‘I have forgotten to order tea, my dears! Please excuse me. I must return to the house. It will be ready in about twenty minutes. Oh, dear!’
Oliver turned to Florence when Lucy had reached the gate. ‘I think she means us to be alone, Florence,’ he said mischievously. ‘Do you think we should? Will you slap my face if I take you into the summer house and try to kiss you?’
He saw with delight that he had made her blush. He felt her hand, unsteady on his arm.
It was cool in the summer house. Potted geraniums were placed along the outside wall and their sharp scent filled the tiny hexagon of a resting place. Their knees touched as they sat on opposite sides of the bench and Oliver leaned across and lifted Florence’s chin, making her look into his eyes.
‘Why, so shy, fair miss?’ he asked softly. ‘You have hardly spoken this afternoon and yet I know that you have arranged all this.’ It excited him, seeing her wide grey eyes looking into his. She was artless and innocent, and she was longing for him to kiss her. Her lips parted, red and soft.
‘If I tell you that I want to kiss you whenever I look at you and that I want to make love to you whenever I think about you what will you have to say?’ he whispered.
Florence put her hands in his. ‘I will say, “I am glad.”’
He lifted her to her feet and drew her to him and as he bent to kiss her he heard the quick, nervous catch of her breath. He drew back for a questioning moment and looked into her eyes. ‘Have we waited too long, Florence?’ he asked.
Her eyes closed, her lips parted, waiting for his, and Oliver had his answer.
There was a message for him, from Dolly. He would have to go to Southport and it was the day Sir Philip Oldfield expected his answer. Sir Philip must wait. Oliver sent a letter to him at Suttonford by messenger saying that he had agreed to his proposition and would see him the following day.
Southport was at its prettiest in July with flowers and trees at their best and pretty girls in light summer dresses shopping and taking tea in the Lord Street shops, but Oliver could not take any interest in the scene for wondering what had gone wrong.
He found her in the kitchen, turning out a cupboard. ‘What the hell are you doing? And where’s Edward?’ He had expected to find that she was ill or wringing her hands in despair at some domestic disaster that was beyond her capabilities – and here she was, dressed in mulberry silk on a hot day like today, her arms jangling with trashy jewellery, a scowl on her face, attacking the contents of a kitchen cupboard.
‘Edward’s all right. The children have gone to the park with Iris. Don’t you start bloody well yelling an’ all!’ She climbed down the step ladder. ‘It’s Wilf! He turned up last night, demanding to stay. He says he’s got a right to live here; that he’ll get Lizzie back. He’s going to get you, he says.’
She washed her hands at the sink as she spoke. ‘You know what I’m like. If I don’t know what to do about something I start looking for things I can do. That’s why I’m cleaning the cupboards.’
‘Where is he now?’ Wilf – in his house! Oliver was angry. Rage was boiling in him. ‘How dare he come here? Is he coming back? Does he know this is my house?’
‘Yes to both. God knows how he found us. He’s either asked at the station in Middlefield or he’s followed you here.’ Dolly opened a cupboard in the dresser and brought out a bottle of tonic wine and two glasses. ‘Do you want a drop?’
‘No. And I wish you’d stop drinking the stuff. You must get through a bottle a week. You don’t need a damned tonic!’ He put the kettle on the gas. ‘What time will he be back?’
‘Tonight. Will you stay?’ Dolly drained her glass, then, seeing the look on Oliver’s face, put the bottle back in the cupboard and made tea for them.
He walked to the park and found Iris and the children sitting by the edge of the lake. Lizzie was hurling pieces of bread at the ducks, squealing with delight as they dived into the shallow water, tails in the air. She saw Oliver approach and ran towards him, arms outstretched, her hair, the colour of carrots, streaming out behind her. She was an adorable little girl, affectionate and good-natured.
‘Oliver!’ she came towards him and he lifted her high above his head in the way she loved and she wrapped her arms tight around his neck, clinging to him like a monkey.
Oliver peered into the perambulator. Edward slept peacefully and he didn’t wake him. He’d help Iris to put them to bed and play with his son later.
