A Woman of Substance

by Barbara Taylor Bradford

  Edwin strode swiftly down the path with a nonchalant and carefree air, blithely swinging his crop in his hand. He was wearing a white shirt with a yellow silk ascot at his throat, buff breeches, and highly polished brown riding boots that glinted in the sunlight. He looked taller, broader, more grown-up than ever. How handsome he is, thought Emma, and her throat tightened. She felt a sharp stab of pain, and she recognized it fully as the bittersweet pain of love.

  Edwin’s face lit up when he saw her and he increased his pace. Then he was standing over her, smiling widely, his greyish-blue eyes reflecting his own obvious delight at being back again. Emma thought her heart would burst. He stretched out his hand and helped her up, walking her to a corner out of view of the house. He seized her in his arms and kissed her passionately, running a suntanned hand down her back caressingly. Then he stood away, his strong fingers gripping her shoulders, and he gazed deeply into her face as if seeing it for the first time. By God, she is a beauty, he thought, excitement trickling through him.

  ‘I’ve missed you, Emma,’ he said vehemently, his ardour apparent on his face. ‘I couldn’t wait to get back. Did you miss me?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Edwin, I did. It was lonely with yer gone.’ She smiled. ‘Did yer enjoy yer holidays, then?’

  He laughed and made a face. ‘Well, yes, in some ways. But it was all a little too social for my liking. Aunt Olivia had tons of other guests coming and going interminably. She also gave two dances, which I could well have done without. Those silly debutante daughters of her friends do so get on my nerves.’

  Emma held herself very still under his hands gripping her so tightly. Jealousy flicked into her mind at the thought of Edwin holding other girls in his arms, if only to dance with them. She found herself quite unable to speak.

  Observing the pained look which crossed her face, he chided himself for his thoughtlessness, and then he grinned engagingly. ‘I much prefer to be with you, Emma, my sweet one. Surely you know that.’ He relaxed his hold. ‘Let’s go and sit over there,’ he suggested, nodding to the old rustic seat made of knotted branches resting under a shady tree in a dim far corner of the garden.

  He carried the flower basket for her, and when they were settled on the seat he said, ‘Can we meet at the Top of the World on Sunday for a picnic? It is your weekend off, is it not?’

  ‘Yes, it’s me weekend off,’ said Emma.

  ‘You will meet me then, won’t you?’

  Emma looked at him, her eyes serious as they searched his face, now so dear to her and rarely out of her mind’s eye, day or night.

  Edwin smiled lovingly. ‘You look very pensive all of a sudden. Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind about our trysts? It can’t be that you don’t love me any more.’

  ‘Of course I love yer,’ she exclaimed. ‘Edwin—’ Emma hesitated and swallowed. The words she knew must be said were lodged in her throat.

  Edwin touched her shoulder fondly. ‘Well then, why are you hesitating about meeting me?’

  ‘Edwin, I’m going ter have a baby!’ she blurted out harshly, not knowing how to tell him more gently, no longer able to carry this worrisome burden alone.

  As Emma spoke her eyes did not leave his face, and she clasped her hands together to stop them trembling. In that tortuous moment of silence that hung between them like a lead curtain Emma’s heart dropped. She was acutely aware of the stiffening of Edwin’s body, the imperceptible drawing away from her, the look of disbelief that wiped the smile off his face, the dawning horror that followed swiftly and settled there, a frozen mask that bespoke his shock.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ he cried, slumping back against the bench. He gaped at her, his face now pale and twitching. Edwin felt as if he had been dealt a violent and crippling blow in his stomach. He was utterly devastated. He vainly endeavoured to still the shaking sensation that seized him, but with little success. At last he managed to speak. ‘Emma, are you absolutely certain of this?’

  She bit her lip, eyeing him, trying to assess his attitude. ‘Yes, Edwin, I am.’

  ‘Jesus bloody Christ!’ he cried, forgetting his manners in his anxiety. He gazed into space, a spasm working on his face. A smothering feeling enveloped him. He thought he couldn’t breathe. Eventually he turned and stared at her, his eyes wide with apprehension. ‘My father will kill me,’ he gasped, envisioning his father’s towering wrath.

  Emma threw him a swift and knowing glance. ‘If yours doesn’t, mine will,’ she informed him bluntly, her voice low and hoarse.

