“I wish I’d known.” Carson pressed her hand. “I wish I could have done something sooner. That you’d got in touch with me when you became ill.”
“I didn’t know how ill I was until I started coughing blood. The doctor said I’d left it too late.” Nelly looked at him sadly. He pressed her hand again and they sat there for a few moments gazing into each other’s eyes, like two star-crossed lovers cruelly separated by fate.
In fact it would have been a misalliance by any standards but, at the time, they were both young and it was a romantic, beautiful affair, perhaps just because it was so doomed. There were so many disparities between them: she a working class girl whose father, a heavy drinker, was a porter in Covent Garden Market, he ... well, in those days she hadn’t known he was a gentleman, the heir to a baronetcy, but thought him a farmer’s son from Dorset working in the City as a clerk.
Nelly had fantasised about them living in a cottage such as this, spending a lifetime together, raising a family ...
How very different reality was.
“Have you told Alexander?” she whispered.
“Not yet.” Carson withdrew his hand, stood up and went over to the window from where he could see his home on the hill about a mile away. Up there were Connie, his three children, his life. And, in a way, Nelly threatened to wreck it, not because she wanted to, but just by being here; first by exposing and then by raking over those old, long buried bones from the past. He turned away from the window and looked down at the fragile woman lying in the bed, this modern Lady of the Camellias taken from the back streets of London, transported to a way of life she had never known.
“It is very difficult, Nelly, I must be honest with you.” He sat down on the bed again and once more took her hand. “You see, Alexander has known no other life than the one he leads now, thanks to you. The Martyns were very wealthy and Alexander has lacked for nothing. I don’t know how to say this to you, but –”
“He would be ashamed of me,” Nelly said flatly. “That’s it, Carson, if he knew I was his mother.”
“I’m not saying he would be ashamed. Although he is an elegant young man he is also a person of deep and profound sensibilities. I think he may well admire you and be grateful for what you did for him, even if he might not think too well of me.”
“But you couldn’t help it.”
“He still might rush to judgement. It would be difficult to explain the exact circumstances of what happened all those years ago. There is also the question of Lally, who adores him.
How will she feel? The point is that she doesn’t know about you either. The whole thing is going to be a shock, as it already has been to Connie, and we must decide the best way to handle it.”
“Maybe I could see him without him knowing who I am? That’s all I ask, a glance before I die ...” Nelly added piteously.
“Nelly, you are not going to die.” Carson grasped both her hands and stared at her hard. “The doctor says you are already making good progress.”
“I feel it in my bones, Carson,” Nelly said mournfully. “I see it in the blood that I spit up.”
“Not yet, not for a while anyway.” Carson patted her hand, trying his best to stifle the fear, almost the sense of panic, he felt when he thought not only of Nelly’s fate, but of a resolution to the situation. “I will consult with Connie. She is very sound, very practical.”
“But she doesn’t like me,” Nelly said, folding her hands prosaically across her stomach. “I know I’ve caused trouble between you. I didn’t mean to. Your wife just wants to see the back of me. Can’t say as I blame her. Someone, another woman, coming out of the past, and the mother of your child as well. Can’t say as I wouldn’t feel the same.”
***
Connie knew she was being unreasonable and that she was hurting Carson very much. But she was hurt too. Hurt to the quick. It was one thing acknowledging a previous liaison, even the existence of a child you didn’t know was yours. It was quite another gathering the woman up, as it were, in your arms and bringing her to your home, expecting your wife to look after her and not to mind.
It was, in fact, outrageous.
Even though it was quite obvious how ill Nelly was it would have been almost too much to expect her not to care, especially as Carson spent so much time in Nelly’s company and, despite the ravages of illness, it was easy to see how beautiful Nelly must have been.
It was so like Carson, the universal do-gooder. The Ark to which everyone came in a storm, and if you protested you were accused of lack of feeling, hard-heartedness, not being able to place yourself in the situation of the one who was distressed.
There had been so many and then, when at last she felt she had him and the house to herself, along came Nelly all wrapped up in blankets, spitting blood and needing constant care, plus her friend, although one could perhaps be thankful for her and the fact that one wasn’t expected to look after Nelly oneself.
Nelly had stayed several weeks in the house until Connie threatened to leave and take the children with her. She meant it. She would go to Venice, re-open her apartment there and stay while she took stock of things, maybe suing for divorce.
There was not only the question of Nelly’s presence, there was the possibility of contagion from such a dreaded disease, the threat to the health of the children.
For, as much as she loved Carson, and she did, she knew he would never change. He was rather like a saint who was married not just to a woman but to mankind in general.
Surely it would have been possible to have provided for Nelly in London? Give her the care she needed there? But no, convinced of the benefit of country air, Carson had to bring her to Pelham’s Oak, and a whole lot of trouble arrived with her.
Trouble they had hardly started to face.
She knew that every morning in the course of his ride he went to see Nelly. Today was no exception. She had stood at the window watching him as he entered Ryder’s old cottage – it was always known as “Ryder’s Cottage” even though it had once had another other name. Pulver, his horse, was tied up outside for ages, as was usually the case and, as usual, since the arrival of Nelly, Connie had gone about some household tasks, had even breakfasted alone, before Carson returned.
