He laid his cheek gently against hers for a moment but he could utter no words. He was choking with heartbreaking emotion, for the only thing he possessed in the world was about to leave him. From now on he would have nothing, no-one of his own. Those up there, even Amy, who had all become suddenly related to him, they were strangers. And the father he had found, what of him? He glanced towards the chest of drawers. That money, those five sovereigns. She had said, ‘That’s what was paid for you.’ Was that what he had paid her for his pleasure? If that was so he would one day ram them down his throat.
He started slightly when she said, ‘Goodnight, Joe.’
She never called him Joe, always Joseph, but he answered her, saying, ‘Goodnight, dear.’
‘I’ll sleep well tonight.’
‘That’s good.’ He leant forward and gently arranged the bedclothes around her shoulders, and then he sat back and waited…
It was five o’clock the next morning. He was in the kitchen making up the fire when the door opened and Douglas came in and he said immediately, ‘I’m sorry, Joseph. Mrs Filmore lay down for what she promised herself would just be an hour. I was to waken her. But I fell asleep, too. I’m terribly sorry. How is she?’
‘She died at a quarter past three.’
‘Oh God!’ Douglas put his hand to his head. ‘And you alone here. Oh, I’m sorry; and there’s been one or other of us here for the past week.’
‘Don’t worry. There was nothing you could do. Anyway, it was as I would wish it. She went in her sleep.’
‘Look, come on up to the house. I’ll get the girls to come down and do what is necessary.’
‘It’s all done.’
‘What!’
‘I’ve seen to her.’
Douglas’s face was screwed up, expressing a mixture of disbelief and astonishment, as he said, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t! It…well, I mean, it…’
‘She’s my mother. I’ve tended her for weeks, haven’t I?’
Douglas now stared at the young man who had somehow suddenly become strange and distant in his manner. But that’s what shock and bereavement did to people, so he said, ‘Well, anyway, come up and have some breakfast.’
‘Thank you, but I’m not at all hungry.’
‘Oh, very well. But…but there’ll be things to see to, the undertaker and…’
‘Yes. Yes, there will. But there’s plenty of time.’
‘Of course, of course…Well, Mrs Filmore will be down shortly.’…
Douglas was walking slowly up the drive as he told himself that shock played havoc with some people, but of course he knew it was coming, didn’t he? In fact she had lingered on longer than any of them thought she would. Yet the young fellow seemed strange, aloof, as if he were on the defensive. But what about?
He stopped dead. Had she told him? No. He shook his head. If she had, his attitude would have been entirely different. He could have imagined that he would have been pleased at the relationship; the fact that he was a full cousin to Amy wouldn’t have deterred him, no matter how it was deterring both Bridget and himself, Bridget even more than himself for she had always looked for traits of Lionel in him. He himself could honestly say that he had never glimpsed any. Yet, as Bridget said, you did not know what went on in another’s mind. But, oh, he’d be glad when the young fellow got himself away to Cambridge. That kind of life would likely blow the cobwebs off him and also obliterate his young love. Well, he hoped so, indeed he did. But then, thinking like that, what about Amy? What about her cobwebs? There was a great deal of Bridget in Amy, the determination to get to the bottom of anything, whatever the cost. Oh, dear, dear. And now there was the funeral to see to, although he would like to bet, from that young gentleman’s manner this morning, he would see to that, too, himself. Dear, dear! Life was trying at times. It would be much easier if one didn’t have offspring, just a wife, a wife like his dearest Bridget.
And then the question arose again, weighing him down: should he, or should he not have told her? He had thought if he could be alone with her just before she died then he would say to her. ‘You are right, Lily, your husband was innocent. My brother was the guilty man. But it was no use exposing him, because the man…your dearest husband, was already dead…’ But he had been unable to do so; the chance to be alone with her before she died had been denied him, for not once had he sat by her bedside: that vigil had been shared between her son and Bridget, relieved during the day by one of the maids. So, he shouldn’t blame himself because another factor to this business might have ensued: if she had had strength enough to respond to such news she might have passed the knowledge on to Joseph, and then what would have happened? He felt he knew: she would divulge his parentage.
