This inheritance was going to change everything. She had watched Caleb’s face when the solicitor had been speaking and, whatever he said to the contrary, he hadn’t liked it. She pressed her hands against her cheeks. He definitely hadn’t liked it. While he might be a little more liberated than his father, with regard to a woman’s role in life and marriage, Caleb was a man of the people. In his world, the man was always the breadwinner – simple as that. In certain circumstances it might be permissible for a woman to marry into money, although even then she didn’t doubt that those less charitable would attach certain labels to the unfortunate girl. But for a man to do so?
Opening her eyes, she shook her head slowly. What was she going to do? Even if she gave everything away, it wouldn’t help now. If they found themselves struggling in the next years and things were tough, Caleb would blame himself that she was in that position, when she didn’t need to be. If she kept her inheritance, it would drive a wedge between them, she knew it. And she didn’t want to live in her old home and play the lady of the manor; she was as far removed from that Esther as the man-in-the-moon. And there was Monty too. In spite of everything, she couldn’t see him penniless. She didn’t want him in her life, or Joy’s for that matter; but he needed help to start a new life of his own and, now she was in a position to provide that help, she couldn’t pass by on the other side of the road. But Caleb wouldn’t see it that way, and she couldn’t blame him.
Leaving the cubicle, she washed her hands at the small basin in the outside area and then looked at her reflection in the long, spotted mirror attached to the cloakroom wall. She was wearing a Utility dress that she had bought with her coupons in the last year of the war. The square-shouldered frock was serviceable at best, and her brown wartime coat was cut without fastenings, to be wrapped around the body and held in place by a tie belt. Economy, and making do. And Eliza and Caleb’s sisters wore similar clothes, like all working-class folk. This was her world now and she had adapted to it, and in the last three years she had come to know that Joy didn’t need fancy schools and a nanny, and servants and beautiful clothes, to grow into a happy little girl – just love. Queuing at the baker’s shop, now that bread was on ration, along with cakes and flour and oatmeal; asking Caleb to resole her shoes, because she couldn’t afford new ones; making a penny stretch to two – this was normal life. And she liked it. She liked it because it was Caleb’s world, and she wanted to be part of it with him.
He was waiting for her in the foyer when she left the cloakroom, slipping her arm through his as they left the hotel, as though there was nothing wrong. But there was. And they both knew it.
The train ride was a short one and they were in a carriage with other folk, so it wasn’t until they were back in Sunderland and making their way to Bright Street that Esther said, ‘What shall we tell your parents? About the will, I mean.’
‘The truth, of course.’
They had just turned into the back lane of Bright Street and now, in the middle of a hot July, the privies in the back yards were stinking to high heaven in one or two of the houses, where the occupants were less than particular. As they passed one yard two small children, as naked as the day they were born, were playing in an old tin bath that their mother had filled with water, while an elderly dog snoozed at their side in the late-afternoon sunshine. Esther glanced at their little faces; they were alight with the joy of the moment. Stopping, she said, ‘Caleb? If we tell them, it becomes real.’
‘What?’ He walked on a step and now he turned to face her.
Softly she whispered, ‘I’m frightened. We’re happy, and I don’t want it all to go wrong. I don’t want to lose you.’
‘You couldn’t lose me if you tried.’ He took her in his arms and kissed her, before saying softly, ‘Hey, sweetheart, there’s nothing to cry about. Look, from the moment I met you, I knew you were unique – a one-off – and that’s part of why I love you, I suppose. And let’s face it, we were never going to be your average family, were we?’ He lifted her chin and smiled into her tear-drenched eyes. ‘Even before you open your mouth, it’s obvious you’re a cut above. That’s just the way it is. And I’m’ – he shrugged – ‘as working-class as old boots. Then there’s Joy, and any children we might have, to be added to the mix. We were always going to stick out like a sore thumb and be the subject of speculation. I came to terms with that a long time ago, and I don’t give a damn what people say or think; it doesn’t matter, as long as we’re together. The thing is, love: the way I see it, we make our own world, a new world, like a good many others will have to do. Wherever it is – be it here in a house in one of these streets, or somewhere else – once we shut the door at night, it’ll be us and our family, and the rest of them can go to hell as far as I’m concerned.’