Sometimes she felt that he had fallen in love with Nelly all over again.
“How was Nelly today?” Connie asked with an air of false brightness as Carson, returned from his ride, gloomily lifted the lid of one chafing dish after the other. It then seemed that nothing appealed to him because he returned to the table empty-handed, a most rare and unusual sight in someone who enjoyed his food.
“Nelly is as well as can be expected.” Carson sat staring at the table. “I don’t know what to do about Alexander.”
“What do you want to do about Alexander?”
Connie knew there was a waspish tone in her voice, but she couldn’t help it. She felt vulnerable. She resented Nelly and the threat she posed to their marriage, their happiness, their way of life. For six years their life had been a dream. She had even been prepared when Nelly first arrived to accept that something that happened long ago was over, past. She could forgive that, overlook it. Carson had been, as he still was, an attractive man, attractive to women, very susceptible to them. But now his obsession with Nelly was making her question the very idea that, as a past love, it was a love that had died.
“I suppose you’re sure Alexander is your child?” she added, picking apathetically at her piece of toast then dropping it back on its plate. She too was without an appetite.
Carson looked up at her.
“Why should he not be?”
“Well, you only have Nelly’s word for it. He doesn’t look a bit like you.”
“He looks like her.”
“We know she’s his mother. But we have no proof that you’re the father, apart from her word. You just seem to accept it, which is what I can’t understand.”
“I think this is a preposterous suggestion,” Carson spluttered, pour
ing himself coffee, finally deciding to take a piece of toast from its rack.
“I think it is very sensible. You may well be the father, but how do you know that Nelly didn’t have other lovers at the same time as you?”
“Because she told me.”
“And you believed her, of course.”
“Why should I not believe her?” His tone was icy cold.
“She was a barmaid, wasn’t she? She could have had many lovers. How convenient to foist a child off on a wealthy man.”
“Don’t be such a snob, Connie.” Carson was clearly furious. ‘Don’t be so unfair.’
Connie coloured. “I apologise. That was uncalled for. What I mean is that merely because she sees your name in the paper ...”
“That was six years ago.”
“I don’t care how long ago it was. She remembers you, your name, and then when she falls on hard times she contacts you and yes, of course, you being the ... well, I was going to say ‘sap’, Carson, but I expect you’d find that offensive as well.”
“I certainly should.”
“‘Kind-hearted person’, then,” Connie’s voice was heavy with sarcasm, “that you are, you accept everything she says, take her in, give her a home, money. The devil take your wife and children.”
By now Connie had got herself into such a state that her normally placid, cultured voice was shrill; her gentle, usually happy face contorted with violent emotion.
Carson had never seen her like that and the experience was an unpleasant one. His Connie, his precious, his beloved, was alienating him by her shrewish behaviour, her lack of understanding of poor Nelly’s condition, her completely unjustified suspicions about her character. If Nelly said he was the father he believed her.
“I can’t understand, you, Connie,” Carson said, after looking at her with incredulous disbelief. “You’re not yourself at all.”
“But you are yourself, Carson,” she said, standing up. “Every inch yourself. In trying to please everyone you end up pleasing no one. What do you think will be the effect on Lally, on Eliza, on the rest of your family, never mind Alexander when this comes out? As if we haven’t enough misfortune with Debbie eloping with a monster like Bart Sadler.”
“I never thought he was a monster.”
“No, of course you wouldn’t,” Connie, beside herself, shouted at him. “St Francis of Assisi, seeing good in everyone, no matter how bad – “
“Oh, Connie, for God’s sake shut up!” Carson cried and, flinging his napkin on the table, he got up and stormed out of the room.
For a long time Connie stared at the door behind which he had disappeared. Then she put her face in her hands and dissolved into tears.
Carson and Eliza had always enjoyed a special relationship, a special bond. As a woman whose own life had been unconventional, who had eloped with a man when she was eighteen and lived in sin with him for a long time before they were married, something considered quite shocking at any time but especially in the last years of the reign of Queen Victoria, Eliza had always had a deep understanding of and sympathy with her once wayward nephew Carson.
After his mother died Eliza became Carson’s main confidante, but although she knew most things she didn’t know everything. She didn’t know about Nelly.
Eliza now sat very still, her head on one side as if listening intently as Carson finished his long tale about his meeting with Nelly in the London of 1909 when he had worked at the Martyn-Heering warehouse as a clerk, hating every minute. After work, rather than going back home to the Martyns’, with whom he was staying (he particularly didn’t get on with his cousin, Roger), he used at night to go to a pub in Blackfriars where Nelly always lent a sympathetic ear and, finally, they had become lovers, sharing an idyll in a room within sight of St Paul’s. It was a world away from today, but couldn’t you say that about everything, Eliza thought, as the sad tale came to an end with the discovery of Alexander on Lally’s doorstep, and Carson’s failure to find Nelly?
“I think I might have shocked you, Aunt,” Carson said when he had finished, looking at her grave face. “I was twenty-two, but Nelly was only twenty. I was a country boy, desperately unhappy. Nelly thought I was a farmer’s son. There was no question that she had designs on me.”