  ‘What in God’s name are you going to do?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t yer mean what are we going ter do, Edwin?’ This was asked mildly enough, but Emma was conscious of the alarm rising up into her already constricted throat. Not for one moment in the past few weeks had she anticipated such a reaction from him. She had known he would be disturbed and upset and worried at her news, just as she was herself. But she had not thought he would act as if this was her responsibility, and hers alone. It frightened her.

  ‘Yes, of course I mean we,’ he answered hastily. ‘Emma, are you really and truly certain? Couldn’t you just be—be—late?’

  ‘No, Edwin. I’m positive.’

  Edwin was silent, his mind floundering, a thousand thoughts pounding in his head. He had never contemplated this eventuality in his entrancement with her beauty, and the flaring passion she aroused in him. What an imbecile he had been not to have considered such an inevitability, the most obvious natural consequence of their lovemaking.

  Emma broke the silence. ‘Please, Edwin, talk ter me! Help me! I’ve been ever so worried while yer’ve been away, knowing about the baby, not knowing what ter do. I couldn’t tell anybody else. It’s been summat terrible for me, it really has, waiting for yer ter get back ter Fairley.’

  Edwin racked his brains. Eventually he cleared his throat, somewhat nervously. His voice was shaky. ‘Look, Emma, I’ve heard there are doctors—doctors who take care of such matters, in the early stages of pregnancy, for a goodly sum of money. Maybe there would be one willing to do it. In Leeds or Bradford. Perhaps we can find one. I could sell my watch.’

  Emma was flabbergasted. His words were like daggers plunging into her flesh. Their very cold-bloodedness was so shocking and repugnant to her she went cold all over. ‘Go ter some quack!’ she cried angrily and with increasing amazement, her eyes widening. ‘Some charlatan who’ll butcher me up with a knife and maybe kill me! Is that what yer suggesting, Edwin?’ Her eyes were now immensely cold and darkly green and watchful. She could hardly believe he had uttered those dreadful words.

  ‘But, Emma, I don’t know what else to suggest! This is an absolute disaster. A catastrophe. You can’t have the baby.’

  Edwin continued to gaze at her in stupefaction, his mind in chaos. The decent thing to do would be to marry her. They could elope. To Gretna Green in Scotland. He had read about couples being married there. It was legal if you resided twenty-one days. He opened his mouth, about to say this, and then clamped it shut. But then what? The thought of his father’s fury paralysed him. Of course, his father wouldn’t kill him. He would do much worse. He would disown him. Cut him off with nothing. Edwin thought then of Cambridge, his future as a barrister. He couldn’t be saddled with a wife now, at his age, at this most crucial time of his life. His eyes roved over her. She was a beautiful girl. This morning her russet-brown hair was swept up and away from her face, plaits forming a circle on top of her shapely head like a crown. The oval face, paler than usual, was like gleaming porcelain, exquisite and refined. The widow’s peak protruding on to her wide brow, and those large emerald eyes lifted her beauty out of the ordinary. She was startling, there was no question about that. The right clothes…elocution lessons…an invented background. Such things were possible, and the proper tutoring could work miracles. Perhaps there was a way to solve this. No, there is not. It would never work, a small voice insisted at the back of his mind. He would be ruined. He could clearly evaluate his father’s reaction. He woul
d be infuriated to a point of madness. She was a girl from the village. Edwin’s eyes rested on Emma and he thought of her with calculated objectivity, and for a split second her beauty dimmed. She was a servant, after all. The class differences between them were too enormous to be bridged.

  And so Edwin swallowed hard and remained silent, biting back the words he had originally been ready to utter. And that was a mistake he would live to regret, for had he spoken up, claimed her as his own, braved his father and the world, Edwin’s life would have been so very different.

  Emma now saw with unmistakable clarity the renunciation on his face, was bitterly aware of the repudiation in his eyes. She straightened her back and her head flew up sharply on her slender neck. It took all of her self-control to speak normally, for she was shaking and her anger, hurt, and disgust were living organisms in her heart. ‘I won’t go ter one of them doctors, and yer silence tells me that yer not prepared ter marry me, Edwin.’ She laughed lightly, but it was a cynical laugh. ‘It wouldn’t be proper, would it, Master Edwin? The gentry and the working class going so far as ter actually marry,’ she pointed out with her usual stringent perception, her voice icily biting.

