by Nancy Carson
The sound of the doorbell woke Rose and they heard her wails of protest at being disturbed so rudely. With motherly concern, Marigold jumped up and darted to the hallway, lifting the child out of her bassinet just as the maid arrived to answer the door. She stood holding Rose, soothing the child while she became orientated with the unexpected surroundings, but which were familiar.
‘Good day, sir,’ Jane politely said to the stranger standing at the door. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Mrs Sampson, if you please.’
‘She’s rather busy at the moment. Who shall I say has called?’
‘My name is Lissimore.’ He doffed his hat. ‘I represent Craven & Craven, solicitors and commissioners for oaths. I am obliged to see Mrs Sampson.’ He spied Marigold tending the child and not surprisingly decided that his quarry was already in sight. ‘Mrs Sampson?’ he challenged directly, leaning over to see beyond the maid.
Marigold returned his look and shook her head. ‘Not me, mister, but I’ll get her for you.’ The man was obviously important if a solicitor had sent him, so she stepped into the small sitting room. Aurelia overheard some of the conversation and was already on her feet, having just poured the tea into gold-rimmed cups. ‘There’s a gentleman to see you, Aurelia, from a solicitor’s. A Mr Lissimore.’
Aurelia flushed, at once uneasy. ‘Please stay here, Marigold,’ she suggested, ‘I’ll see to him.’ She left the sitting room and judiciously closed the door behind her.
Meanwhile, the maid had invited the gentleman into the hall to await Mrs Sampson, who now appeared before him.
‘Are you Mrs Sampson?’ he queried.
‘Yes, I’m Mrs Sampson.’ She looked at him with an expression of solemn enquiry.
‘Mrs Aurelia Sampson? The wife of Benjamin Sampson?’
‘That’s me, yes.’
‘Mrs Sampson, I am instructed to serve you with these papers,’ he said, handing over a sheaf.
‘Thank you.’ She accepted them limply, feeling inordinately hot and uncomfortable.
‘That is all, Mrs Sampson,’ Lissimore said. ‘I’m so sorry to trouble you. Good day to you.’ He hurried away, like a felon sussed while involved in some criminal act.
As Jane closed the door behind him, Aurelia opened up the documents, her heart thumping profoundly. The first words that greeted her were: ‘In the High Court of Justice, Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division (Divorce). Victoria, by the Grace of God…’ She looked up. Jane was standing by her, looking disconcertedly at her mistress. ‘Thank you, Jane. That will be all.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Jane curtsied perfunctorily and headed towards the kitchen.
Aurelia, still standing in the hallway, returned to her papers. ‘To Aurelia Felicity Sampson of Holly Hall House, Dudley, in the County of Worcestershire. Whereas Benjamin Augustus Sampson, also of Holly Hall House, Dudley, in the said County, claiming to be lawfully married to Aurelia Felicity Sampson, has filed his petition against her in the Divorce Registry of our said court, praying for dissolution of marriage, wherein he alleges that you have been guilty of adultery with Algernon Stokes of Kingswinford, in the County of Staffordshire.’
Aurelia gulped.
So this was it.
It had begun, officially and in earnest.
The papers were mere forms, but they alarmed her all the same. They triggered thoughts she’d pondered before, but not seriously till that moment, about her future and the future of her children. Where would this divorce ultimately lead? What was her destiny once it was all over? Where would she live? How would she live? She could not stay in this house, not that she prized the house, but she tolerated it, for it was a roof over her head and over the heads of her children. She pondered the impending material losses. In this reviled house she was a lady of leisure, with servants to do her bidding. She slept alone in her own large bedroom, no longer forced to endure the unsavoury sounds and habits of that mass of arrogance that was her sleeping husband.
Within the room’s four walls were wardrobes full of fine clothes paid for by that same mass of arrogance; dresses, hats and toques galore, muffs, scarves, furs, stockings, shoes. Would he allow her to keep them? In the drawing room stood a grand piano that she loved to play, there was champagne and fine wine in the cellar, horses in the stable, a carriage and a gig; all the trappings of wealth.
