by Nancy Carson
Arthur nodded pensively. ‘Thank you, Mrs Hawkins … I’m sorry to have burdened you with that, but there’s nobody else I can talk to.’
‘As long as it’s helped.’
‘Yes, it’s helped. And I’ll think about it some more. Thank you.’
Sadly, she watched him go. She knew he was going to the Chadwicks’ house to spend the night before he returned on Sunday to his mother’s tender mercies and his new venture in Brierley Hill. She hoped he would return to Bristol regularly to visit her, despite Dorinda. On the other hand, she hated the thought of him being married to that vain, idiotic girl. Men were such fools where a pretty face was concerned, but their folly was not necessarily chronic if the girl had no heart and no common sense. She wished Arthur could meet somebody else. But preferably not a widow with children already.
That same Saturday evening, the Chadwicks wanted to make an event of it, to mark Arthur’s departure, and they had a substantial dinner with some decent wine, and all became quite merry. Arthur was due to catch his train when he’d had his Sunday dinner the following afternoon. Dorinda decided to walk with him to Temple Meads, and would take a hansom back to the family home in Bedminster.
‘It’s always a benefit to the system to have a walk after Sunday dinner, I always think, Arthur,’ Dorinda chimed as they strolled alongside the New Cut approaching the station. ‘It helps my digestion recover in time for tea. If I don’t, I find myself thrust upon my tea before I’ve forgotten my dinner, and there always seems something indecent in that …’
‘I don’t suppose I shall get any tea,’ Arthur ruminated morosely. ‘I’ll still be on the train.’
‘It wouldn’t hurt me to do without it either. I think I’ve eaten quite enough for one day already. I have to think of my figure.’
‘Yes, I think of your figure quite a lot as well,’ Arthur said experimentally, effecting a gleam in his eye.
‘Oh, well, we know what you are thinking, don’t we?’
‘I daresay we do, and what’s wrong with that?’ He looked at her with annoyance over her predictable response.
‘Well, thinking can do no harm, I suppose. It’s the doing that causes the problems. And there’s not much chance of you actually doing anything.’
‘Shall I come to Bristol next week?’ he asked, changing the subject. ‘Or would you like to come to stay with Mother and me?’
‘Oh, I’m not going to stay at your house, Arthur. The place gives me the creeps, it’s such a shambles. I’m sure I should pick up fleas. I hardly slept last time I was there, wondering how long it had been since that bed I was made to sleep in had been changed.’
‘It was changed just before you arrived,’ Arthur answered defensively, cut to the quick at her contempt for his home. He was well aware their house was no palace, that it was unkempt, but it was not up to Dorinda to say so, and she should show more tact. He could say what he liked about the place, but she could not, and she should not take for granted that she could.
‘Well, it didn’t seem like it,’ she went on. ‘If you want me to stay there again get your mother to clean the place up. Or employ a maid to do it. I’m sure you can afford it. I shan’t come otherwise.’
‘The trouble is, Dorinda, I don’t think I can afford to travel to Bristol and back every week. Not if I’m trying to save.’
‘Are you trying to save?’
‘I think it’s sensible, don’t you?’
‘Not if it stops us being together on Saturdays and Sundays I don’t.’ She strutted on, her pretty nose in the air in her indignation. ‘So not only do I have to give you up week nights, I have to give you up Saturdays and Sundays as well. You might as well be the man in the moon, Arthur.’
They sauntered on without speaking for a while.
‘You are very dull this afternoon, Arthur,’ Dorinda claimed derisively, breaking the silence. ‘And I can’t abide dullness in a man. You’ve hardly spoken this afternoon, except to mumble a few responses. Is it because you are sad that you won’t see me for a week or two?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Oh, I do wish you wouldn’t say “I don’t know” when I ask you things. It annoys me to death. I’ll ask you again … Are you upset because you won’t see me for a while?’
‘Yes,’ he responded, taking the easy way out, and so avoiding a further chastisement.
