by Nancy Carson
‘Why on earth did your father want to talk to you without me being present?’ she protested. ‘I felt as if I counted for nothing. It was very humiliating.’
‘He wanted to tell me about the death of my Uncle Sep.’
‘Well, your mother told me about the death of your Uncle Sep. So why should your father want to speak to you alone about it?’
‘Did my mother also tell you that I am the sole beneficiary of his estate?’
‘No,’ Harriet replied, and turned to look questioningly into his eyes.
‘Well, I am…apparently.’
‘Goodness. So what does that mean?’ Her pique disappeared at once.
‘In terms of money?’
‘That’ll do for a start.’
‘Well…my father reckons he’s good for sixty thousand.’
Harriet stopped walking. ‘Pounds, do you mean?’ She was smiling now.
‘Of course, pounds, you nit. Sixty thousand of ’em.’
‘Good Lord!’ she exclaimed. She linked her arm through his proprietorially and they resumed walking, but there was a noticeable spring in her step now. ‘What on earth will you do with so much money? I never heard of one person having so much.’
Clarence shrugged. ‘I haven’t had time yet to think what to do with it, have I? Invest it, I suppose. My father suggests land and property, which is how my uncle became so rich.’
‘Golly, you could start a bank with that amount of money.’
He smiled. ‘Lending out, you mean?’
‘Why not? The banks are not so keen to lend these days, or so my father reckons. You’d get a very good rate of interest.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ he replied. ‘I need time to think about it all. In any case, I haven’t got the money yet. It might take some months to administer probate.’
‘But there’s no doubt about you getting it?’
‘None. My father is an executor to the will. Meanwhile, we’ll just carry on as we’ve begun. We’ll live in our rented house and bide our time. It’ll give us time to ponder what to do with all that wealth.’
‘Just wait till my father knows—’
‘No, Harriet,’ he answered firmly. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea to tell your father, or anybody else for that matter. We don’t want all and sundry coming round and begging. Word would soon get about, and your sisters would not only be first in the queue, but they’d delight in gossiping about it. No, let’s keep it to ourselves meanwhile.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ Harriet conceded, ignoring the slur on her sisters. ‘I can think of a few folk who’d come clamouring. Benjamin Sampson, for one. His firm’s not doing so well, I hear.’
‘Benjamin Sampson’s a fool,’ Clarence stated. ‘He’s lacking in common sense and business acumen. He couldn’t run a raffle, let alone a factory. Lending to him would be throwing good money after bad.’
‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be,’ Harriet remarked, quoting Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
‘For loan oft loses both itself and friend,’ Clarence added for good measure. ‘Not that I would call Benjamin Sampson a friend. Not by any means.’
‘I should hope not after he stole Aurelia from under your very nose.’
‘Bygones, Harriet,’ he answered dismissively. He turned to her and smiled. ‘Anyway, it all turned out well for me – for us I mean – in the end, don’t you think?’
She returned his smile and nodded, gratified that he thought so. After a few moments pause, she said, ‘You know, you’ve courted two of the most gorgeous women I ever clapped eyes on – Aurelia Sampson and Kate Stokes – both of whom I’m sure you could have married if you’d wanted – yet you settled for me, the plainest of God’s creatures. Why?’
He looked into her eyes and smiled. ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, my dear Harriet. And besides, looks aren’t everything, as my father pointed out to me during our little chat.’
‘You discussed my looks?’
‘No, not at all. Actually, he was talking about my mother. As far as he was concerned, he reckoned she was as plain as flour. But he claimed it didn’t matter, because she’s a good wife.’
‘I aim to be a good wife as well, Clarence,’ Harriet pledged.
‘I know. It’s in your nature. It’s why I married you.’
‘And I know you’ll be a good husband too.’
‘I’ll do my utmost to be a model husband, and a fair father to all our children.’
‘All?’ she queried with a chuckle. ‘How many do you intend us to have?’
He laughed with her. ‘Hey, I don’t have a crystal ball.’
‘Well, when your money comes through you might be able to afford the best crystal ball money can buy.’