Well, hadn’t that to come out sometime? But who was to tell him?
It was as Douglas looked into the grave that there swept over him, as in a wave of heat, a sense of regret so deep that it brought beads of perspiration out onto his brow, and in his mind he was shouting down to the elaborate brass-bound coffin: Oh, Lily, Lily, I’m sorry. I should have told you in order to make up for the years you’ve lived in sadness, merely existing. Over the past few days I’ve come to know how you must have felt for him. You suffered all your life for loving as I myself do. Yes I do, for love is a suffering because it’s threaded with fear, fear for your loved one, fear of being deprived of the fear itself. Oh, Lily, forgive me.
The clods were falling on the coffin. The people were moving away. Bridget was crying bitterly. As he took her arm he saw his daughter come and stand close to Joseph, and he stretched out his other hand and gently turned her about, leaving the young man standing alone by the grave…Joseph’s eyes were dry. He had shed no tears over his mother’s going, because all his emotions seemed to have gathered into a block inside his chest and become frozen, emitting a feeling that could only be compared with that of a winter chill.
As he turned from the grave and walked amidst the headstones to the path, he could see in the distance the carriage and the group around it. They were waiting for him, but he wished they weren’t; he wanted to be on his own.
As he stepped onto the path a man, who had been standing on the grass verge, approached him and, stopping in front said, ‘Hello, lad.’
Joseph looked at him in some surprise, not because the man had spoken, but because of his way of address. When he went on to say, ‘You don’t know me, but I was your ma’s half-brother. Me name is Mick Whitmore…Never heard of me?’
Joseph shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I’m sorry.’
‘No need to be sorry, lad. She always kept herself to herself. I can remember the day she left home to marry your dad. I was seven at the time. I can even recall that I missed her. We all missed her, me two sisters and me other brother. He was only three, and he died afore he was five. Me two sisters…well, they might be living in Timbuktoo for all I see of them, but that doesn’t worry me. They are both married and comfortable down in Yorkshire somewhere, and I’m married meself, and comfortable. Many’s the time I thought I’d look her up, but then she cut adrift and she was carrying her burden and I didn’t want to push in, nor me wife. It was a great pity about your dad because most people had a good word for him, apart from his mother. By! She was an old bitch. Well, she swore his life away, didn’t she? He would never have swung if it hadn’t been for her. But she’s got her deserts. She’s in the Gateshead workhouse now, I hear, and…’
‘What did you say about being…swung…?’
‘Well, you know, your dad. He’d only married Lily a matter of months…well, you know’—the man’s head was nodding now—‘he killed his brother. You must know…’ His voice trailed off and he said, ‘Oh! God Almighty! She never told you?’
Joseph made no sign, he just stared at the man who had suddenly become related to him.
‘Why? Oh, she should have told you that. But it’s a wonder somebody hasn’t thrown it at you, lad, knowin’ what people are. Well, you know, as I said, your dad was hung
for killin’ his brother and his mother stood up in court and said that she had heard him threaten him. Of course, I was only a bairn when this happened, but I heard it so often from me mother over the years that it could have happened yesterday, and you know, it was the people who took Lily in, at least, the man, Mr Filmore, who found the brother in the wood and he had just been talkin’ to your dad a short while before. ’Twas all a funny business. Eeh, lad, I wouldn’t have spoken about it if I had thought you hadn’t have known. It seems impossible, you know, that you didn’t, ’cos the owner of the factory where Joe worked, she married Mr Filmore, didn’t she? I mean, well what I understand is, you live in their lodge…and you mean to say they’ve never let on?’
The words came out slowly now as he said, ‘No, they’ve never let on.’
‘Eeh, lad, that’s funny, odd if you ask me. But mind, lad, there’s a lot of people, me ma included among them, who stood by the fact that your da had nowt to do with that business. It was one of Andy Davison’s lot, they said. ’Twasn’t him himsel’ because he was in hospital at the time, so I understand, but he had a lot of cronies, an’ they knew that your da’s brother had potched them from time to time. It was a nasty business. But oh lad, I’m sorry.’ His head now wagged. ‘And…and you don’t mind me makin’ meself known to you?’
