The Child From Nowhere

by Freda Lightfoot

  Kate’s heart sank even further, if that were possible, then rallied quickly on a spurt of anger. ‘And you let her, knowing we were all waiting for you at home?’

  Eliot laughed, and the dark eyebrows lifted in that mildly scolding way of his, the kind of look which firmly reminded her that he was the master here and could do as he pleased. For an instant Kate forgot that she was his beloved wife and felt as if she were still that struggling girl from Poor House Lane.

  ‘I didn’t know any such thing. The train came in and you, my dear wife, were not on the platform. Lucy explained how you’d been held up and ...’

  ‘She what?’

  ‘Don’t look so guilty, Kate. I forgive you.’

  ‘’Tis not guilt I feel, ‘tis fury at her lies! Didn’t I miss you by no more than a few minutes? The porter told me the train had only just arrived.’

  Her soft Irish brogue had surfaced as it always did when Kate was annoyed and he smiled, enjoying this show of temper. She slipped from his embrace and her stance now was one of pride and obstinate defiance, which he knew only too well. ‘Let me look at you, Kate. Dear heaven, I swear you are lovelier than ever, despite the storm brewing in those lovely grey eyes of yours.’

  ‘And haven’t I every right to be cross, with you wandering off for no reason at all?’

  He chuckled, drawing her to him so he could savour the scent of her: lemon verbena shampoo, the tang of soap, and that special something which was uniquely Kate. ‘I remember you looking every bit as truculent and defiant the very first day I saw you, when you were ready to take me to task for allowing my foreman to sack your rapscallion of a brother. I swear I was overawed by your beauty even then: by the set of that small square chin, the way your nostrils flared with temper, those lovely eyebrows winging defiantly upwards. Ready to take on the world and do battle. I swear you made me tremble.’

  ‘I did no such thing.’ She could feel herself softening beneath his charm, the tug of a smile at the corners of her mouth.

  ‘No need to make excuses, my darling. I know how hard you have worked, how overwhelming it must have been for you, taking care of everything. You are safely relieved of all that worry now. I am home again, so what does it matter if you were too busy to come and collect me?’

  ‘Sure and it matters to me. I’ll not have Lucy say what isn’t true. I didn’t forget and I wasn’t at all too busy! She’s just looking for any excuse to stir up trouble between us.’

  ‘Nonsense! Why would she do such a thing? Lucy was only being kind.’

  ‘She was not being kind, she ...’ But the look in Eliot’s eye silenced her, made her bite her lip and not embark upon her tale, not just now, not like this. Hadn’t he only this very minute arrived home, and here they were quarrelling already? And if Lucy’s actions had caused their quarrel, then hadn’t she succeeded in her malice? Kate gave a small choking sob and fell into his arms. ‘This isn’t how I planned it. I so desperately wanted our reunion to be perfect, to be joyous.’

  He stroked a damp tendril of hair from her hot cheek. ‘And it is, my love. It is. I’m here, aren’t I? We’re together at last.’

  She lifted her face for his kiss. Oh, why hadn’t she told him the whole story from the start? It had seemed impossible at the time, cruel almost, to bother him with domestic issues while he was away fighting a war, when he might be killed at any moment and not in a position to do anything about the problems at home.

  Now that dreadful woman threatened to rob Kate of happiness yet again.

  Eliot looked so desperately tired. His sensitive mouth seemed to have thinned with deep grooves marking each corner. The hawk-like nose was even more pronounced and the once fine bone structure more drawn, skin yellowed and pale. Was it any wonder after what he’d been through? He was thinner, looked much older than the day he’d gone off to war. Kate had noticed that he moved with a stiffness to his gait, favouring one leg. She’d made no comment upon this, hoping he would tell her of the injury that had caused it when he was good and ready. His hands might be calloused and scarred but they touched her cheek with the same tenderness as before, the velvet brown eyes resting on her with love. Kate was content.

  ‘There is so much we need to talk about, so much I have to tell you.’

