A Family Affair

by Nancy Carson

  Ramona had irreconcilably alienated her step-mother by bringing shame on her and Jake. Thus, she knew better than to visit them at the Jolly Collier and suffer the ignominy of a monumental snub. Jake, though, while condemning his daughter’s obvious lack of virtue for the sake of peace and quiet at home with Mary Ann, made secret visits to Ramona at least once a week, to give her money and such moral support as he was able. He could no more disown his only daughter and shut her from his life than he could Mary Ann. The two women were integral to his very existence and he walked a narrow path trying to oblige both.

  Ramona pondered her lot as she lay awake waiting for sleep to encompass her. She might be pregnant, but she was lucky – she had a husband. She’d found a man she liked who had played the game nobly and sacrificed what might have been, for her and the child. Oh, she was under no illusions about whom he really loved, but at least his sense of fair play, his integrity, had rendered her position rock solid. But she was determined that he should not regret marrying her. So, she was attentive, sweet and affectionate. She kept a clean and tidy house and, whilst it was as yet sparsely furnished, she brightened it with vases of seasonal flowers and made some bright curtains from material she bought from the market. She ventured that sooner or later he couldn’t fail to realise on which side his bread was buttered and when that happened he would realise he loved only her. But Ramona, always honest with herself if with nobody else, knew that if ever Tom did confess finally that he loved her, she would have achieved her goal…yet once that happened, she would inevitably lose interest in him.

  Naturally, she wondered how Clover felt about the whole unsavoury business and there were times when she was racked with feelings of guilt at having stolen Tom from right under that pretty nose of hers. She had not played fair with Clover. She was acutely aware of it and not particularly proud of the fact. But her own need had been the greater. She was with child. She needed a husband. Her unborn child needed a father. They had been blessed with the finest.

  Tom pondered his lot, too. He had little to complain about from a husband’s point of view. He had a wife who turned heads wherever she went, with her mass of yellow curls and big brown eyes. To look at her you’d think butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth though he knew different. She was sensuous and affectionate but he knew she had been sensuous and affectionate with at least one other man. There might have been others for all he knew, so he could only speculate; but since speculation was dangerous and unsettling he was not inclined to do it. Ramona was proving to be a worthy cook, an adept homemaker; their bed was changed weekly, she did the washing on a Monday like any self-respecting wife and her ironing was exemplary. There was never a speck of dust out of place and the windows gleamed. By the time he returned from his studio every evening she made certain she looked her best. She was a worthy young woman, canny beyond her years.

  So why did he not love her? Well, maybe he would grow to love her in time. Maybe, if only he knew it, if only he could see over the sides of this hole he’d dug himself so deeply into, she was the best thing that had ever happened to him. The truth was, he missed Clover. He still loved Clover with all his being and coming to terms with a life without her was difficult. Of course, he tried to hide the fact. He did not go about with his chin on the floor. But Clover was seldom far from his thoughts. When making love to Ramona in those early days he felt pangs of guilt that he was being unfaithful to Clover, despite the fact that their relationship was at an end. He was both amazed and confused that he could relish making love to one woman when he was so much in love with another. Perhaps that was the hypocrisy of man. Perhaps it was even the inconsistency of man that worked both ways, allowing him to square up to his undoubted responsibilities to Ramona and become her lawful wedded husband, when he was pulled so strongly by his love for Clover.

  Well, Clover was gone. She was out of his reach. She was out of bounds now. Still he could not help wondering what marriage to her might have been like. He could not help imagining how life might have developed with her, how they would have fallen into each other’s ways, accepted each other’s little habits and foibles and laughed at them. He could not help wondering how they would have borne life’s inevitable disappointments, felt elation at life’s triumphs. He could not help wondering what a child of theirs would be like.

  If only he had made her pregnant instead…

  Clover determined to tell her mother that night that she was pregnant but her courage failed her at the last. She trembled at the prospect and felt her legs go weak. She realised, just at the point of forming the words on her lips, that she could not face the torrent of abuse that Mary Ann would undoubtedly hurl at her in consequence. No, she could not face that tonight.