His anger simmered below the surface all afternoon, leaving him only when he put the children to bed. Oliver thought that Edward was very advanced for his six months of age. He held him around the waist while they waited for Iris to fill his little bathtub. Oliver settled himself down on the low nursing chair and already Edward was trying to pull himself up onto his feet.
The baby grasped his hair as his father put his face affectionately towards him and the frown of concentration on his little face was the best thing Oliver had seen in a long time. Strong little feet pushed into Oliver’s lap and the baby’s wet mouth found his cheek.
‘Look at him, Iris! Did you ever see a baby so clever?’ Oliver asked the girl. ‘I believe he’s exceptionally talented. He’ll be walking before he’s a year old. You mark my words!’ He passed the baby to Iris who, aided by an adoring Lizzie, soaped and rinsed the kicking little body.
The house was spotless. Mahogany gleamed, brass and silver shone and the carpets were brushed daily to Dolly’s strict instructions. She was not an easy-going employer. Oliver had never found food to compare with Dolly’s and now that she was able to buy well they kept what she called ‘a proper table’. They dined at the big table in the dining room, both at one end. Tonight Dolly had prepared fillets of sole with shrimp sauce and these were served with green peas and runner beans from the garden, and new potatoes coated in best butter. There was veal and ham in a light golden pastry and dishes of crisp salads. Finally, to please Oliver, she had prepared layered sponge slices with his favourite, strawberries and cream.
It was ten o’clock before Wilf returned. They heard his footsteps echoing hollowly down the side passage and the crash as he slammed the garden gate. ‘Dolly. Open this door!’ he shouted, beating on the back door. ‘Open it before I break it down!’
Oliver wrenched the handle on the inside, making Wilf tumble into the kitchen, off balance. Then he caught him and whirled him around to face him. ‘What are you doing in my house?’ he snarled. ‘Answer me! Who said you could come to my door?’
Wilf threw himself backwards to free himself from Oliver’s grip and clenched his fists, challenging Oliver to attack him. ‘I don’t need your permission to see my own child and her mother,’ he spat out. His eyes were bloodshot and his breath was foul with alcohol. ‘It might be your house but it’s my property as is in it!’
He lashed out at Oliver with his fist, catching him unawares, making Oliver’s eyes stream. ‘Forgotten how to fight have you, lad?’ he jeered. ‘You’ll not have had so much practice lately.’ He punched with the other fist and this time he caught Oliver on the shoulder. ‘Been too busy making little bastards, have yer?’
Oliver was spoiling for a fight … He squared up to the foul-mouthed man he detested. His knuckles smashed into Wilf’s face, making Wilf reel backwards, sending plates from the dresser shelves crashing to the floor.
It did not silence Wilf. ‘Whose is the bastard?’ he jeered.
Wild rage surged through Oliver. He dragged Wilf towards him and with a swift left to the ear knocked him against the wall. His right fist came up under Wilf’s ribs, making him retch and grab wildly for support. Another blow to the face and Wilf was down, coughing and spluttering on all fours. Oliver pulled him to his feet.
‘If you’re not gone from this house within five seconds, you’ll not live to see morning. I’m not making threats. I’ll kill you, Wilf Leach, without a thought if I ever see or hear of you again. It’s only for the sake of my household that you’re alive to hear me now.’ He pulled ope
n the back door and pushed Wilf ahead of him, holding him over the balustrade, making the man grab at his clothes to prevent himself from being thrown on to the slabbed yard below.
‘Get yourself away from here. And away from Cheshire. If I discover you within a hundred miles of me I’ll have you killed, or take pleasure in doing the job myself.’
Wilf stumbled down the steps, hanging on to the railings, with Oliver only a step above him, until he reached the yard. Then he turned and ran from the house.
Wilf lifted his face out of the water. He had no recollection of finding his way to the beach but at last the salt water was numbing his bruises. His ribs ached, one eye was closed and his clothes were heavy with seawater. He reached upwards until his hands found the cast iron of the pier supports. The tide was out but there was water in the deep depressions at the base of the piles. He did not know when the tide would turn and bring the sea swirling back around him.