The loss of her social standing, her reputation – not so long ago merely a remote possibility – was now staring her in the face. While those trappings of wealth embraced her now, all that the future heralded was impending doom. All of this, all of this easy way of living, would be gone, and all because of a daring romantic fling with a man she desired and fell in love with, who was decent enough in his own way but of no particular standing, and certainly no wealth. People would steer clear of her to avoid tainting their own respectability. What few friends she had would disown her, including Marigold.
Indeed, what close friends did she have apart from Marigold?
None.
She had another sister, Rosalind, married to an army captain now serving in India. Seldom did she hear from Rosalind in that far-off land. Effectively, she had nobody but for her two children, and Benjamin was even resolved to deprive her of her son. There was only Marigold; and soon – too soon – Marigold would shun her as well. She was fated to be the most solitary, the loneliest person on God’s earth, a hermit, homeless, friendless. With this catastrophe approaching, she had nobody to confide in, save for the man who was party to her downfall. Furthermore, he could be of no help even if he wanted to be.
In her turmoil she failed to notice Marigold standing beside her.
‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,’ Marigold remarked with sisterly concern. Rose was in her arms but settled now.
At once Aurelia folded up the papers and held them by her side in the folds of her skirt, out of view. She smiled as if to allay any fears her half-sister was harbouring.
‘Is it bad news?’ Marigold asked with obvious unease.
‘Oh…Well…Yes…Yes and no…No, not really.’ Aurelia felt decidedly unequal to the question. ‘Something that more concerns Benjamin, in fact.’
‘But you look so worried, Aurelia. You’ve gone ever so pale. And that man Lissimore asked for you by name.’
‘Oh…because he knew Benjamin wouldn’t be here at this time, I suppose.’
‘Is Benjamin in some sort of trouble then?’ Marigold persisted.
‘He…No…It’s…It’s something I’ll have to talk to him about when he comes home. I’d better put these papers in my bedroom till he gets back.’ She moved towards the staircase. ‘Please do sit down, Marigold. Your tea will be cold. I shall only be a moment.’
‘Why don’t you bring Christina down with you? You know how she loves to gurgle at our Rose.’
‘Of course, if she’s awake,’ she called over her shoulder as she continued up the stairs.
* * *
At just after four o’clock Marigold left Holly Hall House to walk home, pushing Rose in her bassinet. Rose was waving her arms about as she sat up, alert to everything going on around her. Marigold, meanwhile, was deep in thought about the change in Aurelia’s demeanour after the inadequately explained visit of the man Lissimore. It troubled her greatly that Aurelia had seemed so preoccupied with whatever news Lissimore had brought, even though she had tried to dismiss it as trivial. If only Aurelia had confided in her, as sisters should. That lack of confiding led Marigold to wonder whether Aurelia imagined she could not trust her, and the very notion hurt. She should know without doubt that she could trust her with anything confidential. Still, she would mention the incident to Algie, to find out if he knew of anything untoward about Benjamin Sampson that might so disturb Aurelia.
She arrived home at Badger House and wheeled the bassinet into the hallway. She lifted Rose out and headed for the kitchen with the intention of giving the child a drink. Clara was at the stone sink, her sleeves rolled above her elbows, peeling potatoes which, one by on
e, she dropped into a saucepan.
The two women greeted each other familiarly as Marigold reached for a mug out of a cupboard and held it under the tap.
‘How’s Aurelia?’ Clara enquired conversationally.
‘Hard to say,’ Marigold replied with all honesty. ‘There’s something funny going on. Some bloke named Lissimore called while I was there. Something to do with Benjamin, Aurelia said. The man gave her a wad of papers, said they were for her. Then, after he’d gone, she seemed a bit distant – fretting, like. I’m a bit worried about her.’
‘Lissimore, did you say?’
‘Yes, Lissimore.’
‘That’s a coincidence,’ Clara proclaimed, picking another potato out of the sink ready to strip it of its skin. ‘Some chap who said his name was Lissimore called here after our Algie while you were gone. Said he was sent by a solicitor – I can’t remember their name, though.’