‘And any number of children,’ he added.
* * *
Algie Stokes was late leaving home next morning. Deliberately so. As far as Marigold was concerned he was heading for work, but he had decided he must first call on Aurelia again. Logic dictated that Marigold would make Aurelia a prime port of call to announce her pregnancy. Before she did, it was vital to let Aurelia know that he had been unable to make his confession. The timing of his visit had to be right, too; he could hardly arrive at Holly Hall House when Benjamin was still there. As it turned out, Algie judged it perfectly.
‘I had to call,’ he said, mitigating his presence.
Aurelia had interrupted her morning routine to see him, and entertained him in the small sitting room after hurriedly dressing. Whilst she still looked beautiful, it was too early for her usual polished grooming, reminding him of how she appeared the morning after their first full night of love in that little hotel in Dudley. Yet her manner revealed her dread of what Algie was about to tell her.
‘I take it the news didn’t go down very well,’ she suggested.
‘I haven’t told her,’ he answered simply. ‘I couldn’t.’
‘Oh, Algie.’ Her face was a mixture of relief and apprehension.
‘I know…But I had to let you know, in case she decides to pay you a visit.’
‘I’m not expecting her until next week. Next Tuesday she’s supposed to be coming here, about midday. By then you’ll have told her, and I don’t suppose she’ll show her face ever again – and who would blame her?’
‘Maybe she will, maybe she won’t, Aurelia. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion she might call on you anytime, though. If she does, be sure to say nothing about the divorce. I have to tell her myself, but I have to wait till the time’s right. To tell you the truth, I haven’t got the heart to tell her till I really have to.’
Nor did it seem appropriate that he should tell Aurelia that Marigold was expecting their second child; that it was the reason he had withheld the confession of their affair and the impending divorce.
He was in a cleft stick.
Let Marigold inform Aurelia in Marigold’s own good time of her own news. It would be better coming from her, and the fact that he had been reticent in confessing to Marigold about the affair would become obvious to Aurelia. Babies and pregnancies were women’s business, after all; women’s topics.
He recalled how he and Aurelia had sat in this very room before, engrossed in his past emotional calamities, calamities that had drawn them together. Other calamities were now devastating their lives, however, and about to devastate the lives of others.
‘So, I still have a sister who speaks to me.’
‘For the time being,’ he remarked with a wry smile.
‘At least I’m spared that anguish a while longer.’
‘Enjoy it while you can. Anyway, I’m glad I missed Benjamin.’
‘I’m delighted you didn’t miss him yesterday, Algie. It’s a splendid black eye he’s sporting.’
‘Well, at least that’s something for you to celebrate.’
‘But I’d love to know what his doxy thinks of it.’
He shrugged. ‘He’s ever likely told her I was in a far worse state. I daresay I’ve got two black eyes, a brok
en nose and a cauliflower ear.’
‘Oh, Algie,’ Aurelia sighed. ‘What a mess. Who could have predicted such a mess?’
He shrugged again. ‘I know,’ he said resignedly. ‘We had it all mapped out once, didn’t we? Knowing what you know now, would you change anything?’
‘Not a thing.’ She smiled, all her love in her eyes, reminding him of her confession of undying devotion the previous day. ‘But it’s taboo to mention such things now.’ She shrugged.
‘So, do you resent Marigold?’ he asked pointedly. ‘Because she was the reason our plans came to nought.’
‘Do I have to be honest?’
‘Course you do,’ he replied earnestly. ‘We have to be totally honest with each other, if with nobody else. Especially if we are to survive the consequences of all this. So tell me – truthfully…’
‘I try not to think about her in that light,’ she began, looking into her lap at her clasped hands. ‘Yes, she came between you and me. But it was my decision to back away once I realised she had a more valid claim on you.’ She raised her eyes and regarded him candidly. ‘On the other hand, I idolise her. I really do, Algie. She’s the sister I never knew I had, and I feel closer to her than I ever did with my full sister. It wasn’t Marigold’s fault she was born out of wedlock. She’s also my best friend now, and that’s what makes it all so hard.’ Tears welled up in her eyes and she took a handkerchief from a pocket in her skirt and dabbed them. ‘The truth is, Algie, I want you both – but for different reasons, of course.’