With a sigh that swept the tenseness from her body, Esther relaxed against him. He meant it, she could tell. It probably wasn’t the moment to say what she was going to say, but she needed to say it nonetheless. Quietly she said, ‘I was thinking on the train, and I want to sell everything, Caleb: the house, the businesses, and the rest. I couldn’t bear to live in that house now, not knowing what I do about Theobald. And . . . and once things are settled and we know how we stand financially, I’d like to settle an amount on Monty. Enough for him to make a new start somewhere.’
Grimly Caleb said, ‘He doesn’t deserve such generosity.’
‘He is who he is; a product of his parents, as much as I am of mine. His father was a weak man too. I used to feel sorry for him, having a wife like Clarissa, but I think, looking back, that Hubert liked being led by the nose. He was somewhat helpless.’
His voice was stiff when he muttered, ‘And you think Monty is helpless too? Do you still care for him?’
‘Not in the way you mean.’
‘He’s a spineless excuse of a man, and I don’t want him in our lives.’
‘He won’t be, but he is still Joy’s father, Caleb.’ He didn’t reply, and she went on, ‘She might want to contact him when she’s older, because I can’t keep the fact that he’s her father a secret. There have been enough secrets and enough damage done, as it is. But believe me when I say I know Monty, and he won’t want visiting rights or anything like that. At the bottom of him, he’s still embarrassed by her.’ She swallowed hard. It was difficult to say. ‘By her colour.’
‘Oh, my love.’ Again Caleb gathered her to him, and for some moments they stood entwined, oblivious of the mean little lane with its smells and poverty. Sometimes, because he didn’t see Joy’s colour, just the enchanting little girl she was, he forgot Esther worried about how her daughter was going to fare in a world where children, as well as adults, could be horribly cruel. But he would make sure Joy had a childhood filled with love and happiness, where home was a sanctuary and family was everything. The child might not have come from him in a biological sense, but he was her father in every way that mattered, and Joy would grow up sure of that. ‘Do whatever you want about Monty,’ he murmured into the silk of her hair. ‘I don’t mind.’
Eliza and Stanley sat staring at Esther and Caleb, who had just finished telling them what the solicitor had said. Their faces were a picture. Stanley’s mouth had fallen open in a gape, and Eliza was pop-eyed. It was Caleb who said, ‘Well, say something. Don’t just sit there.’
‘I . . . We . . . ’ Eliza took a steadying breath. ‘We thought it was likely something to do with the divorce.’ She glanced at her husband, who was still clearly in shock. ‘I can’t believe it. Are you sure this solicitor fellow has got it right?’
‘It’s a will, Mam.’
‘Aye, I know – I know it’s a will, you said, but he could still have made a mistake.’
‘There’s no mistake, Mrs McGuigan,’ said Esther softly. ‘At least not as far as the will is concerned. Whether Theobald ever intended it to be permanent, I don’t know. He had an obsession about his name being carried on, and I think he thought he could persuade me to resume my position as his daughter an
d Monty’s wife, by the bribe of his fortune.’
‘Did he indeed? Didn’t know you that well then, did he, in spite of bringing you up?’ Eliza shook her head. ‘Well, I never; you don’t know what a day’s going to bring, do you? So it’s a lot, is it? What you’re getting?’
Esther nodded.
‘Well, lass, we’re pleased for you. Aren’t we?’ she added to Stanley. ‘To my mind, you had a raw deal from that so-an’-so when the bab was born, and this makes up for it.’ She shook her head again. ‘This’ll change things, though, won’t it?’ Her gaze moved to Caleb, as she realized it perhaps wasn’t the most tactful thing to say, and then back to Esther. ‘I mean, you won’t have to stay in that room now,’ she added hastily. ‘You’ll be able to please yourself where you live, and what you do.’