Marigold was wide-eyed with astonishment at the coincidence. ‘Did he say what it was about?’
‘I didn’t give him the chance,’ Clara affirmed. ‘I sent him off. Told him it was no good him coming here at this time of day looking for our Algie. “Our Algie’s at his work,” I told him.’
‘And did you tell him where his work was?’
‘Course. I imagine he went to find him. He said he would. I imagined it was about the business.’
‘Clara, what’s that all about then, I wonder?’ Marigold asked. ‘How come the same chap that went to Aurelia’s called to see Algie as well?’
Clara shrugged. ‘Search me.’ She had no answer – or rather, she had no answer she could give. News that the same man had called on Aurelia at once raised her suspicions, not that it was her place to speculate about her qualms to Marigold. She was the only person aware of Algie’s earlier affair with Aurelia, and had disapproved of it utterly. She might be harbouring wrong suspicions about the visit of the man Lissimore. She hoped those suspicions were wrong. It could be about business after all.
* * *
Chapter 12
Aurelia said, ‘I was served the papers for your divorce this morning.’
Benjamin had just returned home and, just as he was turning away from her to hang his hat on the stand in the hall, she detected a smile of satisfaction on his face.
‘Your divorce as well, if I’m not mistaken,’ he replied brusquely. He turned to face her with a disdainful look as he headed for the sweeping staircase.
Aurelia decided to follow him. There were some notions she wanted to be more certain about. At the top of the first landing she caught up with him. He heard the whisper of skirts behind him.
‘What d’you want?’
‘I need to speak to you, Benjamin,’ she declared anxiously. ‘There are things I need to get clear in my mind.’
‘Oh? Such as?’
‘I need to know what’s going to happen to me – to Benjie.’
He opened the door to his bedroom, and held it open for her as an invitation to enter. It was implicit between them that this was so they could discuss the matter in private, unheard by the servants. Once inside, he perched himself on the bed and bent down to undo the laces of his shoes, while she remained standing, facing him, looking at the top of his head.
‘Well, at least you know what will happen to Benjie,’ he said, easing the first shoe off with his other foot. ‘As to what you end up doing is entirely your own affair.’
‘Benjamin, I do understand that I shall have to find somewhere to live…I’ll have to find work to keep myself and Christina, but what I’m unclear about is when. I mean, are you going to throw me out before the divorce is heard in court, before it’s granted?’
‘I take it you haven’t seen a solicitor yet?’ he remarked mockingly.
‘It hadn’t crossed my mind. I imagined such decisions as a divorce court might make wouldn’t warrant me having a solicitor.’
‘Then I suggest you appoint one.’ He removed his other shoe. ‘Soon…He’ll explain everything.’
‘But I don’t know of any solicitors.’
‘There must be dozens,’ he stated with derision at her naïvety. ‘Solicitors are ten a penny, littered all over Brierley Hill and Dudley. Not to mention Stourbridge.’
‘Can’t I use the same solicitor as you?’ she asked.
He uttered a disdainful laugh and shook his head with disbelief as he doffed his jacket. ‘Don’t be stupid, Aurelia. We’re on opposing sides. Find your own solicitor and he’ll explain about decree nisi and decree absolute, and then you’ll know more or less where you stand. But understand this…’ He was pointing a cufflink at her that he had just removed prior to taking off his shirt. ‘Once this divorce is over, you will be on your own. If you end up in the Union Workhouse with Stokes’s bastard then it’s of your own making. I shan’t lift a finger to help you. You’ll not get a penny out of me.’
‘I want nothing from you except my son,’ she replied calmly, pushing back tears that were welling in her eyes. ‘All I want out of this marriage is my son. I’ll not trouble you for anything else. But be sure that I’ll fight you tooth and nail to get him.’
‘That’s up to you,’ he sneered. ‘But you won’t get him.’
Aurelia turned around in a huff of agonised frustration and stamped out of the room, slamming the door behind her. She fled into her own bedroom, shut the door and, with her back pressed hard against it, she wept. So she had found love elsewhere, languishing for the tenderness and warm intimacy denied her at home. And who could blame her?