It was an attractive beach, but not a safe one. Three masts protruded from the sand and stories were told by the local fisherfolk of ships being beached and swallowed up in the ever shifting quicksands. The tide came in swiftly on this section of coast, spreading fast and shallow over the sand, giving the unwary the impression that they were safe at the water’s edge. The water could be ten feet deep fifty yards ahead and the bather oblivious of the danger.
Wilf dragged himself from the pool and made his way back to the promenade. ‘I’ll get the bastard. I’ll get him in Middlefield soon,’ he promised himself, muttering threats as he shivered in his wet clothes. ‘Next time I’ll end it for him.’
He took a train to Middlefield when it was light enough to see, telling himself that he would be back to live with Dolly when he had killed Oliver. ‘There’s plenty as’ll help me,’ he said to himself.
This time Sir Philip Oldfield was in his office. He was seated in a bath chair beside the bench with a footman in attendance. Sir Philip dismissed the man when Oliver was shown in. ‘Take a seat, Wainwright,’ he said, looking up at Oliver. ‘My sainted aunt! What have you done? It’s the blackest eye I’ve seen in years.’
‘I was kicked. By a horse,’ Oliver lied. ‘Yesterday.’
‘Do you hunt?’ Sir Philip enquired. ‘You should have a bit of steak placed on it.’
‘No, and yes,’ Oliver said. ‘No to the hunting. Yes to the steak.’
‘So. You are going to ask Florence to marry you,’ Sir Philip said. ‘You have made your decision.’
‘Yes. I’ll ask her to marry,’ Oliver answered, then added gravely, ‘but there is a condition.’
Sir Philip’s face returned the old look Oliver knew well, a look of arrogant disdain. ‘You are to be accepted into one of the best families in England, Wainwright. Don’t assume too much. You do not make the conditions.’
‘Hear me out,’ Oliver demanded, curt and impatient.
‘Go on. What condition do you think you can ask?’
‘You want grandchildren, Sir Philip,’ Oliver said quietly. ‘And I want children. These children will bear the name of Wainwright, not Oldfield. You have thought of that?’
‘It has not escaped me, Wainwright,’ Sir Philip replied. ‘Wainwright is a good name. Nothing wrong with Wainwright.’
Oliver went to the window and looked out in the direction of the quarry. ‘I want my father’s body brought out,’ he said. ‘At whatever cost to the estate. I know it will be considerable. My father will have a proper burial.’ He looked hard at Sir Philip. ‘My father is to be given a resting place. He is to have a place in the burial ground at Suttonford church.’
‘Only Oldfields are buried in that ground, Wainwright,’ Sir Philip said.
‘My father was all the family I had. He will be remembered and honoured as the grandfather of my children. I will not father Oldfield children unless I can show them where their grandfather Wainwright lies.’
Sir Philip put out his hand. ‘Wainwright,’ he said, and there was at last respect in his voice, ‘I agree. I admire you for that. I hope that when I am gone these children will honour my memory.’
‘Then you’ll do it?’
‘Of course.’
‘When?’
Sir Philip smiled. ‘As soon as your betrothal is announced I shall have Joe Wainwright’s body brought out. Your father will have a place alongside the family graves. What do you want on the headstone?’
Oliver thought hard for a moment. ‘All I want is “Joseph Edward Wainwright, Laid to Rest in 1880”.’
‘That is not the date of his death, Wainwright,’ Sir Philip said. ‘He was killed when you were a young boy.’
‘Nevertheless,’ Oliver answered, ‘I want this done.’
‘It shall be.’
Sir Philip rang for the butler. ‘Bring cognac, Jackson,’ he said when the man came into the room, ‘Oliver Wainwright and I have something to celebrate.’
‘I’ll have to start calling on Florence officially. We’ve been kept apart until now, you realise?’ Oliver said when the door closed behind Jackson.
Sir Philip put out a still firm hand and the two men shook. ‘I shall call you Oliver once she accepts you. Now take a look at these ledgers will you?’
Half an hour later Oliver faced Sir Philip who had patiently watched Oliver’s face as he tried to make sense of the estate accounts. ‘You’re going to have to take drastic measures to save the estate, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘I’ll need to spend a lot of time sorting this out, but from here it looks as if you are in trouble. You must have other assets?’