  ‘And I you. That I love you still, that we have all the time in the world now, my darling, to be together. Don’t be cross with me for not waiting. Or with Lucy for booking us lunch at the County. I believed that you’d encountered some problem at the works. And it was a very hasty luncheon, I didn’t even pause to partake of a dessert, or coffee, though Lucy urged me to have one or the other. Then she drove me swiftly home in her fine motor, her latest acquisition no doubt. Apparently business is booming, which is good to hear. But never mind all of that now. I will gladly forgive you everything, if only you’ll let me kiss you again, and again, and again.’

  He began to suit actions to his words and how could she remain cross when he was kissing her face, her eyes, her throat, unbuttoning the high neck of her jacket, seeking the tender warmth of her breasts?

  ‘Let me warm myself on your radiance. Kate, I have missed you so desperately.’

  Kate bit back the bitter disappointment, dampened her anger over Lucy’s lies and machinations, and allowed herself to be swept away by a different sort of storm altogether.

  Later, as they lay naked together in the big wide bed, sated and happy, Eliot softly stroking her hair, she told him everything. The day Callum had apparently vanished off the face of the earth; one moment playing on the lawns, the next gone from their lives, would live forever in both their hearts. And they each suffered from the guilty knowledge that at the precise moment of his disappearance, they were paying him no attention at all but rather engaged in one of their spats.

  If passion characterised their love affair, it had also blighted it in many ways. They had disagreed on all manner of topics, not least politics and the manner in which Eliot ran the business.

  But then Kate had never been the kind of woman to surrender her independence, or subjugate her own opinion to any man’s. On the day that Callum disappeared she’d been standing her corner for the sake of a friend, Millie, who was being badly abused by Ned Swainson, Eliot’s crooked foreman. Kate’s antipathy to the man had a long history, dating from the time he’d tried it on with her, and sacked her brother. Knowing this, Eliot had been inclined to believe that she was exaggerating in her account of his foreman’s vicious behaviour. This had enraged Kate, and during the heated argument that followed, her son had apparently wandered out of the garden and disappeared.

  Following the terrible discovery that Callum had vanished, without anyone seeing him go, Kate had almost lost her reason. She’d searched for her son for years, her heart breaking from her need to find him.

  Now she was able to reveal exactly what had taken place; the whole sorry story. Kate gently and calmly explained to Eliot that Lucy, his sister-in-law, was the one responsible. She’d taken revenge over the suicide of her wastrel husband, Charlie, blaming Eliot entirely for his brother’s untimely death because he’d adopted Kate’s son, a child from Poor House Lane, thereby disinheriting his own family, in her opinion. And she’d done it in the most cruel way: by abducting the boy.

  ‘She muddied his smart new clothes and slapped him, labelled him with a new name, Allan, sounding enough like his own to confuse a distressed five year old child. Then she took him to the Union workhouse on Kendal Green, and from there he was moved to Brocklebank’s farm out on the Langdales. The couple were not kindly disposed towards him, since he was but an orphan farm boy in their eyes. Callum suffered badly at their hands.’

  Eliot listened to all of this with increasing horror. ‘I find this hard to believe. Absolutely incredible!’

  ‘Nevertheless it is true.’

  ‘How can you be certain? Has she confessed?’

  ‘Of course she didn’t confess. I learned of it from Callum himself. All those years I spent searching for him,
and on one occasion, unbeknown to me, I came so close to finding him. He was apparently helping Mrs Brocklebank on Kendal market and while I was busy buying from another stall, Flora began to chat with him, offered him some of her barley sugar. I scolded her for talking to strangers. But I didn’t know! I didn’t know it was Callum. I saw a woman berating a young boy as we moved away, but I didn’t get a clear view of him. Oh, if only I had.’

  ‘Kate, my darling, how dreadful for you.’

  ‘It tears me apart to think of it even now, to have been so close and not to have realised. Imagine what he had to endure: made to live in the barn with the animals, fed on scraps from their table, forced to work all hours and be shown not an ounce of love or pity. How can I live with that knowledge? It fills me with pain, with unendurable guilt.’

  Eliot put his arms about her and held her tight as she quietly wept. ‘We will not think any more of this matter right now. We will simply be glad that our boy is returned to us. I cannot wait to meet him, so don’t you think, my darling, that it is time we rose and faced the world?’