  But things have a way of happening, circumstances have the knack of unwittingly wrenching from us our most intimate secrets when we least expect it. So it was after tea that same evening. Clover had gone to her room to change, to smarten herself up ready to serve in the taproom. Her mother had gone upstairs as well with the same notion. In her room, Clover took off the frock and the shift she had been wearing all day and stood in her drawers as she looked briefly at herself in profile in the long mirror, inspecting the size of her belly. Next, she reached in her wardrobe for the blouse and skirt she intended wearing. When she had found them she pulled open the top drawer of her chest and found a clean shift. Her door was ajar and she did not know Mary Ann was watching from the landing.

  Clover sat on her bed and felt the cold linoleum under her bare feet as she fingered a stray piece of cotton. She heard the creak of floorboards and looked up as the door opened. Mary Ann appeared, half dressed in her own white shift, looking like Marley’s ghost, her greying hair loose about her shoulders. Her expression was one of horror, as if she herself had just encountered some hideous ghoul. Clover thought she looked like a mad woman. Then she realised that her mother had been watching her, had noticed her swollen midriff that her clothes concealed so well.

  ‘You’ve put on some weight, our Clover. You’m getting quite a belly on you.’

  She knew.

  By God, she knew.

  Mary Ann knew her daughter well. This was the opening lunge, although it did not promise to be a lengthy fencing match. Both women were inclined to be direct, but Mary Ann could be brutally so. Besides, she would know by Clover’s reaction the truth of the matter.

  Clover sighed. It was a critical moment. The opportunity to confess her condition and be done with it was suddenly upon her. It would be hard to shy away from such a crucial juncture, timely or not, only to have to contrive another one later.

  ‘So what’s up?’ Mary Ann persisted.

  ‘I’ll give you one guess,’ Clover answered resignedly, looking directly into her eyes. All fear, all apprehension was gone. Her mother could do nothing that could hurt her. She had already experienced the most savage hurt that events could inflict upon her. Nothing could pain her more, physical or mental.

  ‘I hope to God as you’m not pregnant.’ There was stony contempt in her voice.

  ‘Well, you’ll have to go on hoping, Mother,’ Clover said quietly, ‘because that’s exactly what I am.’

  ‘If it’s the truth, you’m no daughter of mine.’

  Clover shrugged and looked at her bare knees, unwilling to meet her mother’s scathing eyes. It was exactly the sort of unsupportive reaction she had envisaged.

  ‘So whose child is it?’

  Clover shook her head and looked defiantly up at Mary Ann. ‘If I’m no daughter of yours then it’s none of your business.’

  ‘Just you mind your mouth, you damn tart.’ She glowered at Clover with narrowed eyes that promised hellfire and brimstone. ‘Who d’you think you’m a-talking to? Is it that Tom Doubleday’s child you’m a-carrying?’

  ‘I don’t know whose child it is,’ Clover lied, with conviction.

  ‘I asked if it was Tom Doubleday’s. Ramona’s husband’s.’

  ‘No, it’s not Tom Doubleday’s, so you can
rest easy. I told you, I don’t know who the father is and that’s the truth.’

  ‘You don’t know who the father is?’ Mary Ann’s scorn was like frosted granite. ‘What kind of a trollop am yer?’

  ‘Oh, the worst kind, I imagine. It could be one of…of ten men.’ She threw her head back haughtily. Might as well be vilified for having ten lovers as for one. Might as well plague her mother with the thought that her only daughter had slept with ten different men.

  ‘My God!…’ Mary Ann paused while she assimilated this information. She folded her arms disdainfully across her chest. ‘I knew as wearing ne’er a corset would lead to this. I tried to warn you but you wouldn’t listen. And that Ramona an’ all. Well, I hope you’m ashamed of yourself. May the Lord forgive you for your sins, ’cause I’m buggered if I can. I can’t abide such vile behaviour and I’ll not harbour such a sinful woman under my roof, daughter or no. You’ll have to go, Clover.’ She sighed with anger and disappointment while Clover suffered her mother’s icy resentment, her eyes fixed on her knees. ‘What a damned mess!’ Mary Ann went on, trawling new depths for revilement of indignation and disgust. ‘First Ramona, then you. It was bad enough the shock of young Ramona. Jake’ll never get over that. And now you. I thought you had a bit more about you than that. I don’t know what’s up with you young women today, by God I don’t. You’ve got no morals, no virtue.’

