conversations came with the swelling number, who bustled around the table, loading up plates, with comments, questions and compliments about the spread. Shifting bodies obscured his view of Madge and he returned to making her a cup of tea.
‘Shall I get my own water, then?’ Juliette asked, playfully leaning up against him.
‘Sorry. I was just chatting to Madge. I’ll tell you all about it later.’
‘Sounds intriguing.’
‘Hmm,’ Morton murmured. ‘Revealing, would be the word.’
‘Isn’t it funny, seeing who’s talking to who?’ Juliette said, observing people as they filled their plates with food, then stood back to continue their conversations.
‘You’ve noticed it, too…’ He thought that he heard his name rise from one lively discussion between Margot and Jack on the far side of the kitchen. Margot said, ‘…and she actually hit the Prime Minister!’ Morton grinned. She was telling him about the research that Morton had conducted into her great-grandmother, Grace Emmerson, a formidable suffragette, after whom he and Juliette had named their daughter.
‘Everyone’s getting on well,’ Juliette commented. ‘Despite having empty glasses.’
Morton took the hint and went around the group topping up their champagne.
The afternoon progressed with the coming and going of other friends and neighbours. Morton tried to move around the group, speaking to each person on at least one occasion, although he was certain that some people had come and gone—including the new couple from across the street—without his having uttered a single word to them.
When the buffet had stopped being eaten, Juliette produced yet another birthday cake and they sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to Grace, before they all squeezed into the lounge and watched her opening her birthday presents.
Morton took several photographs of the occasion, very keen to immortalise the day forever. He then handed the camera to Lucy and asked her to photograph the family group. Switching to playback, he zoomed in to the image. In the centre were he, Juliette and Grace, a scene of relative normality. Beside Juliette was her mother, Margot. The further he pulled out of the picture, the more bonkers it became: his American biological father with his wife; his biological mother (who was also his adoptive aunt) with her husband; his half-brother, Jeremy (who was actually biologically his cousin, and yet more familial to him than his actual half-brother, George, who was at the edge of the image, frowning) and his Australian husband; and finally, his deceased adoptive father’s fiancée, Madge.
A perfectly normal family.
Chapter Twenty
15th September 1824, Aldington, Kent
Yet another smuggling run had ended in chaos. Since the arrival of the imperious Ramillies, stationed haughtily off the coast of Kent, many more runs had been postponed, delayed or intercepted. The summer months, when the hours of darkness were already too brief, were proving this year to be especially disastrous. Tonight’s run had cost them at least two men, and under half the barrels had made it back for safe storage in Aldington.
‘Everybody out!’ Sam roared, upon marching into the Walnut Tree Inn.
The landlord, Sam could tell, was about to raise a protest, whether owing to the removal of his few final customers or because he was about to close for the night, Sam didn’t know, or care. The landlord huffed, but said nothing, simply watching as the half-dozen customers sloped past Sam and out into the cool summer evening.
‘Pint,’ Sam ordered. ‘The men be coming, wanting their brenbutter and ale. You best get to work.’
The landlord pushed open the door behind the bar. ‘Rose! Be a-getting here dreckly-minute!’
Mournfully, like a funeral procession, the smugglers trudged into the pub. They were bone-tired, their smocks sodden wet with sweat and, for some unfortunate few, stained with blood. Of their own volition, there was no talking as they filed
in. Sighs of relief could be heard as the men found a place to sit down.
‘Your allowances be coming,’ Sam said not sufficiently loudly for any but those still traipsing through the door to hear. He watched as the landlord and his daughter scurried back and forth from the bar with glasses of beer and chunks of buttered bread and lumps of cheese. When the men had been fed and watered Sam would give them their dues. Tonight, he doubted there would be a single guinea of profit.
The last of the men—those who had been injured—staggered or, in the worst two cases, were dragged inside by their arms; their cries of agony made all the worse by the stillness of the bar.
‘God be damned,’ Ransley snarled, striding into the pub and drawing the attention of everyone. He snatched a pint from the landlord’s hand and thrust it with a violent jerk to his mouth, slopping the beer down his front, as he gulped and gulped until the glass was empty. He too was quiet for a moment, then shouted at Sam, ‘Where be that tarnal surgeon?’