  She lifted her face to his one more time, still wet with tears, and he was so moved by the sight of her that he must love her all over again.

  He ran a bath, peeled off his clothes and climbed into it with her. There were angry purple scars on his right leg and he lowered himself into the water with care, but since he made no remark upon them, neither did she. He soaped her back, her breasts, teasing and tickling her. Kate wriggled forward to sit astride his lap, arching her back in sheer ecstasy as she rode him, but then remembered the injured leg.

  ‘Oh, I must take care, I don’t want to hurt you.’

  ‘Don’t worry, you aren’t, and I need you so badly, Kate.’

  ‘Is that all right?’

  ‘It is bliss.’

  Yet insufficient for his urgent needs so he lifted her bodily from the rapidly cooling water, lay her down on the bathroom rug and took her with the kind of force that left them both gasping.

  It was late-afternoon when they finally emerged into the sitting room where the family were assembled, Kate quite flushed about the cheeks, Eliot looking remarkably pleased with himself.

  The aunts were seated side by side on the sofa, for once not in their customary black but dressed in their best navy-blue chenille, to celebrate the occasion. Flora looked remarkably demure in a new white organza dress, though was sitting on the edge of her seat as if it were a huge effort for her to remain still.

  With some relief, Kate noted that Lucy had shown the good sense not to enter the house, for all she’d clearly been anxious to see Eliot on his first day home. But then she hadn’t been allowed to set foot in Tyson Lodge since the day Kate had turned her out of the family home and had publicly humiliated her before the servants.

  However, as Aunt Vera had warned, she might well attempt to return now, hell-bent on trouble, making Kate regret the mercy she’d shown on that fateful day by not reporting her sister-in-law to the police for abducting a child.

  Not that she would allow Lucy to spoil this red-letter day for one moment longer. This was the day Kate had dreamed of for so long. Even as Eliot kissed each aunt on the cheek and hugged and kissed his daughter, remarking on how much she’d grown and how pretty she was, making Flora giggle with pleasure, his gaze was riveted upon Callum, his adopted son and Kate’s own first born.

  Kate’s heart swelled with pride just to look at Callum.

  Wasn’t he a fine young man? He was tall for his sixteen years, well made and strong and, in her eyes at least, remarkably handsome. The unruly thatch of hair was less fiery than her own, but its redness undoubtedly marked him as her son. His eyes were an enchanting blue-grey, slightly narrowed in that brooding way he had, and the mouth still tremulous and sulky as a child’s. He reminded her very much of her own brother Dermot, which she hoped and prayed didn’t bode ill.

  He was leaning against one corner of the mantelpiece, seeming to indicate that he was on the fringes of this little group, this family, and really wished to play no part in it. She itched to tell him to take his hands out of his pocket and greet his father with better manners, but she held her tongue. This wasn’t the moment for maternal nagging.

  Eliot strode right over to him and grasped him by the shoulders, giving him a hearty hug and several paternal slaps on the back. ‘Callum, I can’t tell you how it warms my heart to see you, son! What good fortune that we are both returned home again, safe and well.’

  There was a short silence during which Callum did indeed pull his hands from his pockets and stand erect, but only to move away from Eliot. When he spoke, his voice was soft, a chilling whisper. ‘I am not your son, and never will be.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Only Kate was privy to the flash of hurt that crossed her husband’s face. ‘Callum, don’t say such a thing!’ she chided him. ‘Of course you are his son. Didn’t Eliot and Amelia, your late mama, adopt you as a baby?’

  Callum kept his gaze steady on Eliot for a full half minute before redirecting it to Kate. ‘You always told me, Mother, that my father drowned in the River Kent during a flood.’

  ‘Well, to be sure that is so, but ...’

  ‘And having lived most of me life on a remote farm in the Langdales as little more than an unpaid slave, why would I see this man as me dad? I don’t know him. He’s nobbut a stranger to me. Some bit of paper dun’t turn a person into a father.’

  Kate was horrified. She heard the aunts give a collective gasp and even Flora’s excited chatter was stilled. This reunion seemed destined to go wrong. ‘Callum, that’s a terrible thing to say. Take it back, this minute.’