‘Mam!’
‘I’m just saying . . . ’
‘I know what you’re saying, Mrs McGuigan, and you’re right, of course. I can look for somewhere nicer for Joy, but as for the rest of it, we haven’t decided yet, have we?’ Esther turned to Caleb. ‘The main thing, as we see it, is to get the divorce through, so we can be married.’
Eliza looked hard at the girl who had taken her son’s heart. And then her face took on a tenderness that was unusual. ‘Aye, I see. Well, don’t stand there, the pair of you. Take the weight off, and I’ll put the kettle on. Prudence has taken Joy to play with her two for a while; she should be bringing her back soon.’
Stanley spoke for the first time. His voice gruff, he said, ‘You’re a good lass, an’ no mistake. Caleb’s a lucky fella.’
Caleb looked at his parents and didn’t know whether to be amused or resentful. Had they really expected that Esther would give him the old heave-ho, because she’d come into a fortune? Clearly it had crossed their minds. He glanced at Esther and she met his gaze, and she had a small quirk to her mouth. It said: I’ve passed the test, haven’t I? So be pleased and let it alone.
And he did let it alone.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The winding-up of the estate and all the financial threads connected to it took time, but Esther was content to wait. The Wynford name had died with Theobald, and she felt a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders because of it. To her, his name personified darkness and sick perversion, and to cut if off for all time gave her great satisfaction, along with the fact that no blood of his ran through her veins or that of her child.
By the middle of October, when the newspapers and wireless were buzzing with reports of the execution at Nuremberg of ten top Nazi war criminals, along with the more alarming news to most folk that new research linked smoking to lung cancer, the Wynford house and farm had been sold to a rich London businessman who wanted a country retreat, and the various enterprises Theobald had built up had also been disposed of, mainly to wealthy locals. The bank in Bishopwearmouth, where Esther had opened an account, treated her with a deference that caused her many a wry smile as she walked back to her humble room in Ripon Street. She could have moved to wherever she liked, but she wanted her next home to be one she shared with Caleb from the first day. Besides which, knowing that she wouldn’t be remaining long in her cramped surroundings, the little room had taken on a cosiness that made it bearable, and Joy was happy there.
The six months between a decree nisi and a decree absolute had been cut to six weeks in August, mainly to accommodate the tidal wave of divorces that had swept Britain, primarily due to the war. Many of the broken marriages were those between servicemen and their wives, the victims of too-lengthy separations or too-hasty marriages. So it was that, at the beginning of November on a bitterly cold Monday morning, Esther received an official-looking envelope in the post, which made her tremble. She and Caleb had been to look at a house on the outskirts of Southwick at the weekend, a large establishment set in its own extensive grounds, which she had noticed advertised in an estate agent’s window during the week. She hadn’t told Caleb much about the property, and she could tell he was surprised and uncomfortable at the grandeur of the house and the largeness of the grounds surrounding it.
Once they had finished and had made their goodbyes to the estate agent, who had manfully tried to hide his surprise at the odd and, he thought, ill-matched couple, they had walked back into town, refusing a lift in the estate agent’s car. It was then, with her arm tucked in Caleb’s, that Esther had said, ‘What do you think about the house? Do you like it?’
She could tell he was considering his words carefully when he said, ‘What was there not to like. But isn’t it a bit big for the three of us? I mean, I know you were brought up in a place like that, but for me . . . ’ He swallowed. ‘I thought we’d get somewhere smaller. Less . . . grand.’
She stopped, turning her face up to his and putting her gloved hands on his chest. ‘I want to talk to you about that. I’ve been thinking, over the last weeks, about the girls Theobald used so cruelly—’
‘Don’t. Don’t think about it.’
‘Them, and all the babies and children who are being abandoned in the last little while.’