‘Well, you have a strange way of showing it, that’s all I can say.’
‘Do you love me, Dorinda?’ Arthur asked directly.
‘When you deserve to be loved, of course I do. You know I do.’
‘Then you have a strange way of showing it as well. You are a beautiful girl, Dorinda, full of high spirits and good company most of the time, but I ask myself sometimes whether you’re capable of deep affection.’
‘What a thing to say!’ she exclaimed haughtily. ‘I love you to distraction.’
‘But I think you love yourself more.’
‘How can you possibly say such a thing, Arthur?’
‘Because if we were to get married, you’ve already said that you would not have children.’
‘I hate the little blighters. I hate the thought of childbirth.’
‘And because having children would spoil your figure, you said.’
‘Yes, that as well,’ she pouted.
‘So you’re thinking only of yourself. You’re not in the least concerned with what I’d want. And I’ve decided … I’d want children …’ He transferred his travel bag to his other hand, causing Dorinda to change sides and take his other arm. ‘Furthermore, I’d expect to do in bed with you what normal young married couples do, and as often as I wanted …’
‘Arthur, you are the limit! I really don’t think I shall walk any further with you if you are going to be so indelicate.’
‘Well, I can quite manage the rest of the walk on my own.’
‘I don’t know what’s got into you, Arthur Goodrich. I never heard such things before in my life. Ever since you went back to Brierley Hill you haven’t been the same. I think the Black Country air has addled your brain, I really do.’
‘Well, maybe that terrible accident did it,’ he said evenly. ‘All that suffering I saw, all that agony. People dying before my eyes just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, other people grieving over their dead relatives. Maybe that’s had an effect on me. Because when I hear you harping on about how having a child might upset your figure, I think just how pathetic that is compared to what the poor victims of that accident suffered. It’s plain childish talk, Dorinda. Anyway, I won’t stand for it. So, if you have any hopes of us ever getting married, you’d better change your tune.’
Dorinda looked at him in speechless astonishment.
Chapter 23
Low, racing clouds, ominously dark, threatened to jettison their cargo of rain, but so far that September morning they had contrived to hang on to it. The wind had freshened and turned, swaying the tops of the tall elms, ripping away twigs and leaves not due to fall for some weeks yet. Roses and other late flowers, lovingly placed on neighbouring graves, were violently spun and twisted as the wind caught them in its restless commotion.
The slow march of railway men in uniform, shouldering Dickie Dempster’s coffin, solemnly made their way to the neat oblong hole in the ground that waited to receive him. They passed Arthur Goodrich and Lucy Piddock who stood together yet well away from the chief mourners, thinking their own thoughts, alternately pondering moments of pleasure the deceased had provided and the pain he had inflicted. The vicar, unknown to either Lucy or Arthur, conducted the service at the graveside, his white surplice rippling over his cassock in the wind like a flag of surrender to the overwhelming bluster.
Arthur had his arm around Lucy’s waist to comfort her. As she leaned against him for support she tried hard to shed tears, for she felt that she ought; but no tears came. She had no more tears left to cry. God knew she’d spilled enough already. She watched the coffin, which held what remain
ed of the man who’d said he would marry her, being lowered into the grave, and recalled the first time she had ever cast eyes on him, and her instant love. Oh, it had been love at first sight all right, but such downright folly. Conflicting feelings of regret, love, anger, and grief were tormenting her, and had been from the moment she knew of his already being wed. Her heart had been broken, her soul had been violated, but her anger would surely be the healing salve. The bitter frustration she felt was unappeasable, as unappeasable as the giving of herself to a man who never could have been hers was futile. Little wonder she could not weep at his funeral.
Lucy resented more than anything the irrevocable changes in so many lives Dickie’s death had wrought; changes that were attributable only to him. Yet she also resented this unexpected, tragic end that made a nonsense of everyday living. However much of a rogue Dickie had turned out to be, two children had depended on him, and they presumably loved him and looked up to him simply because he was their father. Those children did not deserve to be left to the whims and devices of an unsympathetic social system that might see fit to incarcerate them, wrenching them from their mother’s care and placing them under the dubious custody of some workhouse, especially if it was believed she could not now afford to look after them without a man’s wage being brought in.