‘He be sent for,’ Sam replied, unable to stop his gaze falling onto the worst of the injured men, John Brockman, biting down on a lump of wood, his thigh bone proudly protruding through his crimson galligaskins.
The door opened, and Sam smiled as Ann walked in breathlessly. She nodded at him briefly, then hurried to the wounded to put into practice that growing knowledge gained from working alongside Dr Papworth-Hougham on so many occasions. Sam observed her from behind as she crouched down, a lust rising inside him. He watched her with a yearning desire, wanting her more than ever. In the process of helping John Brockman, she turned, and the sight of her blood-soaked hands instantly curtailed his want.
The street door was pushed open with the gust of authority that preceded Doctor Papworth-Hougham. Wearing his customary blue coat and long black boots and carrying his red leather case, he bounded over to Ann, trusting her assessment of the priority of assistance for the injured men.
‘Amputation,’ Ann said, almost as an instruction.
Sam could see that she had already removed John’s trousers and placed a tourniquet around his upper thigh. The wound continued to bleed and give the man great distress.
The doctor pulled open the case and withdrew a shiny blade, causing John to resist the shackling grip of the two brawny tubmen who were holding him down. His eyes widened in terror and his head flicked ferociously from side to side as the doctor began to slice into his meaty thigh, which he pulled around the leg in a neat circle.
John issued a stifled scream, then passed out. At that same moment, a great geyser of blood spurted out into Ann’s face; she baulked but kept her position.
The doctor placed the bloodied knife to one side and Ann passed him a steel saw from his case. She parted the carved thigh flesh with two fingers, then he pushed the saw blade down into the gap until it met with the bone. Then, in a quick thrusting motion, he ran the saw back and forth until the leg detached and dropped to the floor. The whole procedure had taken no more than a minute, but to Sam, always morbidly fascinated by an amputation, it seemed to have taken much longer.
Sam turned from the macabre spectacle and moved over to talk to Ransley, who, in a quiet corner, seemed to have calmed somewhat. ‘There barely be enough money,’ he whispered. ‘Whatsay we be paying the men less?’
Ransley spoke through a glower. ‘Be paying what we owe,’ he said.
‘But what about money?’ Sam asked.
‘Happen the next few runs we be a-taking less men,’ Ransley suggested.
Sam nodded and obediently began to go around the room, offering the men their wages. Some stayed on and drank more, others left directly for the walk back home.
Within an hour, the injured men had been loaded onto carts and taken to their homes, their fate likely to be decided by dawn. Doctor Papworth-Hougham had taken a large brandy and then left on horseback for his home in Brookland.
‘G’night,’ Ransley mumbled, staggering out of the pub.
‘Night,’ Sam answered, taking a look at who was left. Only a pair of smugglers from the village—having drunk themselves to sleep—and Ann, slouched at the bar beside her third empty glass, remained.
Sam walked towards her, carefully stepping over the severed leg, ignored by everyone as though it might get up and walk out of its own will and placed his hand on her shoulder. ‘You be wanting another?’ he asked her.
Ann sat up and nodded. Her face was disgustingly comical. Her blue eyes, showing the effects of the drink, stared out from a face smeared almost entirely in John Brockman’s blood. It had matted her hair and stained her clothes, yet she seemed somehow oblivious to the gruesome fact.
‘Two pints of rum and water,’ Sam called across the bar. ‘And run a hot bath for this girl.’
The landlord nodded and disappeared momentarily out the back. Sam heard him talking, before he returned to the bar and served the two pints.
‘You be looking like the devil painted your face,’ Sam quipped.
‘Thank you, kind sir,’ Ann said with a drunken laugh. ‘It be meaning a great deal.’ She took a great mouthful of the rum and water and sighed with pleasure. ‘It be getting harder, don’t it?’ she said, a playful sparkle in her eyes.
‘What be?’
Ann raised one eyebrow and took a lingering swallow of the drink. ‘Smuggling,’ she finally answered.