Algie, being Algie, was moved to take her in his arms.
‘Promise me one thing,’ she blurted onto his shoulder, feeling the pleasurable warmth of his embrace again, after so long.
‘What?’
‘That if anything untoward happens between you and…’ She tore away from him in this crisis of emotion, unable to complete the sentence she had begun, unable now to pronounce Marigold’s name. ‘God, why am I being so stupid?’ she mumbled to herself angrily, but wanting him to hear it too.
He sighed. Simply by being with her, he was adding to her misery. ‘Would you like me to go, Aurelia?’ he murmured softly and rose from the sofa.
She stood up with him and turned to face him again. ‘No, I don’t want you to go, but you have your business to attend to.’
It was heartbreaking to witness those tears misting such beautiful blue eyes; tears that were for him, only for him. He was deeply touched, disturbed. It was heartbreaking that this woman, now so vulnerable, whom he had loved and desired so ardently, could no longer be his. He still wanted her, of course he did, but he wanted Marigold too. Thus he was torn, irrevocably torn, as he always would be. He had responsibilities to both women, moral responsibilities that would lay heavy on him, but legally he was tied only to one. Algie, however, his innate sense of fairness intensifying, realised that he must do what was right for both women. Marigold, to whom he was legally bound, would have to understand and tolerate any actions, which his tortured conscience might dictate in his desire to be fair.
* * *
Chapter 11
To avoid the impression that she was taking her close affinity with Aurelia for granted, Marigold resisted the inclination to visit and break her news earlier; if she had, it would have been just her luck for Aurelia to have some other arrangement planned. She left it nearly a week, therefore, knowing Aurelia would be thrilled.
Marigold decided it would do her good to walk from Kingswinford to Holly Hall House. Whilst she had been used to trekking miles each day when crewing with her family on the narrowboats, such long-distance hikes eluded her as the wife of Algie Stokes. Marooned as she was on the static dry land of Kingswinford, she missed long walks. The weather was lovely, the sun bright, describing a low arc in the late summer sky. She installed Rose in her bassinet and set out, perfectly content with her lot and the prospect of the long haul. The going was mostly uphill, a gentle gradient at first. Approaching the Pensnett Colliery the road became steeper, with the black spoil of coal mining spewing almost to the footpath. She stopped to allow a horse and cart, brimming with coal, to exit the colliery. Coal dust blackened the carter’s face, and Marigold sympathised with his inability to keep clean. Her knowing smile seemed to reward him, and he responded with a touch of his hat.
The machinery of transport – steam tramcars hissing and clanking, carts rattling, creaking wagons and working horses clip-clopping – advanced in random processions up and down Pensnett’s main thoroughfare, beset on either side with its dismal architecture of cones and chimneys. As Marigold breasted the hill, a tramcar, its small locomotive unseen from behind, was a tiny box in the distance, sliding away on glistening silver rails towards Dudley. Its far-off huffing and puffing intermingled with the rasping of steam locomotives that pushed and pulled trucks as they plied the mineral railway of the Himley Colliery. At the equally bleak establishment known as Hollies Farm a little further on, endowed with the cheerless view of all this mining activity and attendant locomotion, an old woman was throwing handfuls of grain to fowl in the yard.
Marigold arrived at Holly Hall House and the two young women greeted each other fondly in the hallway, overseen by the old grandfather clock and Jane, who lingered to watch their sisterly embrace with a benevolent smile.
‘I walked here,’ Marigold remarked blithely as they gently lifted the bassinet, which contained the sleeping Rose, into the hallway.
‘All that way?’ Aurelia said. ‘I thought you had a rosy glow on your cheeks.’
‘Does me good.’ She laughed happily. ‘Made me legs ache a bit, though. I ain’t used to it lately. I miss all the walking I used to do along the cuts.’
Marigold’s amiable and unaffected demeanour confirmed that Algie had still not mentioned his involvement in her divorce.