“Nothing shocks me, dear.” Reassuringly Eliza reached out and took his hand. “Especially a story like this. I was, though, quite mystified by the mysterious woman you brought to Pelham’s Oak, although I thought it must be something to do with your past. No wonder poor Connie is so upset.”
“But I had to do what I did.”
“Of course you did. You couldn’t forsake someone who is dying and in need. You did the right thing. The point is, however, what do we do now?”
“Connie threatens to leave me. Aunt Lally will be beside herself, and what do we do about Alexander?”
“I’m quite sure Connie won’t leave you.” Eliza looked shocked.
“I tell you she is terribly upset and it is true I do spend a lot of time seeing Nelly.”
“Then perhaps you should spend less.” Eliza set her mouth firmly. “I mean she has someone to look after her. Go once or twice a week, not every day.”
Carson shook his head. “I can’t do that. Not now. She will think I have forsaken her again. She is bedridden, Aunt. The doctor has given her as little as six weeks to live. If only Connie could see this.” He looked appealingly at his aunt. “Maybe you could talk to her?”
“Certainly I’ll do what I can.”
“She talks about Venice and taking the children.”
“Oh no, that’s quite silly. But she does deserve consideration, Carson. It is inevitable that she feels insecure, jealous even, of a woman by whom you once had a child.”
“But it is absurd!”
“It is not absurd. Don’t forget that you once rejected Connie too. Perhaps she feels rejected again. You bring a stranger to the house, you spend a lot of time with her ...”
“But a dying woman? Hardly a cause for jealousy?”
Eliza shrugged. “No matter. It is the bond that is important. Maybe Connie thinks you value Nelly more than her just because of the past. I will see what I can do. Now, meanwhile,” Eliza thoughtfully put a finger to her chin, “what do we do about Lally and Alexander?”
“You will have to tell Lally and what you decide I will abide by.” Carson leaned down and tenderly kissed his aunt’s cheek. “Once again, dear Aunt Eliza, so much depends on you.”
So much depended on her, not for the first time. On the other hand it was flattering to be called on, nice to be needed and be thought useful. Eliza was sixty-eight, no longer young, far away from that tempestuous young woman of yesteryear, a matron, a grandmother. But she did not feel her age and she knew she did not look it. Only a few streaks of white appeared in that dark, luxurious hair which had always given her a slightly Mediterranean appearance. But there were few lines on her serene olive skinned face, and the brightness of her tawny-brown eyes was undimmed.
After Carson had gone, Eliza remained in her sitting-room for some time trying to decide what to do, how to tell Lally and when. Fortunately, it was term-time and Alexander was away. Eliza rose from her chair and stood for a few seconds looking out of the window. It was a grey, wet, windy day. Not the best time to break the bad news to a beloved friend. Because it was bad news and Lally was beloved. Eliza alone knew all her secrets: how she had been a dancer when Guy became enraptured by her, and how they had a son, Roger. Only Guy never knew about him either, rather as Carson had never known about Alexander.
Another time, another place ... and yet history had a curious way of repeating itself. There was Deborah’s son, David, now almost eight years of age, who would one day have to learn about his mother. And what would he learn?
All that was known about her and Bart Sadler now was that they had married at a civil ceremony in London attended by none of the family and were honeymooning on the Continent. There were those, among them Eliza, who wished they w
ould stay there and never return to the house Bart Sadler had stolen from her.
And then, for how long could she stay here? She loved being at Forest House. Lally gave her complete freedom and they remained on the best of terms. In fact she knew that Lally would miss her when she went. But where to and, again, when?
She thought tea-time was maybe a good time to choose to drop Carson’s bombshell on Lally. By that time Lally would have had her rest, and they always enjoyed a chat over the fire before returning to their rooms where they read or wrote letters before meeting again at seven-thirty in the drawing-room for a drink before dinner.
It was a pleasant, well-regulated life which suited Eliza as much as it suited Lally. How would it change once Lally had heard what she had to tell her? She knew Lally to be a woman of fortitude and wisdom as well as experience; but for so many years she had idolised Alexander to the state of positively believing she was his natural mother.
How could she possibly face the truth?
Eliza spent a restless and unhappy afternoon until tea-time, wondering.
Whatever the occasion Lally always looked perfect. She was a woman of expensive tastes who, from the fortune left by her husband, could afford to indulge them. Consequently, she wore an afternoon dress for tea, different to the one she had worn in the morning, and already her maid would be laying out the more formal dress she would wear for dinner that evening, even for a simple affair between her and Eliza.
Her blonde hair, now enhanced with artificial aids, was beautifully coiffeured, her make-up carefully and tastefully blended to match her complexion, and she looked tranquil and composed as she poured the tea and passed Eliza her cup.
“Did I see Carson’s car here today, my dear?”
This remark provided the opportunity needed.
“Yes.” Eliza took her cup and put it on the table beside the plate containing wafer-thin cucumber sandwiches.
“Is he well?”
Lally was nothing if not inquisitive.
Past Love (Part Four of The People of this Parish Saga) Page 17