  ‘And no corsets,’ Clover replied under her breath.

  ‘Well, you deserve everything that’s a-coming to you.’

  This diatribe was really no more than Clover had expected. ‘All right, I’ll go,’ she said coolly. ‘If you want me to, I’ll go. Disown me. Throw me out. I couldn’t care less.’ Tears trembled on her long lashes and one trickled down her cheek. She wiped it away with the back of her hand.

  ‘There’s me cousin Jemima in Wellington…’ It seemed Mary Ann might be relenting.

  ‘If you think I’m going to Wellington just to be out of your hair, just to spare your blushes, you can think again,’ Clover replied, defiant, shunning this new-found forbearance. ‘If you don’t want me here, if I’m too much of an embarrassment for you, just disown me. The last thing I want is for you to be embarrassed over me. You must never let your church cronies see that you could condone your only daughter getting pregnant out of wedlock by doing something as mad as supporting her. Well, I can make my own way. I don’t need you to help me rear my child.’

  ‘Contrary madam!’ Mary Ann rasped. ‘I could bloody throttle you. You’ll see what’ll happen. You’ll either end up in the workhouse or the whorehouse. And serve you damned right. You must have the morals of a bitch on heat. And to think you’m my own flesh and blood. Well get your things together and bugger off. You’m no daughter of mine.’

  ‘All right,’ she said, unrepentant. ‘I’ll go tonight.’

  ‘Then go to him who made you pregnant. Whoever he is.’

  ‘How the hell do I know where I’ll go then?’

  Chapter 22

  She was outside in the street. In one hand she carried a basket containing the only other two pairs of shoes she owned, apart from the pair she was wearing, and her purse. With her other hand she clutched the strings of a brown-paper carrier bag that held clean underclothes and stockings, a dress, a skirt, a blouse, a bar of soap and a toothbrush.

  By the scant illumination from the street lamps she could see the smoke swirling from the line of chimneys that stood like soldiers on the roofs of the terraced houses, the blustery wind ravaging it as inexorably as her hopes and dreams had been ravaged. She turned away, pulled up the collar of her coat against the driving rain and, instinctively, headed for Cross Guns Street and Dixon’s Green where the wealthy merchants and professional men of the town sat in front of their warm hearths on that cold, wet night. She had no idea where she was going, nor what she would do. Her head was awhirl with the sanctimonious reaction of her mother and her own terminal defiance of it. Over and over, the row with Mary Ann repeated itself unbidden in her mind, like the persistent re-enactment of some hideous stage play.

  She did not make a conscious decision to cross Dixon’s Green at the Fountain Inn and walk down Bean Road opposite, as she had done with Tom that first evening they spent together before Ned’s celebration, but it seemed a perfectly natural thing to do. As she passed the Blue Coat School in the darkness a creature leapt stealthily right in front of her from the top of the wall that surrounded it. Clover let out a frightened gasp as her heart vaulted to her throat and back again. It was a cat; nothing more. She breathed easy and continued walking, side-stepping the melanite puddles that glinted between the cobbles.

  She walked on, into Buffery Park.

  There were no lights here. She could just make out the path in the blackness, and the hot-houses, so full of thriving plants in the summer, loomed against the feeble illumination thrown up from Selbourne Road and Park Hill Street. No flowers bloomed tonight, inside or outside. She heard something scuff against a tree and realised that a courting couple were pressed against it, making the most of the privacy that the twilight and the solitude afforded, even on this bitter, inclement night. She walked on, ignoring them, envying them and pitying them at the same time.