As the funeral service drew to a close Lucy at last felt a tear roll down her cheek. But it was a tear for herself; for the doubts, the misgivings, the wasted love she’d given Dickie Dempster which, unbeknownst, had been spurned anyway. It had taken the catastrophe of a railway accident and his death to reveal the truth, but the truth had not come in time to save her. There had been other women; she knew one of those women was called Myrtle. But that was all she knew. Yet that knowledge had never prevented her from loving and trusting him, even though it had anguished and plagued her beyond measure.
When the heavy earth thudded onto the lid of the coffin Lucy slumped against Arthur, belying her anger and frustration. He held on to her tightly. Caring, dependable Arthur, who had once been hers for the taking but who plainly she did not deserve. In her hand she was already holding a small lace handkerchief. She dabbed the tears that were stinging her eyes, and felt a squeeze of sympathy from him. She looked out across the churchyard, saw Dickie’s widow and felt a great surge of sympathy for the woman. Mrs Dempster seemed to be bearing her loss well, with grace and dignity. Neither did she appear to shed a tear, to Lucy’s amazement.
Lucy paid no heed, however, to another young woman carrying a child in her arms, no more than a spectator standing at a discreet distance from the proceedings, also with a grace and dignity that belied her own anger, her own frustration and sadness. But Arthur saw her … and wondered …
The service was over and people began to drift away. The wind gusted once more, and Lucy held on to her black bonnet with one hand and clutched her shawl around her neck with the other. Arthur smiled anxiously at her, uncertain of how acute and confused her innermost emotions might be. He simply saw beautiful tear-filled eyes, yet he had no doubts as to her suffering, and led her away before the other mourners reached them.
Some day – Lucy did not know when, but when it no longer hurt nor angered her to think of Dickie and what might have been – she would return to this churchyard and lay flowers on his grave.
From St Barnabas’s churchyard Lucy and Arthur made their way back to Wednesfield Heath station, owned and run by the Grand Junction Railway, where they took an omnibus back to Low Level station. They conversed little. He knew she was best left to her thoughts uninterrupted, and that she would speak when she felt like talking.
Low Level station held so many poignant memories for her; memories of Dickie meeting her there on Saturday afternoons before taking her to the Old Barrel at Boblake, and their delicious love-making sessions in that upstairs room. It also reminded her of the unpalatable fact of his marriage, and that he had wilfully seduced her to satisfy his own lusts, to boost his own ego, knowing that he could never marry her, yet never allowing her to know it, never giving her the opportunity to walk away. And yet she wondered: even if he had told her, would she have walked away?
Eventually they boarded the train. At that time of day it was hardly crowded and they had a compartment to themselves, in which they sat opposite each other next to the windows.
‘I’m glad that’s over,’ Arthur said as they pulled out of the station, hoping to begin a conversation that might divert Lucy.
Lucy nodded glumly. ‘I’m glad you took me, Arthur. There were quite a few women there.’
‘Yes, there were.’
‘His wife didn’t seem to shed a tear that I saw. Did you notice, Arthur?’
‘Maybe she’s done plenty of crying already.’
A pause. Lucy was fiddling with a piece of thread sticking out from a finger of her glove. She stopped, and looked up at Arthur.
‘You never told me Dickie had died, Arthur, but you must’ve known.’
He regarded her guiltily and sighed. ‘Yes, I learnt it at the inquest. To tell you the truth, I couldn’t bear to be the one to break it to you. I knew you’d hear about it anyway, since it was announced at the inquest.’
‘Thank you.’ She nodded and returned to her stray thread. ‘I understand.’
‘I went to see Mrs Dempster the day after … to offer my condolences.’
‘That was thoughtful.’