  ‘No, no, the boy has a point,’ Eliot quietly conceded. ‘He’s right. Being accepted as a parent is more than just a legal process. Sadly, due to circumstances beyond our control, we have indeed turned into strangers. But it was not always so and I hope to rectify the situation, with effect from now. I am certainly eager to do my part. I hope you feel the same, son?’

  ‘Me name’s Callum.’

  Another short silence during which Kate could tell Eliot was struggling to quell a burst of irritation. ‘Very well, as I say, I’ve taken your point. I trust we can at least be friends?’ He held out his hand and only when it became obvious that Callum was not about to take it, did he let it fall again to his side. Eliot quickly adopted a brisk manner. ‘Right, time to sample this feast which Mrs Petty and her stalwart band have taken such trouble to prepare. Shall we go through to the dining room?’

  Flora bounced to his side. ‘May I go in with you, Papa?’

  ‘Most certainly, my sweet. I shall take great pleasure in escorting so charming a daughter.’ And he proffered his arm for the giggling child to take.

  Smiling with relief, Kate turned to Callum, expecting him to do the same for her, but he simply strode past her, his stubborn chin held high, and she was forced to enter the dining room alone.

  Nothing was ever easy with Callum. From the day she’d found him standing on the doorstep two years ago, his attitude had been steadfastly obstructive. Kate was disappointed, and although she tried to make allowances it was immensely frustrating at times.

  At fourteen he’d been at that awkward stage of adolescent self-consciousness where he could see nobody’s point of view but his own. He’d felt betrayed, neglected, abandoned by his own mother, seeing himself as someone nobody cared for. And Kate could hardly blame him for feeling that way.

  She’d agreed to let him be adopted by Eliot Tyson and his wife when he’d been barely fifteen months old because she’d feared her child might otherwise die of one of the myriad diseases easily contracted in Poor House Lane, if starvation didn’t get him first. She felt she’d had no choice. Nor had she been so proud as not to see the advantages it would bring him. This way her Callum grow up a gentleman with a good education and fine manners.

  Except things hadn’t turned out that way at all. As a result of Lucy’s abduction of him, Callum had been brought up as a fa
rm-hand. Since his return home, Kate was desperate to make up to him for all that he had lost.

  She’d provided him with security in terms of an apprenticeship at Tyson’s shoe factory, had done what she could to improve his education. She’d also tactfully attempted to teach him good manners: how to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, and to use a knife and fork properly. She’d striven to dampen down the Westmorland accent he’d acquired on the farm, so that he wouldn’t feel quite so awkward in company. Was it a crime for her to want her son to enjoy the finer things of life?

  Oh, but even if she never succeeded in smoothing off the rough corners, didn’t she love the bones of him? Nothing else mattered but that he was home safe and well, with her. He was her boy. Although she couldn’t help wishing that it had never happened. If only he hadn’t gone missing that day, how different life would have been.

  If only - two words that had haunted her for years.

  If only she’d taken better care of him, paid more attention to her own child and less to the problems of others. If only she hadn’t left him making daisy chains on the lawn while she ran after Eliot simply to win yet an argument over Swainson.

  If only she hadn’t assumed, when she’d realised he was gone, that Eliot had taken him.

  If only she’d searched harder … ignoring the fact that she’d been obsessed with searching for him, had tirelessly scoured the town for weeks, months, years in the end, making herself ill in the process. If she’d seen a child in the street who bore the vaguest resemblance to him, Kate’s heart would race and she’d follow him until, realising her error, she would quietly weep.

  Worst of all, if only she’d recognised him that day at the market, had remonstrated with the farmer’s wife when she’d seen her berating the boy, instead of thinking it was none of her business.

  If only she could turn back the clock and make everything come right.

  If only!

  But she could do none of these things. She could only accept how things were now and learn to live with them. Her heart sang with joy to have Eliot home. Yet seeing her husband attempt to embrace his adopted son, whom he’d loved as his own, and be so rebuffed, filled Kate with sorrow and a deep foreboding.