‘Let’s go in the sitting room,’ Aurelia suggested. ‘Jane, would you bring us a pot of tea, please?’
Jane said she would, and they left Rose in the hall still asleep in her bassinet. If she awoke and cried out, they would hear her. As for Christina, she was upstairs, blissfully dreaming infant dreams too, with the nanny on hand to tend to her.
‘I’ve been dying to see you,’ Marigold remarked, bubbling, her eyes bright, eager to impart her news.
‘I’m glad,’ Aurelia answered truthfully, and with a gratified smile.
‘You haven’t seen Algie, have you?’
‘Not for a while.’ Aurelia’s expression was one of wide-eyed honesty, but with no inner conviction. ‘Why d’you ask?’
‘Well, I told him I wanted to be the first to tell you.’
‘Tell me what?’ She smiled in anticipation, but her heart was suddenly thumping at the prospect of what Marigold might possibly be about to reveal.
‘That I’m having another baby.’ The desire to share this happiness was so intense within Marigold, and she looked proudly into Aurelia’s eyes, anxious to receive her sister’s congratulations and best wishes.
Nevertheless, it was news Aurelia did not relish hearing, but only because it would make matters more complicated. So, although she did not feel inclined to give Marigold a sisterly hug for that reason alone, she forced herself to, and her obligatory smile was as radiant as the noonday sun.
‘Oh, but Marigold, you must be thrilled,’ she replied, her eyes glazing with tears. But her apparent excitement was pretense, because Marigold’s bliss would be marred all too soon, and she herself was predestined to be the cause of it. ‘I imagine Algie’s pleased?’
‘I had me doubts when I first told him,’ Marigold replied. ‘He seemed a bit put out. But after that he seemed pleased as Punch.’
‘I think this deserves a celebration.’
‘Oh, but don’t you think it’s a bit early to start drinking,’ Marigold remarked apologetically. ‘Besides—’
‘All right, maybe not champagne…’ Aurelia forced another smile. ‘It is a bit early for that sort of thing, I grant you, but we could have a celebratory cake with our pot of
tea. How about that?’
‘A cake with our pot of tea?’ Marigold repeated with a chuckle. ‘That’s settled, then. Let’s have a cake with our pot of tea. Just one each though, eh? We don’t want to get stout, do we? I’ll be stout enough for the two of us anyway, before you can say “knife”. And as long as it don’t spoil our appetites.’
‘Have you started your morning sickness yet?’
Marigold nodded and rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, it’s started all right.’
They talked desultorily about Marigold’s pregnancy in particular and childbirth in general. Jane brought the tea, followed by a selection of fancy cakes.
‘I imagine the Froggatts are back from their honeymoon by now,’ Aurelia conjectured, changing tack. ‘Have you seen Harriet?’
‘Not since the wedding. Where did they go? I’ve forgot.’
‘Llandudno, I think.’
‘Oh, well, I s’pose they had a lovely time in Llandudno,’ Marigold suggested. ‘Who wouldn’t, on their honeymoon, eh?’ Her eyes sparkled saucily.
‘Yes, who wouldn’t?’ Aurelia replied with immense feeling, and handed Marigold a plate.
‘Me and Algie never had a honeymoon. I mean, we never had a chance for a proper honeymoon – not going to the seaside anyway.’
‘It’s not too late, Marigold. See if you can get him to take you away for a belated one. Do choose a cake…’
Marigold chuckled as she reached forward and picked up a plain egg custard in a pastry case. ‘Oh, I can just picture Algie and me on the promenade at Llandudno, telling some unsuspecting soul we’re on our honeymoon, and me with an eight-month belly on me. It’d look well.’
Aurelia was amused at the mental picture, and gave a little chuckle. ‘You could go before it shows,’ she reasoned. ‘Why wait?’
‘Algie’s work, that’s why.’
Marigold took a bite of her egg custard, and the front doorbell clanged. She looked at Aurelia enquiringly.
‘Jane will answer it. I’m not expecting anybody, unless it’s the chimney sweep come a day early.’