Although some 60,000 war brides had set sail in a steady convoy of ships across the Atlantic, to join their husbands in Canada and America since the beginning of the year, there were many girls who had been left to bring up illegitimate babies alone, by their exotic boyfriends who had returned home. Not only that, but servicemen returning to find either their wives pregnant or a new baby in the house, fathered by someone else, were sometimes insisting that the wife make a choice between the child or them; and in cases where there were other children in the family, the cuckoo was often being given up into the care of the authorities. For every smiling, waving girl with a baby in her arms standing on the deck of a ship bound across the ocean, which had become the cliché of Pathé and Movietone newsreels, there was another who was in a less-than-happy position. And it was the children who were suffering most, some of them abandoned at the doors of government buildings or convents; others given over personally to the authorities by their mothers.
Esther took a deep breath. ‘I want us to make that house into a children’s home.’
‘What?’
‘I want us to run a children’s home. Oh, Caleb, I know we can do it.’ She stared into his astonished face. ‘We’d have to employ staff, of course, and there’d be all sorts of regulations and rules to understand and take into consideration, but to think of Theobald’s money being used for good would be so wonderful. And we could make it a real home for them – not an institution, like so many are. A big family. I was thinking Prudence might like to come and be the matron, with her nursing experience; she could live in with her children. I know she gets lonely at nights, and in a children’s home there’d always be someone to talk to and something to do. And there’s Priscilla and Kenny. Since his last operation he’s longing to do something – have a real job – but Priscilla says he’d been turned down so often it’s depressing him. He could manage the home, or something; he’s bright enough. Work with his head rather than his hands.’
Caleb was utterly taken aback. ‘I don’t know what to say. How long have you been thinking like this?’
‘Only lately.’ She didn’t tell him that it had begun when she had seen the photograph of an abandoned little girl in the newspaper in the summer. The tot had looked so like Joy they could have been sisters, although the little girl in the paper had darker, curlier hair, obviously inherited from her black father. The photograph had hit her like a punch in the stomach, and for a moment it had been almost as though it was Joy who had been left at the doors of the orphanage, with a label tied around her wrist that read, ‘Her name is Katy and she’s eighteen months old.’ That was all. Someone’s baby, and all she had deserved were nine words on the sort of label you would tie on a package. She would tell Caleb about it one day, and how it had affected her, but for the moment she didn’t want him to think she was using emotional blackmail. This was his life too, and if they went down this road it was a huge commitment f
orever.
They had walked slowly back to Caleb’s house, where Eliza was looking after Joy, discussing the pros and cons of Esther’s proposition, until they reached the others, whereupon they had acted as though the viewing of the house had been merely with regard to a family home.
Esther looked again now at the envelope she was holding. She knew what it was. Her decree absolute. And when Caleb had left her and Joy at the door of the house in Ripon Street last night, his last words had been that they would think about her idea, when her divorce came through. Esther didn’t think it was coincidence that the very next morning it arrived in the post. It was a sign, she told herself, as she nervously slit open the envelope; an indication that they should pursue this. If, of course, the contents of this envelope were her decree absolute.
And there it was, in black and white. As she stared at the official authorization stating that her marriage was over, she felt a sharp stab of pain. It was unexpected. She glanced over to where Joy was still curled up in their bed, fast asleep, and bit her lip. Who would have thought it would end like this? She had loved Monty with all her heart and had been over the moon when she knew she was expecting his baby, even though it hadn’t been planned. She would be twenty-three years old in a few days’ time and already she was a divorced woman, and her child would grow up without her natural father. Nothing in life was certain; it was like those mirrors they had at the fairgrounds, which distorted the image of the person looking into them and turned them into something macabre and strange. She had trusted and loved Harriet, and believed she was her daughter, and all the time it had been a lie. And somewhere in the world her real mother and father had got on with their lives, without her. When she had returned to her home, had her real mother thought about the little baby she had given away, or had she secretly been glad to be free of the burden of an illegitimate daughter?
The Colours of Love Page 33