What had she ever seen in Benjamin? What on earth had compelled her to fall for his self-serving wooing in the first place, his whisking her with sweet words and vain promises from under the very nose of sweet Clarence Froggatt? She would have been perfectly content with Clarence. The flaws in Benjamin’s character were so obvious that she accused herself of being blindingly stupid for not having perceived them within the first hour of meeting him. Where now was the outlandish charm that had once bewitched her? There remained no trace of it. Benjamin was callous, unfeeling and pitiless to be so zealously resolute in his bid to deprive her of her precious son. He was irresponsible, incorrigibly so.
Irresponsible or otherwise, she must follow his latest advice and seek out a reputable and able solicitor to guide her through this quagmire of divorce.
* * *
Oh, this bitter, ruthless contempt Benjamin now had for this useless woman he had been mad enough to marry. Thanks to her perfidy he would be a figure of ridicule, the deceived husband, the cuckold. The prospect brought on inexpressible torment. He found it impossible to forgive, let alone even countenance, the disloyalty, the deceit, the immorality of her despicable, debasing affair with Algie Stokes. He found it impossible to view her infidelity even-handedly, nor could he find any mercy in the fact that some women do stray. Straying was a prevalent weakness of female nature, he believed, a weakness that any woman with any strength of character could overcome.
Yet that same human weakness had manifested itself in his own ineffectual nature; but he could not see it. That same human weakness had enticed him to stray irrevocably towards the tender, sensual allures of Maude Atkins. While he perceived that adventure as his prerogative as a man, never could he tolerate such behaviour from his wife.
* * *
At about the same time that Aurelia and Benjamin were tormenting each other with their matrimonial differences, Algie was sitting at table with Marigold and his mother, dining on liver faggots, grey peas, boiled potatoes and gravy. Rose was in her high chair between Clara and Marigold, waving a spoon and managing to scatter bits of the gruel-like concoction known as grey peas about her, adorning her hair with it. This hot meal, which they called ‘tea’, was ample, decently presented and smelled enticing.
It struck Algie how nobody was speaking, except to urge Rose to eat.
As soon as he had walked into the house, he had noticed the atmosphere had changed. His mother failed to look him in the eye, yet she sounded affable
enough when she actually deigned to speak. Algie, of course, had no notion of the fretful whirrings of her mind triggered by the earlier visit of the man Lissimore. Nor did he have any notion that Lissimore had manifested himself at Badger House, simply because Lissimore had failed to mention it in his hurry to serve papers and be gone. Marigold was not bestowing her usual attention either. He approached her, asked how she was, conscious of the child growing inside her, but she sidestepped away from his touch, making some casual excuse to see to this, or to see to that. She seemed preoccupied, and it was not like her. Now, they were eating together in this unnatural quiet, as if everybody was waiting for somebody else to speak.
It reminded him of when he discovered that his sister Kate was revelling in clandestine visits to her bedroom by her stepfather, Murdoch Osborne, in the middle of the night. That knowledge had been dynamite, and Algie did not know how to deal with it. Nor did he himself feel much like chatting at this time, due to that unexpected afternoon visit from the stranger named Lissimore.
He looked up and saw Marigold’s blue eyes latched on to his, revealing an unmistakeable expression of disquiet. Did she know? Was she aware already that he and Aurelia were about to be ensconced in some unsavoury legal proceedings? Of course not. How could she?
‘Nobody’s got much to say tonight,’ he hazarded, his eyes scanning questioningly from one to the other.
‘Neither have you,’ Marigold replied pointedly. ‘Is anything the matter? Is there something you should be telling us?’
He shrugged, but could not hold her concerned gaze, so he broke open another faggot and watched the steam rise from it. He fed a piece into his mouth, at the same moment looking up at Marigold once more. She was still scrutinising him with those lovely but apprehensive eyes.
‘We had a visit today, didn’t we Clara?’ she stated, unable to hold back any longer, for if something had to be said, Marigold must say it.
Clara nodded, and lifted her eyes momentarily from her plate to glimpse her son’s reaction, but said nothing.
‘A visit from who?’