‘Oh no. No, of course not.’
He had a father to whom he could make no claim, but now he had an uncle, or a step-uncle, who was holding out his hand to him. He took it, and the man said, ‘Look, I don’t want to push, never have, but if you feel like droppin’ in for a cup of tea anytime, we live at thirty-six Mount Pleasant Road, Birtley. I’ve got no family: there’s just me and the wife, but you’ll be more than welcome, lad.’
‘Thank you. Thank you. I’ll remember.’
They nodded at each other, and then the man stood aside and let him walk up the path to the square, where Douglas was standing by the coach.
Douglas did not enquire who the sympathiser was, nor did Joseph volunteer any information. He got into the coach and took his seat beside Bridget, opposite to Amy and her father, who was also his uncle, and he wanted to lean forward and say to him, ‘Why didn’t you tell me that my father was hanged for murdering a man?’ Then there sprang into his pain-ridden mind the thought: But he wasn’t my father; he was someone called Joseph Skinner, someone his mother had loved.
He lay back against the leather-padded seat and closed his eyes. Well, at least he wouldn’t have that on his mind, too. But why hadn’t they told him? The whole thing was like a spider’s web, and there in the middle was the spider and the spider was his father. He must see him. He must look on him even if it be only from a distance.
Three
They were in the kitchen of the Lodge when Amy asked, ‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m going to visit my newfound step-uncle.’
‘Oh. The man who you were talking to in the cemetery?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where does he live?’
‘In Birtley.’
‘How long will you be away?’
Joseph looked into the large brown eyes, thinking, Strange, but I’m really on an equal footing to you, class-wise, now, even if I am really a bastard. Your father is my uncle. No step here. You are my full cousin. This being so, you would have thought, now that we are coming out of the dark ages of dear old Victoria, that they would see the situation in an enlightened fashion. But no, we are still in the status quo.
He answered her now, ‘I don’t know.’
‘There’s only a week before you go up to Cambridge.’
‘Yes, that’s true, only a week.’
She took a step towards him, saying quietly, ‘I know how you must be feeling, but…but don’t push me out.’
‘Please, Amy.’
‘There you are, you see.’ She tossed her head to the side. ‘That’s what I mean. That’s all we’ve got out of you, any of us, for days now, two words: Thank you. No, thank you. Yes, perhaps. And now it’s, Please, Amy. As I said, I know how you feel in losing Lily, but the way you’re going on you’ll lose everybody. Yes. Yes, you will.’ She was shouting now. ‘And me!’
Her statement seemed to have shocked her into immobility, for she stood stiffly, her mouth half open, staring at him, and as he stared back at her he was saying loudly in his mind, Oh, no, Amy! No! I won’t lose you. But there are things I must do, things I must get to the bottom of before I let myself go where you’re concerned.
Why should he suddenly feel old? A few weeks ago he had been looking forward to the time when he would go to Cambridge and enter a new way of life; that was before he realised the seriousness of his mother’s illness. Even then, there was still the light shining in the distance; but not any more; the feeling in him now was that there would be no more school of any kind for him.
Amy’s turning away brought him back to the situation, and he said, although now more out of politeness than of interest, ‘Where are you going?’
She was at the door now and she turned round and snapped, ‘Not the same place as you’re going finally, and that’s nowhere and achieving nothing. And I’ll tell you something more: I’m finished throwing myself at your feet. If there’s any kneeling to be done in the future it won’t be coming from me.’
The door was closed with such a bang that for a moment he screwed up his eyes against the sound. Then he sat down in the wooden chair by the table on which his breakfast things still remained and, holding his head between his hands, he swore aloud…
When Amy entered the hall it was to see her father and mother going up the stairs, and they both turned and looked down at her. ‘You were talking about going for a few days to Harrogate,’ she said, and Bridget answered, ‘Yes, dear, we were.’