He shrugged. ‘She told me one or two things …’
‘Oh, what about?’ At once there was an urgent curiosity in Lucy’s eyes.
He shrugged again, not at all certain how to proceed, not at all certain that he should. ‘Oh, about their married life …’
She looked at him expectantly, but he stalled. ‘What about their married life?’
‘Oh … their children … how Dickie was not particularly close to his side of the family.’
‘But he always told me he was close to them.’
‘Maybe he lied …’
‘Maybe he did,’ she allowed. ‘He lied about other things, why not that? But I can’t imagine why.’
‘To deceive you? To use them as the reason he couldn’t see you when really it was his wife and two children that held him back?’
‘His wife and two children!’ Lucy repeated with resignation. ‘It might be hard for you to believe, Arthur, but I feel sorry for his wife and two children. I imagine she loves her children like any mother would, but if the authorities think she can’t look after them, they’ll very likely put them all away in the workhouse, and she might never see them again.’
Arthur gulped. ‘I never thought about that, Lucy. D’you think they would?’
‘They could, I suppose. I reckon it depends whether she’s got any family that can help them.’
‘And how much compensation she’s entitled to,’ Arthur speculated. ‘She’s got a mother, but I don’t know whether the woman could afford to take them in or help keep them.’
‘Course, I suppose she’ll get some compensation from the railway company, him being on their books,’ Lucy conjectured.
‘Some, maybe, but Dickie wasn’t on duty at the time of the accident, remember. He was travelling as a passenger.’
‘He told me he had to work on the journey back.’
‘But he lied about that as well, didn’t he?’
‘Lord knows what he didn’t lie about …’ Tears filled her eyes again. ‘Oh, what have I done, Arthur?’
He leaned forward and took her hands in his. ‘You fell in love, Lucy. Love excuses all.’
She looked into his eyes with an earnest expression. ‘Oh, Arthur … You are so good, so understanding … Why didn’t I fall in love with you, instead of falling in love with him? You’d have been so much better for me … for everybody … I rue the day …’
‘Life is never that simple, Luce,’ he replied consolingly. ‘We all have to experience pain so as we’ll appreciate better the good times when they come.’
‘The good times seem a long time c
oming …’ She sniffed and forced a smile for him, pushing back tears. ‘What did Mrs Dempster tell you about her marriage?’
‘It was told to me in confidence, Luce. I’m not sure that it’d be fair for me to say.’
‘I see.’ She returned to the loose thread on her glove.
The train rattled over a bridge and Lucy peered out of the window. In the lane beneath, a man was thrashing an ill-kempt horse that was hauling a four-wheeled cart loaded with metal pails.
‘I can tell you she wasn’t happy,’ Arthur revealed after a pause, drawing Lucy’s attention again. ‘Dickie had been having affairs with different women all their married life. She knew about them.’
Lucy was filled with horror. ‘Did she know about me?’
He shook his head and smiled reassuringly. ‘She’d sussed he was having an affair, but she doesn’t know it was you. No, she believes you are engaged to me, remember?’
She smiled again, sadly. ‘He was forever telling me about a girl called Myrtle. Harking back now, I suppose it was to make me jealous. Did she know about Myrtle?’
Arthur nodded. ‘She knew all about Myrtle … Myrtle had Dickie’s child …’
‘Myrtle had his child?’ Lucy’s face was an icon of wide-eyed astonishment.
‘She did. There was a young woman with a child in arms at the funeral. Did you see her? She looked to be the sort that Dickie would fancy. A bit like you. I reckon it was Myrtle.’
‘I didn’t notice anybody … Oh, Arthur, just what have I done? I’ve ruined everything. I’ve ruined my life, yours, hers … everybody’s …’
‘Well, Luce, just count your blessings that you haven’t ended up like Myrtle … that you haven’t ended up with another of Dickie’s bastards to contend with. Then it could truly be said that you’d ruined your life.’
She did not have the mettle or the heart to tell him that indeed her life was already ruined, and that soon it must start to show.