  Edwin flinched. He had the peculiar sensation that she had just read his mind, and he flushed deeply. ‘Emma, it’s not that. It’s not that I don’t love you. But we’re too young to marry,’ he equivocated. ‘I’m about to go to Cambridge. My father—’

  ‘Aye, I knows,’ she cut in, ‘he’ll kill yer.’ Her brilliant eyes narrowed as she spoke, resting on his face with great intensity.

  Edwin recoiled, and he knew then that he would never forget that piercing stare which condemned him so ferociously and with such loathing. He would never be able to eradicate it from his mind.

  ‘Emma, I—I—I’m s-s-sorry,’ he stammered, becoming scarlet, ‘but it—’

  She interrupted him again with stinging sharpness. ‘I shall have ter leave Fairley. I can’t stay here. I can’t answer for what me dad would do. He couldn’t stand the shame, for one thing, and he has a real violent temper.’

  ‘When will you go?’ he asked awkwardly, not meeting her eyes.

  A look of total disdain slipped on to Emma’s face. He couldn’t wait for her to leave. That was most patently obvious to her. Her disillusionment was complete. ‘As soon as I can,’ she snapped.

  Edwin dropped his head into his hands, pondering on what she had just said. Perhaps that was the ideal solution. For her to run away. He felt a little surge of relief and looked up. ‘Do you have any money?’ he asked.

  Emma was reeling with nausea. The shock of Edwin’s betrayal, of his weak and contemptible behaviour had stunned her. She thought she was going to keel over and fall off the seat on to the ground. Pain bent against pain, twisting together to form an iron band so crushing it was almost unbearable. Hurt, anger, humiliation, disappointment, and sudden panic merged into one immense heartbreaking ache that suffused her whole body. The scent of the roses lifted on the air in suffocating waves, overwhelmingly sweet and cloying, and it made her feel faint. Their perfume was choking her. She wanted to run far away from this garden, from him. Finally she said in a small, toneless voice, ‘Yes, I have a bit of money saved up.’

  ‘Well, I only have five pounds to my name. But naturally I will give it to you. It will be of some help, Emma.’

  Emma’s fierce pride rose up in her, commanding her not to accept, to refuse his offer, but for some reason, unknown to her at that precise instant, she changed her mind. ‘Thank yer, Edwin.’ She fixed him with that penetrating glare. ‘There’s one other thing yer can do for me.’

  ‘Yes, Emma, anything. You know I’ll do anything to help.’

  Anything, she thought wonderingly. But he wouldn’t do anything, only whatever was convenient for him, only what would absolve him of his responsibility in this matter.

  ‘I’ll be needing a suitcase,’ she returned coldly, unable to conceal her bitterness.

  ‘I’ll put one in your room this afternoon, with the five pounds inside.’

  ‘Thank you, Edwin. That is very kind of you.’

  He did not miss the acidity, or the cultured tone she had unexpectedly adopted. He winced. ‘Emma, please, please try to understand.’

  ‘Oh, I do, Edwin. Oh, how I do!’

  He stood up, shifting nervously on his feet, flustered and obviously anxious to be gone, to be done with all this. She looked at him standing there, so tall and handsome, the epitome of a gentleman on the outside. But what was he inside? she asked herself. A weakling. A terrified boy with only the physical attributes of a man. That was all. He was nothing. He was less than the dirt under her feet.

  Emma herself now stood up and lifted the flower basket on to her arm. The strong fragrance of the roses invaded her nostrils, making her dizzy and sick again. She stared at him, poised near the bench.

  ‘I won’t be able to return the suitcase, since I won’t ever be seeing you again, Edwin Fairley. Never, as long as I live.’