Sir Philip shook his head. ‘That’s it, I’m afraid, Wainwright. There are a few rents, the farm income, the quarry is making a profit and a few thousand in shipping.’
‘You’ll have to sell something. You know that, don’t you? You must get money coming in. Stop it flowing out all the time.’ Oliver closed the big cashbook firmly and faced his future father-in-law.
‘I see why you wanted me in the family. You think I can save your estate for you, don’t you?’ He spoke without rancour. ‘What a task!’
‘Where will we get the income, Wainwright?’
‘Why are you still growing wheat?’ Oliver asked him. ‘With cheap wheat coming in off the prairies?’ He drew up a chair and tapped at the desk thoughtfully. ‘You should have been building up a dairy herd with all the people in the towns. Supply them! Grow the stuff they want to buy in the markets and in the shops. The towns are growing by the day, taking your estate workers from your cottages and villages and still you people don’t believe what you see before you!’
‘There’s not time for that sort of thing, Wainwright. We need money now,’ Sir Philip said. ‘The things you suggest will take a year or two.’
‘Sell some land for building houses. Sell one of your sites in Middlefield. Don’t start quibbling about who you sell to. Rich people don’t get richer by selling to their friends. There’s a hell of a lot more poor people about than rich ones and a penny or two from every poor person will make you a rich man!’ He saw that this kind of talk was not what Sir Philip had expected but he continued. ‘I didn’t make my money wondering what the rich were looking for. I see what the poor folk need and sell that. Then I look ahead to see what they’ll need next.’
‘You don’t have any compunction about stepping outside your own class to do it, then, eh, Wainwright?’ Sir Philip asked. ‘Are you ambitious to move up in the world? Be taken for a gentleman?’
Oliver looked at him shrewdly. ‘Not in the way you think. I’d not want to be taken for the kind of ruddy gentlemen I’ve come across so far. I don’t care for fancy manners and living the way you do. I want a good life for myself and my family and I don’t feel I ought to pull the whole working class along with me. But I’m not afraid of them, as you are. And I’m not afraid of you, as they are.’
‘Big sentiments, Wainwright, but how will you feel when you have all this?’ He waved his hand towards the window. ‘And you are visited by the kind of gentlemen you despise and you want
to be accepted by them?’
Oliver laughed out loud. He could just imagine it and the prospect amused him. ‘If they are coming here to see me then it will be they who will be trying to please me, won’t it?’ he replied. ‘It will be the gentlemen, as you call them, who will want to be accepted. I’ll not try to please them.’
Chapter Twenty-One
Florence could not decide which dress to wear for Oliver’s visit. It was his fourth in a fortnight. Mama had ceased voicing objections and even seemed to be encouraging him.
‘Do I look prettier in the scarlet or the blue?’ she asked her maid as she looked from one dress to the other. ‘I think I’ll wear the scarlet satin. It has a daring feel to it. Tonight I’ll make Oliver very eager.’
‘Be quick with the hooks,’ she added impatiently. The girl fastened the last hook and Florence dismissed her quickly and crossed to her window. The heavy nets ensured that she could not be seen. She knew it was so because she had obliged her maid to stand where she herself stood and had gone into the street and looked hard at the windows and not seen so much as a shadow. She stood for five minutes, waiting.
Oliver would turn into the alleyway at the top of Rivergate at any moment. He always came this way, shortening his journey by only about fifty yards, reappearing from an alleyway almost opposite the imposing entrance to number twenty-three. Then it took him precisely to the count of eight with her eyes closed, before the clang of the iron gate and the doorbell sounded almost simultaneously. He leaped up the short flight of steps to their door, hardly giving the gate time to swing back on its hinges before he was tugging at the bell pull.
She saw him and her heart quickened as it always did. She liked to keep him waiting for two minutes. Two minutes seemed an age and she did not want to miss any more of his company than she had to.
She heard Mama greet him as if his call were a pleasant surprise and he had caught them unaware. ‘Go up to the drawing room, Oliver. I will tell Florence you are here,’ she heard her say.
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