‘All right.’
‘You would like to go?’
‘Well, what am I saying? Yes! Yes, I would like to go.’
Another time Douglas would have retorted quickly, saying, ‘Remember to whom you are speaking!’ But a tight grip on his arm turned him about, and they proceeded up the stairs and not until they were in their bedroom did Bridget speak, when she said, ‘Chastising will not help at this stage. He’ll be gone next week and she’ll have weeks to cool down. We’ll have to arrange theatres and trips and…’
‘I think he should be told, at least what is necessary at the moment.’
At this, two thoughts clashed in her mind: the first that the road would then be open to him; he would no longer class himself as inferior, the son of a servant. He would see himself as Amy’s equal, in status anyway; that his mother had been a servant would no longer carry any weight. Then the second: why did Douglas always seem to suggest that there was something more than the boy’s parentage to divulge? Right from the time of his nightmare she had felt there was something worrying him at the back of his mind, especially so when he had called out Joe’s name.
However, her main concern now was her daughter and her happiness. She could see no happiness for her married to the son of Lionel Filmore; and Douglas was of the same mind. This she knew, but here he was saying that he was going to tell Joseph of their true relationship.
She said quietly, ‘I…I would leave it for a time. It might be too much coming on top of Lily’s going.’
Douglas thought for a moment, then nodded at her, saying, ‘Yes. Yes, it might, but it should be soon because it’s beginning to worry me and the fact that we’ve kept it from him for so long. It will be no use telling him that Lily wanted it that way.’ He then asked, ‘How long do you intend we should stay in Harrogate?’
‘Well, we have the weekend and perhaps we could return on Tuesday or Wednesday.’
‘Better make it Tuesday at the latest. There’s quite a lot of work in and…’
‘Oh! You and your work.’ She went to him and put her arms around his neck and as she did so he said, ‘And you, too, missis, you and your work, opening another polish factory. I’ve never heard of such a thing.’
‘It’s going to be modern, right up to date. I’ve told you, you should come through and see the sight and…’
‘You know what I feel about factories of any kind. Why don’t you sell the lot?’
‘Oh’—she pushed him away from her—‘d’you want to break my heart? What would I do with my days when you’re stuck down there with your lumps of stone? I do finish at a decent hour and some days I don’t work at all; but you, it’s seven days a week with you. So, don’t you tell me, sir, to sell my pet hobby.’
He put his head back now as he laughed and repeated, ‘Pet hobby, and you competing with some of the big names in the city. D’you know you are actually feared in some quarters?’
‘Oh, yes, yes, I know that, and that’s how I want it.’
‘Oh my dear.’ His voice dropping to a lower tone, she turned and looked at him as he went on, ‘Nobody would believe there are two distinct women inside you.’ She moved towards him and again she had her arms around him and his around her, and she said, and also softly, ‘And no-one would believe that it’s only because I live with a wonderful man who makes me feel, as I never felt before in my life until I met him, like a girl.’ Her head dropped back and she laughed, adding, ‘That’s why I daren’t look in the mirror very often, because it would give the lie…’
Her words were cut off by his lips tracing each feature of her face, and when they came to her mouth she returned his kiss as passionately as when their mouths had first met on that New Year’s morning.
Four
He had taken the train from Shields to Gateshead. He had been in the town a number of times before when, together with Amy, he had accompanied her mother on a tour of the two factories. The first visit had been when he was quite a young boy and the impression it had left on him was that of a dark, dusty and dirty place. It wasn’t until he was in his teens that he became critical in his mind of the conditions under which the people worked. He was given to understand that there had been great improvements made over the nine years in both the machinery in the factories and the conditions of the workers. It must be two years ago since he last visited the polish works with Amy and her mother, and what became evident to him on that occasion was there were two Mrs Filmores: one who talked business like a man, he imagined; the other the doting wife and mother and lady of the house. Now, as he passed Honeybee Place, he noticed that some of the houses were being knocked down, and not before time, he thought.
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