  She walked away slowly, erect and proud and with great dignity, a dignity that masked the terrible desolation in her soul. The silence in the garden was a tangible thing she could reach out and touch. Everything looked unreal, attenuated and fading, then piercingly brilliant, stabbing at her eyes aching in their sockets. The air went dark around her and her eyes misted over. It was as if the clinging fog that shrouded the moors had descended. A deadening coldness seeped into her and her insides were shrivelling into nothing. Eroding. Eroding. Her heart fluttered in a rapid burst and then was still. And it hardened into stone. She placed one foot before the other, automatically moving them. They were like dead weights. She wondered if she had really expected Edwin to marry her. She was not sure. But she did know she had not expected him to behave with such a lack of concern for her predicament, her well-being, nor with such an abject display of cringing fear it was despicable. He had not even shown any concern for the child she was expecting. His child. What a pitiful specimen of humanity he was. She smiled with irony. Imagine him only having five pounds to his name. She had more than that herself. Fifteen pounds, to be exact. Plus her iron will. And her resoluteness.

  Edwin watched her retreating figure soberly and with increasing unease, and then on an impulse he went after her. ‘Emma,’ he called. She ignored him. ‘Emma, please wait,’ he called again. She stopped and he held his breath, hoping she would turn back. But he realized she had paused because she had caught her dress on a shrub. She disentangled herself and went on up the steps to the terrace, without once looking back.

  Edwin stood rigidly on the gravel path, clutching his riding crop so tightly his knuckles were sharp and pointed in the brilliant sunshine. Panic assailed him as she disappeared into the house. His legs were watery, his mind was swimming with confusion, and then the oddest sensation took hold of him, settling in the pit of his stomach. He felt as though something vital was draining out of him, and a strange aching emptiness engulfed him, sweeping away all other emotions. Standing there in that ancient rose garden, Edwin Fairley, at seventeen, did not know that this sickening, all-enveloping emptiness, this hollowness in his heart and soul, was a feeling which would never desert him as long as he lived. He would take it with him to his grave.

  Emma carried the roses into the plant room next to the greenhouse and put the basket down on the table. She latched the door behind her firmly and rushed to the sink. She retched until she thought she would die, her eyes watering, her insides heaving. After a few seconds the nausea subsided and she wiped her face with her hands, resting against the old zinc sink, breathing deeply. Then she turned automatically to the roses and began to clip off some of the leaves, arranging the blooms carefully in the crystal vases, concentrating all of her attention on them. She could not stand the scent of the roses now. In fact, she would detest their pervasive perfume for ever, but she did have her work to do and this diligent effort on her part helped to calm her troubled mind, her quivering limbs.

  It occurred to her, as
she worked, that Edwin had not even asked her where she was going. Only when. Where would she go? She was not certain. But she would leave tomorrow. Her father and Frank worked at the mill on Saturday mornings, as did some of the other workers who wanted to make overtime. As soon as they had departed she herself would disappear. She would leave her father a note, just as Winston had done. She did not know what she would say in that note. She would think about that later.

  Emma cursed herself under her breath as she worked. What a fool she had been. She felt no remorse or even regrets about their trysts at the cave. What had been done could not be undone, and to have regrets was a waste of valuable time. She was a fool for a different reason: she had allowed Edwin to distract her from her purpose, to interfere with her Plan with a capital P, in the same way she had permitted her mother’s death, Winston’s scarpering off, and her father’s desperate need of her to make her waver in her determination to leave Fairley.

  A faint hollow echo of a voice came back to her from the past. They were words said to her over a year ago, that night of the dinner party, that night before her mother’s death, words long forgotten but remembered now. It was Adele Fairley’s voice saying to her, ‘You must get away from this place, Emma. Away from this house. Before it’s too late.’ Mrs Fairley was not as daft as everybody thought, Emma said to herself. She had known. Somehow she had known that doom and disorder and danger lurked within these walls.

  Emma paused in her work and stood perfectly still, lost in thought. She gripped the table as a sudden tremor swept through her, and closed her eyes, concentrating on her thoughts. After a few moments she opened her eyes, staring blindly at the roses. Emma did not realize that a wholly new and dangerous light had entered those remarkable emerald eyes. It was a terrible awareness compounded of her bitter comprehension and the most unremitting calculation. It was then that she made a vow to herself, a vow intensely pledged with every fibre of her being, every ounce of her strength. It would never happen again. She would never allow anyone or anything to dissuade her from her course, to stand in her way, to thwart her, or weaken her determination. She would, from this day on, be single-minded of purpose to the exclusion of all else. The purpose: money. Vast amounts of it. For money was power. She would become so rich and powerful she would be invulnerable to the world. And after that? Revenge. She smiled and it was a smile that was both unyielding and vindictive.