Sam nodded. ‘I bain’t certain how much life there be in it.’ He heard himself saying the words that he had feared for some time but had not spoken. He worried for himself and for providing for his family. As he stared at Ann, though, he knew that part of his fear stemmed from the tacit question of what would happen to her. For a reason he could not explain to himself, he knew that she would not return to her previous life of criminal vagrancy.
‘What you looking at?’ Ann asked.
‘Where do you be going, Ann, when you be taking the coach to Dover every week?’
‘That be none of your business, Samuel Banister,’ she said with a heavy wink.
He smiled, accepting her answer with reluctance, then they drank together in amiable silence until the landlord burst from the back room with a loud snort. ‘The bath be a-ready,’ he said to Ann, then turned to Sam. ‘You be settling your bill tonight?’
Sam nodded and emptied his leather purse onto the bar.
‘That bain’t what we were agreed,’ the landlord said, having counted the money.
‘That be all I got,’ Sam replied, watching as Ann tottered through to the back room.
The landlord grunted something as he scooped up the money. ‘Be seeing yourselves out.’ He walked around the bar over to the two sleeping smugglers and banged his fists on the table between them. ‘Out!’ he barked. He moved quickly around the room extinguishing the tallow candles between his fingers. Without saying another word, he ventured through a side door and was gone. The two remaining smugglers wobbled out, leaving Sam sitting alone at the bar in all-but-pitch darkness; the only light the soft flickering flames of the open fire on the far side of the bar and the enticing yellow glow emanating from the open door to where Ann was bathing.
He finished the final dregs of his rum and water, then stood on his skittish legs, not knowing what to do next. He tried to pull sense from his sluggish and broken thoughts; he could just wait here for her to finish bathing, then walk with her back home. Or, he could yield to his returning desire and go to her. A third option, the one that he could feel his clearheaded-self pushing him towards, was that he leave right now and walk home alone.
Sam bent down and, inconsistent with his feelings, picked up the severed leg, carried it over to the hearth and tossed it onto the fire. He watched, briefly, as the long black hairs instantly tightened into tiny black curls before evaporating into a fizz. Sam caught sight of the toenails, each edged in black filth, before turning away as the repellent smell of burning flesh began to reach his nostrils.
His previous deliberation had softened and a decisiveness about what to do next had arisen. He walked, as if not qu
ite in control of himself, around the bar and into the back room.
Ann was there, in the dull and battered copper bath. Her face was clean now and her wet hair was trailing into the steaming water. She rolled her head in his direction but her face remained impassive; she simply stared at him, watching as his eyes ran down her body to below the waterline. Then, she stood up and turned to face him with a playful smile.
He watched, somewhat breathlessly, as the warm streaks of water trickled over the curves of her body. Her left hand reached out towards him.
Chapter Twenty-One
21st September 1824, Aldington, Kent
Ann was grinning proudly, mirroring the wide smile on Miss Bowler’s face.
‘Read it again,’ Miss Bowler suggested, nodding enthusiastically at Ann’s slate. It was a dictation, another of John Clare’s poems.
Ann looked down at her handwriting. It was a peculiar leaning script, the letters all of a different size, but it was legible, as Miss Bowler had insisted. Ann cleared her throat and sat up straight, holding the slate as she had seen Miss Bowler’s girls doing: ‘My loves like a lily, my loves like a rose, My loves like a smile the spring mornings disclose. And sweet as the rose, on her cheek her love glows, when sweetly she smileth on me.’
Miss Bowler clapped a tight neat little clap then took the slate from Ann. ‘We’ve got some work to do on apostrophes, but that is for another day.’
Ann nodded absentmindedly. She was focused on her slate, wishing that she could take it away with her to show everyone how far she had come. Here was solid proof that Ann Fothergill could read and write. But soon—any moment now—Miss Bowler would tell her to wipe it away and the evidence would be gone forever. Not that it mattered, really. Whom would she show? Nobody in the entire world but Miss Bowler knew of Ann’s lessons. She had almost told Sam and Hester at various points in the last year but at each time she had feared what would inevitably be their first question: why was she doing it? Ann did not have an answer and as much as she loved the lessons, she knew that the possibility of ridicule would be enough to draw them to an instant end.
The Wicked Trade (The Forensic Genealogist Book 7) Page 21