  She came to a bench, the same bench she and Tom had sat on weaving their dreams. It seemed appropriate to sit on it now to relive those moments, those implied expressions of love. Maybe she would stay here the night; she had nowhere else to go. She huddled inside her coat as she sat down on the hard, wet slats. If only Tom were with her now. What would his reaction be if he could see her now, looking like some drowned rat at the mercy of the wind and the rain, when she should be snuggled up in a warm bed? What would he think if he saw her tonight, flung out of house and home for the sin of carrying his child, with her only belongings and what little money she’d saved? He would be appalled; that, she knew. Oh, he would fight her corner with a vengeance and no doubt about it. The trouble was she could not tell him; she could never tell him. He must remain always oblivious to her and her predicament, because of his obligations now to Ramona.

  Memories flooded back. That first evening together. She’d been on top of the world. Never had she felt so happy, triumphant at having won Tom when she’d truly believed he was only interested in Ramona. How cruelly ironic that he was now married to her. She relived every tender moment they spent together. She recalled the first time they made love, how he was as nervous as she was. He possessed neither the attitude nor the technique of a Casanova. She relived the times they went to the theatres in the town, the easy, comfortable times she spent with his mother and father, the unhurried summer strolls in this very park, the walks over Oakham and Penny Hill, picking bluebells in Bluebell Wood last spring. She recalled the joy and pride she felt when he said they should be married and later the excitement of choosing an engagement ring. Now all was gone. She was utterly desolated, her most precious dreams burst as if they had been nothing more than soap bubbles.

  But at least she was having his child. It would be a burden, but a burden she welcomed with all her heart. It would restrict her but, from now on, she foresaw her only joy in being restricted to that child she loved already. She had no thoughts, no hopes of meeting another man when perhaps her heartache had been mollified by the passage of time. She could love no other man. Her child would see her through. In any case, this same child would inhibit the approaches of any other man worth having; but that was for the best.

  The rain came even heavier, drumming on the autumn leaves of the trees around her. If only she’d thought to bring a brolly. But in her anxiety to leave…She pulled her hat harder on her head, adjusted her collar and nestled deeper inside her coat. The rain and the wind and the cold, like Mary Ann, could not hurt her. She would weather it, like she’d weathered the priggishness, the heartache. She could feel the damp driving through her clothes to her very skin and she felt cold and desperately unloved. But she would weather it.

  Numbed by the cold, she fell asleep sitt
ing up, her basket and her brown-paper carrier bag by her side. Her head lolled forward and water trickled down her neck from her hat as the rain fell remorselessly.

  She did not know how long she had been asleep when she awoke, shivering, her teeth chattering. At once she was conscious of another person sitting at the other end of the bench. She started, peering at him or her, trying to discern who it might be in the darkness. Her heart pounded, for she did not know whether she was in any danger.

  A gruff voice, that of a man, said: ‘Yo’m awake then.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what’s a young madam like thee doing sitting out here on a night like this? Hast got no wum to goo to?’

  ‘I was out for a walk. I fell asleep, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh,’ he replied, and she heard the cynical disbelief in his voice. ‘Listen. This is my bench. I sleep here.’

  ‘Have it. I’ve no intention of robbing you of it.’ She gathered her things together and stood up.

  ‘No need to rush off. Yo’ can stop. Sleep wi’ me, if you’ve a mind. I’ll look after thee. You on’y seem young. I’n had ne’er a woman since Adam was a pit boy.’

  ‘Thanks for the offer, but no.’ Frightened now, she turned and walked away, hoping the man would not follow her, would not molest her.

  But she heard his footsteps behind her.

  She ran.

  He ran after her.

  God, please let her get to Blackacre Road and the entrance to the park before he caught up. The bottom fell out of her brown-paper carrier bag that was sopping wet and her belongings trailed all over the muddy footpath. Let them go. Leave them. She couldn’t stop to pick everything up; he’d have her. So she ran for her life and let go of the carrier bag, clutching her basket with her shoes and her purse. Behind her, she could hear the heavy, laboured breathing of her pursuer. At last she reached the entrance to the park. Thank God. She turned right, towards the top of Buffery Road. There would be some folk about that way; the Bush Inn was there, the street lamps were brighter. The man chasing her might be deterred. She could always plead for help, scream as a last resort.